March 2016

March started out with another birthday celebration!  Jen and I went to the Therme Spa to celebrate her birthday and to spend some of my birthday money.  This is a new place in town and it completely met our expectations!  It was wonderful!  We definitely have to go back to this place!!

Two days after we were at the spa, a new team came in!  We had lots of fun with them making Martisor, playing at the park and teaching lessons at the orphanage.  One of the girls on the team was 8 or 9 years old and her name was Ruthie.  So, she and our Ruthie became good pals.  They even got to have a sleepover!

After this team left, we had a few weeks team free and we celebrated Flori's birthday!  All she really wanted was a Minion cake....so I obliged!

Happy Birthday, Flori!

My Babies

You may have noticed on Facebook that I've posted quite a few pictures of babies, recently.  That's because, unofficially, we are having a H2H "daycare" at our house.  Alina and Ioana both work, so to help them out, we keep their girls.  Karla comes two days a week and we usually pick up Ruthie from her pre-school 1-2 days a week.  Daria comes three days a week and stays with her Daddy two days a week.  Karla is an easy baby to handle; eats and sleeps like a gem....Daria is a little bit more difficult; doesn't really like to eat or sleep.  Ruthie is doing well in her pre-school; learning her letters and numbers.  Next year, she will go to Kindergarten.  All three of them are well loved!  My prayer for all three is that they will grow up not just knowing our love or their parent's love, but also, the love of Jesus!

Reading Time

Karla loves to read books!  She will go over to where we keep the books and bring them to us and then plop down in one of our laps so we can read!  She loves the book with the babies and will kiss the babies on the pages with every turn of the page!  So cute!

Happy Birthday, Jenny and Karla!

February came and went so fast....it was here and before you knew it...over!

I celebrated my birthday by going bowling!  It was the first time Ruthie or Emi had bowled....their mothers too!  They had a blast!  Jen and Ruthie made me a pink princess cake!  Yum, yum!

This ball is sooo heavy!!

Lovely birthday flowers!!

Karla's birthday came about two weeks later!  We celebrated with a princess party!  She wasn't really in the mood to give us many smiles that day!

My first taste of cake!!  Yep, it's yummy! 

New Year's/January 2016

Whenever I am in the states for Christmas, then I arrive back to Romania with the Holiday team.  We have a lot of fun with them because they get to help us deliver Christmas presents to the kids at the orphanages where we work.

 We also have a huge New Year's Eve Party with our transition kids and families, complete with Mennonite New Year's Cookies made by Jen and me, dancing, games and fireworks at midnight.

After New Year's, we had a little bit of snow.  We played with the kids at the Voluntari orphanage out in the snow and took pictures with the big snowman they built.

Happy Birthday, Marinela...21 years old!!!

My brother came to visit for 5 days mid January.  I had a lot of fun showing him around to all the places where H2H works.  We had more snow while he was here, so we had a snow day.  Ruthie stayed overnight because her pre-school was closed because of the snow.  Lucky for him, he got to help shovel!!

He even got in on a little princess Monopoly!!

Well, the snow all melted and that was all we had this year!  Praise God!!