This and That

   Hello!  I haven't done a blog post since August! We have been busy with everyday life and ministry things. I thought I would give you guys a quick update on things things that we've been up to!

  In October our oldest, Elijah, became a teenager! I'm not sure if I have come to terms yet that I'm officially a mother of a teenager. One thing that I did this year is take all three of the kids birthday pictures. We had a blast!

Eli the teenager!

 
   
  In November our youngest, Eryn, turned 10! Once again, a milestone birthday. My baby is in the double digits!

Eryn 

  Also in November we were able to purchase our furlough tickets! We were amazed at how God provided. Marty sent out our October/November prayer letter asking for help to purchase our tickets. Within a few minuets we get a call saying that someone wanted to purchase our tickets! It was unexpected, but a huge blessing! We will be back February 14, 2018 until February 2019! 

 We spent Thanksgiving with another missionary family here in town, the Carney family. We had a great time of fellowship and food!

  Each year the towns here in Hungary have a Christmas market where they will sell all kinds of goodies! This year our town of Debrecen has a Ferris wheel! We got to ride it and the view was amazing!

  At the beginning of December Marty finished his third semester of language school, with a 99% on his final! He worked very hard and his hard work has paid off.

Marty on his last day of language school! He was heading to take his final!

 Also in December Maryanna will be turning 12 on the 23rd. We went ahead a got a few pictures on a nice warmer day. All three kids hit milestone birthdays this year!

Maryanna, our diva! :) 

 The rest of our year is shaping up to be busy! In this next week we have
Mine and Marty's 15th wedding anniversary, Maryanna's birthday the 23rd, then Christmas! Craziness! :)  In January we move out of our apartment on the 19th, we will be staying at the church here in town until we leave in February. So, with all that being said, I may not post again until we are Stateside!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family!!  

 

Boldog Karácsonyt! Boldog új évet!

Our school schedule

  I know I've shared a morning routine with you guys before. But, I thought I would share our homeschooling schedule. I like to have it on paper so I can see it. I also like to stick to the schedule as much as possible. I know some days don't go as planned, but having a set plan helps, at least for me.

 As far as curriculum we use Landmark. This is our 3rd year using them, and we really like it. Landmark is an affordable, King James Bible homeschool curriculum. They also have where you can enroll your children in the academy, and have them keep up with your kids school records.    

  This year I have a 5th,6th,and a 7th grader!  

This was too funny! 

Okay, back to the schedule! 

  I'm up by 6, and between 6-6:30ish I have my personal time with The Lord. Like I've said a million times before, this is very important!

6:30-7~I cook breakfast.

7~I wake my guys up, if they aren't already up.

7:15-7:30~Breakfast time

7:30-8~Morning chores

8-8:15~Family devotions

8:15-8:30~We get our school things all ready to go.

8:30-9:15~Math

*15 minute break

9:30-10:30~English

 *15 minute snack break

10:45-11:15~Bible

  *15 minute break

11:30-12~Science

  *1 hour lunch break

1-1:30~Literature

  *15 minute break

1:45-2:15~History

This is the schedule we try to stick with. It works great for us! I will add that the times listed here are teaching times and when they work on their lessons. I set a timer and when that goes off, the class is done.  Whatever is not done during the class time is homework. 

My Testimony

  I was thinking the other about how I got saved, and I realized I have never shared that on my blog. I think it's important to share your testimony of salvation, so here's mine.


  I made a profession of faith as a little girl. It was one of those things, I did because everyone else was doing it. I was never convicted that I was a sinner in need of a Savior. I went several years leaning on that profession of faith.

  I went on and got married and we had our first born, Eli. In February 2005, we were having revival at our church, Bro. Jack Parchman was preaching. I had been under conviction all week. I was miserable! Marty kept asking me to tell him my testimony. He said he liked to hear it. But, in my heart I knew it was fake. I had resisted and told myself that the profession I had made as a little girl was good enough. Well, "good enough" wasn't enough. :) I was married to a preacher after all. :)  I had to swallow my pride, and admit I was lost and on my way to Hell. So, on February 22, 2005 Marty lead me to the Lord.  There was a burden lifted and a new name written in Heaven!

  I'm far from a perfect Christian, but I strive daily to be what The Lord wants me to be.  I would encourage you to share your testimony with others. It may not be a testimony of great flowery words, or a testimony of being saved out of all kinds of sins. If you are saved, your testimony matters. Share it with those around you, you never know the impact it may have! But, if you don't have a personal testimony of when God touched your heart and you admitted that you are a sinner on your way to Hell without Christ, I would encourage you to get saved. Talk to your pastor or a saved friend or family member that can lead you to the Lord.  It's the best decision you will ever make!

Being weary...

Being weary is something that we all deal with at some point in our lives. Be it physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

I looked up the meaning of weary, Here it is: feeling or showing extreme tiredness, especially as a result of excessive exertion. I know as a wife and mom it's easy to become weary. 

So, let me talk to the wives and mommies for a little bit. :) 

Okay momma! I'm sure many of you have fallen into bed many times utterly and totally wore out. It comes with the territory. :) You go through your day wearing many "hats". Mommy, chef, boo-boo kisser, referee, house cleaner, teacher and so much more. I've been a mommy for almost 13 years. Wow! Crazy to think my oldest will be a teen in two months! Anyway, I'm no where near an expert!! Please don't think that! :) I learn all the time. But a few things that I have learned along the journey of motherhood. And yes, it's an amazing journey. So, a few things you have probably already heard them, but here we go! 

Just some humor to start this off! 

*Take time with The Lord! This is very very important. We can give all we've got to our families, but be sure that The Lord takes the preeminence in our lives. It sets our mood for the day and our mood affects our families moods. On days where I don't get to get my morning devotions in, my day is thrown off and honestly, I can be grumpy. And when mommy is grumpy it has the tendency to wear off on our family. 

*Take time for yourself. No, this is not you being selfish. This is your time to recharge. Even new mommies can take that time while the baby sleeps. The chores will keep while you take some you time. :)

*Give chores! This is one area that I still struggle with. I know, my guys are old enough to do many chores, and they do. But, sometimes it's easy to see a mess that needs cleaned up and just do it myself. But, that makes more work for me and teaches the kids nothing. 

*Ask for help. Again, this is an area I'm working on. We like to think we are Wonder Woman and do it all ourselves. But, as I tell my family, I don't live in the house by myself, so they need to help. And my guys are good about helping. 

*Learn to laugh. In life as a wife and mom, you have to learn to laugh even when you don't feel like it. When you've heard half a million knock knock jokes, heard the same story at least a hundred times, learn to listen and laugh.

*Take that time with your hubby!! You are both busy during the day, I get that. But try to remember that when the kids are of the house, it's you and your hubby left. Until then, take what time you can. Sometimes a full blown date is just not possible. But, you can take some time once the kids are in bed and talk or just curl up and watch a movie or a tv series together. Don't for get to talk to one another. COMMUNICATION IS KEY! If we never talk to one another then our relationship will never grow, and we are left with someone that we barely know, even after years of living in the same house. 

These are just a few things that I've been thinking about lately. 

Galatians 6:9a And let us not be weary in well doing:

A few of my favorite things...Hungary style! Part 1

I've decided to do a little mini series on here just covering a few of my favorite things here in Hungary.

Today I want to share with you something we enjoy doing as a family.  We enjoy taking a walk to a park called Nagyerdő. It's about a 10 minute walk from our house. We love it! So we get our exercise in along with some family time.

Organizing my morning...

I thought I would share with you guys what I do to help my mornings go a lot smoother. Recently I have become more of a morning person. I enjoy my alone time with The Lord in the morning. It makes my day go better! :)

My morning organization actually starts the night before. I have learned what works for me, so I thought I would share it with you guys.

Marty and I are coffee drinkers, we enjoy our morning cup of coffee, or any time of day for that matter. :)  I make up the coffee the night before so all I have to do is turn it on in the morning.

The coffee is all ready to go! 

 Another thing I do is to make sure my kitchen is nice and clean the night before. My day goes so much smoother if I wake up to a clean kitchen. I think it's just mental but I feel overwhelmed when my kitchen is dirty. :)  It doesn't take that much time to keep the kitchen clean. At the end of the night I make sure the sink is clear, the counters are wiped down and the floor is swept.

This is what my kitchen looks like right now.

If it's at all possible I like to make up breakfast the night before. I'll make muffins, or bread, or an oatmeal bake. I have an oatmeal bake cooking right now, and it smells amazing. :) As a side note, Marty doesn't care for oatmeal by itself, but this oatmeal bake is one of his favorites! Here is a link to the recipe! I have to double it because my guys like it so much!

Fresh out of the oven berry oatmeal bake!

I also like to set out my clothes the night before. I know, that's simple, but it keeps my sleepy head trying to figure out what to wear in the morning. I put my clothes on top of the washer, so all I have to do is get dressed and get on with my day.

I like to keep it simple, denim skirt, t-shirt and a cute pair of earrings, and I'm good to go! 

My morning routine goes a little something like this:

6-6:30~I crawl out of bed.

6:30-7~I get dressed, turn the coffee on, and read my Bible. Yes, in that exact order. :)

7-7:30~I work on getting breakfast together and wake my kiddos up.

7:30-8~Breakfast and clearing the breakfast dishes. While the kids get dressed I will go and fix my hair and do my makeup. I feel more put together if my hair is fixed and I have at least a little bit of makeup on. The makeup is a personal preference, and it literally takes me less than 10 minutes to do my makeup.

8-8:15~We do morning family devotions.

Then after that our day starts with whatever we have going on that day.

I hope, in some way, that this will give you some ideas on how to organize your mornings. I would love to hear if you do any of the things I do, or hear any of the things you do to help your mornings be more productive.

Recipe time!

  My family and I are on week two of a 30 day stretch without sugar, dairy, processed food, wheat, and junk food. So far, so good! My kids did have a little bit of chocolate on Easter, I'm no monster. :)   

  It's a cold rainy day here in Hungary, so I made some chili for lunch and I also made some banana and cherry "ice cream".  My guys loved it! So, I thought I would share the ice cream recipe with you. It has no sugar or dairy. Let's get into it! 

Four things is all you need! 

Frozen bananas~I cut up about 7 bananas last night and froze them!

Frozen cherries~I used almost all of the 100g bag.

About a tablespoon of water.

Food Processor

 All you need to make this yummy treat!

 Add the bananas to the food processor. I added too many, so I had to take out about half of the bananas. oops. :)

Then add as many cherries as you would like! I really like cherries, so I used a lot. :)  Add a little bit of water to make it smooth, and you are good to go! 

It was smooth, creamy, and satisfying! Marty added some coco powder to his, and it was yummy! 

One year in Hungary...

As I sit here at my kitchen table and think about this last year, I'm amazed at all The Lord has done this past year. Looking back I see when the Lord was working, even when, at the time, we couldn't see what He was doing. We've seen victories, heartache, pain, and joy.

I thought I would do a quick year review with you guys. :) Those are always fun.

We started our journey to Hungary April 16, 2016. We got hung up in Paris and had to spend the night, but that's a story for another time. I did get to see the Eiffel Tower all lit up at night, from the airplane!  :)

Eryn looking at the planes in Paris.

   We made our way to Debrecen and got all settled in. Then a week later I got to see what the emergency rooms looked like. I sliced two of my fingers with a new knife. Thankfully, I've healed up nicely. The people at the church here still get a little nervous when I get around knives. :)

My wounded fingers.

  We went though the summer months helping with various activities with Bible Baptist Church. We helped give the church a face lift with some fresh paint, we helped with the VBS, and we helped pass out lots of John and Romans.

Walking to church

Putting John and Romans in the mail boxes

VBS

We started school in August, and we had our first visitors in September. Our pastor and his wife came for a visit. We loved having them here! And we are looking forward when they come and see us again.

Bro. and Mrs. Graham and our kids. :)

During their visit I lost one of my Grandmothers. I have sweet memories with her, and will cherish them. One of my favorite memories was going to her house in Florida and eating her homemade spaghetti and meatballs. :) Makes me smile just thinking about it.

Grandma O'Neill was the one next to me. 

I was able to go back to the States for two weeks to help my mom out after she had a major surgery. I'm very thankful for that time I was able to help her out. I was also able to see my Granddaddy, Which was a blessing, because shortly after my visit he passed away.

After Thanksgiving my sister-in-law came for a visit! We were so very excited that she could come for a visit. She is more like a sister to me than a sister-in-law. We love and miss her, and we can't wait to see her again!

This accurately describes my family!

I sure love this lady!

  Christmas was great! I loved all the booths set up around the city center and all the excitement that Christmas brings. :) We celebrated Christmas day with Bible Baptist Church, we enjoyed helping make traditional Hungarian cabbage rolls, which are amazing, by the way! :)

Dishing out the cabbage rolls on Christmas Day. It's a joy to get to work alongside of Mrs. Bea Kovacs. She has such a sweet spirit and a true love for others. :)

 Marty and I celebrated 14 years of marriage last year! I'm amazed that it's been 14 years.  :)

New Years came and has gone and we continued on serving the Lord.  

As Spring has sprung here again and all the flowers are blooming, I can't wait to see what new things the Lord has in store for us this year!  We are plugging along with the language and are praying about where the Lord would have us go and start a church here in Hungary. I'm excited to see where this next year takes us!

Thank you for going down memory lane with me. I hope you enjoyed it. :)

Chicken Fajitas!

One of the things I miss from America in Mexican food! It's my favorite. I came across a recipe for chicken fajitas, which is usually what I would order when we would go eat at a Mexican restaurant in the States.

Here is how my fajitas turned out. They were really good! Marty declared it "company food!"  :)

I also made some homemade tortilla shells. Which, to be honest, I usually don't do. I usually buy the store bought ones, but we ran out and we could't find any, so I made my own. I do believe that I have found a good recipe for tortilla shells. They were soft, chewy and warm. All the good qualities in a tortilla shell. :)  They were also incredibly simple to make! Here is a link to the shells, and Here is a link to the chicken fajitas!

If you try it out, let me know if your family enjoyed it as much as my family did! :) 

A day in my life.

You may be wondering what a missionary wife does on a day to day basis. I can speak just for myself, but my days go a little something like this...

This picture sums up my days after school is done.

Some people may think that the life of a missionary wife is always exciting and we are always on the go. But, day to day life for this missionary wife and mommy is full of school, laundry, cooking, cleaning, language learning, teaching a Sunday school class, going to visitation, smiling and being friendly to those around me. 

I'm sure my day to day will change once we are out on our own and get a church going. Right now, our job is to learn the language and culture. Why? Because without a firm foundation in the language and the culture we can't properly reach those we have come to minister to. Hungarian isn't an easy language to learn. The similarities between the grammar and sentence structure in Greenlandic and Hungarian is crazy! But, we are very thankful to have people around us that are happy to help us. They have been very patient as we stumble and butcher their language as we are learning. :) 

Tea talk...

Three of my favorite things! My owl tea cup, my Bible from a very dear friend, and my journal!

    It's a cold snowy day here in Debrecen. We went this morning and helped take down the Christmas decorations at church, then went for a walk in the snow. Now we are home and we're relaxing before church tomorrow.

    As we are all kinda doing our own thing,  I thought I would share some of things that I have been thinking about lately. So, let's have some Tea Talk. I have my tea all made up, so let's go!

    On January 27th it will be a year since we first visited Hungary! Time flies! We would have never imagined that The Lord would have placed us here in Hungary. But, I'm so glad He did. :)  I love my Hungary home.

    Sometimes we get asked if we will ever go back to Greenland? Well, probably not. I see that as a part of our past and we have to look forward, not backwards. We are still in contact with our friends we made while we lived in Greenland. I hope those are lifelong friendships that we can cherish. Sometimes letting go is hard. We do still talk about Greenland, it was a huge chunk of our missionary ministry. Some of the things are hard to talk about while others bring smiles. As I think back at our time in Greenland, The Lord certainly matured me as a Christian, wife and mother. Believe me, I have not "arrived" but, I have grown.  

    We don't understand sometimes why God does things. Like moving some arctic missionaries to central Europe! But, we can take what we learned in Greenland and apply it here in Hungary. Reflecting back over this last year I see areas I need to improve and areas that I have grown. It's easy to trust God in the easy times and it's easy to get upset during the hard times. I have learned, and I'm still learning, to lean on the Lord more during those hard times. Psalm 121 has been my go to passage of scripture when I feel overwhelmed. I find it soothing and comforting.

    I hope some of my openness has helped someone. I think I may try to have some "Tea Talk" once a month. If it helps anyone, it helps me. :)

Trying to get a little organized!

A little organization never hurt anyone. :) At least that's what I keep telling myself. One area I struggle in is menu planning. I LOVE to cook, I just really don't like the whole process of planning out a menu for a week. So, I was trying to figure out a way to make the process a little less  painful.

I have decided to try to plan out our menu monthly. I found a menu meal planner that I downloaded and printed out, and after getting horribly distracted by the kids cartoons, I finally got it all filled in!  I also filled out a weekly menu plan to go along with the monthly one. We go grocery shopping every Monday.

I decided to show you what my menu looks like.  

Here is a link to the website that I got my menu planner from. She has several free ones that you can download and print out. I do believe she had me at "free"! They are also very colorful and cute! 

Our menu for the month. Now all I have to do is get together a grocery list each week! Easy peasy!

This is for next week. I like how it has the menu and the grocery list on the same page. I often forget why I need a certain item.

I made a list of meals we eat on a regular bases and also added a few new ones in there also. The marks by them are how many times in the month they are repeated. :)

With the help of my yogurt and tea, we got it done!!

Grocery shopping here in Hungary

 I thought I would share with you guys what our grocery store looks like. This was one of the questions I was asked on Facebook.  We have several grocery stores in our town, but the closest to us is called Interspar. So, we go there because it's the closest.

I will forewarn you, this is a heavy picture post!

All of our grocery store trips start at the tram stop! And we always have our rolling cart, it has been a huge help hauling groceries home!

The walkway up to the store. 

The bakery right in the entrance, it smells amazing!  

The produce section is good here, there are other stores that I like to get my produce from in the summer. But, since it has been so cold, we just get it all at here.

Eggs aren't refrigerated. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to find the eggs the first time I went shopping. I kept looking in the refrigerator section, not the produce section. :)

You have to weigh your own produce. This was fun to figure out too! I irritated many workers before I figured it out. 

Our milk comes in boxes! You  can get fresh milk out of a machine, but the box milk is more convenient. 

We have Oreo! I don't care for them, but my family loves them!

The fresh bread section! 

Fresh pastries smell amazing!

We have Heinz. It's a little pricey,  899 forent is about $3. Every once in a while I'll get it, but the cheaper brand tastes just as good. :)

The candy isle! My kids favorite! (And mine too)

Fresh meat!

More Heinz ketchup! I will confess, I have been known to splurge and buy Heinz ketchup when it's not on sale!

The cheese section. Not my favorite part of the store! Marty and the kids usually pick out the cheese since I'm allergic and don't eat it. :)

Lays! 299 Forint=$1.02...YES!!

Down on of the main isles

We have pretty much all the major brand American sodas here.

Lots of juice, water and sodas

My kids favorite section! 

Lots of odds and ends

You can get your major appliances here too!

A small baby section. 

This was short line. Most of the time the lines are really long!

You have to bag up your own groceries. You also have to pay for the bags. We use reusable ones, it saves some money! 

All bagged up and ready to go!

We take the tram and then walk the rest of the way home! Everyone chips in and we get it done!

Eryn got to carry the bucket of oranges we bought today!