Memorial Day

We will be celebrating Memorial Day in Romania aging this year. It is different for us when we are home. My husband's VFW group visits 3 to 4 cemeteries in the greater Green Bay area to perform a celebration that honors the Vets and he is the Chaplin for the group. I miss these ceremonies to honor the Vets that have made the ultimate sacrifice so we can remain the free nation that we are. I will still send a prayer of thanksgiving to the fallen and my spirit will be with the VFW as they celebrate without us for another year.

until next time
God Bless you and keep you safe

No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth

I know I haven't posted for quite a while, but I have been busy traveling and the internet connection was not wonderful. I am back in Romania until July and our internet connection is very good here in our flat.

I was wondering if spring would ever get here! It has been so cold in Romania until a few days ago. Now it is hot enough to need the air conditioning on during the afternoon and early evening.

While we were home the last time, I had a wonderful visit with my Mom. She came to visit me in Green Bay with one of my daughters and her husband. I went back to CA with her and got to visit with my other children that live out there.

My learning fiber artist group on Yahoo had a class on how to make a Seminole strip quilt. Our teacher had wonderful instructions and my resulting quilt is below. I think I should have picked different fabric, but I do love the technique that she provided in her lessons.


I am working on a quilt for one of my children, but other than that, I have not done very much sewing, due to all of the traveling that I have been doing. I hope to finish the quilt top I am working on and at least start another one before we leave for home again. I will post a picture of the top as soon as I finish it.

Until next time, May God Bless You

Counting the days until we head for home

Our flight home is February 26th and I am sooooo happy to be going home. I like Romania, but I love my home and it seems that we have been gone for a long time. I will be home for 2 months, but Bruce only has a week and then back to Romania for him. I am looking forward to having several months at home and have planned many projects while I'm home. Bruce's work in Romania is slated to be finished in October 2011, so we have many more months here.

I hope to post more often when I am home as I will have more to share.

Until then,
God Bless

It has been a long time....

There has been a lot going on since my last post. Melissa got married and I not only have a son, Allen, but also a granddaughter, Taylor, which makes me very happy! Leah, another daughter, announced her engagement to Michael so another son will join our ever growing clan.

We did get home for Christmas, but it took us 4 days to get there. We were stuck in Amsterdam for 2 days and then a day in Chicago due to bad weather. We had 3 weeks at home and enjoyed every minute of it. Bruce was asked to come back to Romania for another 20 months. We will be able to vacation again in Europe this year and are trying to decide where we will go. I do love to travel and experience new things.

We are having a real cold spell here with temps of -20C and below. There is about 6 inches of snow on the ground and it makes getting around town hard. They are not as prepared for snow here as we are in Green Bay so there are no snow plows to clear the roads. Here are just a couple of photos of the last snow storm.

I am working on a quilt for our son. He loved to golf before he had his accident so I am making him a quilt using golf material. I hope to get it done before the end of February when we go home for a few weeks.

Until next time, God Bless you all

Getting ready to go home!

I have not posted since June, where do July go? We have been in Romania for almost 3 months and it is time to go home. We will be leaving on Friday and I am really looking forward to being home.

I have managed to quilt a bit and even finish (except the borders) my Double Delight (a Bonnie pattern) quilt top. I will have to post pictures when I finish it.

We took a week off to go to Austria. We stayed in Vienna at a lovely old hotel and visited 3 other countries while we were there. Each night we fell into bed, exhausted from our day, but I would not have missed this trip for anything. Budapest (Hungry) is a a wonderful old city with lots of history. Of course I can say that about Prague (Czech Republic), Bratislava (Slovak Republic), Vienna and Salzburg also. Each city has wonderful old buildings and stories to go along with them. I was very surprised to find that most of Vienna's old buildings are 'rebuilt' new - old buildings. Vienna was bombed so badly in the war that a good portion of the city was devastate. Most of the building were re-built to look the way they did originally.

If anyone is planning a trip to Vienna, I can strongly recommend using the Vienna City Tours to book day and half day guided tours. They were wonderful and their tour guides speak several languages which was very interesting. The buses were very comfortable and the history lessons were great.

I do have loads of pictures and have posted some on my face book page. Here are just a few from out Austrian vacation.


The first one is the parliament building in Budapest. This was taken from the other side of the Danube. The second one is a Mozart monument in Vienna. There were many monuments in each of the cities that we visited.

Stormy Weather

We had a really bad storm last night. The hail was very large and the wind was just howling. On top of that there was heavy rain while it was hailing. Here are some pictures that we took.The rain was so heavy that you could not see the buildings very well. They look like far away mountains in this picture.

Just look at the size of the hail stones. I know any of you in Texas are probably saing to yourselves that they are small, but for Romania, these are really large. Thank the good Lord there wasn't any real damage around the campus or the power plant. We didn't even loose power during the storm, although the lights flickered so we up plugged the computers and T.V. and my sewing machine. No sense in taking chances on power surges. We already lost 2 T.V. sets to the surges since we have been here.

Been a long time

A lot has happened since I last posted. We traveled home on May 2nd. It seemed that we were gone forever, but of course, it had only been 3 months and with the internet and phone there is contact with home folks. I wonder what it was like without the telephone. I remember when there was no internet or e-mail and SKYPE was unheard of. We seemed to get along just fine way back then. If you haven't used SKYPE I can recommend it. There is a free version that you can download from the internet. With SKYPE you can talk to anyone who also has SKYPE using your computer. You need a mic and if you and whoever you are calling have web cams you can see each other. I am still amazed who technology has made the world a much smaller place!

I was in the States for 4 weeks and during that time I traveled to California to visit my children and Mom. I made 2 round trips from Green Bay to San Francisco, the first one with my youngest daughter and the 2nd with my Mom. She came to visit for a week. My Mom is great, she is 86 years young and shares her home with my brother, his 3 children and his 6 grandchildren. It is a very full house!

While in California we had a wedding shower for Melissa, my middle child. She is to be married in September when Bruce and I return home and yes, her husband to be is a real sweetheart. I couldn't ask for a better son-in-law than Allen. This is one of the pictures that we took at Melissa's shower. The first row from left to right is Melissa, Leah, Manda, Bonnie and in the back from left to right is Jenn, Me, Mom and Karen (my older sister). Melissa, Leah, Manda, and Jenn are 4 of my 6 children and Bonnie is Karen's daughter.

We are back in Romania now. Today is our 18th wedding anniversary. We will be going out to dinner tonight to celebrate. I love to go out for dinner, not just because the food is good (and it really is good) but also there is no cleanup afterward! Good food - no cleanup, who could ask for more.

BTW, I am still working on Bonnie's quilt pattern, Double Delight. I will finish it, but I don't know when. I am also working on several other quilts at the same time. I will get pictures posted when as soon as I can.

Until next time - blessings to you all.