Who can feel more blessed at this moment than I? Celebrating my birthday morning was so much fun this year, waking up to a fresh blanket of snow, reveling in the thought of my promised breakfast in bed, eating my omelet, muffin, and truffle and savoring my morning coffee propped up on pillows, devouring a love letter written by my dear husband (when was the last time my husband wrote me a love letter just like when we were dating? blush, blush), blinking back tears over the beautiful words of a carefully chosen birthday card, drinking in the words of appreciation from my four children….oh, God, thank you for my blessings.

October, the month we expect falling leaves and apples and hot spiced cider, brought us a surprise this year. We woke up one morning to a white world outside and snow kept falling most of the day. The leaves were still on the trees making them heavy and with that together with a windy day brought huge trees and branches down all around us. I was planning to go shopping that day, leaving John home with the homeschooling. A few times I almost turned back because the snowy conditions made driving absolutely treacherous. At a snail’s pace, I continued on, but the snow didn’t let up. Who is prepared for deep snow in October? By the time I did my shopping in the first store, I had a hard time wading out to my car with snow coming in my shoes and my cart wallowing in the slush. I had had enough of shopping in this weather and decided I should just go back home. It was a good decision. If I would have been gone any longer, I might not have reached home for hours. As I crept out of town, branches were bending down to the road. A few places, we had to go into the other lane of traffic to avoid the low hanging obstacles. Branches were beginning to break and litter the road. It was dangerous to be out. I almost slid on the corner even going only 20 mph, but I managed to pull myself back onto the highway. After I arrived home, we stood on our porch, and could hear the trees just creaking and groaning with all the weight. We watched as tops of trees on our neighbors’ property just broke off and crashed to the ground. Living in the woods causes one to fear a bit in a storm like that. Two trees fell right by our house, but none of them did any damage.

During the snowstorm, we along with almost all of Poland lost our electricity, y. With all the lines down and branches and trees fallen everywhere, it took quite a while to restore all the power. We lost power on Wed morning and finally had it again on Friday. Our house was very cold by this time and we even spent some time in town at our school there so the children wouldn’t have to do school in the cold conditions. We are so dependent on electricity for our heat, and it is frequent that we lose our power here in the village. We would really like to get our fireplace finished for a second source of heat.

John and the boys spent the next couple of days cutting up all the downed trees and branches. Two trees fell into our pond on the back of our property, so it was exciting to pull them out. A few trees had fallen on or close to our property fence, so we had to do something with them as well. We ended up with a nice pile of wood for burning in the boys’ stove for which we are thankful.

The boys are building a rowboat to row around in our little pond. There is quite a few sticks and things poking up out of the water and boys would really like to get it all cleared away before winter so hopefully they can do some skating. Building the stern was the easiest, just pounding together the two side boards into the correct shape and length. Then using correctly positioned trees, they managed to bend two side 1x8s to fashion the prow and continued by building a floor. Their maiden voyage wasn’t too successful with water spurting up through the bottom of the boat, so they have dry-docked it for further repairs hoping to launch it again before the ice makes the trip impossible.

Our dog also is owner of a deluxe doghouse which the boys made using wood that they found around here and also some that John purchased to finish it up. It has a nice tin roof and even a plaque over the door with the dog’s name “Mocha” engraved on it. I wonder if the dog is as pleased with her new quarters as the boys are satisfied with their efforts. Since her former house was made of blocks that would collapse without warning, this is indeed a great improvement.

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the future here and what options might exist for occupations for our boys. Conrad finishes high school this year and we’ve been talking about what the next phase of his life might look like. A lot to think about when you live in a foreign country. We’ve been tossing around some ideas and have been becoming more and more serious about perhaps starting a family business. It is now legally possible for us to do this since we now have our permanent residence cards. This might seem strange to all of you, since we have almost all boys, but the most feasible and seemingly profitable business in our town would be a coffee shop. Our friends have encouraged us for a long time to open something like that and make American baked goods. It isn’t a new idea for the team here, but recently we’ve been thinking about it more seriously as something to do with our family. We’re praying that God would open doors for this to happen if it is something we should pursue. We are praying for financing, committed people to help us start, for a location here, and that all the regulations would be easy to comply to. So you can join us in prayer about this. It looks big, but we want to be open if this is what God wants us to do.

Allison has recently taken up crocheting and knitting. She has great ambitions of making Christmas presents and gifts for her friends. I hope this keeps her recently restless spirit occupied for awhile. Right now, she has so many new ideas. But her ideas come at such inopportune times. On days when I feel the busiest she has some great project on her brain. One day, I was frantically trying to get everything done before an evening commitment, when Allison has the bright idea that we should do some card stamping. I told her I just couldn’t take the time. Another time, I borrowed the one and only sewing machine we have here to share among ourselves. Borrowing it at a time when no one else needs to use it is a feat in itself. This time, I wanted to revamp some of the curtains that bought in America this summer to better fit the windows here. I had five days until the machine had to be returned to one of the girls so she could sew. Guess what? Allison got the bright idea that she wanted to sew a jumper while we had the machine, so I spent three of those five days helping her cut out and sew it. I’m happy for the jumper and I’m glad she loves to sew, but that didn’t get any curtains redone. Sigh! Maybe another week when it is free I will try again. I wonder what projects she will come up with next?

We just celebrated one year in our new house. John and I went and picked out my kitchen countertops. So this now means that they are waiting for cupboards. John is getting closer to getting them done, and hopefully, there will be at least some of the lowers installed before Christmas. Oh, wouldn’t that be grand? I’m very happy with the colors of the counters, and I can’t wait to have a functional kitchen. It would be great to have it to cook for Christmas, but I won’t get my hopes up too high. We still have a lot of work to do inside our house, but we have made some progress since we moved in.

Blessings to all. Have a great Thanksgiving!