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Tuesday, January 2, 2024

                                               2024   A New Year!


And just like that a new year has begun! I remember as a child thinking that the year 2000 was forever away and now we're in 2024 and this year I'll turn 60 years old!  60 feels both older in some ways and younger than I expected in others! 

We started the year off a bit sadly as our little family with their 4 childen moved away to Bocas del Toro.  We will certainly miss them all but I pray that the time we were able to minister to them will bear fruit some day.

We spent New Year's eve with a nice church service and after church we had coffee,cocoa and a rosca. It was a nice time of fellowship and chatting. ❤

On the way home we stopped at our veggie stand and I found the largest cantaloupe I've EVER seen!  It took me forever to cut it up and dice it but it was very sweet and delicious!!

                                                              


We spent the evening in and at midnight when the neighborhood fireworks were set to begin we had a deluge of rain instead! We fell asleep and a couple hours later when the rain stopped the fireworks began...in the middle of the night! It sounded like a warzone!πŸ˜…


So the old year is gone. Goodbye 2023 we are thankful for all the blessings that year brought.     God was truly good to us.❤

                                                            

Hello 2024! I'm looking forward to what the Lord has in store for us this year!             

                                                                  



Wednesday, December 27, 2023

                                                             Goodbye 2023

2023 is coming to a close. It seems this year flew by and while it was a year filled with some challenges and some heartbreak for family members, it was also a year with more blessings than pain. I always count that as a win as there have been years in the past that I was happy to say goodbye to.  

The biggest blessing is the imminent arrival of a new Grandchild in 2024.  We look forward to meeting little Aidan Stanley Helio Sierra in about 4 months. ❤ 


         He is only our second grandchild after Matthew, who turned 16 this year! 



I find it funny that given we only have the one grandchild and another on the way, we spent the year full of children!










             Often times they were sleeping on my lap...I guess I was comfy.😜








For Christmas this year we had planned a nice Christmas service with coffee, cocoa and homebaked goodies after Christmas Eve church service. Instead, a large part of Panama had the electricity go out...for several hours! We had a church service without airconditioning or even fans! As hot as we all were during service, poor Gary was drenched by the end of preaching a short but beautiful Christmas sermon. Still, we had a good time...giving gifts to the kiddos and enjoying the goodies with water instead of coffee and cocoa.  The homemade fudge was a hit...but folks weren't sure about the ricekrispi bars.πŸ˜›  


Adios 2023!!!






Tuesday, December 5, 2023

                                                                 Fun with Sister

                                                 Back to more travel memories of 2023.  

In August, Lynn treated me with a trip home to Wisconsin. We spent several days just doing fun stuff...hiking, ferry rides, beach picnics...delicious food and rock painting! The most fun though was just spending time chatting and laughing and being together!  The hardest thing about our nomadic lifestyle is having to leave family behind, so on the rare opportunities we are together it is a special blessing!                  Thank you so much Sis for the wonderful memories!❤❤❤❤




                                                      Hiking...lots of wonderful hiking. 







                        It was fun discovering hidden rock villages on Madeline Island. 



                                                                       Shenanigans 😜


                                                                    Riding the ferry.


                                                 
                                                             I LOVE Lake Superior!!!!










Monday, November 13, 2023


Memories



Ninety years ago today, in South St. Paul, in this little house, my mother was born during a Minnesota blizzard.  They couldn't get her mother to the hospital so her father ran to his parents home to get his sister Elizabeth, who was a nurse, and she delivered Mom. 
Interesting thing about that little house that Grandpa built is that there was a trap door that went directly into the little barn below where the animals were kept. The little house was built on a hill and the barn was dug out of the hill under the house.
Later, Grandpa would build the 'big house' as it was called, next door. I remember when we visited as a child, that us kids would all sleep upstairs in the attic area where there were a couple of bedrooms. Grandpa had alzheimers and he couldn't have his routine upset. When we went to bed we had to stay there and not be going up and down the stairs so Grandma left a chamber pot upstairs for us to use at night. 
Behind the big house was a large glass greenhouse. I always loved how it smelled of earth andwarmth.  My mother had a very large and ugly scar on her arm from playing and running through one of the greenhouse windows as a child. She was bleeding so badly...Grandpa took a rock and wrapped a cloth around it on her arm and made a tourniquet. He got his nurse sister again to hold Mom and drove in his old truck to the hospital where somebody really did a poor job of stitching her back up. Thus the really big messy scar. 
The door on the side of the big house was supposed to one day have a beautiful deck built off of it for my grandmother. I suppose life and alzheimers got in the way. They had the money as Grandma worked as a well known cook into her seventies at the Cherokee Sirloin Room. The St. Paul Pioneer Press even wrote an article about her cooking career.  I guess having survived the great depression, she was too frugal to splurge on herself for her deck and sadly it was never built. 
One funny story about the door to nowhere as we called it,  is when Grandma  pushed a piano out of it! I guess she was tired of it taking up space and decided that was the easiest way to get it out of her house! 
The little bit of house you see on the right side of the big house was Grandma's washroom. It had two deep, large concrete sinks in it. She had a modern washing machine by the time I was born but she would  still use those old sinks to throw dirty grandchildren in and bathe them.
To the left of the big house was a large garden that Grandpa farmed. When Mom was little, she would ride with him in his truck as he traveled to the area neighborhoods selling vegetables. He did organic farming before it became popular and would order in ladybugs to keep the pests down. Years later, my dad, who was raised in West St Paul,would remember that vegetable man who would come to his neighborhood and realize it was my grandpa and the little girl sitting in the truck was his future wife! 





Saturday, October 14, 2023

                                               Costa Rica!!!

In March we headed to Costa Rica! Gary had been invited to preach and it was Visa run time as well. He happily told me that he had booked us flights on Wingo airlines. Everyone who knows me knows that I have a genuine fear of flying and the thought of getting on a plane that belonged to an unknown airline called Wingo did not inspire convidence for me! I confess, I half expected it to look like this:


However I was very pleasantly surprised to find a modern and very comfortable airplane with plenty of leg room and a very tasty affordable lunch menu.❤


We arrived safely and to be honest, I LOVED everything about Costa Rica! 

    The Food:










                                                               The people:
          ...who even surprised us with a beautiful Anniversary cake and sang us songs to celebrate!❤


                                                     
                                                                  The cities:
                         
      San Jose


                                                                         Herredia



                                                           and even the birds! 
                                Of course Gary manages to get a perfect bird pictureπŸ‘Œ




                                            And then there is me with my usual grace...πŸ‘€


                                                      Did I mention the food? πŸ˜‹


                          Yes, our whole trip was wonderful...I can't wait to go back!❤