vacation

We have been out in the snow and ice a bit a couple of days, but it is a little cold to stay out for long, especially when the cold symptoms are probably not far away. The boys enjoyed using sticks to dig out ice that was stuck in the walkway to the slide at the park. They opted for that rather than walking around the statue park.
One of the fun things we discovered over the last weeks is that we can buy cantaloupe here in Lithuania- even now in off season. It was one of the few fruits Erik really liked this summer when we had the choice of almost anything!


We are enjoying a change of pace and the ability to meet with more people this week. At the beginning of the week we went to Siauliai (2 hours drive). I have nostalgic feelings for that city even though it is nothing much to look at. My first experiences in Lithuania were there and I got to know the place from living there one year back in 96-97 as well.

We stayed with Grazina who had a young kitten. It was definitely the highlight for the boys. They also enjoyed playing with Domas and his toys of course too. His parents Viktoras and Asta are our friends over the distance too.

We also met with some Free Christian church associates as well and were welcomed rather last minute to lunch at Kristaf Haegle's home. They are missionaries from Germany who have been in Lithuania longer than we have.

We decided against going on from there to Latvia to a water park since Erik was coughing when got up in the morning. It turns out the travel was enough activity for us. And we've now sucessfully stayed somewhere other than our home here in Lithunia. It took a little for the boys to understand staying over night and whether we would come back to our home! But Grazina seemed "no worse for the wear" so to speak and invited us to consider coming again sometime.


We also had a visit to Mc Donalds where the boys wanted to play too. Well, the best we came up with was making the rule that they could be in the children's room for parties but not walk on the floor. So they climbed from stool to stool and across the bench around the table and quite enjoyed themselves.

Last night Chris Hatton visited. He is the current chaplain at LCC. And he was ready for some exercise which the boys took advantage of for certain!

We expected to have a short visit from a couple from church today but that did not happen after all. So now we can have a quieter rest of the day I suppose!