Proud of this kid...er young lady

I have written before about how great this kid is.  I think she is the bravest kid I know.  After living here seven days her parents just dropped her off at a foreign school and she never flinched.  She just learned and made friends and has continued to amaze me with her bravery.  In the days when I am struggling or barely making it, I look at her and see a kid that is thriving and growing to be an amazing young lady.  Those of you that know her already know all of that so today I am going to tell you one more reason that this young lady is AMAZING... she loves the Word of God.  This year she has put her heart and soul into AWANA and has memorized a ton of scripture.  She finished her book nearly three months early and is chomping at the bit to get the next one here.  Of all the things she could decide to do, or to read, or to learn about, I can think of nothing more spectacular then hiding God's word in your heart. 

MIKI TURNS SEVEN... SAY WHAT?

I can not believe this little angel is 7 years old.  She was barely a toddler when we arrived and now she is a big kid, kinda breaks my heart.
For her birthday she took her two best friends and sister the "Mickeys Magic Adventure Show"  It was a live Disney show, like Disney on ice without the ice.  After the show the kids came back to our house and ate Mickey themed food.  They ate pizza that had Mickey shaped toppings, American homemade chocolate chip cookies shaped like Mickey and cupcakes with Mickey shaped decorations. We were blessed with many packages from the U.S. full of Lego Friends sets.  I think the girl now has the complete village of Heart Lake!  Thanks to all of you out there for taking care of her and us.

So who is this seven year old kid.  She is really funny and witty.  She gets a little pleasure out of  tormenting her sister.  She is smart!!! She speaks and reads in two languages.  I barely can do either in one.  She likes life, she likes laughing and having fun.  I hate she is growing up but I love who God shaping her to be.

Jen made Miki a super sign for her super day

After the big show

cupcake with a torch

Celebrating with our Serbian Friends Filip and Boris and our Jgirl Amy

Everyone gets some presents.... Share the Birthday love

 

Catching Up with the Stevens Family

So two months without posting, I know pretty grievous sin.  But I have thought about writing blogs about 1, 237, 411 times in the last two months, so that has to count for something.  My lack of writing has been a combination of things: very busy, very busy, procrastination and extreme laziness.  It's the end of the winter here and by Febuary I  slip into survival mode and just want get through the day.  But the sun is shinning and spring is coming so let me take a minute to catch you up on what has been going on.

Prague, probably one of Europe's top five most beautiful cities.  Jen and I had to go their for some training and we were so looking forward to spending time together in this wonderful city.  Our first night was amazing, we got a great tour of the old part of the city and ate at the hard rock cafe... and then I got the Flu... and then Jen got the Flu and we spent our time in a lovely hotel room.  Prague = epic fail. 

Hard Rock Prague, about 2 hours before massive fever.

The rest of the month was taken up with copious amounts of paperwork and administration and Miki's Birthday (that's a seperate post coming soon).  Jen set up a couple of super family nights.  We celebrated valentines by making secret message hearts and then painted them to reveal the message.  Paints are always a hit with our three.

SHARE CONFERENCE:  We finished the month with a family trip to Sopron, Hungary to attend the SHARE conference.  This is an education conference that hosts expats from around Europe to help us figure out the best way to educate our kids while living cross culturallly.  With full disclosure being important to me, Jen handles 99.9% of the kids education, my input consists of "that sounds like a great plan".  So my goal was to spend time with the family, get away from Belgrade and see my super friend Wes, who lives in Spain and I rarely see. The conference was really good, and Jen got a ton of great information (I even picked up few good nuggets I immediately passed on to Jen).  The best part was watching the girls interact with friends.  While we learn the kids go to class with other Americans.  I think its just a great time for them to learn in English and be around kids living the same kind of life they live (big time decompression for them).  The kids love this conference because we eat picnic dinners in the room every night.  Now that may not sound fun, but these are not regular picnic's.  They are picnics with all the American goodies we can't get in Serbia... soft sandwich bread, seedless grapes, cinnamon toast crunch, Cheetos, and they have these amazing sandwhich cookies from England that we all enjoy.  Truly amazing dinners.  We finished our trip with a stop at BURGER KING!!!! #notmcdonalds.

A boy and his momma

Kids performance (if yo look in the back you can see K)

The prince and princess