"Hello World, This is Me..."

We all have been addicted to The Saddle Club lately, a TV show (based on the books?) about a bunch of girls who ride horses and get into, and out of, trouble. And when I say addicted, I mean we all sit and watch the show, we've purchased the music from iTunes, we sing the songs (such as the title of this blog entry), and we talk about horses more than you can imagine. And Shanna and I don't even like horses. (Example: I fell off one during our romantic ride on the beach during our honeymoon.)

So this is new territory for me and Shanna. As it turns out, very close to our house (halfway to the zoo) are some horse stables and riding/jumping pens. Last weekend they were having a horse show so we decided to check it out. It was actually pretty cool, and we all enjoyed watching the horses do some pretty cool stuff. There were several horses that we could pet too.

We picked up some cowboy hats...

Made friends...

Watching intently...

Heading home after a fun day...

Fun at the Falks

Friday night we went over to our friends the Falks for dinner.  Their 3 kids (Andrea, Mark, and Sarah) are older than ours but play SO well with our kids.  We hope that Lucy, Clark, and Piper can be even half as nice as these kids when they get older.  We had a great time eating, laughing, and jumping on their trampoline - Piper especially.  Her hair turned into a science experiment on static electricity when she got on!

Hiking through Cesky Raj

Chris and I went to Cesky Raj (Czech Paradise) for a 2-day hiking trip.  (This is where our family went hiking several months ago - a.k.a. Narnia)  Needless to say, we got much further into the nature reserve than I did with the family and put in about 15 miles.  We saw some amazing rock formations and 5 castles (we spent the night in one of them) along the way.  After the first day we determined that we are in fact old, based on how tired and sore we were, but we still had a great time.

We started and finished in the little town of Turnov, with its quaint city square...

Kost Castle, where they filmed part of "Hannibal Rising" (never saw it)
A real pillory (the 2nd time I've used that word in a month)

Castle Hruba Skala, which is now a hotel/restaurant

Church Dinner

Faith Community Church is 2 years old!  To celebrate we had a nice dinner after church yesterday at the Stewarts' flat.  The weather has been great so we were able to hang out on their terrace some.  We had good food and fellowship, and we sang "Happy Birthday to Us."Tim might have had more fun with the kids than adults...

our week in review

The kids have had this week off of school so we have had loads of fun in the amazingly beautiful weather....

having friends over to play which seems to always end up in a full costume performance...

picnics and playtime at the park...
Piper lovin' the swings...

more friends and more performances (this one ended with little B planting a kiss right on Clark!) silly daddy... sweet friends...
no her finger is not broken just an infected finger caused by biting her cuticle (sad to say she takes after me) you can never be to cautious...
hungry hippo she is amazing she eats anything but LOVES carbs especially in the form of muffins...
outing out to Imax we are SO cool...
fun morning with friends...
we took an afternoon and walked through the park to the zoo where we bought our annual passes and met the syves for dinner, saw a few animals and strolled home... lots of laughter and lots of running...on the stroll home we needed our daily dose of ice cream...
friday we planned on a lazy day and toyed with the idea of Beckiland (indoor play place) and called Vivi and Michelle to join us and they were in so we headed all headed out. When we got there there we saw tons of others from school and the kids had an absolute blast. We stayed for 4 hours! Unfortunately we had a slight mishap about 20 minutes into our adventure Piper got a tickle in her throat (two of the three Davis children have amazing gag reflex) and she ended up throwing up all over herself and Phil. The two of them rode home shirtless for showers.  They returned for a little more trampoline action before the day was done...
today was our last day of vacation (Sundays are busy for us so Saturdays we really cherish together) and we ended up taking a family only day of rest. It was wonderful uno spin, muffin making, puzzles, nap, snuggling with books, a fun adventure in the tent in the backyard, BBQ chicken pizza, homemade ice cream and Charlotte's web.... perfect!
Here is to a sweet two weeks!!!

what are you looking at?

The real deal

On Sunday I noticed that the landlord had put up our name on the sign at the new building.  It may not seem like a big deal, but for me this is more than a sign - it's marking our presence in the neighborhood as an official organization.  And to me the word "FAITH" stands in contrast to "management," "development," and "reality" (which is the Czech word for "realty" or "property").  I hope that "Faith" can truly serve the city and seek to bring transformation, hope, and yes, deeper faith.

Easter

Having just seen one of the largest tombs ever built last week (Great Pyramid), made from over 2 million stones, it was wonderful to celebrate the one simple stone being rolled back from a humble tomb in Jerusalem - and to declare with the angel: "He is not here; He has risen, just as he said!"
Sunday's service was a great celebration of new life in many ways - it wasn't just Easter but also the baptism ceremony of Elliot Syvertsen, and the church debut of little Izaak Stewart.

Thanks to Victor for taking these great pictures. All our guitarists were out of town so I led worship for the first time ever. It was fun but my fingers are still recovering and I'm looking forward to having Ondra back in town next Sunday!

Meeting Izaak...

Camel Dismount

Definitely the hardest part was getting the camel to stand up at the beginning, and sit at the end... "Charlie Brown doesn't want to lean back"

Piper's burka

No trip for us would be complete without a trip to a Pizza Hut. While we were there, we tried to get Piper more inculturated. Wait for the end for her magic trick with her hair.

Camel Ride

We chose to ride this camel, named Charlie Brown, as part of our pyramid experience.  We chose him because his owner did not hassle us as much as the others, and Charlie Brown had a moderate number of "pieces of flair."  I have much more respect for the 3 Wise Men now, after my 2-minute, fairly bouncy ride.

The Pyramids

Egypt's finest, ready to leap into action...




Walking like Egyptians...