Productive so far...

Today has been a productive day so far... I spent time with Ksena drawing shapes, did laundry, did the dishes from last night and this morning, fixed Kati's dress straps (they were too long and kept falling down), gave the girls a bath, took a shower, and now I'm blogging :)

I still have to practice worship, spend @ least 15 minutes on Rosetta Stone (my new daily minimum... trying it keep it) and vacuum. I need to wait until Travis gets home from a meeting to practice guitar though. Whenever I try to practice, the girls literally go crazy, and I am NOT exaggerating. I wish I was! It is serious spiritual warfare. As soon as I start playing the guitar, they pretty much start trying to kill each other. So he has to play referee so I can focus.

The girls are wearing me out a bit so far today. You know when your nerves are just spent and you feel like you might burst a blood vessel in your head? I get so tired of them yelling at each other, and Katienne screaming. Ahhh the joys of motherhood, lol. This morning I was really, really praying for patience. Especially with Kati going through a super whiney phase, I need it! She is growing and she gets growing pains, and she falls a lot because she's not used to being half an inch taller yet. It is so good to be able to lay all of my small frustrations down at my Heavenly Father's throne and know He actually cares :)

A praise report: Kati can now feed herself cereal, praise the Lord :) Now I can eat breakfast at the same time they do.

The house is mostly clean because we did most of the cleaning yesterday, so preparing for the bible study tonight shouldn't be too much work.

Sorry this was mostly ranty... I hope God blesses you with an extra special blessing today!

My First Video Blog!!

Here is a video I took of our place so you can all see what it looks like where we live, and kind of get a sense of our style (this flat is far from being finished decoration wise). Hope you enjoy!! Can anyone count the number of Ksena sightings?

Transitions

I haven't really reflected on the last two crazy years of my life. We have moved to two different countries, had many adventures, and been given many obstacles along the way to test our faith.

You know, sometimes I feel like I can overcome huge, insurmountable obstacles... but when the little things come up, I just get so out of sorts!

Like the CC Missionary Women's blog, I won't be posting on there anymore. No, nothing happened between Suzie and I or anything like that. I just knew that God told me to transition out of it, and Suzie is doing a great job with it! She just switched it to wordpress, and the site looks, and operates amazingly! But I'm not part of it anymore and that makes me feel weird.

I also feel weird about Canvasthreads... I get encouraged when I read about people in the states using the shirt I designed as a tool to share the gospel, but I am so irritated that my Keith Burger shirt didn't get printed. It's honestly my best work so far, and I just don't get it. But I'm still submitting on there. Why?

I have been spending a lot more time working on Threadless subs. I have a new one that is in critique stage right now called "Ottoman Empire"that is about some ottomans attacking chairs.

I have also been working on a different blog, which is about traveling with young children. It's not up or anything yet. I have just been doing artwork and writing articles for it. I see it as an opportunity to maybe make some kind of income for us.

My work in the ministry is very fulfilling, and I know I'm doing what God wants in that area. I also love being a mom and a wife. My husband is my best friend and my girls are amazing! But I still feel like God has a profession for me, and I don't know what it is. I'm frustrated with myself because I'm so scatterbrained and I have too many hobbies/interests. I don't feel like I have anything to prove, but I just want to pick one thing and be faithful to focus on it. But what should I focus on? I am really in need of some guidance from my Heavenly Father.

Are any of you in that place right now of seeking direction? I feel like I have been at this place in my life so many times. And here I am again... waiting for the next major transition.

Ouch, and other thoughts

Tuesday night was our special ministry thing with some brothers and sisters from Cape Town, South Africa. It went well and I think everyone had a good time. It was fun to meet them, and one of them was the brother of a friend I met in Vajta, small, small world after all :)

Me making crowns of olive leaves (paper olive leaves of course).
Picture courtesy the CC Hellas facebook page

Then, as I was cleaning up, I decided that I should carry the TV out of the girls' room back into the living room by myself because Travis was walking them to the bus stop and I needed to put the girls to bed. Bad idea. Thirty minutes later while I was in beed I was adjusting and, pop, my back when out. So I've been in a lot of pain the last few days. And I'm trying not to get annoyed because I've pretty much been stuck lying down or sitting propped in a weird way on the couch.

I have also decided that I'm not going to let my really low score on threadless keep me from submitting. I have two designs in the works, one is a collab between Travis and I (which can be difficult because he wants things a certain way, and the artsy side of me doesn't like that... lol) and also one I have been thinking about for a while that I think would work well for their "Select" line.

Tonight is bible study so please pray for me, that as I lead worship I would be able to sit up straight enough to sing and also have strength to play. I practiced yesterday and it was quite painful. But, God is in control :D

Love, love, love,
Kristin

Busy, busy, busy!

We are having a special meeting for our ministry this Saturday because we have some visitors coming from South Africa!! It is really exciting! So I have been running around the house like crazy trying to get ready. I made a craft for the kids, to go along with their lesson which I just finished up about running the race of faith. I normally don't like being super busy, but I'm so excited about this, I don't mind at all! Now I need to pick songs for worship and practice... but I will finish this entry first :D

Yesterday Suzie and I met over at Sevi's where she showed us how to make authentic Greek stuffed peppers and tomatoes. SO GOOD!

Kati and Ksena are playing in their room and I can hear Kati counting in Greek. It is pretty cool to hear those kinds of things.

I also forgot, I really wanted to mention that on Tuesday night, we had a new person come. His name is Manos and he is a musician. He played us some songs on the guitar and it was amazing! I love hearing Greek worship, even if it is VERY different from American worship. And also, his friend, Panos translated for him, so that was a ministry first, and totally unexpected and unplanned! Every day it feels like God is reminding us we need to be here, despite the general frustrations that come up. It's really encouraging, as you can imagine.

I also finished up a design I had been working on for a while. I still don't really like how it turned out, but I can't think of how I could possibly fix it, so I submitted it. It was an idea that Travis had. Here is a preview... it's for CANVAS, not Threadless.

There are a lot of things going on right now, I really need to make more time for language study, but at least I've been listening to Greek worship music pretty non-stop.

Hope you are having a blessed sunny, or rainy day (it's been raining here on and off all day).

Tuesday: Cleaning Day

Today is Tuesday, which means that tonight is our ministry bible study. It is currently held at our place because that way both of us can attend, and the girls can go to bed at their normal bedtime. That also means that on Tuesday we deep clean the whole house.

You know how the floor never looks that dirty, but when you mop the water is disgusting? That always baffles me. Especially because we are constantly sweeping the floor. You know, with two small kids, they are always dropping (or in Kati's case, throwing) food on the floor.

Today, cleaning included Travis throwing away a bunch of things the previous tenants left on both balconies (does anyone in Athens need motor oil? We have a lot, and no car). We are turning the back balcony into a mini yard for the girls to play on, so right now Travis is putting up plastic mesh that will keep them from being able to climb up onto the railing, or dropping things off of the balcony. Maybe I can make a water table for them out there so they can play. The nice thing about both of our balconies is that they have drains on them, so you can just dump out your dirty mop water, or let the kids play with water out there without the fear of them flooding something.

Eventually I also want to get a rattan chair so I can do my devos out there.

I scrubbed the tub today, but it's so stained, you can't tell. Does anyone know of a home remedy that will get the stains off of our tub? We managed to get our toilet bowl clean, but we can't use the same cleaner in the tub because it's specifically for toilets.

What is your favorite thing about cleaning day? What is your least favorite chore?

Clarification & Geography

Hey everyone, sorry about the last post being so vague, but now I can fill you in on what is going on. We have to make a trip out of the country to deal with standard visa issues, and we will be going to Hungary. I didn't want to post about it earlier because I wasn't sure what we were going to do, but we will be going to the bible college in Vajta for a month while we work out some stuff. Nothing major, but please keep this whole trip in prayer, because it's going to cost a lot of extra $ and we don't want anything coming up to complicate our visas.

I don't get a lot of comments on here (yet), so many of you might not know that people from all over the world read this blog. I get really excited every time I look at the "Audience" section of my stats and I notice a new country on the list! I thought I would make a list of some of the different countries that I get the most traffic from, and invite you, the reader to comment and represent your country. Just say hi and where you are from :)

United States
Hungary
Greece
Canada
Russia
Netherlands
Germany
Belize
Brazil
South Korea
Poland
Ukraine
Serbia

Sorry if you are not on the list, but I can't see some of the countries unless they were viewed this month. But feel free to comment anyway and I will add your country on.

I know I haven't been the best at commenting back when people leave comments, but I am going to make it a point to answer comments on here from now on :)

Have a wonderful day!!

Praying and Planning

Well, I guess I still need to learn to trust God better, because He is definitely teaching me that lesson yet again. We are praying and seeking Him as we make plans at the same time. So, we are stepping into the water just like God told Joshua to instruct the priests to do before He would part the Jordan. Sorry about the vague nature of this paragraph, but I have to be vague. It's not always wise to spill everything on your public blog ;)

We are listening to Greek worship right now. It's pretty cool :)

Also, my threadless submission is not doing well... 2.19 out of 5, I was hoping this would be my highest score ever (beating a 2.3) but I guess people just don't think it's clever enough. I'm always torn about how to deal with rejection over things like this. It definitely hurts my artistic ego. I find it difficult to accept that my "brilliant" idea was only brilliant to myself. But, maybe I just need to eat some humble pie. What can you do? Things you like might not appeal to other people. It's subjective. So yeah, bummed, but trying to be ok with it.

How do you deal with failure and disappointment? 

Newest Threadless Sub

If you have the time, please login and vote on Threadless... this is my first submission in a while and I put a lot of work into this one :)

Happy (late) Mother's Day

Good morning from Athens!

Travis took me on a surprise date for Mother's Day on Saturday night. Some of the girls from the Campus Crusade ministry (here it's called Agape) came over and watched the girls for us. It was really nice of them, and the girls had a wonderful time!

Trav didn't tell me where we were going but first we went out to McDonald's for dinner. You may laugh, but it's actually pretty common for missionaries to do things like that. Mickey D's is pretty expensive here, and tasty, so we don't eat it often. Actually this was my first time eating it in Greece. It was very good! I don't like McDonald's in the US, but if you are ever in a European country for a prolonged period of time, it is a good splurge in my opinion. If you are thinking, "Why wouldn't you go to a nice Greek restaurant?" well the answer is... we eat Greek food all the time :)

Onto the surprise... Travis took me to an outdoor move theater right next to the Acropolis to watch "The Big Sleep" with Humphrey Bogart :) Neither one of us had ever seen it before. And they let us bring gelato in... actually you can bring anything you want in to eat. It was a really good movie!! The plot was kind of confusing, but luckily the Greek subtitles helped me figure out everyone's names. They sure don't write scripts like that anymore! And old Bogie... he was seriously cracking us up with the one liners. 


"Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains."

It was really fun and we had a wonderful Mother's Day. I hope that you did too, and thank all of you mothers out there that work so hard! In church they put it this way, "When there are 5 people and 4 pieces of cake, the mom is usually the one that says, 'I didn't want a piece of cake anyway...'" So true. Happy Mother's Day!