The GrillMaster

This man of mine has been talking about wanting to grill ribs for about a month now, maybe longer...

So while his parents are in town, we took the night to celebrate a belated Father's Day with some Bar-b-que rubbed ribs and mac & cheese!

There he is folks, the GrillMaster himself!

And the infamous ribs...

I must say, I'm not the world's biggest meat-lover, but these things were GOOD.  He did a great job...I'm proud!

Father, son and ribs.  What a manly picture.

While we were out on the balcony, I snapped some shots of our just-now-producing pepper plant:

Better late than never, right?!

Maybe for our next night of grilling we will be able to add some home grown peppers to the mix :)

Pregnancy Photos!

Like I mentioned in a previous post, while Brooke was here in Bratislava, she kindly agreed to do a pregnancy photo shoot with Jas and I.  She did an awesome job, of course, and if you haven't seen these already you can find these and more on her blog, or facebook also.

Here are a few of my favorites...

Brooke, they're great...we so appreciate it!  Thanks for being patient even with my crazy eyebrows (believe me, these brows of mine have some crazy angles...lol :)

32 weeks!

Well, we are now in the single digits week wise!  In hopefully some 7 or 8 weeks we'll be able to meet our sweet girl.

Here's a recent shot of 32 weeks, though it's not the best preggo shot (like the ever famous side view I've been posting for a while now)...

At last appointment, baby was right at 4 pounds (already!) and seemed healthy.  She's just really working hard now at bulking up.

We've made more progress on the nursery and finally purchased a stroller, so we're excited about those things...but really we're just waiting in anticipation to meet this baby.

Thanks for following along and joining us in prayer!  Stay tuned...now that things have slowed down a little bit, we'll be back at it in the blogging world :)

The Past Week

We've been quite busy the past week, thus the lack of blogging.  Team Ridgecrest was here (they leave tomorrow! sad!) and we had a great time working together at DEPO (similar to a community youth center).

I didn't take my camera this week, as the team was here and Brooke did a great job capturing lots of wonderful moments.  So these next pictures are all to her credit.

We made a sign for DEPO on the first day.

The kids that came had lots of opportunities to play fun games...like this one where they had to move the cookie from their forehead to their mouth.

The guys helped clear a large pile of dirt and trash from the back of DEPO.  Here they are in action.

And a group shot.  So there's just a lil snippet of what we've been up to...it was indeed a good week :)

While the team was here, Brooke and I also got the chance to have a little maternity photo shoot, so those pics will be making an appearance on the blog soon, too.  THANKS, Brooke!

We're still here!

We're still here!

Just been busy doing some of this...

and this...

And prepping for a quality week hanging out with Slovak kids! Check back later for more updates :)

**Pics courtesy of Brooke from this blog**

A Success? Perhaps?

You may or may not have been following along with us as we navigate our very own Veggie Tales (also known as trying to grow our own balcony garden vegetables), but if you have been, then you may remember our cucumber plant taking off with some major cucumber sprouts.

Well, then we hit the road for two weeks and left our awesome Slovak tutor in charge of watering our plants.  She did an amazing job, as would be expected, and the plants received plenty of water.  However, it was supposedly quite hot the weeks we were gone and our poor cucumber plant couldn't withstand the heat.

HOWEVER, we were SHOCKED to come home to this guy:

All that watering had been soaked up by our one lone cucumber that overtook the whole planter!  It was HUGE!  We were sad at the seeming loss of our cucumber plant, but we were equally stoked that this guy had grown so!  Success? We'll chalk it up to one :)

And here's the proud grower himself demonstrating it's ginormous size... (and don't mind the hair, it's a new fashion trend here in Slovakia)

And just in case you were wondering, we still have some hope for the lil cucumber plant that seemed to be dead/dying...this morning it appears there may be two new little cucumbers fighting to take off...score!

Will it EVER Clear Up!?

That was what we kept wondering this past week at camp in Ruzomberok. The first four days were rainy, cloudy, and all together just COLD.  It was like winter, but in the summer...crazy!  Jas and I weren't quite expecting it and I think it caught us off guard (though we had been warned!)

This was our attire for most of the week...

BUT, I will say, these campers were troopers and sun or no sun they stuck it out and enjoyed every last minute of outdoor games....awesome!

Speaking of, here are a plethora of pictures from the week's games.

A Photo Challenge Scavenger Hunt.

Patiently waiting their turns during a human-sized game of Trouble.

Relay race which included this stick version of "dizzy bat"

AND then...

you see it correctly, that's right, threading string through a needle (after being dizzy!)

Team Building games

A more complicated version of Capture the Flag

A team vs. team game of "grab that flag!" (at least that's what I'm calling it)

And a straw, water-collecting, relay race.

There also was a welcomed guest that participated in almost all the games.  Meet Murko (the cat):

He's quite the photogenic lil mammal wouldn't you say?

But the fun didn't stop there...they also were awoken in the middle of the night for a night game involving glow sticks...

On top of all that fun they attended daily English classes, were a part of small groups, had campfires (just 2 due to the weather!), and most importantly, the best part, they heard about Jesus and some chose to accept Him as their personal Savior!

It was a good camp, despite the weather, but the best part of it all was getting to know the kids that came.  I really enjoyed them and am praying for them even now.

I made it all the way until the end of the week before getting sick!  I contracted an ugly migraine and then it turned into a sinus infection...yuck.  BUT, we made it back to Bratislava and are now gearing up for Ridgecrest team's arrival.  Prayers, please, that it would be a fruitful time of ministry (Satan is always at work...but GOD is bigger!)

30 weeks!

30 weeks...hooray!  That means in about 9 or 10 weeks, hopefully, we'll be able to meet our lil girl.  Each day we get more and more excited :)

Baby girl has been kicking up a storm.  I feel like I say that every time, but she seriously gets stronger weekly in her kicks (though I guess as she runs out of room in there, that'll slow down some...).  She now weighs 3.5 pounds and is still measuring about a week ahead...we'll see what happens!

And, wouldn't ya know it, good 'ole friend nausea decided to return this week and bring with it a lovely case of sinusitis (you can probably see in my face above the signs of sickness :P).  So we're currently fighting off the crud over here.  But we are thankful baby is strong and growing and we just keep looking forward to and praying for her arrival in September!

Poooooland!

We arrived back to Bratislava yesterday after being gone for close to two weeks.  Our first week gone was spent in POLAND.  Wisla, Poland to be exact.

We didn't have a whole lot of time to get out and explore lil Wisla due to meetings and less than favorable weather, but the first day there we did get to hit the town once.

At one place we stopped Sonya and I were excited to meet some celebrities!  These guys were gracious enough to stop and pose in front of their latest concert sign "GANGSTERZY RAPERZY."  They part of the crew, 'yo.

Cute little downtown Wisla.

Typical tourist pose in front of the Wisla sign...

We then took a short walk along the river.  We saw these little rock towers just hanging out there in the river!  Supposedly, Slovaks (and Polish alike?) feel the need to create these little rock towers when they get in the river...how cool!

Little cabin in the woods tucked up above the river.  How would you like to live here!?

Wish we had had more time to explore Wisla, but the week ended and we hopped in the car for Ruzomberok, Slovakia.  Lots of pictures to share from this past week!  Stay tuned :)