Love this

"Not the labor of my hands

Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and Thou alone"

From Toplady's "Rock of Ages"

Snow!

Russian snow that is...I think that makes it more exotic...(yeah, warning, I'm running on little sleep, so this blog may be excessively quirky)...
Actually, I changed my seats on the flight from ATL to Moscow and got three seats to myself! Can you say "holy lay-down-across-all-three-and-actually-get-some-solid-sleep Batman!"? That was of course, until Russian-guy-who-was-sipping-from-his-duty-free-beverage-bottle got sloshed and proceeded to talk REALLY LOUDLY about politics. Actually, I have no idea if he was talking about politics, I just said that because it sounds very Russian...he was probably telling the babushka sitting next to him that he didn't like her hair color or something... (shrug)...anyways, he got carted away (I am still wondering where they stored him...he didn't surface again until customs)...and I was awake again. But I highly recommend the three seat thing...
There is so much snow here! And it is really cold. My co-worker, Nik, and I headed to Red Square after checking into the hotel (unexpected blessing- I DO have a wired room! Yay for a computer being close by!). Of course, my camera battery died after the first picture (I charged it yesterday, but then I realized that I think this is the battery that I meant to throw away because it wouldn't hold a charge any more)...so I will head back tomorrow to get some more snow pictures...but here's what I got...

Moscow Book List

As most of you know, I am an avid reader. I've been quite the slacker as of late, due to other projects, priorities, etc. I'm hoping to make a decent dent in my "to read" stack of books while in Moscow (helping that fact is that I am in an unwired room- ie no computer, most likely no AFN, coupled with cold weather- makes for a nice recipe for reading). Here's the stack I have compiled (subject to change between now and when I actually get on the plane :) )-

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron- a travel journalist's take on China
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch (nope, I haven't watched it either)
Kingfisher by Gerald Seymour- it was on sale and looked interesting-spy/thriller
A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro- one of my favorite authors
The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin- given my background with Mars stuff, I figured I'm a bit overdue for reading this :)
My Grandfather's Son, A Memoir by Clarence Thomas. The Supreme Court Justice's memoir- I've heard good things
Knowing God by JI Packer- I'm about halfway done reading this one...its slow going cause there's so much application on every page!

We'll see how far I get...

Whomp! Thwack!...Whoa....

That's the sound of a song smacking me upside the head...what? you've never experienced that before? You're sitting in your car and a song comes on and you're like "OH MY GOSH! That is TOTALLY what I've been feeling/thinking/wanting to say but can't find the words etc etc? You have, trust me ;-). The past few weeks have been filled with a plethora of whomp-thwack-whoa moments for me. My friend Megan gave me some lyrics to a song (maybe I will post it someday :) ) that she heard and then thought of me...and I finally looked up the words to another song she had mentioned and yep, you guessed it: whomp, thwack whoa. I think it is amazing that God has gifted people in the area of songwriting- to put words to thought and feelings that we sometimes have trouble clearly expressing, or even putting our finger on. Today in church, we sang this song for the first time and well, I think the word "waterworks" sums it up :). Yay for whomp-thwack-whoa moments.

Abba, Father

Abba, Father, you have loved me
With a love like I have never known
Abba, Father you have saved me
From the depths that I’ll never know

What a great Father you are
What a great Father you are

You have loved me with arms open wide
You have held me through it all
You are faithful to the broken
Lord you hear me when I call

Thank you Lord for all that you’ve done
Thank you Lord for giving your Son
When I was lost you came after me
When I deserved such great penalty

You have loved me with arms open wide
You have held me through it all
You are faithful to the broken
Lord you hear me when I call

My Birthday :)

I had a wonderful birthday today. It actually started yesterday with Irma giving me a birthday muffin and flowers (Sarah and Katherine made me cookies and a beautiful card) and then continued today with Pam making me scones (YUMMY) this morning, thoughtful gifts from the roomies, a half-day at work (a side trip to the doc's to get exsanguinated again- as much as that isn't fun, I did get to use my favorite word on my birthday :) and I got happy shots, so that is a very good thing!), a facial at the spa, and dinner (RIBS!) with some good friends. Thanks for spending time with me on my birthday guys, it was fun! I'm excited to see what will happen over this next year and I pray that I will walk with Him every step of the way.

Me and my FULL rack of ribs that I have been looking forward to ALL week

I was much more lady-like in my excitement over the ribs than Josh was...

Stephanie, Shelly, me, and Stacy (sorry, Sara :(, you got cut out of the picture...)

Todd, Stacy

Josh and Lisa

part of Pam :), Claire, Lynn, Christina, and Paul laughing as the TR people yee-haw me

Lisa made me a birthday cake (oh yeah, and thanks Josh! ;-) ). It was super yummy!

A best thing...

So on the list of best things ever? A child's unconditional love. Such a blessing. Over the past couple of weeks, my sister has told me the following stories about my nephew:

He was sitting on the bed looking at the family album and saw my picture and started talking about how he loved Sissa and Sissa got him "this" (he was wearing the wicked cool sweatshirt I got him for Christmas :) )

Yesterday, he was eating breakfast and looked up at my sis and said "Sissa is a girl. I love Sissa". Later that day, they went for a walk and walked over some chalk pictures some kids had drawn on the sidewalk. JM stopped walking and looked down and then got all excited, telling Monica "I DID THIS!!! I did this with Sissa!". Which we totally had, back in September when he and Monica came to visit, he and I let her take a nap and we went outside and drew chalk pictures for an hour. :D. How sweet that he remembers me. Definitely a blessing from God, since I only get to see the tyke about twice a year. Awwww, happy face.

Hospitality Event #2

So in keeping with our tradition of having one hospitality event a month, we had the Yohe family, the Sinclair family, and my friend Lynn over for some lasagna eats today. Good times, good times...