most anticipated...

i've been gearing up for one of my most anticipated weekends of the year. i've let go of blogging(except updates on here) and facebook this week to re-tune in. i've tried reading some better literature. i haven't given up on myself as an early bird or a healthy being. we've invested in deep conversations as a couple, and even reupholstered the cushions on our dining chairs. now we just gotta re-stock our snacks, and get some questions down on paper. general conference here we come.

quotes from my readings accompanied by waterloo pics.

"As a new school year begins, I know that some of the pressures of study, finances, employment, and dating weigh heavily upon you. Take your fears to the Lord. Talk to him and listen to him. Then, if you feel a spiritual motion as tiny as the touch that a butterfly's wing might make, acknowledge it, heed it, and let his influence work upon you. The Lord wants you to succeed even more than you want to yourself. Have faith in a perfect Father's love, fearing nothing. Remember that love is promised not just to those who have never made a mistake, but that love is promised to every one of us--who have all made mistakes.

I think I have a glimpse of that kind of love because of my own experience of giving birth to three beautiful children. I have discovered that the child who is at the moment content and happy often has little need of me. That gladsome child usually runs away to play. But the child who has made a mistake, has faltered, or is wounded or frightened turns quickly to come back home for reassurance. As that child draws near unto me, nothing--I repeat, nothing--can stop the opening of my heart or the reaching out of my arms to enfold him or her into my protection." -Pat Holland

There is nothing more vital to our success and our happiness here than learning to hear the voice of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who reveals to us our identity-which isn't just who we are but who we have always been. And that when we know, our lives take on a sense of purpose so stunning that we can never be the same again. Sheri Dew

"We will never be happy or feel peace; we will never deal well with life's ambiguities; we will never live up to who we are as women of God until we overcome our mortal identity crisis by understanding who we are, who we have always been, and who we may become." Sheri Dew

"More than twenty years ago President Kimball prophesied: "The female exemplars of the Church will be a significant force in both the numerical and the spiritual growth of the Church in the last days." He was talking about us." Sheri Dew

Lastly, a snippet from President Monson's new biography entitled, "To the Rescue." Tell me you are not dying to get your hands on it, because I am. Before this new book, Elder Packer’s biography was the only published biography for our living 15 apostles, so this is big! For me, and just because you can, drive around the corner this weekend and pick one up at Deseret Book:)

"President Monson's life is a witness of the importance of following personal inspiration: “When you honor a prompting and then stand back a pace, you realize that the Lord gave you the prompting. It makes me feel good that the Lord even knows who I am and knows me well enough to know that if He has an errand to be run and prompts me to run the errand, the errand will get done.” Put simply, he does not gauge where or what or how. “I’ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord” is what President Monson is always about. He always has been. When he is asked how he finds time to do such things, given the burdens of his ministry, he responds, “I am a very simple man. I just do what the Lord tells me to do.”"

Enjoy Conference!

this is food production at it's finest

you could imagine my on-the-clock-life being something similar the following video. because i did that today. for about thirty seconds, i imagined i was lucille ball from the following clip.

oatmeal weather

i could eat oatmeal everyday of the year, weather permitting. i never tire of it. i love the way it sticks to your tummy for what seems like hours, meaning less calories and longer lasting fill. but i do have a hard time eating hot breakfasts on hot days. it's been cloudy days and chilly nights lately. i realized today i am in the middle of my third consecutive box, yes my third(devin eats sophisticated yogurt and mueslix stuff for breakfast), so i guess you could say oatmeal season is here to stay. you can be assured of what i will be eating the next one-hundred-something frosty days. woo. i love having something to look forward to when i get hungry at night. i love less decisions at hours when my decision making skills are still in bed, or i'm simply too rushed. mostly, i love the freedom of rhythyms. now if only they sold freshly ground peanut butter i'd be in morning heaven.

i tried looking for pb at the local market. nothing. i followed a tip from a ward member and even went to the the carrefour in waterloo. it is massive enough to hold six different aisles for different countries. this was a USA section of the 'euro walmart,' look for the flag on the back. they had the strangest items, but no adam's pb. nuts.

1 cake mix: 4.95 euro cents = 6.67 american dollars

1 mustard: 3.85 euro cents = 5.19 american dollars

we didn't buy anything, from this aisle at least.

but we did walk away with the longest french bread loaf you've ever seen. i wanted to have a sword fight with them. kinda hard to sword fight with just one loaf though.

and look at this couch on the aisle next to the shampoo. could've fooled me as an anthro chair. i'm loving this euro walmart.

guess how many...

in a span of about three hours at church, i think i hear the kissing noise about 129 times.

you know what kissing noise i'm talking about-the one your little niece or nephew makes when they blow a kiss to you. yup that's the noise. the belgiums greet everyone with an air kiss on the cheek. i can't recall my first occurance of such a greeting, but i do remember being a bit apprehensive about letting all ages of aquaintences, male or female, touch cheeks with me. i still am apprhensive about it, which cheek comes first, what if i just shake hands, and i hate the stressul decisionary period-is it coming or not?

all that aside, there are some benefits of this ritual. less body contact than a hug, just a quick touch of faces. watching strangers at the airport pick up loved ones can't help but bring you to a smile. plus what's better than hearing kisses all the time?

devin and i have had some pretty laughable experiences: turning toward the same side as the greeter, a teenager girl giving devin two kisses, and not so nice breath. gotta love it.

green gate plate

i found my danish plate, in beligum. sorta cheating, i know, but when i saw "greengate danmark" on the underside of our friend's china, i had to ask if they found the china in denmark. we went to denmark last year, but i was too cheap to buy a plate that entire trip. now i'm chasing down the plates from last year's trip-better a late plate than no plate, right?

luckily the danish china was bought just down the road in our favorite waterloo. so we found the teeny store flowerpot and 6 euros later we had our danish plate.

now i'm just wondering if i want to walk away without the grey lovelies below.

full greengate collection here. beware it may get you thoroughly anxious for christmas.

images here.

no time for a run...

one of the few runners i've seen in belgium.

after our first BIG hail/thunder storm last night i was anxious for the morning to come. i usually am not this way. a recent free, and really short, e-book about how to maximize your mornings found on my favorite simplemom.net has encouraged me yet again. i love the author's connection between exercise, and God and morning time. it took a few minutes to read and many things were very impressive.

if nothing else, you gotta try her five minute workout. this neat lady exercises everyday, even if it is only five minutes. i never considered five minutes adequate time to burn some calories, but when i didn't fit in a run this past week, i experimented upon her word. boy, i will no longer give up on exercise even if it is just a few minutes. spare five minutes to try this and tell me if you were not whooped.

here are her own words:

"The Habit Workout

If I wake up late, don’t have time for a shower or just don’t want to

do much, I do my 5 minute workout. It’s a simple way to get good

exercise and no matter how busy my day is, I can usually fit it in.

Here’s what it looks like:

I set my watch timer for 5 minutes. I must complete my workout

within that time. This keeps me from falling asleep on the floor after

doing my situps. Don’t laugh. I’ve done it.

As soon as the timer starts, I do 10 pushups, roll over for 30 bicycle

crunches, and stand up for 10 squats. That takes about a minute

and I do it 5 times. If I’m doing my exercises well, my arms, back,

legs and tummy are burning by the end. Then I collapse in a heap

and bask in my sense of accomplishment.

And it only took 5 minutes."

sometimes i forget i live in on a different continent

it's easy to remember this simple fact when i wanna call my mom and she's eight hours into her beauty sleep. not hard to remember when the man in the grocery line behind us jibbers politely, pointing and smiling and such, and we don't have clue what he's saying. i didn't forget when i drove the car by myself for the first time in a busy area for twenty minutes and didn't stop at one stoplight-i love you roundabouts. even though i never thought it was possible to forget how foreign this place can feel, sometimes i do. my soul must be settling right on in to this level land.

uploaded from our past bruxelles discoveries

this is our walden babe

i found out where beauty and the beast's belle keeps her horse phillipe-in the pasture next to us! i've NEVER seen a horse so massive or with such big bell-bottoms:)

call me a late bloomer but i'm just reading henry david thoreau's famous book "walden". sometimes it's nice to think that our situation is similar to throeau's, and sometimes i want anything but to live in my own walden pond... either way, i've been thinking about thoreau's insight as i trudge slowly through the book-so much insight takes my mind a while to process. without any warning last night devin said to me, "This is our walden babe." i guess out of the mouth of two witnesses...

i wholeheartedly have believed, i think since i was young, that simplicity is beautiful. but when we freely chose a simpler life by moving here, the beauty is at times hard to emphasize. easier said than done. i love my anthro. i love a good salad spinner. i love nail polish. i love having more than five pairs of shoes. i love a couch to cuddle on. i love carpet. i love a bike to ride. i love unlimited text messaging. i love a good lunch with a close lady friend, or better yet a sunday dinner with family. gratefully, words of a prophet changed my erroneous thinking that our newly chosen simple life should be a concern-free, effortless, and hearty life. he said, "(it) is simple but not easy."

despite the lack of ease at times, this is our walden and if only i could be a little more like thoreau. he soaked up life. to quote him,

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

my turn to soak up the marrow of life. I gotta love the rolling hills AND the smell of manuer. i gotta love the beautiful sound of french, AND that i don't fully understand sunday school even when everyone raises their hand but us and then they joke that we are americans:) i gotta love that i am surrounded by sweet design, AND that i live off a little suitcase of clothes. i gotta love the flat horizon sun rises AND the cloudy skies. i say gotta, because i'm trying hard to love the simplicity AND let go of the little details that prevented m

i am learning i can live, fully, with less. i am learning to appreciate the simple, even when it means sacrificing the ease. i am loving the reducing of cares, and the rush of realizing how little i need to live and how satisfying that can be. nevertheless i will i be excited to when our walden-living is up, and it's back to salad spinners and nail polish:)

beating the record

our longest record for consecutive outings has been, get ready, 3 days. today made it four. saturday=tourist brussels. sunday=church nivelle. monday=fhe waterloo. tuesday=home teaching ittre. :) i'm ever ready to stop driving, make a decent dinner, write some, and go to bed early.

for now, let the day go down in history as a dear friends birthday, complete with an achey legs run, witnessing the moon rise before the sunset, and forgetting the camera when you need it. good job tuesday, you were excellent.

here is the most recent footage of us. belgium only has hills, and this is the best view of brussels. the spectacular part about this sight is the rarity of being able to see for miles, that is if you can get past the fence and ugly building:)

belgian waffle take two

i've been visualizing, rather drooling, about what it would be like to try a real belgian waffle since the first time we saw one on the street. by real, i am talking about everything a food street vendor should be: temptingly warm, tantilizing smell, and not store bought. it does not get more touristy than vendor belgian gaufres, but even Elder Ballard specifically took time to say he tried a gaufre. we dove into the tourist pool head first. let the pictures speak for themselves.