A Loud New Year's Eve

Never trust your GPS

People in Croatia love their fireworks.  They have been setting them off since Christmas.  But New Year's Eve was the night of all nights.  As we stood on our balcony, there were fireworks all around us.  During the day, kids will set off what appear to sound like M-80's.  They are not your typical firecrackers.  I'm surprised I haven't seen more missing fingers.

Go Packers!

We went to Varaždin during the day and decided to take a different route through the back woods, which took us up a mountain.  We had our GPS set with our destination and we ended up having to stop because the road appeared to have fallen off the edge of the mountain.  We were able to take a detour and avoid a serious accident. We met up with the Porter's at the church and EK helped them with their computer.  Afterwards we tried to find a place to eat, but everything seemed to be closed.  That surprised us, as New Year's Eve is usually a big night for restaurants back home.

A sweet reindeer sleigh

We did find one place open, and we had a nice dinner with the missionaries, the Porters, and President Bahin and his daughter.  Afterwards, we walked around  and found a sleigh with reindeer made out of white birch logs.  We also saw the cutest window display, with a snowman made out of paper cups.  Then as we left town, the Elders told us to drive by the soccer stadium and check out a little cafe/bar nearby.  We drove that way out of town and came across a Green Bay (Packers?) cafe.  We never expected that!

The grandkids will love this!

We are continuing to teach Institute (adult religion class) every week, and are learning so much ourselves.  We love all the opportunities we have to study and teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We meet with our missionaries weekly for district meetings and they continue to amaze us with their ability (at 18, 19, and 20 years old) to plan, set goals, motivate, teach, and speak this challenging language so well.  It is a another confirmation to us that this is the Lord's work and He is in charge.  We are grateful to be a part of it.

And now they are four!

On December 29th, our eighth grandchild was born.  We welcomed Oliver William David Krehbiel into the world, and we are so grateful for his safe arrival.  We are also grateful for our healthy unici, and know that although we miss them very much, we will have plenty of memory making moments when we get home. We are grateful for the technology that allows us to keep in close contact with them. Thanks to Face Time and Skype, we can almost reach out and touch them!  We've even had them "kiss and hug" us on the screen.  They are so sweet, and we appreciate the support we receive from them.

And lastly, we got hit with 6" snow last night.  We woke up to this winter wonderland which made us feel right at home.  We haven't seen a snowblower anywhere,  just a lot of people shoveling.  We may be stuck for a while, as it is supposed to snow for three more days.

Speaking of unuci, it's time for the word of the week, which is:
snjegović  (snay-go-veech) which means snowman.