A new school year 2010-2011

East Coast: The Welbourn's

West Coast: The Reedal's and two Welbourn's

Luke and I just arrived back in beautiful Kandern, Germany. We spent a wonderful 7 weeks in the states visiting family, churches and supporters. It went by a little too fast, but as we were flying into Basel we realized how excited we were to be back for a third year at BFA. This is the first year of our marriage that we haven't moved or changed jobs and THAT feels really great! On Sunday we started up with our resident life orientation. We were able to meet most of the new staff that will be working in the dorms and it is such a great group of people. We won't know who our new RA will be for quite a few more days so if you are reading this, you can pray for wisdom in that decision. Hopefully in the next few days we will find out how many girls and who we will have as well. There are a lot of unknowns, but we feel more confident going into our second year. The summer was such a good time for feeling all the support and prayers of all our friends and families back home. Thank you to everyone who made us feel so loved and cared for!

The week before spring break...

A few highlights from the week and weekend:
- This past week was the 2010 Music Festival. The week is filled with nervous musicians who have practiced countless hours and perform by memory in front of a judge. In Palmgarten alone we had 4 piano performers, 2 strings performances and 2 vocal performances. Out of the 8 performances, Julia, Krista and Rachel were chosen to perform in the Honors Recital which took place on Friday evening.

- The juniors turned in their final poetry project this week. It was an intense art studio in the dining area with the girls working on the creative element to their projects.

- Soccer tryouts concluded this week and we have 7 girls who made the soccer team, 2 who are going to be managers, and one videographer! Yes, that means 10 girls gone on away games. This weekend was their first game of the season against Bamberg and they won 4 to 0! Palmgarten's own Rachel scored one of the goals.

- Track practices started up as well. We have two girls competing this season and one who is helping manage three days a week. Track did not compete this weekend, but will start up with a home match when we get back from spring break.

- For the 9 girls left in the dorm, we tried to plan an eventful weekend. Friday was gorgeous outside, a nice break from the rain and snow. A few girls went to support the Honors Recital and then we had a campfire cookout with our dorm and Maugenhard. Saturday was a low key morning with waffles, eggs and sausages! A few girls went to the thermal baths with Lizzy and a few girls went with me to a volleyball championship. A teacher volunteered her home for students to watch Sherlock Holmes, so most of the girls went to see that to end the Saturday night. Sunday we are planning on dying eggs for Easter and having an Easter Egg Hunt later on in the evening.

I can't believe it's March 6th!

Polishing off a strawberry pie from the birthday girl

The girls after our Valentine's Dinner

Cooking LOTS of pasta

Sadie Hawkins dance: teaching the students a few Scottish dances in pairs

Happy ladies after buying chocolate in Brussels

Emily and Katey working the pancake breakfast fundraiser for Haiti

Our one basketball player at her last senior game with her parents

Students getting ready to usher in the varsity basketball team

Sledding on the golf course behind our dorm

For those of you who receive our newsletter, you know that the past two months have been filled with activity! These are just a few of the pictures from the past two months. We just had a weekend off in Brussels with two good friends. It was very refreshing, and we had a great time driving up there. The girls are at High School Retreat right now, they will arrive back tomorrow evening. We're hoping that they've had a great weekend with a new speaker, skiing and late nights!

Past Christmas memories

All the girls dressed in their best for the Christmas banquet

My makeup collection is put to good use in the dorm

Cheering fans at the Palm vs. Witt flag football game

We all supported the Palmgarten girls with hand prints on our faces. No, that is not face paint but regular paint that you have to scrape off!

Jersey by the Christmas tree posing for her Christmas picture

Swine Flu, The Play and Thanksgiving

Well, this has been an eventful past two weeks. Starting two weeks ago we had quite a few girls home sick. The school ended up confirming that we had cases of H1N1 and closing down the school for a few days. The play was scheduled last weekend so everyone in the audience had to wear masks! We had two girls involved in the play and we were grateful to see their hard work not go to waste. Luke and I had our last weekend off before Christmas break and we went to visit Tim and Rachel Meier in Toulouse. It was great for us to see friends and reconnect....plus they have Dominoes pizza with cheesy bread =) We got back to the dorm and immediately started prepping for our dorm Thanksgiving. All the dorms have their Thanksgivings on the Thursday before so we can invite the families that sub in our dorms. I have never cooked an entire Thanksgiving meal before and had loads of help pulling off the 36 person production. In the end it was a tasty night with amazing fellowship. We are leaving today for our dorm retreat. We will have 2 days away with no internet or tv with the girls. We're hoping for snow since we're taking them to a missionary camp house in the Alps. It should be a great change of scenery from them being cooped up and isolated in the dorm for the past week and a half!

Brandon and Lizzy at the play in their mandatory masks

Rachel was a Brooklyn diva in the play- she was amazing!

The girls before their game of muddy tackle football

Thanksgiving place settings

The ENTIRE oven was filled with Thanksgiving food!

The final product layed out before everyone feasted

Waiting patiently to get food

The aftermath of the food set in quickly- rolling around on the floor

All of our wonderful dorm girls!

BAKE OFF

Every Sunday evening we have "Dorm Fellowship" which is usually a time where we come together and regroup spiritually as a dorm. The past few Sunday's we had serious dorm fellowships so we wanted to lighten it up a bit and let the girls have some bonding time. Luke came up with the idea of a bake off. We put the girls in teams of 4 and they each gave us their ingredient lists. We told them the only parameters is that they had to be done by 8:30 on Sunday evening with presentation in hand. We "flew in" three judges (from three different parts of town) and told them there would be three awards handed out: Best in Show, Presentation and Taste. They had a blast and it was a really great night for the dorm!

Emily and Krystal mixing their hot fudge in the kitchen

This yummy dessert won best in show

The very prestigious judges (naturally Luke wanted in on the judging action!)

These are the three trophies we made

The winning teams happy dance when we announced the results

There are good pumpkins....and bad pumpkins...

Last weekend the dorm was invited to HBR (a boys dorm) to carve pumpkins. They asked us to bring 14 pumpkins to split between 47 guys and girls in teams. The girls had a great time and a few of our girls were even part of the top three prize teams. After lots of hot chocolate, spiced cider, delicious applesauce cake and peach crisp- we went to their rec room to play "name that tune." It was among one of the more hilarious games played with a group of MK's and young adults. A couple days later a few girls and I were driving by HBR and saw that all of our pumpkins were still on display on the dorm steps. We decided to play a mini prank and steal 4 out of the 14 pumpkins to display at our dorm. This may seem harmless since there were 14 total pumpkins and we brought them anyway, right? Well, that is thinking from my female perspective which is very different than having 28 boys witness you take 4 of THEIR pumpkins. The guys apparently got pretty riled up and later that night we had a surprise attack on our dorm where the pumpkins were smashed and pumpkin goo was spread all around. Luckily, HBR came to help clean up and like gentlemen, later on in the week came over dressed in ties with a cake in hand and sang "stand by me" to our dorm. Lesson for the weekend: never pretend to steal anything when there is testosterone involved.

1 of the 6 crates of pumpkins we bought

This is a typical pumpkin stand alongside the roads in Germany

Major concentration in pumpkin carving (this was the winning team!)

Carving out the pumpkin

Picking up the larger pieces of the mess after the guys came

Luke is surveying the damage from the inside where it is safe and smell free

HBR with their cake, ties, and amazing singing skills....apology accepted