Some people love fall. To me it mostly just signifies the end of summer and the beginning of winter, but there are some fun things going on during the fall season. We didn’t grow up having fall, and we won’t have fall in Indonesia, but we’re enjoying it this year with Talia. If we were around for fall each year, we’d probably make some traditions of the things we did this year, like going to the pumpkin patch, taking a scenic hike (or drive if it’s too cold!), baking pumpkin goodness, etc.. Here are some photos.

A visit from Julianne!

A scenic fall drive

At the pumpkin patch

Carving and baking (Julianne and I thought we were picking out the biggest pumpkin to bake from, but found out that we didn't pick out a "pie" pumkin. So, Ryan carved our pumpkin and we got a can of pumpkin from the store.)

Talia and with a Talia-sized pumpkin

Well, Melissa is back in school now.  What that means for Talia and I is some quality time, at least while she isn’t napping.  Melissa is going to be gone two full mornings (6am until noon) and one afternoon a week.  This last week went great.  Although I don’t get as much done while taking care of her, we are having fun.

Talia’s Papa and Nana finally got to meet here for the first time.  They came up from sunny Florida to a colder-than-average Wisconsin. (you never want to hear “colder than average in Wisconsin)  Thankfully, I think that cuddling with Talia was able to keep them warm enough to enjoy their time up here.

Having a good chat

Every year, Ryan’s grandparents plant a HUGE garden in the back yard and his grandma does tons and tons of canning to feed them during the winter months.  I thought it would be a practical skill to have that might come in handy someday.  So, Nana taught me how and we canned 9 quarts of tomato juice.  Yum!  Next I’ll have to learn how to can meat in case I want to can some wild animals (or dogs) in Indonesia!

Before

After

We recently applied for Talia’s passport and decided to take her picture ourselves.  Let’s just say it was a challenge to get a good picture.  She’ll have to have this picture until she’s five years old, so we wanted it to look decent!

We took Talia on her first road trip this weekend.  We were invited to speak at a church in Martintown, Wisconsin, a little farm town on the border of Illinois.  We didn’t know what to expect of the weekend as we had only ever met the pastor, but our time there turned out to be a huge blessing.  This little country church was full of very friendly, caring people and we were so encouraged by them.  We stayed overnight on Saturday and had the best hosts.  Our hostess even got up at 4am to bake a peach pie, sticky buns, cinnamon rolls and bars for the next day!  We were well taken care of and Talia did so well, even sleeping 8 hours that night on her little bed we made for her on the floor!  It’s so neat to see how the Lord uses people we didn’t even know to be part of our ministry.

Outside Indonesia, bulutangkis is known as badminton.  Within Indonesia, badminton is a national obsession.  Badminton was introduced into the Olympics in 1992 and Indonesia has won the gold metal in every single Olympic Games since.

Since badminton is such a big sport in Indonesia we figured that we had better take some measures to prepare ourselves for some bulutangis competition.  We’ve set up a badminton net in the backyard here in Wisconsin and have been out getting the hang of the game.  I’m sure that we aren’t quite at Olympic level yet, but with time…

Trying to get a decent family photo is difficult!

Sorry for the silence on our blog lately!  Life is finally getting back to normal.  For those of you who don’t get our newsletters, I’ll give you a brief update.  Talia had a rough start with eating.  Because she was early and small, she didn’t have the energy that she needed to nurse properly. She lost a lot of weight in the first week because of that, and it wasn’t until she was five weeks old that she finally got the hang of things.  Because of all that, I wasn’t able to go back to class in August.  Now, I’ll be going back in October and finishing in March.  This postpones our move to Indonesia by about 8 weeks.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time at home with Talia these last few weeks.  She is so much fun, smiling and cooing!  She’s very healthy and is gaining weight just fine, now!  She’s also sleeping longer at night which makes for a very happy mommy and daddy!

We are thoroughly enjoying life as a family of three!

Lovin' it!

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