Autumn /Fall again..

hello again dear followers,

I don`t really know much to write but I find it time to at least write SOMEthing again..
Lukas and I are doing well, we enjoy spending time together when he comes home from work in the afternoons and evenings. I realize I am a lucky wife having her husband come home every day at 18.15! Sometimes when he has to work weekends, all of a sudden he has free on monday and tuesday!.. So very wonderful.
The newest news is, that I got a very early Christmas present....
We now are the lucky owners of a piano!!! It is so near to a `real piano` the way it is played, the touch and the sound. I`m loving it.. It even has a pedal, and allows me to play whenever I want to, because you can pluggin a headphone so I won`t disturbe the neighbours too much f.e. late in the evening..
The girl nextdoor plays drums, and one neighboor above plays trumphet, so I am not afraid to make some piano`noise` during the day:-) It is so fun playing more often again. I noticed I was losing my skills. They called me to be the pianist/organist in church, and I could`t play all the hymns flawless without practicing!
The `thing` hanging above the piano is my newest handy. There is just 1 danger, it can become a mess in a very short time, but it`s soooo practical putting and storing sheetmusic/books/magazines in.. It love it. I got 20% on it, and it still was a very expensive buy in the deco-store in our town, (40 CHfranks) but it was worth it.
What is also fun, we picked up playing the guitar a little bit. Lukas is way better than I am, but it stood around in the living room just staring at us.. doing nothing.. I was asked to play `come come ye saints` and some other songs for this
Relief Society thing in the woods, remembering the Pioneers.. That forced me to start practicing again and ohw how much fun it is! :-) The blessings of the gospel..
The Swiss Fall has been treating us so nice.. we had the most beautiful sunny shinging fallweather and took a lot of walks through the forest around the corner. We even biked to church yesterday, it was so nice and warm.. (about 15 km. one way)

We gave our new, white wooden furniture its place and it`s so pretty! I`ts just like it belonged there long before it stood where it is standing now:-) The `table with mirror` is standing next to my bed and I made an `earring-holder` (heart) to put on it. (it`s glow in the dark too!!) The lady in red we bought in Holland, very handy for neckless etc. Inside her skirt there`s place for more hanging earrings/rings!

Our little red Dicia takes us everywhere we need to go.. It withstood the test of driving to Holland last month, as we visited for a quick couple of days to attend a wedding of a friend. It was so sweet to be home and meet with the family, especially my two little nephews. I loved spending time with them!

When Krista and Patrick visited in August, they brought me a very special `leaf`.
It is part of a plant, that belonged to my grandmother who passed away last year.
At first it stood in water for a while, so that it could get roots, but it seemed to die on me for 3 times. I cut it off and was patient, and finally planted it about a month ago. I thought nothing happened, untill, to my surprise I lifted the big leaf and saw.. somthing growing underneath!! I am so happy about this that it deserves pictureproof here! :-)

Furthermore.. we just enjoy spending time together and just are very happily married! We bake, cook and try (Zopfen or braid? a very popular bread here in Switserland, see picture), or the delicious orange pumpkinsoup sometimes, I even draw again (flower) .. Life is great. I can`t believe it`s been over a year, and realize we must LIVE every minute more consious that we are ALIVE! I bought a card once in Hamburg and it`s standing in the living room so that I can read it often. It says:
Gib jedem Tag die Chance, der schoenste deines Lebens zu sein!
(Make it possible for every day, to be the best day of your life!)
Pretty good huh?

I`ll post some more pictures of things around that are new.
For example, I went and picked up our very first printer last week! We didn`t need one desperately, and if/when in need : lukas is allowed to print something at work.
But it`s good to have one and it already makes life even more convinient and handy!
There`s a picture of how they transport sugar beets here, it was such a long train!!
The town where I got the printer had a super beautiful church. (the white one). It is standing in `Soloturn`.

So that was it for today. I have some curtains to sew, the goal for today was to finish that so I`m going to give my best!

Have a great sinterklaas/Christmas preperation-time everyone and make the best out of.. Today!

Love,
the maerki`s












































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Life is good...

Hello there,

It`s been a while.. We have enjoyed getting aquinted with the new envirnment and area here. It was a beautiful after-summer in Bern and we enjoyed that 300%. The radish and herbs at our balkony are growing, almost ready to be `harvested`..
I`m amazed at how busy life can be without having a fulltime job at the moment.
It is wonderful slowly getting life (meaning our appartment and all the stuff there`s in it!) in order and getting organized..
I read a nice fitting scripture to that one last week and remembered that I liked that one since long.. : `Organize yourselves; prepare every needfull thing: and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a hous of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God... ! ` (D&C88:119)
I guess I like it so much because the things mentioned here, are like goals for me..Just imagine... Creating a house of Glory yourself! I`m really not an organized type, Lukas isn`t either altough I must admit he`s better than I am.
Ofcourse it is primarally about order at the moment, getting things in place. Since there are still boxes laying around that contain things needing desperately to find its place.. but eventually having a house of order, but especially (the order must have a connection to it..?), a house of God! I think of the Temple immediatly, wauw.(speaking of the Temple, I`m reading the best book right now:House of Glory: Finding Personal Meaning in the Temple by S. Michael Wilcox-I`d advise it to all of you, really an supergood book!).
It takes a lot before I could/ would call our home a house of Glory or of God but, its good to have goals, right?
Basicly these days exist of working, for lukas and for me being a housewife and having lunch (usually warm) ready when lukas comes home at 12.00.. I love having him home from 12.00 till 13.30 and I love having him home early at about 18.00 at night.
It is so fun and handy, that where we live he has a 3 minute bike ride or about a 6 minute walk to work. A great blessing.
In between, we were both called to serve with the youth in our ward. I may learn a lot from the Young Woman, and Lukas is with the young man. Yep, theres just 1 (his name appears to be lukas also;-) but we are both grateful for this new opportuniy to learn and grow; so far, we really like it!
We also like to bike around at night or take a walk in (the neighbourhood of) our new village. It is a really beautiful landscape everywhere around and the weather has been so wonderful! Autumn is slightly starting, visible in the Jura mountains, covered with trees, the tops are slowly turning from dark green to light yellow/orange and I`m exited for fall to `fall in`!
We love our new appartment. Like I said, there is still some things not in OrDeR, but I`m working on it and am really seeing progress every day.
We feel extremly blessed with our new car and love all the possibilities that opened up that make transport a lot easier. (Even tough we look back on traveling by public transport with a big smile, it definately also had its advantages!
I need to show you a picture of our newest furniture!
After finding our perfect book-storing cupboard for 25 franks(?), we were offered an ever better deal last saturday the 25th. We were helping out a member that was moving. There came some furnuture from the attic. I said I really liked that thing with the drawers in it (it actually was precisely what we were looking for since some weeks but all we found was too expensive). So here it comes. She goes: Do ya like it? Well, have it! Oh no, i couldnt.. But she made it even better: there`s another piece in the attic that comes with it, like a `make up table sort of thing`. And I have a mirror that goes with it too. You can have all three!!! I was so exited, it is sooo pretty and looks like it belongs to our white wooden bed. (the same kind of wood/structure/paint).
So now theres an extra motivation to get more OrDeR in the house, to find a place for our new furniture and get ourselves organized;-)
I also need to show you what I did with the little shelf lukas made me..
And I`ll post some pictures of the embroided/stiched bibs I send away. You`ll see it really is not as boring as you may have thought:-)

life.. the nieuwtjes!

..just picked it up!



Newest aanwinst: a bookboard for only 25 CHfranks at a 2nd hand shop in our town! We love it..
Filled (im working on it), it looks like this:




A little `make-up-carkeys-wallet-shelf` - made by... lukas! (on my request, sweet huh?)


Back in lucerne with Krista and Patrick @ the vierwaldstätterlake.. isn`t it beautiful out there?




proudly presents: the dalias at our balkony




Lukas his `bruxoguard`- it protects your teeth & jaws agains bruxism (knarsen). Very soon I will have one too.


very first self-sewed (with HELP from my mother in law) curtains

Vacation and move

Hello everyone!

There we are, living in our new home decorated with beautiful full, half full and empty boxes all over the place! :-) We are having lots of fun unpacking them and finding out what`s inside.. (In most cases, they are labeled but it still is often a surprise what exactly appears. It almost feels like sinterklaas ( of Christmas ) sometimes:-)

Lukas had a week off, which we gratefully spend on this `boxes project` in trying to make our new home look more cosy. We decided not to pack stuff (because then, unpacking and packing at the same time didn`t make so much sense plus the weather didn`t help) and to camping for a couple of days. Since living in our new app. for the first week Felt like a vacationhome - we made lots of fun trips and just returned to our vacation home at night to rest.
We love our new home and are absolutely thankful for all the help we received packing and moving. My best friend from holland came with my mom and Jan-Peter to help me pack the heavy stuff. Jan-Peter has proved to be our muscle man and carried around somuch full, overloaded boxes in one day that I thought he would fall down somewhere in between, but he didn`t. They were great.
Then on the day of the actual move, we had a Lucerne-priesthood team down our 8stairs, who carried everything down in a chain so amazingly fast that I almost couldn`t follow nor believe it with my own eyes.

With two busses (one from Lukas`s brother and the other from my work), lukas and I each drove one to our new home in kanton Bern.
There awaited us a new priesthood-brother team, that builded another chain into our new appartment.
Without the huge help from everyone, we would not have made it. Thank you all soo much!

Last week, we spent one day making a 3-lake-trip on a boat starting in Biel/Bienne. I even got a foot-massage on the boat! The weather was gorgious and the city we left the boat ( Morat/ Murten / Mont Vully) was worth spending some time..

We also spend our first ! anniversery visiting the Temple, making a trip and taking a wonderful walk. I can`t believe we have been married for 1 year now.. It feels like yesterday and we enjoy eachothers company and love eachother more everyday...

After one year Lucerne, I am so curious what adventures and blessings are awaiting us here in Kanton Bern... I am positive that it will at least be as fantastic as the past year... !

Finally we had (made) time to cut lukas`s hair. There is a before- and after picture:-) Expecially for Josien: His exam-beard became his `vacation-beard` now.. :-)