June in Vienna

After over a year of praying for our residence permits, God responded clearly.  Here we are holding our 2012 permits.  We get to stay!!!

 

Nathanael has a hand and mouth full of snacks in that picture, the only way we could get him to look at the camera and hold his permit! :)

Nathanael and I love the mornings when we get to be with our friends.  Here are a few pictures from our outings.

Sunday morning fun at church

Our twice monthly Moms and Tots group at church just had our final meeting last week.  We went to the zoo!!!  Nathanael loved watching the tall giraffes eat from a hanging basket.

 I can't believe I caught this photo before they were off and running around some more.

We love to get away to parks, and that's quite easy to do in this city.  They're everywhere!  Here we are in Prater, one of our favorites, just after a rain.  Nathanael wanted to jump in every puddle.  We stripped him down in the middle of the park and changed his clothes before heading home. 

For a holiday, we took a day/morning trip just over an hour to the Vienna Woods, hills overlooking the city.  Here's a picture looking down on our new home, most notable here, the Danube and the tall buildings on the left around the UN.

I hosted my first afternoon coffee a couple weekends ago.  I made a special Austrian, orange-flavored cake, and it was magnificent!  (I ate way too much of it...)  We had a wonderful time with our friends, and they were so incredibly patient with us and our minimal German.

We're still looking for the right apartment.  One Saturday morning when we were walking around the neighborhood praying, we ran into a festival for our district, held in the square with the huge church in the area (picture below).  There were tons of Turkish cultural tables there, and it was fun to experience all the Turkish food, flags, music. and people right in the neighborhood where we'll live.

Austria is a grilling culture.  We love it.  We finally bought some coals and used our hosts' grill to indulge in some delicious Viennese wursts!  Oh my, they were good.  Nathanael ate two entire hot dogs and was asking for more!  And with the hot weather recently, it was nice to keep the cooking outdoors.