All Things Good

1. Girls nights! I am so blessed to have met two girls here, Sara and Pia, that I can have girls nights with. I have always struggled when coming to a new country that I will miss my family and friends so terribly and that I would be bored. Honestly, every place I have gone God places that one or few special people in my life to remind how awesome he is and how he will never let me down. Who am I to think God wants me to be bored? Silly me! So on Saturday the boys were gone for an out of town basketball game as I had talked about in my last post and so we decided to get together. We watched The Internship and let me say hi-lar-ious! Definitely a must see if you love a good comedy. Lets be honest you can't have a complete girls nights without tons of snacks. Well heres some pictures of our menu that night.

Baked Zucchini tossed in olive oil, pepper and salt. Then dusted with some parmesan. Bake for 25-30 min. on 350(175 celsius)

 Chicken Nachos: ginger chicken, peppers, tomato, a creme and hot sauce mix, pineapple, cheese

Fruit, Chocolate and chips w/ queso

2. Cooking! I was not always blessed with the cooking & baking skill. I was thrown into it when moving to Spain. I mean as we all know Brad needs to eat and can't afford to lose weight so I MUST cook a good filling meal every breakfast, lunch and dinner. I won't toot my own horn or anything, but I'm quite impressive in the kitchen. I made three of our favorites this past week. Goulash, Chicken Enchiladas with Sour Cream White Sauce and for dessert Banana Pudding. You can see pictures & recipes here. 

3.Basketball! Boy am I glad it is season again! Brad had his first home game last night against Tampere. They sadly ended in a loss 86-94, but it all in all was a great game. Brad ended with 20 points, 5 rebounds and 1 assist. He was the high scorer of the night of his team and so he even got a prize. They will play again on Saturday in a city that is about an hour or so away so I am able to ride with some other girls to the game. Once again so thankful for them! Here is a picture/video from his game:

4.Nail Time! I really do have quite a bit of time on my hands, but never find time to just sit and relax to do my nails good instead of fast with lumps and crap. Well, I made myself make time to do them good and I am so glad. I literally brought like 20 nail polish colors so I better use them all right? 

China Glaze- Peach Keen

5.Teaching English! As of today I am officially a course leader and English teacher here in Lapua. I got hired through a company based out of Finland called Speaking Out. I start my training in about a week or so. It's really nice that they take the time to train everyone that works for them so we are all kind of teaching the same things with our own personal twist. They even mail us all the materials so I don't have to go find my own. I found it tough in Spain and in Czech to find the materials since anything English is very sparse. Once I finish training I will go out to the schools/nurseries here in the town and talk to the principals and head masters to spark up interest about me starting groups. I get to make my own hours which is the most awesome job yet! I've always taught hour classes so it'll be refreshing to do just 30-45 minutes with each group so no one gets bored. I will have groups with the ages 3-6 and then different groups for 7-12 years old. Anywho, I am so pumped! I went to school to teach and it's all I've wanted to do for so long and I get to do it while my husband does what he loves. It's a win win! 

6. Exploring! Today I had to go to the doctor so Brad and I took out some time to walk around our bitty town and take some pictures and just emerge ourselves in the gorgeous chilly weather! I'll let the photos do the talking :) 

Soccer Field across the street from our apartment

This is outside of our kitchen window

Hello beautiful leaves!

A little park area downtown

This is an old bullet factory that blew up, but they keep a library and museum inside. 

And, of course a selfie ;)

7.Genesis Pure! We got an awesome goodie box from my mom yesterday and it had some new and old but great genesis pure products in it. I am still the biggest fan of the Go-Yin. It's a mixture of super fruits and all natural for some energy and feel good. The new product I got is Mila. I added it to on top of my pizza I had today and couldn't even tell that there were some chia seeds on there. It was still tasty as ever. To learn more about Mila check here.

Last, for a bit of spread out randomness I found the cutest way to tie a scarf you can find here. Also, I have begun to learn that the devil sometimes sets things in motion in our lives that are meant to distract and break us. It will speak fear into you and try to tear you down. When you keep strong in the word and keep your faith that God knows what he is doing and has it handled for you, you can do it all! Psalms 41,42 and 43 really helped me today and maybe it'll help one of you. 

xo Brooke