Professional Putt-Putt

This is the last Mallorca post I promise, but I had to show off our amazing golf skills. 

Towards the end of our trip we decided instead of going to a not-so-nice putt-putt course "we" would play on a real course. We got the after 5 pm special and only played 9 holes so it was basically the same price and the scenery was a bit more enjoyable. 

Stephen did all the long shots and I got to be his caddy girl/putter! 

I didn't really bring golfing attire so Stephen let me borrow one of his polos.....and it actually fit pretty good since at this point I was almost 5 months pregnant. From the front it is not so apparent, but....

from the side you can see it - although the shirt was ballooning a bit!

 We did not get the best score on the front nine, but we really enjoyed the afternoon!

 Oh and lastly, here is a picture of the cathedral in Palma, Mallorca - we visited it the day we flew out! 

Ancient Fort in Majorca

Ancient Fort Tour in Pictures!

There was a special Owl Display that Stephen loved in the Castle.

Who knew you can pet Owls!

Arcade Strong Man Champion!

One night in Majorca we went out to eat and walked along the boardwalk. Most of the stores were closed because of it being low-season still, but luckily for us the arcades were still open! 

As you know Stephen grew up on a farm so he is really good at chopping wood, which translates to being really good at hitting things hard! He showed off his chopping skills and....

 got the high score in the game to the delight of his wife and a random couple that stood around to watch!

And just to rub it in, he beat his own best score on the last try and can truly be called the "KING Hammer"! Bet you didn't know he held that title!

How to Make Lemonade in Majorca, Spain

At the end of April we took a short trip to a spanish island called Majorca to celebrate our anniversary...just a little late! It is a really popular european destination for travelers and there are very affordable flights almost everyday from Germany! We rented a tiny apartment close to the coast and soaked in the sun. Our terrace was bigger than our apartment so we took advantage of grilling out and making homemade lemonade and orange juice from the trees in our garden! 

Here is how we made lemonade....which turned out great I have to say!

Choose the best lemons...not to brown but a little soft. 

Make your husband take a picture too!

Boil a couple cups of water and add some sugar, based on how sweet you want your lemonade. 

Juice your lemons....

and really put your wrist into it!

Add your fresh squeezed lemon juice to the sugar water and refrigerate.

Enjoy!

More pictures to come from our trip!

Katy Hudson....or Katy Perry

I found a random article online about celebrities who changed their names and was so surprised to find out about Katy Perry. Laura Scott and I used to listen to her christian album freshman year and now....well, that is a different story. Here is a classic in honor of the best freshman roomie!

Who knows what God will do in her life!

America Update

Sorry I have been so bad about posting. I have not been doing a good job taking pictures, but I am going to do better this spring! Here are a couple pictures from our visit to the states....better late than never.

Our new nephew Thomas, at his baptism in New York...that Stephen got to perform.

Trip to Cracker Barrel. 

Great visit with friends in Birmingham, thanks for hosting Hil!

Happy Easter!

Dumpster Diving

I saw this article on yahoo news and found it pretty interesting! Leave it to Germans to give Dumpster Diving a whole new meaning! I highlighted one quote that seems a little crazy, but more power to you I guess!

BERLIN (Reuters) - Just past midnight behind a Berlin supermarket, two youngsters with flashlights strapped to their woolen hats sift through trash cans for food that is still edible, load their bikes with bread, vegetables and chocolate Santas and cycle off into the darkness. 

It is not poverty that inspires a growing number of young Germans like 21-year-old student Benjamin Schmitt to forage for food in the garbage, but anger at loss and waste which the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates at one-third of all food produced worldwide, every year, valued at about $1 trillion.
In environmentally aware, cost-conscious Germany, "foodsharing" is the latest fad, using the Internet to share food recovered from supermarket dumpsters while it is still in good condition. 

"Dumpster-diving" for society's cast-offs is a fast-growing phenomenon among sub-cultures in Europe and the United States and "freegans" - vegans who do not believe in paying for food - have long been sifting through supermarket dumpsters.
But the "foodsharing" movement that has sprung up in cities like Cologne and Berlin brings efficiency and technical skills to the table in ways that make it uniquely German.
More than 8,200 people across Germany have registered to share food on the www.foodsharing.de website in just seven weeks of existence, said Berlin organizer Raphael Fellmer. 

The website - which has an appropriately recycled-paper look - advises people where there are "baskets" and what is in them: organic sausages in Cologne or spaghetti and Darjeeling tea in Chemnitz. Members can log in or use a Smartphone app to see the address of nearby baskets or a pick-up time and place. They can then rate the transaction like ordinary online retailers. 

For people who cannot afford the Internet, Fellmer has set up the first of what he hopes will be many "hot spots" where food can be picked up anonymously: a fridge at a covered market in Berlin's Kreuzberg, where anyone can help themselves to food.
"I've come for some bread rolls, just a couple," said Frank, an unemployed 47-year-old, who was alerted to the location of a hoard of fresh bread on the website and called at Fellmer's house. 

Opening his rucksack, he helped himself from a bag of rolls that had been on sale at a nearby bakery till 7 p.m. the previous evening. 

TASTE THE WASTE
Throwing away food is a rich country phenomenon but a poor country's problem.
Camelia Bucatariu, a policy expert on food waste at the FAO in Rome, said North American and European consumers waste 95-115 kg of food per capita a year, compared to just 6-11 kg in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. As economies develop, the level of food waste grows, said Bucatariu, who is Romanian. 

The foodsharers' argument that the tons of food wasted in Germany could feed people in poor countries is not as simplistic as it sounds: less waste means less drain on resources in the producer countries and less upward pressure on prices, she said. 

"It is not only wasting an apple, but wasting the resources embedded in that apple which may be produced outside of Europe," Bucatariu told Reuters. As well as economic damage there is the cost to the environment of using energy to grow food that ends up in a landfill site, emitting greenhouse gases like methane. 

The FAO is studying how to change such behavior and whether changes are needed to legislation on the retailers' "date marks" differentiating "Best By" from "Use By" - the latter being the date when food may start to become a biological hazard. 

Fellmer is on a three-year-old "money strike": he does not earn or spend a euro and he, his wife and child eat only food that has been rescued from the trash. 

A rangy 29-year-old in a baggy blue jumper with spiky blond hair and a pointed beard, he is already something of a German media phenomenon. On a recent visit, a TV documentary crew and a reporter from a local daily were crowded into his one-room flat. 

He plonks on the table a packet of ginger biscuits for Christmas - from a batch of hundreds fished out of the garbage nearby - bearing a "use by" date which is still a month away. They taste fine, as do some red and gold-wrapped chocolate Santas.
The "use by" dates infuriate the foodsharers, many of whom were first inspired by the 2011 film "Taste the Waste" by their guru Valentin Thurm. 

It documents waste ranging from farmers discarding tomatoes that are not red enough to bakeries burning the excess bread they made to keep the shelves looking full until closing time.  Fellmer's friend Schmitt was brought up in a "very food-conscious vegetarian household". His mother is a food chemist who advises him on hygienic ways to eat and share food from plastic sacks that he admits are sometimes "mushy" under your fingers in the dark.

Like Fellmer, he lives not in east Berlin, with its history of squats and communes, but in the leafy western suburb of Dahlem where he dumpster dives under the noses of the German capital's most affluent residents. 

Foodsharing appeals to the "hipster" culture of Berlin with its tradition of anti-establishment protest, Schmitt said. The German crowdsourcing techniques could turn out to be "best practice" for reducing waste in other countries too, said the FAO's Bucatariu. "Solutions may vary according to the culture, the context and to what access to food there is," she said. "But each and every one of us can do something. 

Article from Yahoo.com (News)