Enjoying God's Creation

We are packed and ready to go!  Sorry I haven't blogged more, but we've been frantically trying to gather up everything we need.  I had such great plans to post so many different things.  Sigh.  There's never enough time in a day for what I want to accomplish.  The good news is everything fits in our luggage and we even have a little extra space!  We're each taking a medium sized suitcase to check and then backpacks as our carry-ons.  That's all for 18 days!  And we have a lot of gifts we're bringing- cross wall hangings for the churches in St. Petersburg, materials and gifts for the women at the retreat, uno cards for the couples with kids, stole sets to present to the pastors in Siberia.  Let's just say we have a lot of room for souvenirs to bring home!

We leave early tomorrow (Monday) morning for JFK where we will meet up with the 5 others in our group, and then head onwards to Moscow.  I'm not looking forward to all the time spent sitting tomorrow (16 hours roughly).  It's still hard to believe our trip is here.  A trip that we've been planning and praying about for over 2 years.  It hardly seems real and probably won't be until we are walking the streets of Moscow on Tuesday.

I haven't a clue if I'll be able to get online and give you updates, so if you don't hear from me for 18 days, just know I'm out of the country, but still thinking of and praying for all of you.  I thought I'd leave you with some pictures of God's creation that I've taken with my new camera.  I've been trying to get out and practice using it in preparation for our trip, and so far I've been pleased with the shots compared with my little point and shoot.  I've only begun to play around with aperture, shutter speed, iso, and white balance, so most of these are taken from Program mode or Scene mode. Still, it's been fun to resume a hobby of mine that has been dormant for several years.  I also completed my 4 photo classes the past month in preparation for the trip as well.

My husband and I took a drive up our nearby canyon one morning to practice with my camera.  Waterfalls were plentiful as were budding wildflowers.  It was beautiful. Here's what my neck of the woods looks like:

Mountains and wildflowers- nothing more magnificent.

Numerous waterfalls due to all the snowmelt.

Budding flowers.

Flowers near the river.

Different layers of flowers and water.

The puffball flower (sorry, no time to look up all the official names).

This one might be lupine.

God's beautiful creation.  I love being out in nature and witnessing the creativity of our Creator.  I hope you get the chance to as well.  Next, I'll show you pictures of God's creation from another part of the world.