Happy April, Happy Spring - Happy, Happy Everything!!

 Doesn't this just shout out SPRING??  For those of you that know me well, you know that I love bright yellow. So when we finally had the time to walk around Schloss Eggenberg, we found it...

 gorgeous and full of color!!

The flower mounds that we walk by are in full bloom.

 They have even taken the coverings off from the statues by the entrance now.

 Even the pigs are celebrating Spring with a little Easter deco.

 And the pigs have some friends now. Our sweet neighbor Val (who lives in the apartment in the back) brought us this Easter surprize the other day. She said  "Here is a special couple for a special couple." She is so great. We think we will give her a Book of Mormon for her Easter gift.

 Lisa and Marlene are standing behind the Easter tree that Marlene brought and decorated. Austrians hang artificial eggs on branches of flowered trees for Easter. There are no plastic eggs. For the Easter egg hunt they hide colored hard boiled eggs. The egg shells are thicker and harder over here so the eggs don't have to necessarily be refrigerated. All the eggs we buy are brown shells. We see cartons of beautiful colored eggs everywhere in the stores now to buy. The farmers give the chickens a better kind of feed that makes the egg shells that way, and the yolk is orange colored.  Eggs are rather expensive here but people are buying tons for Easter.  Oh... I must mention about Lisa because she is a new investigator who is Austrian and she is golden! She found out about the church on the internet and just showed up about 3 weeks ago. I will most likely talk about her in further posts.

 Just look at this beautiful happy face.  This is Sister Bulmann and she is one of our people we home teach. She is single, never married, is turning 79 in May and is one of the happiest people we know. She decided long ago that she was not going to let her circumstances get her down.  When she was young and pregnant, she and her soon-to-be husband were in a terrible car crash. Both her fiance and her unborn child were killed, and she was in a coma for several weeks in the hospital.  When she recovered she felt like she had been given a new life with alot of energy and vitality which she has used for the rest of her life.  She never married saying that she could not ever find another true love. When she joined the church she found peace and comfort and has great love for everyone. She has some health problems now and her right arm is "kaputt" (broken and can't be fixed after many surgeries). We have not seen anything like it. But just look at her, she is an Angel.

 Sister Bulmann let us see this 6 sided harmonica that belonged to her brother. Elder Tew is pretending to play it.

 General Conference Weekend! We got to see all of the sessions except the last one due to the time difference. We had a picnic on the church lawn with the JAEs between two of the sessions. Also our young missionaries came.

 One day we were down in the city and stopped for lunch at a little cafe. I had the best vegie lasagne I have ever tasted.  Elder Tew had wienerschnitzel.

 Here's a pic of 3 young men in the ward. I gave them a bag of microwave popcorn for a snack and they were so funny just standing there watching it that I had to take this picture. 

 Yay, we finally got to hike up all 260 steps to the top of Schlossberg.  Last time we went with the young missionaries in December and we took the elevator up and the cog train down.  We went this time as a JAE activity on Friday night.

 Part of the stairways with lookouts.

 This is at the top looking over the city. (Rick found a flower for me which he is holding)

 Schlossberg is exploding with color.

 Some of our fun group by the famous clock tower. Notice that the hour hand on the clock is the biggest so that the people down below can see the time.

 Love this picture we took of Graz city hall (Rathaus) and surrounding city.

 We stopped in for a double scoop of gelato on our way back home.

Yummmm ...  wish you were here!