Our Many Faces

Cade now loves to make faces...and have his picture taken. Chelsea doesn't miss an opportunity, either. Next time, I should brush their hair and clean their faces first. Oh well.

Cheese!

Scary...

and scared.

So sad.

Surprise!

Love them!!!

O Christmas Tree

Yesterday, we decided to search for a Christmas tree. A little early, yes, but we will go back to the US for Christmas and we wanted to enjoy our Christmas decorations for a few weeks.  We have seen artificial trees at a few places, but I kind of wanted a real one. So, we headed to a nursery we were familiar with to see if they had any in stock. Side note - in Hungarian, plant nurseries are called fa iskola, or tree school. I love that.  We arrived at the nursery and found someone that spoke a little English. He led us to a place where there were several rows of trees. But, they were tiny. Like, 3-4 feet tiny. Not exactly what I had in mind.  In the moment, we were trying to get all the information we could and I asked the stupid American question of the day..."Is this normal?"

 In addition to the small size, the trees gave a new definition to "live tree". They all had their root balls still attached. What??? What is that about?? We proceeded to ask the next stupid question of the day.  "What if we just want to throw it away after Christmas?" The nice salesmen were very patient with our ignorance. Apparently here, or at least at that nursery (we have yet to verify this with anyone else), people don't throw the trees away. What a waste that is. Instead, you plant them in a pot until Christmas, and then afterwards you can plant them in your garden. Next year, you can dig it back up and use it again! 2 for the price of one!

At that moment, I was ready to leave and go get a fake one, but Larry thought we should have the full Hungarian Christmas tree experience. So, we picked out the tallest one (about 4 feet). The nice men potted it for us and got it all ready (which doubled the price, maybe we got the special ignorant American deal). They shoved the poor tree in the back of my SUV and off we went.

We got home and had to use a dolly to get it up the stairs. It is super heavy.

We found a little spot for it and let the kids decorate it. They had loads of fun. Cade really appreciates that I have placed all of these shiny balls out for his enjoyment. He is a brilliant child, already experimenting to see which ones bounce, which ones roll, and which ones shatter.  

 It certainly won't win any "most beautiful tree" contests, but it has character. And we laughed. And we made memories. And that is more important than having a 10 foot tree.

Fall!

Before our Houston trip, the temperature here was beginning to drop and the leaves were changing colors. After only being gone for 10 days, it was amazing to come back to leaves of all different colors. Fall had truly arrived, and now we are on a quick downhill slide to winter.
                                        

The leaves have been dropping like crazy, and I think I am the only one who deliberately swept leaves from outside our gate onto our driveway and into the yard so the kids could jump in them and enjoy them. I also made a "things they should tell you when you move here" observation.  I noticed the sidewalk in front of our house was the only one covered with leaves - apparently you are supposed to sweep your sidewalk. Who knew?

We enjoyed our leaf frolicking for about an hour right after Chelsea got off the bus - notice it is already getting dark at 4 pm in these pics.  The kids loved jumping and sliding and throwing the leaves. So fun!

 We will enjoy the leaves for another week or two, then it should be snow time! We can't wait!

Halloween in Houston

Last year, we had a not so exciting and somewhat disappointing Halloween adventure in Hungary. This year, as a result of the great dental trip, my kids were able to trick or treat in Houston. 

Chelsea started out in a "Jasmine" costume we got in Turkey, with a leotard underneath.

 For trick or treating, she shed the dress and went as a ballerina. 

She was accompanied by a cute little spiderman. 

 We trick or treated up and down my parent's street.  The houses are pretty spread out, so my little people had to work for their candy. Many in the neighborhood were trick or treating in golf carts.                    Nothing says America like going house to house for free candy in a golf cart. 

 Spiderman figured it out quickly and was quite the cute trick or treater. 

He usually stayed a little long at each house, commenting on their puppy or pumpkin. 

His cuteness caused most people to give him a second round of candy. 

He got lots of his favorite candy...a successful night!

Trip to the Dentist

And what a trip it was! Long story short - when Chelsea was 2, she fell and hurt her front tooth. It has been fine for 3 years, but started bothering her and then developed an abscess in September. Dental visits here were super cheap, but more painful and different from the US in treatment recommendation. So, we decided to go back to Houston over fall break to get her tooth taken care of. She was a trooper! She is quite proud of her lost tooth and loves telling everyone about it.

While we were in Houston, we all had our teeth cleaned. Following the cleaning, Larry's whole face swelled up horribly and it turns out he had a bad tooth infection. He ended up having a root canal right before we left to come back to Budapest. We were thankful it happened there and he was able to get it taken care of easily. We are now back home in Hungary and hopefully done with dentists for awhile!