Birthday Boys

Happy, happy birthday to 2 of my guys.

 I am so thankful for Larry and the way he provides and leads our little family. 

He is adored by me and by 3 little people. 

And I can't believe this dude is one. Last year at this time, we were flying, praying, hoping, waiting...

I am so thankful for him and the blessing he is to us. 

What a precious gift God gave us. 

At one year old, he has 7 teeth and eats everything in sight. He is not interested in walking, but is quite the climber and cruises along all the furniture. After I bragged on his sleeping last month, he decided to start waking up in the middle of the night again. Oh well - this too shall pass. He says mama, dada, nigh nigh, and last night started saying uh oh. He loves music and does the motions to Wheels on the Bus. Pure joy!!!!

For his birthday, we gave him a motorcycle like all the Hungarian kids have. Cade was so excited that they can have races now...not sure if Logan is quite ready for that, but it won't be long!

We are having a little party next weekend, so fun cake-eating pictures to come. Happy Birthday L and L!  We love you very much!!!

A Lotta Love

It's February....and it keeps on snowing! Snow boots with dresses are a new fashion statement. 

We have no slice and bake cookie dough here, so we made Valentine's Day cookies the old fashioned way. It brought back fun memories of making sugar cookies with my mom when I was little. 

I enjoyed taking cookies to Cade's class for them to decorate. Chelsea decorated cookies for her classmates. I have recently developed a relationship with a local orphanage, and I am excited about what will come of opportunities to volunteer there. As we were making cookies, I felt like we should make extra for the kids at the orphanage. But, let's be honest, rolling out sugar cookies is time consuming. By the time we got all of them made for Chelsea and Cade's classes, I had run out of steam and convinced myself that I could skip the cookies for the orphanage. But, sometimes God makes it extra clear what He wants us to do. As only He could arrange, there were enough kids absent in Cade's class so that I had exactly enough cookies left over for the kids in the orphanage. I had to smile at that. 

Farsang

This is the season of Farsang in Hungary. Farsang is similar to Carnival or Mardi Gras, but without the parades, etc.  In southern Hungary, it is celebrated with a festival including men wearing Buso (aka scary, wooly-looking) masks and they are said to chase away winter.

Chelsea made a Buso mask in art class and they got to eat Fank (doughnuts) in their Hungarian culture class. Fank are traditionally eaten during this time of Farsang. 

Halloween is not celebrated in Hungary, but kids dress up in costume during Farsang. One of Cade's classmates wore a Spiderman costume to school on Friday, so today Cade requested to wear his costume. We took the kids ice skating at a mall, and Spiderman was quite the hit. He had his photo taken and lots of people stopped to admire him.

Both big kids are getting to be decent ice skaters. They love it! 

 This ice rink was in a food court area, and the most popular restaurants there were McDonald's and KFC. This is usually the case in malls!  There was also a Pizza Hut, one of only a few in Budapest.

 Logan would have loved to ice skate, but once again was relegated to watching from the stroller. Tough life for this little guy. It won't be long before he is able to keep up with the big kids!

A Night on the Ice

A few weeks ago, we took a family trip to the Varosligeti Mujegpalya, otherwise known as the City Park Ice Rink (but that doesn't sound as cool). Supposedly, this is listed as one of the top 10 sights in Europe in the winter. The scenery is hard to beat, with the Vajdahunyad Castle in the background.  We had no idea how popular this place is on a Saturday night, and we had to wait in line for at least 30 minutes to get our skates and our entry tickets. 

Sweet Natalie went with us, and there is no way we could've done it without her. There are no walls or rails or anything to hold on to, so ice skating with 3 kids requires 3 adults! 

 We took turns skating with each child and staying back with Logan. 

It was so fun and everyone had a great time!

Larry tried to skate while pushing the stroller, but he got busted before he got very far. 

They had a ski jump set up right in front of the castle  with a giant inflatable pillow to land on. it was quite entertaining to watch the skiers and snowboarders try their tricks!

It was a fun night for all - I would highly recommend it!