Family Pics

We took advantage of the Budapest Cherry Blossom Festival to take some spontaneous family pics. Turns out, there was only one cherry blossom tree, but whatever. Still some nice scenery and good place for pictures!

Classic Logan...what will happen if I step in the stream of water?

We tried to hide Chelsea's cast, but now it looks like she only has one arm in all of the pictures. Lol. 

Love my fam!

Nana and Papa

We enjoyed a fun 3 weeks with my parents in town. They have done most of the Budapest stuff already, so we hit a few highlights and then they just hung out with me and my normal routine. I loved our time together! The big kids were in school most of the time, but still got lots of Nana and Papa fun. Logan got to accompany us on our daily adventures.

Our fun times included -

A forest walk, which was fun but quickly became "can we find out way out before dark?" 

Thankfully, we did. 

A trip to the Gellert Hill slides - haven't been there since Chelsea was 4 and Cade was 1...wahhh.

Logan is my daredevil and loved every slide. 

A walk through Fisherman's Bastion and the Castle District.

Feeding fish at Millernaris park

A trip to the zoo for some animal feeding, playground time, and a kurtoskalacs! 

My dad's trip is not complete until he has had a fahejas kurtoskalacs. 

We also enjoyed a trip to Berlin together - that is a blog post to come. 

It is quite possible that my parents were our last visitors - so strange! We expect to move back to the USA next summer, and we don't have anyone else lined up to come visit. For so long, moving back seemed like a faraway dream and now it feels oh-so-close, maybe too close. Weird. That is also a blog post for another day!

Going on a Bear Hunt

We're Going on a Bear Hunt is one of the boys' favorite books, and so we went on a bear hunt of our own. We live in the Buda hills, and we have some great hiking trails very near our house. Sadly, we have never used them until a couple of weeks ago! It was so much fun and we will definitely do it more often now. 

4 walkers, one rider

So many cool discoveries along the way

We overdid it a bit and hiked all the way to a glider airstrip - took about an hour and a half to get there. Needless to say, the kids then were worn out and we still had to go back. Since it was our first hike, we didn't think we would go far. I packed water but no snacks. Oops. 

Thankfully, Daddy is a pack mule and gave everyone a little rest. 

You can see the rider conked out along the way. 

We came upon this fallen tree, and suddenly the two who couldn't walk another step mustered the energy to drag this tree through the forest :)

My Favorite Thing

I know sometime in the past I have blogged about the grocery store experience here. 3 years later, it is still an ordeal, just not as bad as it used to be. I still must drive to the store, park in a garage (or drive to a way further store), have the right change to get a basket (trolley), take the elevator up with cart, do the shopping, remember to weigh fruit/veggies and put sticker on the bag, try to translate unfamiliar items, pay, nod and smile and say, "nem beszelek magyarul."  I must bag my own groceries, hoping that I remembered to bring bags. Then, it's back down the elevator, pay for parking, unload groceries, put cart back, get my money back from cart, and come home. This summer, I added 3 kids to that routine and let's just say I needed a nap by the time we got home and got it all unpacked.

So, it is Tesco to my rescue. A few months ago, they began a grocery delivery service. People, this is the best.thing.ever. Just now, while the 2 boys are napping, I sat here and did all my grocery shopping with just a few clicks. Tomorrow, in a 2 hour window I selected, a nice man will deliver all my groceries and bring them inside for me. He may not speak English, but that is a-ok. I don't have to drive, bring bags, wrestle squirmy children, or remember the right change.....thank you, Tesco!!!

The Great Flood

The first week of June brought record flooding to the Danube. It was crazy to see it rise day by day as we were out touring with Jeff and Erin, and it soon enveloped the roads that run parallel to the river. We took a nice walk after returning from Vienna to see the flooding first hand. Thankfully, it receded after several days and the impact to the city was minimal. 

Christmas Playgroup

A brave mom hosted our Christmas playgroup last week. She assembled gingerbread houses for 12 kids and arranged for Santa to come with a gift for each child! Cade quickly discovered that the fun in the gingerbread house was in the eating, not the decorating.  Chelsea enjoyed decorating it later.

Santa was great and Cade wasn't afraid at all. My favorite part was when Santa asked him what he wanted for Christmas and he answered, "A present." He is easy to please!

He got his wish!

A Visit from Mikulas

In Hungary, children have an extended Christmas celebration. Traditionally, Szent Mikulas visits on December 6th. Children polish their boots and leave them in the windowsill the evening before. Good children receive fruit, candy and small toys. Bad children receive a virgacs, or wooden switches.

Mikulas and his angel 

Larry's office hosted a Mikulas party last Saturday. We learned Mikulas is accompanied by an angel and a devil to decide who was good or bad. Yikes. Mikulas was a little thinner than Santa...no cookies for him, I guess. He was bilingual, so that was a plus. My kids started blankly at him as he spoke to them in Hungarian.  Chelsea spoke up and said, "Nem beszelek magyarul." He then switched to English.

Chelsea wanted a hug. Cade just wanted the candy.

Mikulas also visited Chelsea's class at school. There, they each got candy and a virgacs. Chelsea was excited about the virgacs.

Chelsea and her virgacs                                              

On Christmas Eve, there is no Santa visit. Instead, it is said that baby Jesus delivers the presents.  Interesting, huh? I guess no crazier than saying Santa delivers them... and at least keeps the focus on Christ.  When our kids realize that we're providing the gifts, it will be easier to tell them that Santa isn't real versus explaining that Jesus is real, but baby Jesus bringing gifts isn't...to each their own.  While we're here, we'll enjoy the celebrations of both our American and Hungarian cultures.

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!

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!

Random Tidbits from Our Day

*99 times out of 100, you can throw a dirty diaper from the top floor to the bottom and it works perfectly. On the 100th time, it may explode. Upon exploding, it may shoot its' contents all over and some may stick to the wall. Just maybe.

*If you have no bread, frozen puff pastry dough can be used for peanut butter sandwiches. Pretty good, actually!

*Today my car was in the shop. I am thankful to live somewhere there is public transportation so that I could still go to my hair appointment! Today's public transport methods included a taxi, a bus, walking, and sitting in a friends child's booster seat for a brief time. All worth it for the haircut!

A Fun Day at the Vidampark

Trying to take advantage of the sunshine, we visited the Budapest Vidampark on Saturday. It is Budapest's only amusement park, and it is quite amusing in more ways than one. Inside the gates, it resembles a parking lot carnival.  The amusement park was built in the 1950's, and I think some of the rides have never been updated. In spite of some questionable safety issues, we all had a fun time.

There was a cute little kids area with little rides and a playground. 

Notice Chelsea's left hand over Cade's shoulder....the rides pretty much all lacked seat belts. This one bumped up and down and went in a circle pretty quickly. She was a good big sis and Cade didn't fall out!

The kid ferris wheel...here I was formulating my strategy on how to catch Cade if he decided to stand up.

He didn't like the rides that went in the dark..."All done! Scary!"

This was the most memorable ride of all...the Hullamvasut.  It is a giant wooden roller coaster built in the 1920's and is the oldest operating roller coaster in central Europe. 

There were NO seat belts or lap bars, and the seats had springs underneath for that extra bounce!

This man was the brake guy.  I later read that this roller coaster is called a side friction roller coaster and has nothing to keep the cars from flying off the track, thus the brakeman. Yikes!  

We took Chelsea on the ride and she LOVED it. I held onto her for dear life and prayed. There were some pretty decent sized drops, and without any restraining devices it was a bit scary! There is an overall theme of personal responsibility in Hungary, but this took it to a new level.  Thankfully, we all survived and had a really fun day.