Ethan in the States

We were thankful that Ethan did so well in the States. He was so flexible, especially with us staying in so many different places and being around so many different groups of people. He got a couple of ear infections, and we had to fly both times. I warned people around me because I had heard horror stories and just knew he would be crying and screaming with pain. To our surprise, he never cried or screamed on either of the flights that he had ear infections (with the exception of one where he screamed before we were even seated :-), but then calmed down).
Ethan did well on the flight back to Hungary. It took him quite a while to get back on schedule once we returned, but we were glad when he started sleeping through the night again.

Here are a few pictures and updates about Ethan from our time in the States:
I gave Ethan his first hair cut soon before we left for the States. I didn't cut a ton off, so I needed to cut it again while we were in CO. Once we got to NC, we decided to take him into a walk-in place and have a professional who knows what they're doing cut his hair. I just told the girl to make him look like a boy. He did really well with sitting and not moving around. I can't believe he is 10 months old and has already had 3 hair cuts. He actually has hair going over his ears again.I think that I mentioned during an earlier post that we only had the chance to go hiking once while we were in CO. We had hoped to go in NC, but only got to do a little something for maybe 20 or so minutes. The minister of missions let us borrow his baby backpack while we were there, and there were hiking trails around the missions house, but we just didn't have time. We had about an hour one afternoon, so we decided to do a short hike. It had been raining in previous days, and leaves covered the ground, so it was pretty slippery on hilly areas. We got to one place where you have to hold on to a rope to go down the hill. Gary tried it a little, but since it was so slippery and he had Ethan on his back, we decided to turn around and head back. We hoped to go another day when the ground was dry, but we never had time.

These two pictures are when we were in Raleigh for a recruiting convention (recruiting staff for the school here). We met some friends for dinner at a mall. They have 2 boys, so they went to the little play area after dinner. We didn't figure that Ethan would get into any of this type of stuff, but he had a blast. None of us put money in the machines, but the boys all enjoyed playing with them anyway. Gary and I absolutely love this picture of Ethan in the red car.
This last picture is from when we were at the home of some ministry partners in Texas. They had a piano and then had this right next to it. I'm not even sure whether to call it a toy or not. Gary and I love this picture, and know that Gary's mom will too (she was a piano teacher). I've never seen anything like this before. All 3 of us (Ethan included) were impressed with this 'toy'.

Our Time in the States

We arrived back in Budapest on December 2nd. I had hoped to update this blog again while we were in the US, and definitely before now. I even made a folder of some more pics to post on here from our time in the US. It's 17 pictures, so I guess I will just post some of them.

My mom was thrilled to meet her only grandchild. She has waited many years for this.
We stayed at my church's missionary house. It was 30 minutes out in the middle of nowhere, but it was beautiful and very peaceful. Here are some pictures of 5 deer and 6 wild turkeys that were right out front. The turkeys only came 2 or 3 times, but the deer were around every morning. We were really thankful for my church and them having a place for us to stay. Even though we do stay with some people during our furlough, it's really hard on us to continually do so.

It's interesting when we go on furlough because so many people ask us if we are enjoying our vacation. We usually look at each other and laugh on the inside. Furlough is one of the most stressful parts of our ministry. It's great to see family and friends, and of course, go to Wal-Mart and get clothes and other things for much cheaper prices, but we have to cram a ton of stuff into a little bit of time and often run on fumes. We were real thankful for how well Ethan did considering that he was always having to adjust his schedule around, especially with us doing a lot of speaking in the evenings. I will do another blog entry and talk some about his time and post pics of him. I was also thankful that we didn't gain weight. During the last furlough many people wanted to meet at a restaurant, so we were usually eating out for lunches and dinners. We gained around 15-20 pounds from that (and not having time to exercise). We do enjoy going out to eat when we're in the States, but not everyday, and especially not multiple times a day. This time, there were quite a few people who invited us to their homes for a meal. One family even cooked a meal and brought it out to the mission house for us to all eat. I still can't believe that they went through so much trouble.