I mentioned in my previous post that we had a former 2nd grade student of mine come to visit us for 5 days. Since we had church Christmas morning and Melanie had to be at the airport a little after 5:00 pm, we ended up doing our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day
I’m just going to post some different pictures from the last few weeks and mention a few things about them.
The rest of the pictures are based around one “outfit” for Sienna that was a hand-me-down from a friend. Jamie, I still can’t believe that we brought this over, but Sienna looks adorable in it. 
Hopefully I can keep up with Sienna’s monthly birthdays now that I’m back. At least there are just 2 more until she turns one. :-)
As much as I love real Christmas trees, it has gotten too expensive to buy one each year. They are cheaper here than what we’d pay in the US, but we make less than what we would make in the US too. :-) So, we finally broke down and got a fake tree. We looked for fake trees here last year or the year before, and just couldn’t find any good fake trees. For the most part they were pretty dinky. We borrowed one from a family last year, but didn’t get it decorated before we ended up going back to the States for Lori’s funeral. While in the States we looked at trees thinking maybe we could buy one after Christmas inexpensively and bring it back, but the boxes were beyond the size limit we could take on the airplane. So, when we came back to Hungary we asked the family who we borrowed the tree from if we could buy it from them, and they said yes.
It was nice not stressing about getting a tree this year. I wish we could have put it up earlier than we did, but with not getting back until December it was a lower priority. I decided this year not to put our really nice, breakable ornaments on the tree because if one broke we wouldn’t be able to replace it. Ethan has been good about not messing with ornaments, but there is always a first time, there are other children over here, Sienna is getting a little more mobile, and accidents often occur around young children.
We went to my mom’s house for Thanksgiving. My cousin and her family were coming to town the next day, so it was just Mom, Gary, Ethan, Sienna, and me for the meal. My mom is an excellent cook, so I was glad that she decided to make something (which wasn’t originally going to happen since we were technically planning to celebrate the next day with the rest of the family).
After the kids’ naps we went to my aunt and uncle’s house to spend some time with them and one of my cousins.
And Sienna was glad to spend time with my uncle.
Believe it or not, I took a lot of pictures, and this was probably the best one. Most of them actually were blurry. (And the one with Nikki and Josh all had one of the kids blocking half of their face or something where it didn’t turn out so well.) We had a nice group picture last time we saw them (Thanksgiving 2009).
Ethan learned about American football while we were in CO,where it seems that everyone is a die-hard Broncos fan. (Football in Europe is what Americans call soccer.) He talks about how they wear helmets so they don’t get boo-boos.
While we were in NC a friend noticed that he was talking about football and let him borrow a helmet. Ethan enjoyed wearing it, and even wore it into a store one day when it was raining to keep his head dry.
Ethan loves to “cook”. In doing this he will push a kitchen chair over to a cabinet, reach up and pull some spices down, pull some cans of food down, and sprinkle spices on top of the cans. He also like to put things into the oven. It occupies him a lot, but he does tend to make a big mess with pulling everything out, and especially if he actually uses the spices.
He will bring me one of his plates with “food” on it and then later bring me a bowl and spoon out some more onto the plate. He will often say that it’s hot and that I need to blow on it.
It has been nice for him to be able to do all of this because we have safety locks on our cabinets in Budapest. Also, he hasn’t been able to reach the cabinets in our kitchen even if he has a chair. He has enjoyed playing in one of the cabinets we have in Budapest, but I guess I’ll need to get some pots and pans out when we get back so he can cook some things.
Ethan has really gotten into the pretend thing since we’ve been in the States. He likes to pretend that he is eating fire trucks and all kinds of tractors. He “cooks” almost every day. The funny thing is that I thought that young children could not tell the difference in real and pretend, but he often tells us that he is doing something pretend.
Gary was going to take Ethan to the posta (Hungarian word for post office) and then to the playground next to it. Ethan looked at me and said, “You can make real supper while I go to the posta and playground.” I guess since he makes “pretend” supper, he was telling me that I could make the real thing.
This is another little short thing without pictures that will probably only be interesting to some family members. :-)
In October Gary asked me if Sienna needed a coat for us to go out to the car, and I said that I thought she would be fine. Gary said, “I’m going to wear what’s it called?” (not thinking of the name of it) and Ethan said, “Fleece.”
In October I blogged about something similar that happened in CA with Ethan saying the word that I was trying to think of. It’s pretty bad when your 2 year old child has to keep helping his parents complete their sentences. :-)
This entry was done a while back, but I just never posted it.
The conversation below started in CA but has continued during the rest of our furlough. In CA every time we got in the car this was what was said. Now, it’s not when we get in the car, but when we are getting ready to go somewhere. It has settled down some since we sometimes get in the car to go to the grocery store.
Ethan: “Going to church?”
Gary or me: “No”
Ethan: “Going to someone’s house?”
Gary or me: “Yes”
Ethan: “Toys there?”
(I don’t know how to get this to single space when I hit enter. Julie, if you’re reading this and there is a way, can you e-mail me and tell me how?)
We had a wonderful time seeing people in Chattanooga. We haven’t been there since we had children.
We don’t have pictures of Calvin and Margaret, with whom we stayed, but we do have pictures of their turkeys.
When we got to the Barbers’ house, it wasn’t too long before Ethan noticed some guitars in a bedroom. And, of course, he knew exactly what kind each guitar was.
