Rickards in Hungary

When Husbands are Gone

2012-02-15T20:00:00.001+01:00

Well, it often seems that things go wrong when Gary is gone. It’s that way for another family on our team as well. I mentioned that we did not have internet when we returned from Prague. Our company was bought out and changed hands while we were gone. When we returned to no internet, they told us that we needed to change the username and password on our modem. Since the modem came with the house, we didn’t know the username or password and had difficulty trying to get help from the company. We finally had to pay a person to work on stuff with it. After the username and password thing got figured out, it still didn’t work. So, then they were told that we needed to buy a new modem. They came over last Monday and tried out two different modems just to make sure we didn’t go out and buy one and then it not work. Sure enough, neither of the modems worked. He called the company, and they said that there had been an administrative error and they had cancelled our service. He asked if they could just turn it back on, and they said no, that we would have to sign a new contract. After spending over a week of trying to deal with this new company and having nothing but problems with them, we decided to look for a different internet provider. Come to find out, there weren’t really many other options of companies. In Hungary the internet companies don’t really compete with one another, so if there are already one or two companies who service an area, other companies don’t give service to that same area. At least that is what one of the Hungarians said that I spoke to about this. The new company says that we should have internet service in about a week and a half or two weeks.

The night before Gary left I dropped my cell phone by accident, and the screen went blank. I could still receive a call and dial a number, so that was good. A few days later the screen came back on, but was upside down and backwards. Strange! An upside down and backward screen, however, it is better than no screen!

At some point during the week our landline telephone also stopped working.

And then on Friday morning, I was so excited because someone had invited us over to their house for the kids to play and to have lunch together. With Ethan and me both having a large need for social interaction, we were looking forward to this. I got the pack ‘n play loaded in the car for Sienna to take a nap, got some bags in, Ethan buckled in, and went to start the car while I scraped the ice off the windshield, but the car battery was dead. So, sadly, we weren’t able to go out. But I was so thankful that this didn’t happen before I needed to go to the Body & Soul exercise class that I lead the day before. I don’t know what I would have done in that case.

I don’t dare ask what else can happen before Gary comes back, because I know that more stuff can happen. :-)

Well, I wrote this post before Gary returned, but he is home now. However, he missed his train in Croatia, so had to come home the next day. And, then the train was several hours late (due to snow) the next morning, so he didn’t arrive until the next evening (verses the afternoon).

Snow

2012-02-15T19:56:00.001+01:00

We had a good amount of snow the day before Gary left for Croatia, and then it continued to snow for the next day or two. We never got snow boots for Ethan while we were in the States, and hadn’t found any decently priced ones here, but thankfully a friend had some in Ethan’s size that her youngest son wore last winter. So, she gave them to us just 3 days before it snowed!Ethan enjoyed trying to shovel our walkway. But, he had more fun off of the walkway, especially once the snow was deeper.The weather was around 18 degrees the beginning of the week, but it did warm up some toward the end, so we finally made it out for a walk. This was our only walk while Gary was gone (unlike when he went to Slovakia, and we had nice, sunny weather).

Loving Guitars

2012-02-12T22:53:00.001+01:00

I’ve mentioned before that Ethan can look at a guitar and tell you if it’s an electric, bass, or acoustic. He enjoys trying to play Gary’s guitar as well as his toy guitar. (If you notice, he is also into wearing only one sock around the house.) Gary took a little break from studying to play a song with Ethan.It looks like Little Sister may end up liking the guitar as well. Time will tell.

Finally Crawling

2012-02-12T22:49:00.001+01:00

Well, believe it or not, Sienna finally started crawling—at 11.5 months old!

We were on our way back home from Prague and stopped at a gas station/restaurant in Hungary to change diapers, etc. There was a play area inside that had soft, rubber type things for the floor of the area. We took the kids there so Ethan could play a little after being in the car for so long. Sienna had almost started crawling in Prague, but the floors (being wood and tile) just seemed too slippery for her. Well, she began crawling when we put her down in the restaurant/gas station play area. She crawled mostly around a train table. She was basically trying to get this balloon. I kept moving it, so she would crawl after it.

Once we got home, she was able to crawl on our rug, and within a day was able to crawl on the tile floors. Now, she is working on getting up the three little steps that we have between our living room and dining room. She has made it up one of them so far.

No Internet & Shattered Shower Door

2012-02-04T23:43:00.001+01:00

Not only did we return from Prague last Friday with no internet (this blog post is from using our neighbor’s internet—with their permission :-)), but we came home to a bathroom full of glass from where our shower door had shattered everywhere. The doors were actually not working great when we moved in to the house, but they have gotten worse since then. Last year Gary found out from the company that they didn’t make the shower or the doors anymore, but he was able to get some new wheels to replace the old ones in hopes that it would help. It did help temporarily; however, evidently not for good. So, now we already know that we can’t replace the door, which means we will have to buy a new shower. We’ve not had success so far with finding a person who can do this. We’ve been told that it’s not just a matter of going to the hardware store and picking out a shower (nothing is ever that simple over here). We’ve also been told by several Hungarians that it is expensive. Even the garbage man told Gary that it would be expensive (after he took the metal rod out to them to see if they would take it—they don’t take everything—and had to explain what it was and told them what happened). We’ve waited this week just trying to find a person who knows how to do this, but that hasn’t happened so far. This will probably be at a halt since Gary is leaving to go teach again. My guess is that we MAY have a shower in and hooked up in a month if things go smoothly and quickly. We’ll see how close I am with my guess. :-) We’re hoping the internet will be working sometime this next week. I won’t even go into all of the stuff with that other than it’s just part of the experience of living overseas.

Ethan Learns about Hockey

2012-01-31T23:46:00.001+01:00

The family we stayed with in Prague have two sons who both play hockey. Ethan had never heard of hockey or seen the equipment until staying with them.

They had a very cool bedroom. It was really big and had a small basketball hoop and a hockey goal along with basketballs, soccer balls, a football, hockey sticks, and some wiffle balls they used for pucks. Ethan had a blast playing all of these different sports and wanted the boys or whoever was in the house to play with him as much as possible. With the cold and snow and us having a double stroller that I would have to get up and down several flights of stairs along with two little ones, we stayed indoors. So, it definitely made it nice on us since Ethan, Sienna, and I stayed at the house while Gary taught across town.You can’t tell from the picture above, but this basketball actually says “Tarheels” and has the emblem. So, at least he is learning to play with Mom’s favorite BB team.He enjoyed wearing one of the hockey helmets. Each day Ethan made sure that all of the equipment was put in the corner of the room. The boys’ mom said that Ethan was keeping their room cleaner than they do (or something like that). Relaxing with Sienna for all of about 30 seconds. She enjoyed watching Ethan play the various activities.

Birthday Celebration

2012-01-31T23:43:00.001+01:00

Gary was teaching in Prague on my birthday, but thankfully the whole family got to join him. We stayed with some friends of his.

We heard from several missionaries in Prague about a store that had some American products that you can’t get in Europe (mostly candy type stuff, cereals, etc.). We were eager to check it out, so we went. Sadly, the prices were quite high (a small pack of Big Red gum that has 35 cents labeled on it was over a dollar, all of the candy bars were $2.00—though, Europe has some great chocolate, so that wasn’t such a big deal). However, Gary did buy me this package of cherry Twizzlers, which were $2.00, for my birthday. I really wanted a roll of cherry Lifesavers, which I love, but they were also $2.00, and I felt that we would get more for the money with the Twizzlers. :-)One of the Czech women who was in Gary’s class said that she would babysit the kids for free so we could go out. That alone was a GREAT birthday present! Gary asked around and found out about a restaurant that opened since he moved away from Prague. It was on a boat on the river and was inexpensive (except for having to pay for water to drink—which many of you who know me know that I hate to do that), so we decided to go there to eat dinner and then we walked around Old Town and across the Charles Bridge.

11 Months Old

2012-01-19T00:54:00.001+01:00

I can’t believe that in one more month Sienna will be 12 months old!Sienna is able to get from a lying position to a sitting position, but she still hasn’t started crawling yet. She goes backwards, turns around, and manages to move from one place to another, but she won’t crawl forward. She tends to put one leg up like she is doing in this picture below. She seems much more interested in rattles and other types of toys than Ethan when he was her age. She also puts a lot more in her mouth than Ethan did—except food, that is. She will pick food up with her hands, but she won’t put it in her mouth. And, if I hold a piece of food up to her mouth and try to put it in, she won’t open her mouth. However, if I put the same food on a spoon, she will open her mouth and eat it. I have tried to give her kiwi, even on a spoon, several times, and she still won’t eat it. She is starting to eat some foods that are just cooked, like broccoli or pears, but she prefers pureed food. So, I’m going to have to do more work than I did with Ethan to get her to feed herself and eat foods that aren’t pureed.

She is still trying some new foods sometimes, like persimmons (which Gary, Ethan, and I all tried for the first time last summer), but I am mostly doing more of a variety of things such as homemade tomato soup, chicken noodle soup, beef stew, Mexican casserole, etc. (and, of course, whatever fruits and veggies I can get here).

I can’t believe how much she eats. She usually goes through about 9 cubes of food per meal (I freeze her food in ice cube trays and then pop them out to store). And, I’m giving her starches and protein in her lunch and dinner meals too. I was so excited to get these two pictures! It’s so difficult for me to get a picture of Sienna and Ethan both smiling and looking at the camera.And, Ethan usually won’t keep his arm around Sienna when I’m trying to take a picture, but he cooperated this particular day.

First Tooth

2012-01-18T23:59:00.001+01:00

Sienna finally got her first tooth—three days before turning 11 months old! The funny thing is that I got my first tooth one day before turning 11 months old.You can’t see the tooth in this picture, and most of you reading this probably don’t really care. But, I had to put some kind of picture in here with her mouth open for you to “see.” :-)

Nice Weather Walks

2012-01-08T22:37:00.001+01:00

Hurray for nice weather! Well, at least it’s nice for January. It’s been in the 30s and even in the low 40s some here. Thankfully, it has only been really cold and windy one day since Gary has been gone. The kids were glad to get out of the house to go on walks this past week.I’m very thankful for this little suit type thing that Sienna is wearing. A friend down the street gave it to us, and we weren’t able to use it last winter when she was a newborn.

Ethan wanted to take his trike a couple of days and wanted to walk one day, but has taken to going up the hills in our neighborhood.It was beautiful and sunny one day (which we don’t see much of in January). I was so excited, and Ethan was very excited to wear his sunglasses. Sienna had her sunglasses on that my mom bought her, though, they are still a bit too big.

New Year’s Eve

2012-01-02T22:50:00.001+01:00

Things were very low-key this year for New Year’s Eve. We normally go to a friend’s house for a party, but they weren’t doing it this year. It worked out just as well since we had a lot to do before Gary leaves for Slovakia.

Michelle invited us over for lunch, so it was a big highlight for Ethan to go to William’s house to play (a highlight for me to get out too). Sienna peeping around Joshua’s back William and Ethan played, and of course, right when it was their nap time and we were going to leave, they both decided to chase each other around the house. Course, I’m sure it made them sleep better. :-)I put this picture of Sienna in for Nana

Each year our neighbors and people on the street behind us set off fireworks. Well, this year, it started about 7:00. Ethan was excited about the fireworks and even asked to go to bed 30 minutes early (I think because we had been telling him that there would be a lot of fireworks happening when he was in bed). While he was upstairs getting ready for bed, Gary and Ethan looked out the window to see some fireworks. After seeing a few Ethan said that he didn’t want to see them anymore. Once Ethan was in bed he said that he was afraid of fireworks. So, we went over and over talking about how they don’t hurt you, blah, blah, blah. Well, I must say that these fireworks were right over our house (you probably could have reached out Ethan’s window and touched some). So, I can’t say that I blame Ethan for being scared of the noise. He just wanted to be in the same room with us. We finally decided that we would bring his tent down to the living room, and he could sleep in that. Gary and I were both actually working on stuff, but decided to watch A Flintstones Christmas Carol to try to create "good noise” to drown out the fireworks. Ethan fell asleep in his tent, but woke again right at the end of the movie. By this time, our neighbors were having a party and being VERY loud. When we went upstairs Ethan didn’t want both of us even leaving the room he was in. So, we put his tent in our bedroom and all went to bed about 11:20. We all fell asleep despite all of the noise from the party coming out of our neighbor’s open window which was about 10 feet away from our bedroom window. Gary and I both were woken by fireworks at midnight, but lo and behold, Ethan stayed asleep. I really don’t know how he stayed asleep because they were really loud, the light flashed in our bedroom, and they lasted about 20 minutes. Gary and I watched some out of our bedroom window, and they were quite nice, actually like what I was used to seeing (or pretty close to it) in Boone and Wilkes on July 4th. Gary and I fell back asleep, and they started up again about 2:30. Thankfully not as long. They also did some fireworks last night, so we went through a little bout with Ethan being scared again. It didn’t matter how much we talked to him, prayed with him, explained things, etc… I’ve probably never seen him scared over anything as much as over these fireworks. However, he will say that he is afraid of the “big fireworks”, not the “little” ones.

Plumbers

2012-01-02T00:51:00.001+01:00

When we returned from the States our kitchen sink wasn’t draining well. We put lots and lots of Drano-type stuff in it over the first week with no success. We finally started calling people to find a plumber. We weren’t able to get in touch with several, but got in touch with one who was able to come the same day (and not just the same day, but one hour later). He had a rotor eater type thing rather than just a snake. He said the problem was 16 meters (52.5 feet) away!

Gary and I both feel like we are in the lap of luxury with a working kitchen sink again. Another good thing is that the plumber was here for about 45 minutes and charged the equivalent of $75. Last spring we had 3 different plumbers come to fix a drain in our bathroom that overflowed every time we ran the washing machine. None of them fixed it, but they all charged a lot of money. The 2nd one actually had this same type of rotor eater thing, stayed a total of 15 minutes, said it was fixed, and charged over $100. So, we definitely have this guy’s name written down to use him in the future. It was very nice to have a nice cultural moment like that (other than me still being frustrated over the guy from the spring). And, hopefully this will also fix the problem in the bathroom!

Christmas

2011-12-29T23:52:00.001+01:00

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.Justin and Michelle came over and brought scalloped potatoes, homemade rolls, and a Hungarian dessert. I made a ham, green bean casserole, and a salad. I’ve never made a green bean casserole here before because you can’t get the fried onion type things that you use in it, but we actually brought some back from the States this time. We weren’t able to bring much “fun” type stuff back from the States, but I did bring that. Melanie doesn’t eat pork or red meat, so I made a chicken for her and planned for it to be a meal for us another night. Plus, I am able to use the carcass to make chicken noodle soup.Joshua is 6 weeks younger than Sienna. Before too long, they will be running around and playing together. It looks like he’s playing with her foot even now. :-)

Christmas Day I didn’t want to just have sandwiches for Christmas lunch, so I decided to do raclette, a Swiss meal. If you don’t know what raclette is, it’s where you have baked potatoes, and melt toppings in the thing you see on the table. Some typical toppings are black forest ham and raclette cheese. Raclette cheese is pretty expensive, so we started using cheaper kinds (mostly the main Hungarian one). I thought raclette would be a fun experience for Melanie before she left. I heard that a couple of teachers from the school didn’t have plans for Christmas Day, so I invited them to join us. Since we’ve been gone this fall, I actually had never met one of them, who was a new teacher this year.

We opened gifts in the evening after taking Melanie to the airport. Ethan and Sienna got a percussion instrument set.Gary got a kick out of the gift certificate that I gave him. It was for raking the lawn. We returned from the US with leaves all over the yard, and a former horticulture professor told Gary that it wouldn’t be good for us to leave them on the ground. With the busyness of Christmas and having company as well as several teaching trips that Gary will have in January, I figured this could be a good gift since Gary won’t really have time to rake the yard anyway.Ethan trying out his new drum.

Pre-Christmas Pictures

2011-12-28T00:19:00.001+01:00

I’m just going to post some different pictures from the last few weeks and mention a few things about them.Ok, so this isn’t a Christmasy picture, but I thought I’d post it anyway. Ethan loves to help Gary water the plants. He used to pretend or ‘help’ Gary pour the water, but now he actually waters them himself. Watering the plants was part of the weekly routine. It is definitely nice to be back into a normal routine! Taken at our team leader’s house.

We have people over each Advent Sunday. Just a few minutes after Gary took this picture he showed Ethan how to blow the candles out. While doing so he caught his dress shirt on fire. It was one of his nice dress shirts (actually the one in the picture above of the 4 of us), and sadly it was ruined.Melanie, one of my former 2nd grade students from the Christian school in Boone, came to visit for 5 days. I haven’t seen her since 2nd grade because I came to Hungary the following year. She is a junior in college now and studied at Oxford this semester. It was strange but fun getting to see her and spend time with her, especially over Christmas. We had several long nights of interesting conversations.

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. All buckled up and ready to go!

Our little Christmas tree cutie!And, once again, Ethan pulls her over.

10 Months Old

2011-12-23T23:16:00.001+01:00

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. :-)I included a picture in her 9 month update of her holding her leg up in the air while in her high chair, and I said that she wasn’t doing that much anymore. Well, she wasn’t doing that exactly, but she does still enjoy putting her right leg up. And, it always seems to be her right leg that she is holding up or propping against something.

She isn’t crawling yet, but really wants to.She still doesn’t have any teeth.She likes to pull her socks off, but these tights just won’t come off.She loves Ethan and kicks her feet from excitement when he comes in the room or she hears his voice (especially after waking from a nap). However, she doesn’t like it when he pulls her over like he often does.

Decorating the Christmas Tree

2011-12-23T23:14:00.001+01:00

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.My mom had an ornament made for Ethan’s first Christmas and one for the 3 of us in 2009. Ethan hung his ornament first and then our family ornament from 2009. This year Mom gave Sienna one for her first Christmas and gave us one for the 4 of us. Sienna looking cute in her little dress that belonged to a friend in NC. We actually got two 12-month Christmas dresses from her, and they both fit well enough for Sienna to wear. Other than “hanging her ornament” Sienna sat and watched. Gary and I were impressed at how well Ethan did with hanging ornaments. A lot of them were difficult to get the string open, but he managed.All done!

Thanksgiving

2011-12-19T00:10:00.001+01:00

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). Ethan watching the Macy’s Day Parade--his first parade. It didn’t last for long before he wanted to be running around outside.Helping Grandma make sweet potato soufflé.He’s just loves to cook.Such a cutie!Sienna’s 1st Thanksgiving meal—turkey, broccoli, and sweet potatoes. Yum, yum!

After the kids’ naps we went to my aunt and uncle’s house to spend some time with them and one of my cousins.

Ethan was very excited to drive my aunt’s convertible—a new experience for him.

And Sienna was glad to spend time with my uncle.So, the next day we met my aunt, uncle, 2 cousins and their families at a restaurant to eat. Ethan decided, for the first time ever, to take his pants off while we were in the restaurant. I was sitting across the table and looking a different direction, so I actually didn’t see it, but someone else at the table said that the men at the table next to him were laughing a lot (which probably just encouraged the behavior). I’m not sure what got into him, because he’s never done this before. I do have a friend in Boone who has a daughter about the same age, and she said that her daughter often takes her clothes off in public.Ethan and his cousin (well, my cousin’s daughter) Paige.

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).

American Football

2011-12-15T16:00:00.001+01:00

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.Ready to play ball!

Ethan Loves to Cook

2011-12-15T15:59:00.001+01:00

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 likes to tell me what he’s making. What he makes changes from day to day. He may be making pizza and salad one day (which he doesn’t even eat salad), and he may be making asparagus or peppers the next.He likes for Gary or I to sit at the table to “eat.”

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.Ethan teaching Sienna how to use a steamer.He loves to wash dishes too. Of course, he gets himself pretty wet.One solution to him getting wet—no shirt or pants.

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.

Pretend

2011-12-12T21:30:00.001+01:00

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.I wrote the above part while we were in the States, but this next part has happened since we’ve been back in Hungary.

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.

Fleece

2011-12-12T21:26:00.001+01:00

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. :-)

Going to Church?

2011-12-12T21:22:00.001+01:00

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?)

A Visit to Chattanooga

2011-12-10T20:42:00.001+01:00

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.Ethan actually got to play with someone during our time there, which was nice. He enjoyed the tire swing with Jonathan. Sienna also enjoyed the swing in the front of the house.We’re excited for Drew and Amy, who will be traveling to the East in a week or two to adopt a little girl. They’ve been waiting on her for years.

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.Katy Beth and Ethan jamming together.

Say “Cheese!”I just love this family!!! Jim and Tammy were my Sunday School teachers in Boone. They moved to Chattanooga the same month that I moved to Hungary. It’s still hard for me to see their “kids” all grown up now. One of them was missing in this picture due to being at college. When we left, Gary commented about how Katy Beth and Hamilton hung out with us the whole time we were there. Most people in high school and college wouldn’t be doing that, especially when they have rarely seen me over the last 13 years.

Sienna’s Dedication

2011-12-09T20:20:00.001+01:00

Sienna was dedicated at Mt. Vernon at the end of October. This was the first time that she wore a dress, and it was the only dress she had in this size. I really wanted her to wear a dress, so I was thankful that a friend in Budapest gave it to us.Sienna talked the whole time the pastor was speaking. Thankfully she sucked her thumb during the prayer. It was my associate pastor’s first time to do a baby dedication.My dear friends, Teresa and Lori, came up from the next county to see her being dedicated. They came over for lunch afterward.Ethan was glad to have some playmates again.

President Coming to Town

2011-12-09T20:19:00.001+01:00

This is so cute, I just had to post it even if it’s not that big of a deal. Obama came through Boone on his way to Millers Creek. He actually spoke at my former high school, which was a shock for me. There are 4 high schools in the county, and two of them are all white, including the one he spoke at. It’s also pretty rural. Gary and I spoke at a church in Millers Creek the day before he came to town, and we spent that night with my mom (who lives about 7 minutes from the high school). But, we didn’t want to wait in line to get the tickets, even though they were free. We did try to get back up the mountain, to Boone, before he came down. We’ve never seen so many highway patrolmen in one area in our lives. They were all up and down the highway that Obama was going to travel. Sienna is also in shock that the president came to town!

9 Months Old

2011-12-07T21:43:00.001+01:00

Next week Sienna will turn 10 months old. I’ve been working for some time on several different posts at the same time, including this one. I thought I’d still post something for 9 months, especially since I skipped a few months while we were in the States.One interesting thing is that Sienna doesn’t have any teeth yet. It seems like she’s been teething since she was about 4 months old, but we’re still waiting for one to pop through. Ethan got his first tooth around 7 months, but my mom said that I didn’t get mine until I was 11 months old.As you can see, she’s still working on getting that first tooth! A friend in CA sent us a package of these headbands and clips. There are lots of different and fun colors. Thanks Beth!

Since we’ve been in the States, Sienna has gotten to where she does not like having a poopy diaper (unlike Ethan, who never cared). She enjoys playing peek-a-boo, and she is totally fascinated by her brother. She laughs at Ethan more than anything or anyone else (even when he’s being rough with her).This picture is actually closer to her being 8 months, but since I’m so behind on blogging, I wanted to post it to show how she held her leg in the air. She did this for a while, but doesn’t do it anymore.I’ve been so thankful to be in the States during this stage of her trying new foods. I’ve loved having access to almost every kind of fruit and vegetable for her to try. She has eaten everything I’ve given her, but didn’t seem to care much for eggplant or cantaloupe. Gary, Ethan, and I don’t like cantaloupe either, but I try to give the kids foods even if Gary and I don’t like them. Like Ethan, she has really enjoyed asparagus, sweet potatoes, avocado, pineapple, and mango. I’m disappointed that we can only get asparagus for a few months during the year in Hungary,and sweet potatoes cost around $2.50/pound. Her hair is so long that we have to keep it pulled back so it’s not in her eyes. She does not like anyone messing with her hair, though you can’t tell by this picture of her grandma putting her hair up. My mom is so happy to have a grand-daughter.

Back in Budapest

2011-12-07T21:37:00.001+01:00

We are back in Hungary and with all of our luggage! The flight seemed shorter than Gary and I expected. This is especially good considering that Ethan only slept one hour on the flight (and he didn’t have a nap the day we left). Gary slept 4.5 hours, and I slept 5.5 hours out of 55 hours.Sienna did better than I could have imagined. She went to bed (in the bassinet) at her normal bed time, which was not too long after we took off. She was asleep while we ate dinner, so we didn’t have to figure out how to hold her while we ate. She slept until about an hour before the plane landed. I was also grateful that we all were able to sit next to each other in the bassinet aisle. This made things MUCH better for us!Ethan didn’t pull his carry-on the entire time, but he did some. He particularly enjoyed pulling it on and off of the moving walkways in Germany.Ethan in the Munich airport watching the planes and people working. This occupied him during much of our layover.

So, now I need to post some of the blogs that I’ve started working on. I’m sure I won’t do all of them, but hopefully I can at least do some from the rest of our time in the States.

Fire Trucks

2011-11-22T05:21:00.001+01:00

We went to the fire department that is a few miles up the road from my mom’s house. We were hoping that Ethan could look at the fire trucks and maybe get to stand on one. We were surprised that Ethan was able to do as much as he did.They gave Ethan this fire hat. He was so excited to wear it and stand in the fire truck. Then he got to try on a real fire hat.Course, it was a bit too heavy for him to wear. He started leaning forward and downward once it was on his head.Talking about one happy little boy. So much better than any amusement park--getting to “drive” the fire truck.And then getting to spray the big water hose.

Tractors

2011-11-18T02:20:00.001+01:00

A dream come true for Ethan…

Mom and Gary took Ethan up the road where someone sells tractors and equipment and asked if he could get on them.I can drive this thing… no problem!

Look at me- all by myself!

Dad and I can both fit in the blade!

Another truck to operate, oh fun!

And, now I get to drive a fork lift, one of the first pieces of equipment that I learned the name for.

1st Dentist Appointment

2011-11-17T05:06:00.001+01:00

I’ve heard that children should start having dental check-ups at 2 years old, and I wanted our first experience to be in the States for a number of reasons. So, we took Ethan to a pediatric dentist. We had no idea how it would go.

The dentist said that for the first visit, they don’t really do a lot. It’s more to get the child use to being there, etc. They told us that he could sit in our lap for the check-up, but we said that we thought he would do fine in the chair.The key thing with Ethan was the gloves. He has a thing for gloves. So, since the hygienist wore them, he opened his mouth and kept it open and closed it when he was supposed to.Flossing went well too.

I think the dental hygienist was pleasantly surprised at how well he cooperated. She made comments throughout the time at how well he was doing and said that some children cry and scream during the appointment. Another woman who worked there came back and commented about how she couldn’t believe how well he was doing.

Memory of a Two Year Old and Closets

2011-11-14T04:40:00.001+01:00

We were in the living room at Kent and Debbie’s house and Ethan pointed to the corner and said something about the Christmas tree going there. He remembered that from us being there over 6 months ago.

When he first went to his great-grandma’s place he noticed that there weren’t snowmen. When he was there 6 months earlier, there had been snowmen decorations out in the front grass.

It has amazed us at how well he recognizes places while we are driving. He did this some in Hungary, but we live there. We can almost be at the missionary house or my mom’s house in NC, and he will know that we are almost there. He remembers the Boone post office when we drive by after only going there once with Gary.

Closets

Ethan loves the closets in the States (and so do I; in fact I really miss them a lot after being in a house full of them). They make great forts. He loved getting into the closet at Gary’s parents’ house that had all of the coats and shoes. He would take all of the shoes out and then hide in there with Gary or Papa. When he got in it by himself, he would want us to find him, but if we didn’t open the door pretty soon, he would open it and laugh. He’s not much into waiting/patience at this point. One evening, Ethan, Gary, and I all hid in the closet together.Ethan not only took the shoes and boots out of the closet to play in it, he also enjoyed running around the house in Nana’s boots.

Our Time in CO

2011-11-06T22:06:00.001+01:00

Our time in CO was split up with a week in CA. We are in NC now and much of our time in CO seems like a blur and so long ago. One highlight from our time there was being able to celebrate Gary’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. It was actually in August, but the celebration party was in September. Much of the family flew in for it, so that was really nice, and I was able to meet some family members that I’ve never met before (like Debbie’s sister in the picture above).

Near the end of our time we were in Colorado Springs overnight and woke up to snow. It was a good amount, but thankfully did not make the roads unsafe to drive on. After we left that morning, we went to the homes of 4 different people in Denver back-to-back before going to Gary’s parents’ house. I enjoyed seeing the people, but it was very rushed, which wasn’t so fun. It was great to see Mark and Matthew, two of Gary’s good friends, one from birth and one from high school. They were both in our wedding. Ethan enjoyed “playing” the drums and guitar while we stayed at Mark and Holly’s house. Gary has taught him the difference between an bass guitar, electric guitar and an acoustic guitar, so he knew what kind of guitar this was right away.

Ladders

2011-10-23T22:34:00.001+02:00

On the drive from Lake Arrowhead to Mission Viejo Ethan was talking about ladders at our house and said something about having two ladders. I said, “Maybe you are thinking about how we had the ladder in the garage and then moved it into what do you call it?” I couldn’t think of the word and thought Gary could help out. As soon as I said, “What do you call it?” Ethan responded, “Tool shed.” I was a little dumbfounded that Ethan just finished my sentence knowing what I was talking about. Then I also realized that he was correct; we do have 2 ladders if you count the ladder that goes up to the attic. He always amazes me! It makes me wonder how God looks down on us. There are so many times that I look at Ethan with joy and happiness, and I’m so proud of him. There are also times that my heart is saddened because he made a wrong choice that either resulted in natural consequences or the need for parental discipline. We do that in love and gentleness hoping he will make the correct choice in the future because he wants to obey rather than from fear of correction. We can look at him and experience love, joy, happiness, sadness, frustration, laughter, pleasure, and many other things. It’s just a small glimpse of our heavenly Father looking at us. Of course, God knows our thoughts, motivations, and what we are going to do beforehand. Wouldn’t that be nice with children! Here is a family picture from us at my relatives’ house in Lake Arrowhead, soon before this car ride back to Mission Viejo.

Our Time in CA

2011-10-23T21:46:00.001+02:00

I’ve been working on this CA post for some time, so it may seemed fragmented, but hopefully not. :-)

Thankfully our week started out in CA with some couples coming to where we were in Mission Viejo. This helped keep somewhat of a decent nap schedule for the kids. We stayed with a couple who are ministry partners. I only met her once four years ago, and this was the first time that Gary and I met her husband since she got married a few years ago. She is a second grade teacher, and he is a Kindergarten teacher, so of course, that was a good connection. We really enjoyed staying with them and getting to know them more. Ethan enjoyed riding on this rocking horse at George and Lynn’s house. It didn’t matter how far back you rocked, it didn’t flip over. Really cool! Even Gary got on it. For some of you in Budapest reading this, you may recognize a few of these CA faces on this post. It was fun to meet Beth’s husband, Gabe, and their little girl.Aria and Ethan are posing for the camera whereas Sienna would rather play with the flower in her hair.On Saturday, we drove up to Ventura County, which took us around 3.5 hours (should have been about 2 hours without kids). We have some friends who drove down 2 hours from Bakersfield to meet us. None of us could find the place they wanted to meet, so we ended up on the beach. That worked out perfectly. We didn’t think we would make it to the beach at all while in CA, so this was our chance. It was much more child friendly than where Kristine originally planned for us to meet. The kids played in the sand while we all stood and talked for a few hours. Course, I thought to put sunscreen on the kids, but Gary and I forgot to put any on, so both of us got burnt. Ethan and Ellie played well in the sand together.Ethan’s tent came in handy for Sienna to get out of the sun and wind. I think my mom actually bought this for us to put Ethan in outside in order to keep him out of the sun. But, this has been his bed for the past 5 weeks.It was quite windy, but Sienna loved looking at the water coming in and out.

We went to speak at a church the next day that we’ve never been to. They had a service, then Sunday School, then another service, so we were there for 4 hours. We took Ethan and Sienna out of their room to be outside during the SS time while we talked to people, so it wasn’t too long for them. After church we went to someone’s house for lunch. The weather was much warmer than forecasted, so we were able to eat outside. It was a beautiful (but hot) day. The couple invited the pastor, his wife, and some others over for lunch, so we enjoyed getting to know them all better. The pastor’s daughter played with Ethan most of the time which was a blessing.

We went straight from there to see Robeson and Natalie. Natalie taught in Budapest, and the last time I saw her was our wedding. It was fun to see them, along with her mom that I hadn’t seen in years, and meet their little boy. I felt segmented in my thoughts while trying to catch up because of Ethan or Sienna. I’m not a good multi-tasker (at least when talking is one of the things involved). They took us to a place to eat fish tacos on the pier, so it was nice to spend a little more time with them. By the time we got back we had been out for over 12 hours. And, Ethan didn’t have a meltdown! That was great considering he went to bed late the night before, we had to wake him up that morning, he didn’t get a nap, and he went to bed late that day.Benjamin coming over to see what is going on and why this other child is sitting in his Neemommy’s lap. It was so fun to see Natalie again!We went out to eat with everyone and I had my first fish taco (which I’ve seen in CO and NC since then, so I guess it’s becoming a popular thing, or I just never noticed it before).

We left the next day to go to Lake Arrowhead to meet my relatives. This is my mom’s cousin that I’ve not seen since I was about one year old. It took us about 3 hours to get there, and we could only stay a couple of hours since we were speaking to a group in Mission Viejo that evening. It was so nice to meet Jerry and Bam after growing up hearing stories and seeing pictures of them. We left there and went to Mission Viejo to where we were spending the night and basically put the suitcases in the house, changed clothes and walked out the door to go to a dessert where we were speaking. I loved getting to spend a little time with my relatives and hated that it was only a few hours when I’ve basically never met them before.They had a great view of the lake!

We spoke to two groups during the evenings while in CA, and each time we were able to change Sienna into her pajamas, nurse her, and put her down in the car seat for her 7:00 bedtime. Ethan just ended up staying up past his bedtime in both cases. On Sunday and Monday, we were out for around 12 hours straight each day. Are we crazy or what?!

Flights, Flights, and More Flights

2011-10-17T06:17:00.001+02:00

We have been on 5 flights in 5 weeks and one day (8 fights if you count the legs). We’ve also been in 5 different time zones during those five weeks. I’m eager to land in NC and actually be there a while before flying again.

I’m in the Atlanta airport as I’m starting this post. Gary is working on a medical claim form, Ethan is sitting next to him in the floor “reading” a book, and Sienna is laying on a blanket, where we hope she will take a nap.

We had a missing bag on the flight from Hungary, but it was a different case than just a missing checked bag. The bag that was missing was a carry-on that we had put inside of a checked bag. It was also full of clothes and a tent for Ethan to sleep in. Somehow the tent and some of the clothes managed their way out of the carry-on and into the larger suitcase. After much e-mailing and phone calls, Gary just went to the lost and found baggage at the airport when we went for our next flight. The number the Budapest airport gave us was not one in the computer system. Thankfully Gary saw the bag and pointed to it saying it was ours. However, it was full of someone’s stuff. It was a handbag and laptop inside with a tag from Amsterdam to Budapest. I don’t know how in the world it got in our bag when our bag was in a checked suitcase leaving Budapest, and this bag was arriving in Budapest. Sadly, we will probably never get the clothes back that never made it back in the large suitcase. I’m thankful it wasn’t more and that we did get the carry-on back. We borrowed a carry-on to take to CO, so once we got our other carry-on from the airport that meant that we had 4 carry-on bags (the wheel kind). So, Ethan ended up pulling one of them. From that point, we decided he could help with a carry-on bag during the rest of our travels unless it was too heavy.

Some of you probably wonder how the kids have done on all of these flights. They are kind of a blur now, but some were good and some not so good. Thankfully the one from CO to Atlanta today was good, and hopefully the next one will be. After the flight landed from Atlanta to Denver, Ethan told Gary that he was going back. Gary asked if he was going to fly back to Atlanta. Ethan said he was, and Gary asked if he was going to fly back all by himself. Ethan said, “yes.” Gary said, “Well, send us a postcard if you find work.” Then Ethan said, “I’m joking.”

When the flight landed in CO from CA Ethan didn’t want to leave the seat because he was watching a fire truck or something like that out of the window. Every single person in front of us had left the plane, and many people behind us were waiting for him to get out of the seat. Thankfully some of them were laughing at him saying he wanted to stay to watch whatever it was (I don’t remember now).

Well, I wrote all of this in the airport and am just posting it 5 days later. An update on us hoping Sienna would sleep in the airport… well, we ended up picking her up and Ethan laid on the blanket and took a nap. We had to wake him to get on the flight.

I’m going to post some more random pictures since I don’t have any photos to go with what I’m writing. I just hate to post something that has no pictures.There are lots of geese near Gary’s parents’ house. Here Ethan is feeding them, and this particular one was about as tall as Ethan when he stretched his neck (which doesn’t show in this picture).Cutie-pie!

Generous Neighbor

2011-10-11T06:53:00.001+02:00

Several of you have made comments to me about not updating the blog since we’ve been in the States. I keep meaning to, but we’ve had to work on so much other stuff I’ve not had a chance. So, I am attempting to start working on some blog entries and hopefully get them posted before too long.

Two weeks ago I told Gary that I just had to blog about what happened to us, so I will focus on that for now. However, I will put a few random pictures at the bottom that are from CO.

We were scheduled to speak to a Sunday School class and then speak in the church service at a church in CO. Gary and Ethan went out to the car while I was getting the diaper bag, snacks, etc. together. All of a sudden I heard the horn honking over and over again. I thought that Ethan had gotten in the front seat and was just honking the horn, so I walked out to stop him. Lo and behold, Gary was sitting in the front seat of the car, and not honking the horn. Some how the alarm started going off on the car but we didn’t have the little part that turns it off. It disabled the car from starting, so nothing Gary tried worked. The neighbor pulled up and came over to help but couldn’t figure it out either. Gary’s parents had already left in the other car for their church. The neighbor heard that we were speaking at a church, so she just told us to take her car. She had a fairly new Jeep. We were so surprised that she just said to take her car (especially rather new car) when she hardly knows us. So, we switched the car seats to her car and went to church. It was so neat how she pulled up right at the time the alarm was going off. Otherwise, we would have had to call the church and ask someone to locate Gary’s parents for them to come home and would probably have been about 45 minutes late rather than 10-15. Thankfully we were speaking to a Sunday School class first. Otherwise, there would have been people in the church service saying, “Well, we were supposed to have missionaries share with you this morning, but …” I didn’t mention that we didn’t have any telephone numbers for the pastor or anyone on the missions committee at the church where we were speaking either. I’m so thankful for God’s provisions and in unexpected ways!

So, here are a few pictures: Sienna (7 months) with her grandma (Nana). Ethan doing what he loves to do at Papa and Nana’s house- playing the piano.

Brief Biking Moments

2011-09-06T00:28:00.001+02:00

Since Sienna isn’t old enough to ride on the back of a bike, we haven’t really gotten to ride our bikes this summer. There have been a few times that Gary will take Ethan to the store on the back of the bike or something like that. Here are a few pictures from one day where Gary took Ethan to the playground so Ethan could play while Gary read in preparing for a course. Ethan knows he’s a little cool dude!

Ethan checking to see if the bike is in good working order. Making sure the breaks work.My 2 cool dudes!A little light reading for the ride.

Solid Food

2011-09-06T00:27:00.001+02:00

Some Americans start their babies on vegetables, and some start their babies on fruit. Many of the books recommend vegetables so the baby will have the sweet tasting foods after trying vegetables. Hungarians start their babies on fruit, with apple typically being the first one. This is more due to constipation that can occur when the baby eats only vegetables.

It seems like everyone is so eager to start their children on solid foods. We are not parents who look forward to that, so we wait as long as possible. We’ve thought it was so much easier to just nurse. It’s faster, less messy, and you can do it anywhere (at least over here in Europe). We chose with Ethan and Sienna to wait until they were 6 months to begin solid foods. We decided to start rice cereal a few days before Sienna turned 6 months so Stephanie could be there and experience this with us. It took her longer than we expected to get the hang of this food thing. I wanted to start her on butternut squash for her next solid, but you can’t get them in Hungary this time of year. We were pretty random with Ethan’s next solid (We gave him pears because we had about 65 people at our home for a pot luck and someone left a bunch of pears, so we decided to give those to him.) With Sienna we knew we were leaving a few days later for Albania, so we just did carrots and thought we would try to take some with us for the first day there.While in Albania we bought bananas and smushed them in a bowl. Because we could not drink the water, we decided to even buy a jug of bottled water to wash her bowl and spoon each day.

I look forward to being in the States during the time that she should be trying lots of different foods. I LOVED that with Ethan. We can only buy the fruits and veggies that are in season here. I did puree some asparagus and some seasonal fruits this summer so she could have some of them in the winter.

6 Months

2011-09-04T00:08:00.001+02:00

Sienna turned 6 months old a couple of weeks ago. Wow! These 6 months have certainly gone by quickly! And, faster than I remember Ethan’s first six months going.

Sienna weighed 14.6 pounds at her 6 month check-up. That’s about how much Ethan weighed when he was 3 months old. She has been in the 75th-80th percentile for height the last couple of months.

She is a great baby. Outside of the first three months she hasn’t been fussy much except about 6:30 in the evenings. She is almost like clockwork when it comes to nursing at that time and going to bed (unless people are around which tends to distract her). She still goes to bed around 7:00 at night and gets up between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning. I’m working on pushing her naps to 10:00 and 2:00, but it’s more like 9:30 and 1:30 right now. Her naps are usually around 2-3 hours each, so that has been nice, but also made it difficult to take Ethan to the playground (like he wants to do everyday). I definitely wish that I had known more about nap stuff when Ethan was this age. Gary thinks that she smiles more than Ethan did. I remember him smiling a lot, so I don’t really know. She seems to enjoy people and being held by whoever will hold her, so I wonder if she will be an extrovert like her brother.We get a lot of comments about her pretty blue eyes. I still get comments about Ethan’s blue eyes too. I think they both still look a lot alike.

She is much more verbal than Ethan was at this age. And she is loud! She makes all kinds of screeches at a very high pitch. Some people think she’s upset because it’s so loud and high pitched, but she often does it when she’s happy.Her hair is still a strawberry blonde color, but seems to be more blonde in the back and at the roots. We’ll see what color it ends up.

Before too long many of you reading this will get to meet Sienna in person so won’t need these little descriptions.

Final Pics from Albania

2011-08-30T22:58:00.001+02:00

Ethan and Luka hugged every time they saw each other. Luka didn’t speak English, but each boy would ask us moms about the other one.Ethan didn’t really get in the sea much when we had swim trunks on him. So of course, the day we decided not to put them on him, he wanted to go in further.

Ethan loved playing in the outdoor shower afterward.

An Interesting Maid

2011-08-30T22:55:00.001+02:00

We had some interesting experiences with the hotel staff in Albania. We can’t imagine them happening anywhere else! Many of the families with babies or little kids were staying on the first floor of the hotel with the reception desk just down the hallway. We borrowed a monitor from some friends to use while Sienna napped in the room. Unfortunately, when you took the card that opens the door out of the slot, all electricity to the room was turned off, so we weren’t able to use it. So each day I put Sienna down for a nap and then returned upstairs where Gary was teaching. I would have to come down to the room when it was about her normal wake-up time each day.

I tried to communicate to the maid on the first day that she could still come in the room and clean but that Sienna would be taking a nap. At some point during the morning, the woman from the front desk brought Sienna upstairs to me. Come to find out the door was pretty loud, so anytime it was closed Sienna would wake up. It finally got to where I would walk downstairs to check on Sienna and the maid would tell me if she was sleeping. I walked down one day, and the maid was in our room cleaning the bathroom while Sienna was in the crib with music playing on the TV. The maid told me that she was crying and stopped crying with the music. I came down another day, and the woman at the front desk told me that the maid had changed Sienna’s diaper!

One day the maid told me that I needed to wash Sienna’s hair. Since I couldn’t understand her, she could have been offering to do it for all I know. I tried to communicate to her that I knew that and needed a towel (we were only given 2 towels… I’m not sure if they assumed the kids would use our towels or just not need one at all during the week). Evidently, I did not communicate effectively because I was not successful in getting anymore towels from her. The maid and the women at the front desk all loved holding Sienna. They were continually kissing her as well. They also greeted Ethan by name every time he came through the lobby.

Sickness in Albania Strikes Once Again

2011-08-30T22:33:00.001+02:00

If you keep up with our blog you may remember how a lot of people got sick last summer when we were in Albania (including Gary and me). Well, Tuesday night Ethan woke up vomiting. I got him cleaned up, the tent cleaned up, and changed his pajamas, and then he threw up again (of course on the clean pajamas). This is the first time that he’s thrown up other than from trying to swallow too much food at the table. The poor little guy was trying to hold it in his mouth. When I got him to the toilet he didn’t want to try to spit in the toilet.

We found out that some other children were throwing up that same night. Thankfully he was fine the next day and has been so far since then. He hadn’t been drinking the tap water, but we were brushing his teeth with it. We stopped doing that. When I picked him up from childcare he was drinking something that looked like it had been mixed with water. I’m afraid that the childcare workers may have used tap water, so that could be the reason. We just aren’t sure.

On Saturday I woke up with some kind of stomach bug. I wasn’t able to eat breakfast or lunch and still had things leaving my body. At dinner I ate one bite of the meat and one bite of the potatoes, but then threw up afterward. Gary had to help me back to the room. He said that he’s never seen me that weak except after having a baby. I do remember being this way last year when we got home from Albania.

I’m thankful that it was our last day and not the beginning of the week. Unfortunately, Gary and I both had problems after we got back home too (which happened last year as well). Hopefully our whole family will be better soon, especially before we fly to the States.

Albania Again

2011-08-25T22:11:00.001+02:00

Well, it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago when we were here. Ethan’s first flight was to Albania, and now we can say that Sienna’s first flight was here as well. Ethan slept most of the flight when we brought him at 6 months of age. Unfortunately, Sienna fell asleep just as we were landing.

Our first night here was a little rough. Ethan was sleeping on a couch with a pack-n-play up next to it so he wouldn’t fall out. He tossed and turned a lot and somehow still managed to fall off the couch. Of course, with Sienna in the pack-n-play right next to him, he woke her up when he cried. Thankfully she went back to sleep soon afterward. The afternoon nap for him didn’t go so well the next day either, so we decided to just make it work for Ethan to use the tent that we used during our time in Germany. I’m SOOO glad we brought it! Of course, he’s not falling out, and he loves it.

Well, Ethan has been in his element since being here. There are LOTS of kids to play with each day. After dinner our first night, Ethan began playing with one of the 6-year-old girls. She would chase him to a building, then they would both walk back toward us parents holding hands. They kept doing that over and over. Our second night here, one of the women in Gary’s course said that her 5-year-old son wanted to eat dinner with Ethan. So, we all sat together and Ethan and Luka kept hugging each other. Ethan has not had any problems with me leaving him in childcare, even though the babysitters are Albanian, and the other kids are Albanian. He is just so happy to be playing with kids. He especially seems to enjoy playing with the kids who are 1-4 years older than him. Our hotel is by the sea, so we took Ethan there one afternoon to see what he thought of the water (last year he didn’t want to get in it). On the way there he saw some of the older kids playing in the sand, and preferred to play with them.Ethan didn’t want to get in the water much more than this.He actually didn’t really like walking in the water much either. He must be like his Mom and Dad… more of a mountain person than a beach person. Sienna just went along for the ride.

Summer Fun II

2011-08-21T01:04:00.001+02:00

Here are some more pictures from Ethan playing with friends in the last week. As usual, Ethan is going in for a hug. Ellie was fine with it until it got to be around the 10th one (I’m exaggerating a bit, but it was quite a few).Seth was gone all summer, so Ethan was happy to have him back (as was his Mommy). When Ethan and Seth started to play with the swing set Ethan said something about spider webs then walked over to the patio, got the broom, and walked back to the swing set where he began getting down spider webs.I’m not sure what Kristen is saying to them, but I love the look on their faces as they’re eating and listening intently.Time for a break!

Summer Fun

2011-08-16T21:15:00.001+02:00

Several of Ethan’s friends were gone for the summer. I had thought that I would be able to get together more with the ones who were still here, but sadly did not. The summer has gone by SOO quickly!

Here are some pictures of some of Ethan’s little get-togethers. I had a couple of moms over for lunch. Ethan, Evan, Tosha, and Zsuzsi actually ate better than I expected. Usually when the kids are together they just want to play instead of eat. Here is a picture of Zsuzsi (right) and Ethan from June ‘09. Zsuzsi was 5 months old, and Ethan was 3.5 months old. Here is a picture of Kata (right) and Sienna from July. Kata is about 8 months old, and Sienna is almost 4 months old in this picture.Dinner time with Ryan and Kevin.Ethan’s uncle Neil mailed this thing (I don’t know what you call it) over here for his birthday. Ethan wanted Jasper to shoot the balls at him. It took some coaxing from Julie for Jasper to think it was okay to shoot the balls at Ethan. After all, we teach are children that doing such a thing is not being kind. :-)

End of Vacation

2011-08-11T14:53:00.001+02:00

Ethan loves trucks, tractors, motorcycles, etc. (basically anything moving). He was excited to see this motorcycle pull up in front of where we were staying and of course wanted to sit on it. He’s sat on a scooter before but not an actual motorcycle. The couple actually were from the town where we hiked our first day, so that was kind of cool.

The place we stayed was a refurbished farmhouse. It had a playroom for children, so that was a hit with Ethan, especially after his nap, when it was raining on our last day. In the picture he is chasing Gary.

Ethan had asked about playing with kids much of the time that we were gone and sadly, there weren’t really any around. At least not until the last place where we stayed. There was a little girl and boy from Belgium who enjoyed playing with Ethan. She actually played with Ethan while we packed up and loaded the car. Then she asked if she could put Ethan and Sienna in their car seats.This was Ethan’s first time on a trampoline (besides a little jogging trampoline). He liked it a lot. We were happy for him to be jumping and getting some energy out before another long ride in the car—what ended up being 11 hours after all of the stops (would have been around 6-7 hours without kids).We stopped at a grocery store on our way out of town to stock up on foods that we can’t get in Hungary. Gary got several kinds of cereals and Almdudler (an Austrian soft drink that can be bought in Austria and Germany, but not in Hungary). Ethan enjoyed pushing this little cart around the grocery store.

Hiking Day 3

2011-08-11T14:36:00.001+02:00

This was our final day of hiking. With the issue of little kids, nap times, etc. hiking is a little different than what I used to do. In the past I would have never ridden a cable car up a mountain when I could have hiked up it. Not just because I didn’t want to pay the money, but I much preferred to hike. Well, those days are gone…. at least temporarily. We took a cable car up part of this mountain and then hiked from that point. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have made much progress by the time it was Ethan’s naptime. You can’t see it but there is a cross on top of the mountain behind us. We hiked up to this meadow but didn’t have time to hike up to the cross or some other areas. We planned to get back in time for Ethan’s nap, and it would have been a couple more hours of hiking (without kids) to go up to the cross (thus more than 2 hours for us).

When we were walking back to the car Ethan pointed to a tour bus and wanted to ride the bus. He started walking over toward it and a woman was standing nearby. He kept pointing to the bus, so she held her hand out and said something to him in German. It looked like she was saying something about him going with her or he could go to his mom and pointed to me. He held his hand up to take her hand to go with her, and she looked at me with this shocked look like she couldn’t believe he just did that. I laughed because I was not so surprised at our little social butterfly. It’s pretty bad if he will just go with a complete stranger who talks to him in a language that he doesn’t understand. Course, he is used to being around people who speak different languages that he doesn’t understand. Whatever the case, we will have to be real careful when we go to the States and will need to do some major work on stranger training.

Gary’s neck ended up hurting some with these hikes (you can see the posts from the end of June that talk about Gary’s back/neck problems). Sadly, we forgot our walking canes which I need to take pressure off of my knees when hiking downhill. My knees still hurt a week later. Maybe one day we can go back and take the kids when they can hike themselves.

Hiking Day 2

2011-08-11T14:32:00.001+02:00

After driving around 6 or so hours we arrived at our destination in Austria. We spent the night and left the next day for this gorge. Some of the places were a little narrow to get a large backpack between the rock and the railings, but we made it fine. After we got through the gorge, we stopped by the river to eat our lunches.And, of course, Ethan had to throw rocks in the river, or as he calls it, “make waves.”We took a different way back down. It wasn’t quite as exciting as the water rushing through the gorge on the way up. As you can see the kids partook of a nap on the way back down.

Hiking Day 1

2011-08-11T14:30:00.001+02:00

This is from our first day. We spent the morning in one area and the afternoon in another area. Sienna napped in the backpack, and Ethan had a short nap in the car between the two hikes. Ethan enjoyed watching the cows with the big bells. It actually started snowing (yes, in July) while we were looking at the cows, but didn’t last for long.Mom gave us the backpack that Sienna is in, which has been quite handy to use with her and Ethan. We borrowed the one that Ethan is in from some friends. It was too big for Sienna. Our backpack is really not supposed to be used until 6 months. We used it for Ethan when he was 5 months to do the same thing- tie in some hiking to my classes in Germany. Course, he was a good bit bigger than Sienna is at this age. Thankfully, it worked for her.Sienna conked outThis is a picture of the area where we were. It was taken the next day on our way OUT of town. It was sunny and beautiful, but we had a 6 hour drive ahead of us, so we couldn’t stay. The first three pictures above were taken above the waterfall in this picture.

Traveling with Little Ones

2011-08-05T22:10:00.001+02:00

I shared in the last post about us going to Germany. We weren’t planning to have a vacation this year, but since we had to be in Germany we decided to tie in two days to go hiking. We actually ended up adding a 3rd day since we didn’t do anything to celebrate our 5th anniversary.

The weather in Germany was cold and rainy. The forecast called for rain on the days we were supposed to hike as well. We had nothing planned except to hike, and there wouldn’t have been anything else to do if it rained. The kids were going to be on our backs in backpacks, so it wouldn’t work to hike in the rain with them (except Sienna would have something that could go over her backpack for rain). So, I prayed that God would not allow it to rain on us for our first day of hiking. He answered that prayer. It was a mostly cloudy day, but it did not rain. It was disappointing that it was overcast because the view would have been spectacular had it not been for the clouds. I can’t complain, though, because God answered my prayer. I told Gary that I would pray specifically about the following day, so I asked God to not allow it to rain and for there to be some sunshine. Once again He answered. And, again on the 3rd day of hiking. There were just a few drops of rain at the end of our hike on the last day, and as we drove back to the pension it began to rain. And, we left the next day, driving back to Hungary in the rain. I’m so thankful that God cares for us and loves us so much to give us such blessings as being able to have 3 days of vacation hiking without rain. There are so many “big” concerns going on all around the world, but He also cares about the little things in our lives such as this.

I want to share a few stories and some pictures from our time traveling. We took our pack-n-play with us along with this tent that my mom gave us. Ethan loved being in the tent, and it was nice that we could zip it up so he didn’t get out unless we unzipped him. The room at the first place was so small, there actually wasn’t room for both of them in the room with us, so the hotel gave us a second attaching room for free. That was really nice not having them in the same room with us. I feared that he would wake her Sienna since she goes to bed earlier than him, and he often wakes her up. But, she must have gotten used to him because he didn’t wake her up during our travels except once when he screamed from having a bad dream, and then she went right back to sleep. This picture was taken at the last place we stayed. You can see how close they were to each other. If you haven’t been to Europe then you may not know that it’s common for a double bed to be two twin beds put together. Sometimes you can find a place that will have one big sheet that just covers the two mattresses, and in a few cases you may find a place that has a real thin big mattress that covers the smaller ones and then has a large sheet over it.Amazingly, Sienna usually smiles despite how rough Ethan is with her. He moves her arms and legs around rather roughly, but she really likes that a lot. Sometimes his hugs are a bit too much.This is one of the few pictures that I actually have of the two of them where they are both looking at the camera, and probably the only picture where they are both lying next to each other.

Kandern, Germany

2011-07-30T00:32:00.001+02:00

I had my last Bible class through PBU last week. I finished all of my educational classes a few years ago, but still had a few Bible courses to complete my master’s degree in International Education. Professors fly to Kandern from Philadelphia each summer to teach graduate classes on the campus of Black Forest Academy (a boarding school for missionary kids). We have pre-course work and then five days of class from 8:30-4:30. Then we have post course work to e-mail to the teachers afterward. It worked out well with the timing to nurse Sienna before going to class, then at lunch time, and again after class. The teacher kept us later than we were supposed to stay on most days, which caused me to be a little concerned. But typically Sienna was just waking up from her afternoon nap when I would get back.

Kandern is the smallest city in Germany. It is a beautiful area and a great place for hiking. Sadly, it was fairly cold and rained most of the days we were there. Seeing as how I love the mountains it would have been difficult had I seen this place before moving to Budapest. If I could have had a choice I would have chosen to serve at BFA due to the location (as well as the ability to get certain food items that we can’t get here like sweet pickles :-)). It’s a good thing that I knew I had been called to ICSB by the time I ever visited BFA.

It was strange talking about Systematic Theology for hours each day when I’m used to talking about tractors, trucks, and animals much of my days. I really enjoyed the class a lot and found it to be helpful for ministry. I also enjoyed being able to discuss the material with Gary after the kids went to bed each night since he already knows all that I was learning.

We stayed in someone’s apartment who lives across from the train station. Ethan enjoyed seeing the trains up close in person.He also liked being the center of attention. Our class went to an ice cream shop one afternoon. As you can see, Ethan is sitting in the middle of everyone just loving being a part of things.

5 Months

2011-07-30T00:09:00.001+02:00

Sienna turned 5 months old a few weeks ago. She is entertained more and more by her brother. We are amazed at how he can be rough with her and she will smile and laugh. It’s strange to look at pictures of Ethan at her age. He looks so much older than she does. He was actually 2.5 pounds heavier than she is and one inch shorter.

Sienna is around the 80th percentile with her height. I find that hard to believe that she is taller than 80% of other baby girls her age when some of her 3-6 month clothes are still too big or too long for her.She woke up one morning with hair sticking straight up. It was basically this way most of the day.

Cooling Off in the Heat

2011-07-10T21:56:00.001+02:00

We have bought a blow-up pool from someone and have been given a blow-up pool over the last few years. Both of these have had holes in them where we couldn’t find all of them, so needless to say they didn’t work. Yesterday some friends gave us a kiddie pool that they brought from the States when they moved here. It was for their daughter, whom I actually taught in the first grade (she’s going into 10th grade this year). When Ethan went over with us to get the pool, he asked Jennifer if it worked. He was used to us having to tell him that the pools we had didn’t work.

It was perfect timing. The weather in June was fairly nice and more on the cool side of things, but we are now experiencing summer. It’s hard to believe that it was cold enough last week for Sienna to wear long sleeves and pants, and yesterday was 90 degrees.Ethan enjoyed putting water in the pool and “helping” Gary clean it. Today Zsuzsi’s family came over to pick cherries and apricots from our trees. Edit’s parents own a peach farm, so she has been looking forward to getting fruit from our trees all summer.Such a cutie… yes, both of them!

Today was over 90 degrees, so when Edit called I told her that we got a new pool and that Zsuzsi and Ethan could play in it when they came over.Ethan patiently putting the water into the pool.Now everyone patiently waiting for the pool. Ethan and Zsuzsi having a dandy ‘ole time.A future playmate of Sienna’s- Kata.

I put a swimming suit on Sienna and planned to put her in the pool, but the water was too cold, and by the time the kids were getting in the pool it was Sienna’s nap time.A good-bye hug. Ethan used to hug Zsuzsi, but she didn’t like it. During the last few months she has let him hug her and doesn’t seem to mind at all. She even asked for a 2nd hug today.

Exersaucer

2011-07-09T20:52:00.001+02:00

We finally got the Exersaucer out for Sienna to use. She seems fascinated with the mirror on it. I don’t think Ethan ever noticed the mirror when he used it.This is a picture from Sienna’s first time in the Exersaucer. This is the only clothing that she has that is blue (other than turquoise). I think it looks SO good with her blue eyes. I love to dress Ethan in blue too for the same reason. She spent a lot of time checking out the mirror.I love her big toothless smile.And now, for comparison purposes, here is a picture of Ethan his first day in the Exersaucer two years ago. He was about a week younger than Sienna is in these pictures.She’s into the mirror on the play gym now too. Once again, Ethan didn’t pay a lot of attention to the mirror on the play gym. Looking at yourself in the mirror all the time… must be a girl thing.Had to get a picture of the cute bear on her bottom. When Gary puts these pants on her, he always puts the bear in the front. I laughed the first time that I saw it.

It was nice to just say her name while she was having tummy time and her look up at me. Gary and I loved this stage with Ethan so much more than the newborn stage, and feel the same with Sienna. It’s so fun when they can interact more. With Ethan we have enjoyed each month more and more and I’m sure it will be the same with Sienna.

Gary’s Birthday and the Zoo

2011-06-30T23:23:00.001+02:00

Gary’s birthday was last Friday but we did all of the celebrating on Saturday. We went to the Budapest Zoo. Gary and Ethan have never been before. The weather was great. Ethan has several books with animals in it that are typically found in a zoo, so we’ve told him for some time that he would get to see them at the zoo someday. Interestingly, one of the animals that he’s asked about the most are flamingos. He has wanted to see the gorillas beat their chest, but all of the gorillas were sleeping when we saw them. Ethan saying, “rhino-oferis.” Ethan was trying to push his sunglasses on his head and they kind of just stuck here.

Look at those good looking people! I don’t know if you can tell on the blog with the picture this size, but I like looking at how well Sienna’s eyes match Gary’s eyes and his shirt.Ethan enjoyed watching the monkeys. After we left he said that he liked the monkeys and flamingos the best. (And this has changed since Saturday… today his favorite animal that he saw was the Orangutan.)Course, maybe it was him being the monkey that he enjoyed the best.Ethan got a little exercise by pushing his stroller around the zoo. We were watching the sea lions while they were underwater, but Ethan was more entertained by a little girl who was standing next to him than he was by the sea lions that were swimming right in front of him. Our little social butterfly!He was a little more entertained by the sea lions when we were above ground and he watched the little ‘show’ from Gary’s shoulders.

Sienna slept off and on, so she didn’t pay much attention to the animals (not that she would have noticed the animals much had she been awake the whole time). Sadly, she doesn’t sleep as well in the car seat or stroller as Ethan did. She has a 2-3 hour nap in the mornings IF she is in her bed, but not if we are out. Thankfully, it didn’t throw her schedule off completely.

That night our team came over for a birthday dinner and party. Gary requested BBQ type stuff, so I fixed BBQ pork. The other women brought baked beans, salad, and corn on the cob. I made chocolate cake and we had ice cream.

MRI Results

2011-06-29T21:16:00.001+02:00

Gary started having tingling sensations throughout his arms and legs a little over a week ago. It was keeping him up during several nights. He hasn’t had a physical since before we were married, so he went to a doctor to get a physical and hoped to also find out about the tingling sensation. The doctor had him see a neurologist. The neurologist told Gary that he thought it was a problem in the neck and he wanted Gary to get an MRI. When Gary asked about possible treatment, the doctor said, possibly surgery. The appointment for the MRI was last Friday, on Gary’s birthday (yes, bummer). He got the results afterward but the neurologist was out of the country for a week, so Gary wasn’t going to know the results for another 5 days. Thankfully the family doctor told Gary to come in and he would look at the results so Gary would not have to wait. He said that Gary has 4 herniated discs in his neck. One of them has a broken membrane on the outside. The other three are bulging. These put pressure on the nerves which cause the tingling. So, Gary is supposed to begin physical therapy to strengthen the muscles around the spine. So, it was a bummer for Gary to have this on his birthday but the results were better than we thought they might be.

4 Months Old

2011-06-20T22:13:00.001+02:00

Sienna turned 4 months old this past week. Her hair hasn’t fallen out yet. Ethan had a lot of hair, but she actually has more than him. Personally, I like it since she’s a girl, but I never remember to put little bow things in her hair. She has little curls after it’s washed, and I love that since mine is as straight as a stick. Her hair is still an auburn/strawberry blonde type of color depending on how the light is on it. If her hair stays this color I will definitely be avoiding orange, red, and pink clothes. Some of the red and pink things look okay on her but not great. So far she looks the best in purple, turquoise, and brown. There are still some colors that she hasn’t worn yet too. :-) What a face!

She really enjoys watching Ethan. He makes her smile a lot. He loves to mess with her face. We continually work on the word “gentle” with him. He does pretty well most of the time. I don’t remember if I mentioned it on here or not but she is a thumb sucker. She never would take a paci. There are advantages and disadvantages to her sucking her thumb, but we will have to tread new waters with that since Ethan used a paci.

One thing that I haven’t ever mentioned is that her hips are very loose. Her doctor had us do a hip ultrasound to make sure that things were fine with them, and they were. The Dr. said that she may just be real flexible like those people who put their legs over their heads, etc.

Here are a couple of snapshots that we took on Father’s Day. Sienna started rolling from her stomach to her back. Ethan started rolling from his back to his stomach first (which is actually more difficult). He didn’t like being on his stomach, but she doesn’t much either.

Ethan, the Fresh Fruit Expert

2011-06-12T20:50:00.001+02:00

Ethan is often picky about his food. He likes things a certain way. Though this is common with kids his age, I’m not sure how common it is for kids his age to realize that things are not fresh just by looking at them. For example, the bread rolls here are not fresh unless you eat them the day you buy it or the next day. Well, somehow he knows if it’s not the same day and won’t eat it.

Tonight, while I was nursing Sienna, Gary got some pineapple out of the fridge for Ethan to eat. He sat it down in front of Ethan, and Ethan said, “No” (without even touching it) and then pointed to the countertop where a fresh pineapple sat. Gary told me that Ethan wanted fresh pineapple, and I told him that I just cut it yesterday. Then I remembered that I had used some canned pineapple for a recipe and put the remainder of it in the fridge. I asked Gary to bring it me so I could see it. I looked at it and realized that it was the canned pineapple and that it actually needed to be thrown out. So, Gary got the pineapple out that I cut yesterday and put it in front of Ethan. Ethan looked at it and said, “Oh yes!”

Cherry Pickin’

2011-06-11T16:05:00.001+02:00

Gary has been gradually cutting dead branches off of our trees. Ethan loves it when Gary works in the yard and he gets to help out. He often asks to go outside so he can use the tools.

Here are some pictures of Ethan picking cherries from our cherry tree. After Ethan would pick a cherry off, he would drop it and enjoy watching it fall to the ground. Then he would pick up the cherries from the ground and put them in the greenery trash can (that is for branches, greenery, etc.).Maybe before the summer is over and the cherries are gone he will actually start eating them.

3 Months is Bliss

2011-06-07T22:32:00.001+02:00

I’m VERY thankful that Gary is back home. There were a few good days and some bad days while he was gone. Thankfully the whole family will join him on his next teaching trip.

One good thing that happened while he was gone is that Sienna went to a 4-hour feeding schedule. I think I mentioned on here at some point that Ethan went on a 4-hour feeding schedule when he was 3 months old but I didn’t think she would be doing that for some time. So, I was pleasantly surprised. We have continued to wake her between 10 and 11:00 for a late night feeding, but I figured that she would probably be able to sleep through the night without us waking her anymore. I didn’t want to try it until Gary returned, so once he got back we stopped waking her for that feeding. We’ve been putting her down around 7:30, and she has been getting up between 7:30 and a little after 8 in the mornings. I actually had to wake her at 8:15 this morning so I could nurse her before my exercise class. It’s been funny because since we stopped waking her for the late night feeding, she has made lots of ‘happy’ noises and coos in the mornings when she wakes up. She didn’t wake up crying before that, but she wasn’t making all of the little ‘happy’ noises.

She has also seemed to get settled into a good nap schedule this past week with taking a 2-3 hour nap in the morning and another 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon. I think we are much better at putting her down at the right time for a nap than we were with Ethan, which may be why his naps were so short for 10 months. Also, we know now not to get her just because she wakes up after the first hour (a mistake we made with Ethan for a long time). :-)

Gary and I both thought that things were SO much better after Ethan turned 3 months old, and it is wonderful to be experiencing the same thing with Sienna. It’s nice that she is a lot more interactive with us, but I REALLY like it that she only nurses 4 times a day. That makes it much easier to go places and plan things. We have enjoyed each month with Ethan more and more, so I hope that will be the same with Sienna. The picture above is from a few weeks ago, and the picture below is from yesterday. Not much difference, but I thought they were cute. I must say that it’s so much more fun dressing her than it ever has been dressing Ethan. I just love her cute clothes.

Bagpipes and Tractors

2011-06-01T10:06:00.001+02:00

We haven’t shown Ethan any DVD videos yet, but he has started associating our computers as something where he can look at pictures and watch bagpipes and tractors. Yes, you read it correctly- bagpipes. He enjoys musical instruments, so Gary has taught him a lot with signs to go with them. He recognizes some of them when he hears them. Sometimes he asks to listen to certain instruments on the CD player. One time he asked to listen to bagpipes. We didn’t have any CDs with bagpipe music, so Gary pulled a video up on You-tube for him to watch bagpipes. Now, Ethan wants to watch several different types of instruments on You-tube. In recent weeks, Gary has shown him some videos of tractors, backhoes, etc. on You-tube. After watching for about 5 minutes he asks to watch bagpipes and drums.

Here are two pictures from a few weeks ago where we stopped at a nearby construction site for Ethan to look at an excavator. (I have learned the names of all kinds of construction vehicles… something I never thought I would know.)

Life this Week

2011-05-29T23:12:00.001+02:00

Thank you to those of you who have been praying for me this week. I’ve had some good days and some bad days. The days have definitely been long for the most part. A friend in CA put it well by saying that sometimes a day seems like a year when your husband is gone.

Our team leader and his wife brought dinner over on Thursday. Ethan loved having the company (and so did I). Ethan’s nose has continued to run all week, so he still hasn’t been able to get together with friends his age. A couple of his friends got a runny nose last week too, so they were going to come over on Friday, but then the Mom called and said that one of them had a fever. Sadly, I had already told Ethan that they were coming over. Before that we had planned to go to a friend’s house, and she cancelled that morning. I had also told Ethan about that, so, the rest of the day, Ethan went around saying, “Someone’s house.” He was thrilled when some “big kids” came over yesterday and he got to play with them. We didn’t get to go to church today between him still having a runny nose and me not being able to nurse Sienna/hold her and keep Ethan until children are dismissed for Sunday School.

Emily came over for dinner tonight, and once again Ethan was excited. He wanted Emily to brush his teeth and orszivo him. When it was time for him to go to bed, I told him to go upstairs to pick out a book to read. He wanted to read the book to Emily. So, when I went in the bedroom, Ethan was reading a book to Emily, and wanted me to go back downstairs. Of course, she had to put him in the bed too. Then after I prayed with him he wanted Emily to pray too.

Here are some pictures since Gary’s been gone. Gary, I can’t remember if I told you about this lawnmower and scooter or not.These 2 pictures were taken at the house of one of the Hungarian women in my exercise class. Ethan hasn’t ever seen a riding lawnmower before. I still don’t think he really understands that it mows the yard like our push lawnmower, but he had a blast “driving'” each of these.Ethan wanted to wear his sunglasses when we went outside to play later in the day. I think Ethan looks like a little cool dude here. :-) Ethan pointed to the guitars on this t-shirt while it was on the drying rack today and said, “Acoustic.” (Gary has taught him the difference in acoustic and bass guitars.) Here’s a picture from when some of the “big kids” came over yesterday. Carina seemed especially happy to hold Sienna. Her mom joked about how our car is a Toyota Carina, and they would like to have a Toyota Sienna van.

I have another blog that was actually ready to post before Gary left, so hopefully I can get it posted soon. I just wanted to get some new pictures on here for Gary to see while he was away and to let those who have been praying know how it was going. 3 more days to go!

Pray Request

2011-05-24T16:04:00.001+02:00

Please pray for me and Ethan over the next 9 days. Gary left for Macedonia this morning, and this is the first time that he has traveled since I had Sienna. Ethan and I are both extroverted so definitely need to socialize. Ethan got a runny nose on Sunday, so that means that he won’t be able to play with any other kids while he has the runny nose. This will seclude all 3 of us possibly until Gary returns.

One of my friends has never cared if Ethan had a cold; she would bring her son over anyway. When her son was over last month he got a cold from Ethan. After that his dad didn’t want her to bring him over if Ethan was sick. I understand and don’t blame them. I just can’t believe that out of all of the times he has been around Ethan with a cold, he just got it recently, thus isn’t able to come now while Gary is gone. Such a bummer!

So, please pray for Ethan’s nose to stop running ASAP and for God to give me wisdom and creativity with things to do with him in the meantime with it just being us together all day and evening. I have some toys that my mom brought over and that we bought off of people moving back to the States hidden from him. I plan to pull them out during this time, but had planned to do that in addition to getting together with people. Hopefully the toys will be more entertaining than I expect. I took this picture before Gary left this morning. Ethan will enjoy looking at it later today.

Sienna’s Dedication

2011-05-22T23:35:00.001+02:00

We had Sienna’s dedication at church today. Two years ago we walked into church and sat behind the pastor on Mother’s Day, and the pastor turned around and asked us if we wanted to dedicate Ethan that day. He told Gary to share something from up front about it, so Gary had about 10 minutes to decide what to say for Ethan’s dedication. This time we asked about dedicating her, so Gary knew ahead of time that he would be speaking. He said that he wanted Mary, the mother of Jesus, to be her model-- that she would be the Lord’s servant and trust in Him and that God would fulfill His purposes for her (based on Luke 1:38). Here’s a more up close picture of Sienna that we took after church.

Dr. Carson

2011-05-20T23:19:00.001+02:00

The team that we are on with CCC offers a seminary class in Budapest each semester and brings in seminary professors to teach. The course is this week, and Dr. D.A. Carson is the professor who is teaching. For those of you who don’t know who he is, he is a professor of the New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the author/editor of over 60 books, and is one of the top evangelical scholars in the world today. He preached at our church on Sunday and Gary thought it was the best sermon that he’s heard in a long time. Sadly, I didn’t really hear it all. We do have speakers in the nursing mothers room, but I’m very visual and have never been able to listen to preachers on the radio or books on tape, etc. When Gary preached a few weeks ago, I just sat in the back of the church because I really didn’t want to miss what he said, and I knew I would if I couldn’t see him (and I still didn’t catch it all due to nursing [keep in mind, I can’t even talk and cook at the same time]). So, it won’t even work for me to go online and listen to Dr. Carson.

He came over for dinner on Monday night. It was amazing how well rounded he is and how many things he actually does. He was a chemistry major in his undergraduate degree, he writes poetry and hymns as well as plays the piano. I just find it interesting for a “science” type person to do these other types of things as well. He is also a pilot and rides a motorcycle.

I was able to go for part of a day to hear Dr. Carson teach. I was glad but once again had a difficult time paying attention while sitting in the back and holding or nursing Sienna. I was able to focus in while she slept, but sadly a window blew shut and knocked a glass in the floor which woke her up. Sienna did not pay much attention to what Dr. Carson had to say. As you see she enjoyed some snoozes.

At some point, another woman was holding Sienna. Sienna started making some noises, so Gary went over to get her. When Gary picked up her, Dr. Carson interrupted himself and said not to take Sienna out of the room if she is making a little noise. He said that if she gets up to 140 decibels then we can take her out, but that he would like Gary and me both to be able to stay in there, and if Sienna leaves that means that one of us has to leave. Then he told the singles that if they didn’t like it to suck it up. I thought that was very gracious of him (on our part). Thankfully, she did very well and wasn’t fussy like she can be at times.

3 Months Old

2011-05-17T23:48:00.001+02:00

Sienna is now 3 months old. The time seems to be going by faster than it did with Ethan. She is a lot smaller than Ethan was at this age (12 pounds compared to his 15), so it’s hard for me to believe that she is already 3 months old. I remember that Gary and I thought things got a lot better with Ethan at 3 months. I think some of it is because he went to a 4 hour nursing schedule then. That won’t be happening with her. :-) She basically nurses every 3 hours during the day, and I don’t see her moving to a 4 hour schedule anytime soon (at least not for every feeding).

She still sleeps well at night. We put her down for bed around 8:30 or 9:00 and then have still been waking her for the late night feeding (between 10 and 11). She eats a little and then goes back to bed, so we will probably start working on getting rid of that feeding before too long. She typically wakes up between 7:30 and 8:30, though, I tend to wake her a couple of days a week if she’s not awake by a certain time.

Her naps are getting better which is nice. I was afraid that they were going to be like Ethan’s, which were short. This still may happen, but it seems not. We love her big blue eyes. It’s so hard to believe that Ethan’s hands were once the size of hers. And just 2 years ago! I enjoy watching her respond to Ethan’s voice. Sometimes I think she responds more to his voice than mine or Gary’s. As you can see Ethan is doing well too. William came over last Saturday and managed to stay a bit more clean than Ethan. It took quite a while to get all of the dirt out of Ethan’s eyes. I think he looks like a raccoon here.

Resurrection Day

2011-04-27T23:36:00.001+02:00

I hope you all had a wonderful Resurrection Day. I love it that there is a holiday where we celebrate Jesus rising from the dead! I was glad that Sienna slept through the music at church. We had a choir (which I don’t think we ever have had before), and sang some great songs such as the Hallelujah Chorus. Gary thought it was the best church service that our church has had.

One tradition in Hungary is that the boys spray the girls with water on Easter Monday, which is a holiday here. I’ve never seen this happen, but Gary actually saw some guys doing it to a teenage girl who lives a few houses down from us.Michelle got Sienna this 0-3 month dress, but it’s been too big for her till now. So I was glad she was able to finally wear it. Kristen got her this onesie which happened to match perfectly.

Our teammates, the Beattys, invited us to their place for a cookout and potluck, and for the kids to hunt for eggs. There were 2 other families and 2 single girls who joined us.Ethan didn’t understand the concept of looking for eggs at all. He walked right over the first one. So Gary gave him some help in seeing the eggs. He just pointed to the next one (in the picture above). Later he came back to it and touched it but didn’t want to pick it up. He finally picked one up and put it in the bag with much encouraging from us.But he quickly went on to other things that were more fun such as carrying the trailer around.

We love his expressions in the next 2 pictures.It’s really hard to get a decent family picture now with 2 little ones. This was the best we could do without taking forever to do it.

Two Months Old

2011-04-25T23:57:00.001+02:00

We went for Sienna’s two-month check-up last week, and she is doing well. She gained 2 pounds since her one-month check-up. She seems a lot bigger, and we’re realizing that a lot of pictures that we wanted to do with her don’t work now because she is too big. When Ethan was 2 months old, he weighed 2 pounds more than her, so she is still small compared to him at this age.

If you don’t want to read details about how she is getting along then you can skip the next 3 paragraphs and just go to the pictures below. :-)

Her hair is auburn now and it looks like blonde is growing underneath. After we give her a bath her hair is curly. So, we’ll see what happens with the color and curls. I just hope that her hair doesn’t all fall out because I like it that she has long hair.

She doesn’t take a pacifier and doesn’t seem to take a bottle. We practiced giving her a bottle a few days before a women’s meeting that I had last month. She took the bottle fine, but while I was at the women’s meeting she didn’t take it well and then spit up what she did take. Thankfully, my meeting was a block down the street, so Gary was able to just bring her to me so I could nurse her. We tried twice over the weekend in anticipation for a women’s meeting that is this week, but she hasn’t taken it either time. I will probably just take her with me since it is the last one of the school year. We only gave Ethan a bottle 5 times, so I can’t imagine that it will be a big deal if she doesn’t ever take it. Someone has let me borrow a great cover with a hoop type thing that goes around your neck so you can see the baby while she nurses, so I can use that anywhere. I do love it that nursing in public is not a big deal over here.

Lots of people ask us how she is sleeping. That seems to be the second or third question I get asked. So, in case any of you are wondering… She has slept well (waking once in the night) most of the time since her 2nd week (when we quit waking her to feed her). Sometimes she wakes between 4 and 5 and then goes back to bed after nursing until around 8:30. Sometimes she has been sleeping through the night and waking between 6 and 7. We are not morning people, so I nurse her on one side and put her back to bed. Then either she wakes up or we get her up around 8:30. So, either way, we are getting up once (even though technically one of those times is considered time to get up:-)).

She will be 10 weeks old tomorrow, but here are a couple of pictures from when she was 8 weeks old.One of the Hungarian women from my Body & Soul exercise class gave me this wrap. She used it with her daughter all the time (including during the exercise class when she was fussy). She taught me how to use it and showed me a video online to watch. The wrap is quite long and neat with the different ways it can be used.

Ants

2011-04-25T23:21:00.001+02:00

I wrote this a few weeks ago but am just now posting it. I’ll try to catch up some with the blog. :-)

We have had ants each year, and I thought they were gone this spring. I was nursing Sienna the other day and Ethan pointed to an area on the floor where ants commonly were and said, “Ants.” I told him that I hoped they were gone. He said, “Outside”, and I said, “Yes, we don’t want the ants in the house; we want them outside.” He kept pointing to something, but I didn’t see anything. Finally, he walked over to me holding an ant between his index finger and his thumb. I told him to throw the ant in the trash can (it was dead from him squashing it).

We were outside today, and he pointed to a bunch of ants walking around and said, “Outside.” I told him that they were fine outside and that I just didn’t want them inside. However, a few minutes later, he showed me where he had killed an ant and said, “Trashcan.” So, we’ll need to work on the concept of leaving ants alone when we’re outdoors.

Big Bed

2011-04-20T21:10:00.001+02:00

We knew that we would need to get a “big bed” for Ethan at some point after Sienna was born, so when a family here sent an e-mail out that they were selling one, we jumped at the chance. It is a single bed that actually starts off short but extends into a longer bed. We have talked to Ethan about it for some time and decided to go ahead and put it together and in his room, so he can get used to it being there before moving into it. And he would start sleeping in it a good amount of time before we move Sienna out of the pack ‘n play into the crib.

Ethan was eager to help Gary put the bed together. He would ask Gary to lift him up so he could get to the tool box to get a tool, or he would tell Gary what tool he wanted. He specifically asked for a wrench and later the pliers. I have a feeling that he is going to be handy when he gets older. He’s almost more handy than his parents now, so he will have to learn from his grandparents when we visit. Kent and Mom, you can probably start teaching him this fall when we visit. :-) Gary and Ethan had to take a break for dinner. During dinner Gary asked Ethan if he wanted to sleep in the big bed, and of course, Ethan said yes. We had planned to let him see it in his room and get used to it some before making the change and probably even begin using it at nap time. I can’t say that I’ve been looking forward to him moving into a big bed. Many parents make the change when their toddler is climbing out of the crib. Well, Ethan has never climbed out of the crib, or even tried as far as we know. However, he does try to climb INTO his crib every night. Go figure!

At this stage, he really likes the number two so he wants to have two blankets on him at night. He wants to sleep on one of those animal things that velcros together and is also a pillow that my aunt and uncle sent him. When we go in to get him in the mornings, he is usually sitting in the crib reading a book. And, even then, he wants to stay in the crib and read to us or for us to read to him while he sits there. Gary and I really like how things are with him in the mornings, so we’re not sure how changing to a big bed will affect that and know it will take some work on our parts to train him to stay in his room when he wakes in the morning, etc. Plus, Ethan knows that he can only have his pacifiers (“boppy” as he says) when he is in his crib, so we have planned for them to stay with the crib when he moves to a big bed.

After dinner they finished putting the bed together and we put sheets on it that my cousin, Nikki, gave us. We explained to him how when he moves into the big bed that he will need to leave his pacies in the crib. We talked about the things that he could have in the big bed, so afterward, he said, “sheet in big bed, pillow in big bed, blankets in big bed; no boppies.”

He was very excited and after having his diaper changed told Gary that he didn’t even want to read a book. He wanted to sleep in the big bed. So, Gary and I were surprised and not planning to start tonight, but thought if he wants to sleep in the big bed knowing that he can’t have his pacies then we should try it. He’s not used a top sheet before, and we put that on his big bed, so he just wanted to use that and not the blankets.

We weren’t sure how this would work especially since he sucks his paci and holds the other two to go to sleep. So, needless to say, after lying in bed for almost 30 minutes he started crying (he normally goes right to sleep without any problems). After a little bit Gary went in to check on him and sure enough, he couldn’t go to sleep. So, Gary moved him back into his crib. So, we’ll try again hopefully when we are all ready for the change (I know I certainly was not ready for it to happen tonight).

Ethan Trying to Help

2011-04-11T00:07:00.001+02:00

This past week Ethan asked me if he could put the silverware in the drawer (sometimes he helps put it away). I told him that after it was cleaned that he could. Then a friend came over to drop something off. I went outside to get it, and when I came back in, he came up to me holding a butter knife saying, “knife.” When I walked in the kitchen, he had pushed a chair over to the drawer and had the drawer open. I explained that he needed for Gary or me to be with him when he does that (since there are sharp knives in the drawer… we may have to change that now even though he knows that they are a “no touch”). Then I realized that there was some dirty silverware in the drawer. He had opened the dishwasher and taken some of the silverware out and was putting it away.

Any time he sees me getting a mixing bowl out he wants to push the big chair over to the counter to help “cook.” He loves to stir things with the spoon and mixer.

Below are some pictures from two weeks ago. The family behind us has a swing set and slide and allows children in the neighborhood to play on it. We were given a swing set, but it doesn’t have a slide. Ethan loves to go to their yard to go down the slide. He wasn’t able to climb their ladder last year but is now. And, he loves going up into the “fort” as he calls it. Here are some pictures from a week ago. I’m enjoying seeing things bloom now along with having some nicer weather.

Pictures at 4 and 5 Weeks

2011-03-24T00:08:00.001+01:00

Sienna is 4 weeks old in this picture. One of the women on our team gave her this little bathrobe as a gift. How cute!

The pictures below are of her in the play gym at 5 weeks.I think the look on Sienna’s face is funny in this picture. She is looking at Ethan like, “What in the world are you doing?” I’m sure we will see her give Ethan this look often.Ethan still loves to hug her a lot. He even asks to hug her while he is eating meals.He is encouraging her to do tummy time by doing it with her.And, of course, another hug. I sure hope that she ends up enjoying hugs because Ethan loves to give them. He has a couple of friends who don’t like hugs (and he wants to give them hugs a lot), so it will be difficult if his sister doesn’t end up liking them.Gary is giving Sienna her first bottle in this picture. We decided that we had better go ahead and see if she would take a bottle since I have a Crusade women’s thing tomorrow night and hoped to leave her at home with Gary giving her a bottle. Maybe I will be able to get a picture sometime of Ethan trying to pull his shirt up and use the breast pump on himself. He understands that it is to get milk for the baby, so it’s funny to watch him try to use it on himself.

Third Try is Much Better

2011-03-24T00:07:00.001+01:00

The weather here has been so nice lately. We finally got the Baby Bjorn figured out with the help of Michelle. I don’t know what happened since we used it with Ethan, but it seemed to be all tangled up or something. So, I have been venturing out with Sienna in the Baby Bjorn and Ethan on his new trike that my mom bought him when she was here. We have gone out the last 3 days with today being the first successful day (so-to-speak).

The trike is too big for Ethan, so he has to use his tip toes to push himself, and the wheels hit the back of his heels. Since he’s never had a trike before, he has to get used to how to do it. For those of you in the States, basically all of the little Hungarian children have these little plastic trikes once they start walking well. The moms take the babies or younger children in the strollers and have the older children ride these trikes alongside of them as they take their walks. I don’t know how it is in the city, but that is how it is in our village (where there aren’t many sidewalks).

So, on Monday we headed down the street. 45 minutes later we got to the end of our block. Yes, 45 minutes! On the way, Ethan stopped at 2 trashcans that were turned over by the trash men and wanted me to pick them up and set them back the correct way, since he couldn’t. He stopped to look at every dog on the way down the street, and since the trike was too big, he took longer to ride it than to walk (which is the opposite of how it normally works with these trikes). When we got to the end of the block, he wanted to go into the little playground which has a sandbox. So we went. Soon after he got into the sandbox, Sienna woke up and started crying (because it was feeding time). It took quite a bit to leave the playground and even get back to our street (with Ethan trying to make the trike go up hill and on a rather bumpy surface), so by the time we got around the corner to our street probably 10-15 minutes had passed (the playground is right on the corner of our street). I finally just picked Ethan and the trike up and carried him, the trike, and Sienna all back to our house.

Yesterday, we ventured out to try again. We made it a little faster this time, in about 20 minutes. Ethan chose to walk some of the way and pull his trike, which did help with making it faster. Ethan figured out that the road goes slightly downhill, so he can pick his feet up and the trike will go faster and on its own.Ethan looking around me to watch some people come walking toward us with their dog.Ethan went back into the sandbox (which was more fun because someone left their bucket and shovel).

I decided that we would try to leave at 1:30 to give us 30 minutes to get back in time for his nap. As soon as we walked out of the playground fence, Kristen was walking down the street with Seth and Kate. So, of course, we stopped and started talking. Ethan and Seth played in the ditch and little field beside of us while we talked. I finally thought that we’d better start walking toward our house since it was close to Ethan’s nap time and Sienna’s feeding time (and knowing that Ethan could just walk with Seth, or even run, and it would be much faster). When we got in front of our house, Kristen and I kept talking and then Yulia, who lives down the street, came walking down with her kids. So all 4 of the boys were running around in front of our house while we talked. Most of y’all reading this probably know what a talker I am. So, needless to say, we got inside past Ethan’s nap time. Well, when we finally went inside, he was hungry from the running around, and he had a poopy diaper. Sienna was still asleep in the Baby Bjorn, but I knew I couldn’t change Ethan’s diaper with her in front of me like that, so I put her down. Ethan’s diaper was so bad that I had to give him a bath, and of course, Sienna woke hungry (past her feeding time) before I even put him in the bath. So, I was trying to quickly give him a bath, get him dressed and down for his nap while she was just crying. And, of course, I could have prevented much of this by just not talking as long. :-)

So, today, we tried for a 3rd time soon after Sienna ate, but still just an hour before lunch time and 2 hours before Ethan’s nap time. This time I took the stroller planning to possibly push Ethan home in it. I didn’t time how long it took us to get to the end of the block, but was successful with Ethan having some time to play in the sand with the toys that were still there and then coming home with him in the stroller and me carrying the trike. Sienna stayed asleep until I got him his lunch, and then I was able to nurse her as he finished lunch. I put him down for his nap just a few minutes before two (and I actually was able to take a nap myself while both of them napped- yeah!). I was excited that this 3rd try to the end of the block was much better! :-)

3 Weeks Old

2011-03-15T15:22:00.001+01:00

Well, Sienna is 4 weeks old now, but I’m actually posting pictures of her at 3 weeks. I’m still trying to catch up on things. :-)My friend, Lori, gave Sienna this Piglet stuffed animal at the baby shower. Of course, Ethan saw it and asked to sleep with it. As you see in the picture above, Piglet is about the same length as Sienna.Sienna is trying to get her head as high as Piglet’s head. She has done well with holding her head up every since we came home from the hospital. I remember a lot of people commenting about how well Ethan held his head up when he was around two months old. She holds her head up much more and better than he did at this point which surprises me since she is so much smaller than he was.I think this picture is adorable with her head to the side a little like she is trying to figure out what I’m doing.

Mom’s Last Few Days in Hungary

2011-03-14T22:24:00.001+01:00

Mom bought some cucumber and zucchini seeds for us to plant, and then dug up an area for us to plant them. Ethan is “helping” her out. I can’t even keep house plants alive, so we’ll see how it goes. These pictures are from Mom’s last night before heading back.

Baby Shower

2011-03-14T22:21:00.001+01:00

The women on my team gave me a baby shower last Sunday. I wasn’t expecting a shower, so was surprised when Yulia mentioned it to me. I guess it’s more common when you have a 2nd child of a different gender. It was a lot of fun to get out of the house and socialize some. And Sienna slept the entire time which was nice. The decorations were great! Becky used this bassinet/crib for her children, so it wasn’t one of the gifts, but was perfect for holding the gifts. The mobile hanging above it was made by my team leader’s wife, Vivian. Sadly, she was sick and wasn’t able to come to the shower. She had planned to read something about a mobile and made this as an illustration.For now Sienna is sleeping in the pack‘n play in our bedroom, so my mom hung this from the ceiling fan in there. I still can’t believe that Vivian made all of these little birds and thought to hang them on sticks to make a mobile. I’m just not a crafty person at all to even think of such things.

Ethan’s Birthday Party

2011-03-11T22:20:00.001+01:00

We decided to wait until Mom arrived to have Ethan’s birthday party. And then he ended up being sick when we had it planned. So it was postponed again. We finally had it this past weekend. I made the cake and icing, and Mom decorated it with some spray green icing and stuff she brought from the States. I never heard of icing that you spray on a cake to give it color- very cool!Mom bought Ethan a Thomas the Train set, so we did that as a theme for the cake.

It’s so hard to plan parties for young children around naps, etc., so we did it from 12-2:00 and just had sandwiches and fruit for lunch. Then we had carrot cake and frozen yogurt. I put in 3/4 cups of sugar for the cake instead of the 2 cups that it calls for, but made the icing with the normal amount of sugar. I had planned to just scrape the icing and gum drops off of Ethan’s cake since we don’t give him sweets (the cake would be more than what we normally allow). I asked Ethan if he wanted cake and had a piece ready to give him. He responded, “No.” He wanted yogurt. I was surprised since all of his friends there were going to have cake, but of course, I was excited over his response. :-) For those of you reading this and who are thinking, “If you don’t let him have sweets then he will ‘pig out’ at someone’s house when he gets older and can have sweets there,”… well, we do plan to let him have sweets, but right now, he basically doesn’t even know what he is missing. I know a handful of people with older children who didn’t let them have sweets until they were from two years to school age and said that their children didn’t want or crave sweets as often. The key is moderation, but when Ethan doesn’t even know what ice cream, cake, cookies, potato chips, etc. are, our attitude is why introduce it to him for him to just want it a lot. Plus, Ethan is the firstborn. It’s much easier now with him than it will be with Sienna.Next year we will probably be celebrating both Ethan and Sienna’s birthdays at the same party since they have the same birthday. Hopefully that will work until they don’t want to do it anymore or have very different friends.Later in the day, we gave Ethan his presents and cards from family. We also learned not to do it so much later. He went down for his nap as soon as the party was over. When he woke, I needed to nurse and then it was dinner time. So he got his gifts after dinner… too close to bed time. Not a good choice on our part. :-) We bought this Thomas the Train book with attached tools when we were in the States in December. He enjoys trains and loves tools, so we thought he would enjoy it.And he did! I’m sure he will still enjoy using the real screwdriver, wrench, and hammer more than these toys, but he had fun playing with them. The next morning, it was the first thing he asked for when Gary walked into his room.

Handyman Mom

2011-03-08T21:02:00.001+01:00

Mom has been quite busy doing handyman things and teaching us how to do stuff. As soon as she arrived she began pointing things out in the house that needed fixing, etc. With everything she pointed out, our reply was that we didn’t know how to do it. Most of the stuff she was pointing out was stuff that she knew how to do with some exceptions. I often comment about how Gary is a walking, talking Bible where you can basically ask most any question about the Bible and he can answer it. Well, that is how Mom is with household things (indoor and out). For example, they were outside today and Gary pointed out the moss that is all over our backyard, and my mom just said to put lime on it. She also pruned our apple trees while they were outside. Soon after coming in, a guy across the street began pruning his fruit trees. Mom and Gary went over to talk to him about our trees. He said that the family who lived here before us actually had him plant the fruit trees in the yard and that now is the time that they need to be pruned. He said that our trees need it really bad (which makes sense, since we’ve never done it!). Our other neighbor actually came over last year or the year before and pruned the apple trees himself, on his own initiative, since they are still pretty small and growing. After Mom showed Gary how to prune the trees and they talked to the guy across the street, Gary is motivated to prune all of our fruit trees now.

We talked to Mom about how we hoped to paint some day but we don’t know how, and it cost too much for us to pay someone to do it. She just looked at us and said that she could paint while she was here. Our neighbor, Jennifer, is good with decor, etc. and came over to talk about paint colors and explained how painting is different over here than in the US. Everything she said meant nothing to us, but Mom has painted all of her homes, so she knew exactly what Jennifer was talking about. That is when Gary and I began learning about painting walls. During this time, we also learned that you can’t paint water-based paint over oil-based paint, which is what happened this fall when Gary’s parents were here and Gary accidentally bought oil-based paint for his dad to paint some shelves, and then bought water-based after it ran out. So, we’ll see what happens with them. :-) One thing that was quite frustrating for us was that you can’t buy little swatches or samples of paint over here to test out on the walls. You have to buy a liter (about 1/4 of a gallon), and paint is much more expensive here than in the US. We finally decided on a color and Mom began. She painted our kitchen and living room. We love the colors! Hopefully Gary was able to watch enough so that we can do any future painting in the house ourselves. Here are a couple of pictures of Ethan and Sienna with the finished brown living room wall in the background.Here Mom and Ethan are putting on upholstery fabric to a chair that had ripped fabric and foam coming out of it. We had to go to one store to buy the upholstery fabric and another store to buy the foam. Then we borrowed an American stapler gun from our neighbor.

No Pneumonia

2011-03-08T20:55:00.001+01:00

We went to the doctor yesterday for Sienna’s 3-week check-up. Sienna is doing better but still has congestion in her chest and is coughing some, so the doctor wanted to double check to see if she had pneumonia. While there, they did a chest x-ray, that Sienna didn’t like at all. We were all thankful that the results were negative. So, now it’s just a matter of waiting it out for her chest to get cleared up. Thanks to all of you who have been praying for her!We were at the doctor’s office for an hour and a half, so Mom took a nap in the chair while waiting. Gary and Sienna took a nap before dinner.

Sienna is Sick

2011-03-03T00:41:00.001+01:00

Ethan got a cold when Sienna was just under a week old, just a few days after we all got home. It was difficult because he wanted to hug and kiss on Sienna, but we were trying to have him kiss the back of her head and not touch her hands. It made it more difficult with her being ‘new’ in our home and he could not touch her much. Gary got the cold soon after Ethan, and then on Friday, Sienna had it. Thankfully she didn’t have a fever like Ethan did, but she was congested, coughing, and had a stuffy nose. It was so hard to know what to do since she was only 10 days old and doesn’t really breathe through her mouth, and had difficulty breathing through her nose. Over the weekend she began vomiting (not just spitting up, but vomiting with retching). Ethan never did that so it concerned us as to if she was getting enough food. At first I was afraid that I had eaten something that she was allergic to which caused the retching and vomiting. It was more noticeable that as she nursed she wasn’t able to breath and then would vomit. We thought that it was probably due to not being able to breathe, so we started using the orrszivo on her (you can see a picture of it below). The orrszivo is a Hungarian invention that is one of the best baby inventions that we’ve come across. You put one end into the vacuum cleaner and the other end in their nose, and it sucks the mucus out. It’s made for children from 0-6 years old. It works WAY better than those bulbs you put in their nose and squeeze to get the snot. Ethan likes it so much that he has learned to do it himself. However, it doesn’t really fit in Sienna’s nose, so it only sucks the little bit that is at the bottom of her nose. After going for her check-up today the doctor said to put saline drops in her nose which will dilute the mucus and cause it to come down, and then the orrszivo will suck it out. We are to do that before every nursing. I started getting the cold yesterday. The doctor said that now my body will produce antibodies against the cold, and they will be passed on to her. I said that it’s too bad that I didn’t get the cold last week when Gary did, and the doctor said it would have been better if I had gotten it last week. Gary said, “Well, if I would have known that, then I would have kissed you!” Once he got sick, he didn’t kiss me so I wouldn’t get sick.

Many people say that a newborn baby who is only breastfed can’t get sick. Yes, it’s true that they have antibodies passed to them through the breast milk, but if it’s a sickness that I’ve not had for me to have antibodies for, then she won’t have those antibodies. She only has the antibodies that I have. Dr. Orsi explained a lot about it to us today, so I learned a lot concerning those things.

Sienna seems to be doing better today, so we hope that she will continue to improve. Ethan had a MUCH better day yesterday. He was a total pill last week (probably between not feeling well and having a new sister around). I thought I would include this picture of Ethan from his two year check-up that was today. He can actually say the word stethoscope pretty well. We really like Dr. Orsi, our pediatrician. It is evident that she really enjoys children, and she lets us take as much time as needed to ask questions without making us feel like she needs to get to the next patient (something that I have rarely experienced in the States). She called me at the hospital a few days after I had Sienna. She told me that she would be on vacation the following week so her colleague would need to see Sienna for her first check-up, but told me that if I had worries about anything to call her while she was on vacation. She is even having us call her on Friday (her day OFF) to tell her how Sienna is doing with the vomiting, etc.

Already Two Weeks Old

2011-03-02T23:56:00.001+01:00

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been two weeks since Sienna was born.

In Hungary you go to the doctor for a check-up each week until the baby is one month old, then you go once a month for check-ups until they are six months old. When we went to the doctor for Sienna’s first check-up, she had gained a lot of weight and was doing well. The doctor said that she was very strong. When on her stomach, she was able to move forward on her own with her arms. The doctor said that she is actually strong enough to roll over without realizing it, and if she were to roll over onto her stomach, she could easily “crawl” off of whatever she is on. So, the doctor said to be sure not to just leave her somewhere like the bed. Her legs are pretty strong, and she is holding her head up well. Now I understand why I felt such kicking/hitting while she was in the womb (much more so than with Ethan). :-)Here is a picture of her on the quilt that Mom made for her. Mom was very eager to get her pink things, despite me not liking pale pink. However, now that Mom has seen her in lime green, Mom agrees that it looks better on her than pale pink. :-)

You can see where she scratched her face with her fingernails in the picture above. Unlike Ethan, she won’t keep her mitten on her hands. I guess her hands are smaller than Ethan’s, so they come off easier, but she definitely doesn’t like it when we put them on. I was able to go ahead and cut her nails so hopefully she won’t get anymore scratches like this.More pictures of her at two weeks…

Ethan and Sienna Meet

2011-02-28T11:28:00.001+01:00

We were able to leave the hospital a day earlier than scheduled (after 3 days instead of 4). Kristen brought Ethan to our house after dinner on Thursday and said that he had done fine the previous two days, but that on Thursday he had begun asking for us and being emotional. We met him at the door and then took him into the living room where Sienna was. He got happy and said, “Baby!” I took a video of him meeting Sienna, so I don’t have pictures from that. I am putting some pictures up from the next day where Ethan is being affectionate with her. He really likes to hug her and has gotten upset several times because he wants to hold her on his own.

My mom arrived on Saturday, after we had been home for 2 days. She has been very eager to meet her new granddaughter and see Ethan again. The last time she came to Hungary was over 10 years ago.Ethan giving Sienna a kiss above and enjoying holding her below.

Ethan’s Birthday Celebration at Yaikos

2011-02-26T17:06:00.001+01:00

Interestingly, Sienna was born on Ethan’s birthday, so we actually weren’t able to be with Ethan on his birthday- not that he even knew what day it was.

But, Kevin and Kristen were so sweet to have a celebration with their family to celebrate his 2nd birthday. Here are some pictures that Kristen sent. I just love this picture! Ethan with his little buddy, Seth, and Ethan looks so enthralled with what is going on.

I have never been away from Ethan as long as I was while in the hospital (3 days), so I missed him quite a bit. It brought such joy to my heart when Kristen sent this picture. Ethan didn’t even know it was his birthday, but they still did something special for him.

Kristen even made sugar free pudding for him to eat (knowing that we don’t give him sugary sweets). Doesn’t look like he liked it too much though. Kristen told me that he didn’t eat all of the pudding and ended up eating a yogurt instead. Glad to know he is making ‘healthy’ choices. :-)

Arrival of Sienna

2011-02-26T17:04:00.001+01:00

I know that the family has been patiently waiting to see pictures posted on here. I’m finally able to sit down for a bit (over several days :-)) to write and post some pictures.

Here are a few ‘before’ pictures that were taken about a week before Sienna was born.

And here is what everyone has been waiting for… the pictures including Sienna.Sienna was born at 2:44 am on February 15th (the same date that Ethan was born two years earlier). This picture was taken about 15 minutes after giving birth, as soon as they checked her out and cleaned her up.

All of these pictures were taken later the day she was born. She has a full head of hair, just like Ethan. Gary’s mom said that she is a Rickard because they all are born with a lot of hair. Ethan’s hair never fell out. I’m hoping that hers doesn’t either. The Custers were Sienna’s first visitors. I’m not sure if William knew what to think, but either way, it is a little preparation for the arrival of his little brother in April.It’s hard to say who we think she looks like at this point other than we both think that she looks like Ethan. It is evident that she has Gary’s forehead and possibly his cowlick (hopefully not :-)) and Kim’s nose.

For those who are interested in reading about the labor and delivery you can read below. Otherwise, you can just skip this part and read the last 2 or 3 paragraphs. :-)

When we returned from the mission’s conference in January (4 weeks before the due date) I was dilated 3 cm. I attributed it to being on my feet all week long at the conference and was more careful when exercising after that so not to speed things up. When I went to the doctor on the 14th (11 days before the due date), the doctor said that I was fully effaced and 4 cm dilated. He said that my body was completely ready to give birth and that she could come today, tomorrow, or just wait until the next week. A friend had offered to babysit Ethan after he was born, and we had never taken her up on it. Since we rarely go out on dates and knew it would be more difficult with the baby being born soon, Gary asked her at church on Sunday to watch Ethan sometime in the week. She said that she could watch him on Monday night (Valentine’s Day). So, Gary and I went out. Contractions began while we were out. When we came home we decided to go ahead and pack the car and bring Ethan’s suitcase, etc. by the front door. The contractions continued to get closer together, but I was expecting them to be stronger than they were. With Ethan, they came on very quick and went down to 5 minutes within an hour and a half. I remember not even being able to stand up with the contractions before we left the house. This time, I could still stand up but was hurling over some and swaying from side to side (not being able to just stand in one place). A friend down the street offered for us to call her if I went into labor in the middle of the night so she could just come sleep at the house rather than us waking Ethan up and taking him somewhere. We finally decided to call her to come. We left the house a little before 1:30 am and arrived at the hospital a few minutes before 2:00. When we got there my doctor was on call and examined me. He said that I was 8 cm dilated and then broke my water (he actually had a hard time breaking it; he said the membrane was real strong). He had to break my water with Ethan too (and neither Ethan nor Sienna had dropped before that point). He told me to go to my room and change and then walk back down the hall for him to check me again. While in the room the contractions were much stronger. Gary and the nurse helped me walk back down the hall and as soon as we got to the room for the doctor to examine me, I had to stop with a contraction. I felt a need to push during the contraction and just automatically started squatting some and pushing. The nurse quickly took me directly across the hall into the delivery room and called the doctor to come over. As soon as they got me on the table, he told me that I could start pushing. There were four series of pushes and she was out. After I gave birth I told the doctor that that was fast. He said yes and that had he not been on call that he would not have made it for the delivery. There would have been a different doctor on call, but we were thankful that he was there since we knew him and he had been working with me this whole time (and he speaks English). He is the same doctor who delivered Ethan.

It was such a different (and better) experience this time. After I gave birth Gary told me that I acted like I hadn’t even given birth. After giving birth to Ethan I was totally wiped out. Ethan’s umbilical cord was really short, so it took him quite a while to drop after the doctor broke my water, and I had to push for a long time. I was thankful that she dropped quickly. The most painful part was getting sewed up from tearing some. Last time my doctor did an episiotomy and then I tore in 2 places, so the pain afterward was FAR less this time and the recovery has been a night and day difference. It feels WONDERFUL to have some soreness compared to a lot of pain as well as to be able to walk around or stand up and sit down while holding Sienna. I feel like I can enjoy her much more at this stage in her life.

It was even a better experience at the hospital since there was at least one English speaking nurse on duty each shift. When Ethan was born there were hardly any English speaking nurses the whole 4 days. There are still some differences and issues with the nurses there, but I still felt much more comfortable since this was my 2nd time having a baby there.

I’m thankful to God for a healthy and safe delivery and for a recovery that is so much better than last time. I know that everything is supposed to be faster and better with having more children, but I know of some cases where it was more difficult. So, I’m VERY grateful that wasn’t my experience. I’m also thankful for friends who pitched in with coming to sleep with Ethan and feed him breakfast and take him during our stay in the hospital (THANK YOU Yulia and Kevin & Kristen!!!).

I will share a little interesting thing that Yulia shared about the morning that she got Ethan out of bed. Thankfully it went well (he had one person besides us putting him to bed since we were out and then had a different person besides us getting him out of bed). Yulia said that when she carried him downstairs that he asked for Daddy. She told him that he was helping Mommy. Then he said, “Doctor?” She said yes that we were with the doctor, and then he said, “Baby?” We know that there is no way he could understand that I was having the baby, but we found it interesting that he just put that together about being with the doctor when she said that Gary was helping me. He has gone to all of my doctor appointments and been listening to the baby’s heartbeat as they monitored it (including the day before she was born), so I’m sure it was on his mind a good bit.

Our Mission Conference

2011-02-13T15:50:00.001+01:00

Well, I don’t even know where to begin. As usual, I’m behind on the blog. Once we returned from the States I haven’t done anything but eat, sleep, and breathe the conference that was at the end of January. I was asked to be the childcare coordinator for the 0-4 year olds for our mission conference that is held every 3 years. I was busy in the fall with this, but was consumed with it in the weeks leading up to it. Gary and I have always gone to bed together, so when my average time of going to bed for 3 straight weeks was 2:00 am, that meant it was his average bed-time too. He had stuff to do and work on, but I know he would have preferred to go to bed sooner (as I would have).

We had a house guest the week before the conference who was one of the key people involved in the planning of it, so each night after Ethan went to bed, all 3 of us were busy working on conference stuff. My home church sent a team of 5 over to help with the childcare. I recruited 16 others from Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, including some teachers and students from ICSB. The work alone of recruiting, dealing with transportation issues for many, and even getting involved in medical insurance for the Eastern Europeans since they were having to travel to a different country was much more than I imagined. I ended up being on my feet running around during most of the conference. I attended two of the main sessions. Gary was recognized for serving with CCC for 25 years (in the picture above), so I was glad to attend that session.

I had a great time getting to see the team from my home church and spend time with them, though I didn’t realize that so much of my time with them would be talking about childcare issue concerning the conference. The team were such troopers! They arrived without their luggage and ended up wearing the same clothes for about 4 days. The supplies and snacks for the kids were in the suitcases, so they had to adjust and be quite flexible at the beginning. This was the first time that three of the five had left the country, so they had quite a beginning to their week. So they arrived, jet-lagged and no luggage, and then jumped in working with lots of children from 12 different countries (and many not speaking English). Many of these children had never been left with anyone outside of family before this conference, so you can imagine how much crying there was the first night and next day as parents dropped off their children. We had 15 babies that were 2-6 months old.I never stepped foot outside of the hotel all week except to take this picture of Gary and Ethan from our balcony. Gary and I had planned to go to the neighboring town during an afternoon that was free time, but it was the end of the week and my legs and feet were enormous from swelling due to being on my feet all week, and I couldn’t have walked the mile to get there and back due to my feet hurting me so badly. This is a picture of Ethan during lunch on our last day. This is probably how many felt, especially the kids who had such long days. Ethan was having to get up earlier than normal and was going to bed later than his bedtime due to the conference schedule. Gary and I were so thankful that he is a pretty flexible child and that he is so social. That saved us from lots of meltdowns during the week. I couldn’t have imagined having the responsibilities that I had at this conference had Ethan been having meltdowns and not enjoyed being around so many people.

I’m quite eager to see the personality that God gives our little girl. I know that she will be very different from Ethan, but I do hope she is easy-going like Gary and Ethan. She will probably be introverted since Ethan is so extroverted, but it will make life easier if she has some extrovertedness. But God knows best what our family needs, so we will see.

Statues

2011-02-08T23:47:00.001+01:00

I had this blog post done and saved on my computer that I forgot to post. These are from when we were in the US in December.

Ethan learned the word “statue” around November and has used it often. He knows when we drive by the church in Diosd (our village) that there is a statue and points it out every time we get anywhere close to it.

There is a park near Gary’s parents’ house that is full of different statues. Ethan really enjoyed walking around and seeing them.

Christmas Day

2010-12-29T08:42:00.001+01:00

Bret, Seth, and Kenna were able to come over for a Christmas brunch before going to Denver. Mom made an egg casserole the night before and then bacon, biscuits, and homemade gravy (of course, I requested the biscuits and gravy :-)). Debbie made a braided bread. I love eating breakfast things like this but never make biscuits and gravy and rarely make bacon. It’s so yummy, but so bad for you.Ethan with his cousins, Seth and Kenna, above, and with his grandmothers below. This will possibly be the only time that he will be with both grandparents at the same time.This was the first time that Mom has been in CO. Gary’s parents had thought about taking her to the mountains while she was here. I’ve never seen the Rocky mountains in the winter, and Gary hasn’t in a long time, so we thought that Christmas Day would be ideal to go since it shouldn’t be so crowded and we didn’t have plans after the brunch. Debbie ended up staying home while Kent, Gary, Mom, Ethan, and I went to Rocky Mountain National Park. On the drive up the mountain we saw some bighorn sheep. There were several rams in the group. Though this picture needs some cropping and enlarging, it’s the only one that turned out of all of us. If I wait until it can be cropped then this post won’t go up for several weeks. :-)We were surprised at how sunny and warm it was in the park. We didn’t even need to wear our coats. The interesting thing is that CO hasn’t had much snow so far this year, and western NC got a lot of snow on Christmas. I think it may have been their first white Christmas in quite a while.We saw these elk while in the park. I like how the sunrays are coming down on them in the picture above. Below is the bull that was in the group.

We were standing on the frozen, snow-covered lake at Bear Lake. The sun had gone down behind the mountain by this time, so it was quite cold.On our drive home (outside of the park), there were quite a few elk on the side of the road. I took this picture of a bull with the side mirror in the picture to show how close he was to the car.

Christmas with Family

2010-12-29T08:16:00.001+01:00

Since Bret and the kids were going to Lori’s parents’ house for Christmas dinner, we did a Christmas dinner and opened gifts on Christmas Eve. Mom and I made the ham, and Debbie made the side dishes.Ethan played the piano while we sang Christmas songs. Just kidding. Actually, Debbie played.2- However, Ethan got a toy piano from his Papa and Nana.

We got Ethan a transportation puzzle. All of the grandparents got him really “cool” gifts (and, of course, the gifts that make noise). I thought this was a neat picture of Gary, Bret, Seth, and Kenna hanging out.

Christmas Lights

2010-12-27T06:27:00.001+01:00

Mom was planning to come to Budapest for Christmas, but was able to change her ticket once we found out that Lori died and that we would be coming back to the States. She ended up getting a ticket to come to CO for Christmas. We stopped in downtown Denver to see Christmas lights on our way to pick her up at the airport.This building is the Denver City and County Building and is lit up each Christmas. I love Christmas lights, so it was fun to see this building. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before.

Family Pictures

2010-12-26T07:14:00.001+01:00

We had someone take some family pictures while Gary’s brother, Neil, was here from TX and we were here. We did them in front of a fireplace in the assisted living home where Gary’s grandmother lives. The background looked just as good as, if not better than, at a professional studio. I have several entries partially done and saved and may not even post them until after we return to Budapest. I’m hoping to get some specific entries up sooner from Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all of those reading this!

Ethan in CO

2010-12-20T02:32:00.001+01:00

Now, I will go back to putting more pictures than writing. :-)

Here are some pictures of Ethan with the family from the last couple of days.Ethan has absolutely loved playing with Papa. Just like he is a Daddy’s boy, he is a grandpa’s boy. Kent and Debbie had some little cars and toys here already, so Ethan has been very entertained with “different” toys and has wanted to show them to every person around.Debbie use to be a music and piano teacher, so she has two pianos at home. Ethan has crawled up on the piano bench multiple times a day and has enjoyed playing the piano. The impressive thing to me is that he doesn’t just always bang on the keys. Sometimes he only hits a few of the keys and sometimes even does it softly. Maybe Nana can teach him how to play before we leave. :-)

Gary, his two brothers, and Seth and Kenna played a game of Risk while Ethan took turns going around the table sitting in laps. Ethan has just loved all of the attention that he has gotten and everyone holding him all of the time. He will be in for a rude awakening when we return to Budapest, and it’s just Mom and Dad at home.

Sister-in-law

2010-12-20T01:26:00.001+01:00

I’ll go ahead and say that this post will be a lot of writing and only one picture.

Probably most of you who are reading this know that our sister-in-law, Lori, died on December 10th after a 21 month battle with breast cancer. Bret, Lori’s husband and Gary’s brother, sent an e-mail out that was a great testimony. He wrote: “My sweet, amazing Lori has fought the good fight, and this morning she passed on to be with the Lord. Friday morning (12/10) at 5:20 am Lori gained full victory over the disease of cancer as her Lord Jesus ushered her to her forever true home. Her sister, Brenda, her wonderful children Seth and Kenna, and I were all with her to say goodbye. Shortly thereafter many family and friends have blessed us with their well wishes. Lori’s faith in Jesus to completely save is now beautifully realized!”

We were able to get tickets to come back the day before the funeral. Ethan didn’t have a seat, and it didn’t look like we would be able to get a seat with a bassinet, which meant over 10 straight hours of him being on our laps. God continually provided, and our trip was much better than we expected. We went from the very last 2 seats on the plane that didn’t recline to where one of us were able to get a seat with the bassinet and the other one would have to stay in the last row to where we were both able to get on the row with the bassinet but with 2 seats of other people between us. Then once we got on the plane, the woman next to Gary noticed that we were together and asked if I wanted to change seats with her so I could be next to Gary and she could have an aisle seat. So, Gary and I were able to sit next to each other AND have a bassinet for Ethan. The interesting thing was that the plane didn’t take off for awhile because there seemed to be so many people complaining to the flight attendants about their seats. Gary and I heard several people trying to switch seats with people and talking to the flight attendants about problems with their seats. Neither of us have seen so much changing of seats and problems on a flight before. That made me all the more thankful for how God provided for us. And, to top it off, we were on a plane where you can go downstairs to the bathroom which was better for me than just walking up and down the aisles since I needed to get up and move around every hour due to blood clotting being more prone in pregnant women.

We woke Ethan just before leaving the house, at 4:30 am, and just took him to the airport in his pajamas. Surprisingly, he stayed awake on the whole drive to the airport. The flight to Germany wasn’t full, so Gary moved to an empty row to get a little sleep. As usual, Ethan was a big hit with the flight attendant, so she carried him around the plane several times. Near the end of our 4 hour layover in Frankfurt, we were in the security line (which was very long). That was the first time that Ethan began getting fussy and having a meltdown. Before too long, one of the security workers let us jump line and go through since we had a young child. I don’t know if she would have noticed us had Ethan been quiet. We weren’t in a hurry but it was nice to not have to wait so long in line. After getting up so early in the morning, Ethan didn’t sleep until his normal nap time and only slept the amount of time as his normal nap time. He still did well on the flight. We know that there were many people praying for us and our travels here, so we are thankful for that! Please also pray for our return trip.

The funeral was a great testimony to the Lord. Several of Lori’s friends shared some stories about her. Bret played a recording of a song that Lori wrote a few months ago and he and one of Lori’s friends sang it and then taught it to everyone to sing along. Bret said that at least one of her doctors was there. He counted 470 people who signed the visitor book for the funeral. One of the people commented to me, afterward, that it was the best funeral service they had ever been to.

We are all so glad that Lori is not suffering or in pain anymore. I am sad for Bret and the kids who are 13 and 17 years old. Even though my dad died when I was 26 years old, I can’t imagine what they are going through. I do know that God is sovereign and His timing is perfect. His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts than our thoughts. I do pray that Seth and Kenna will know His presence and peace and feel their Heavenly Father’s arms wrapped around them like I did when my dad was dying from cancer. I just don’t know how people handle these types of things when they are not Christians. I’m sure God will be using this family as an example to those who don’t know God personally.

Here is a picture of Ethan with his cousins, Seth and Kenna.

Thanksgiving

2010-12-04T23:45:00.001+01:00

We had a good Thanksgiving here. The plans of where it would be and who all would be there changed around some, but it ended up working out well. And, the food was delicious!

Since Thanksgiving is something celebrated in Canada and the US, it isn’t a holiday here, but ICSB is cancelled and the Americans do celebrate it. Of course, you can’t just go to the store and buy a turkey like in the States. So you have to either fix turkey breasts or go to a butcher shop and order a turkey. Our group did the latter. Here is a picture, below, of Justin carving it. Kids playing before time to eat. It’s actually not Ethan in Gary’s lap. This is William, Ethan’s friend who is 4 months younger. His mom is also expecting their 2nd child. Ethan is in the corner behind Gary getting a book.

We celebrated with an Albanian family, a family that is part American and part Belarusian, an American family, and one of the singles from ICSB. The Beatty family didn’t make it into the picture. Ethan was too interested in toys to eat, so we took his food home with us and gave it to him a few days later. He’s very social (wonder where he got that from!), so when we are with a large group, he tends to not eat anything.

All Saints Day

2010-11-21T22:59:00.001+01:00

November 1st is a holiday in Hungary, All Saints Day. It is interesting because in the States the only holiday around this time of year that I was familiar with was Halloween. That is not celebrated over here. However, Reformation Day, which is also October 31st is celebrated in Europe (where there is a larger Reformed population) in addition to All Saints Day which is celebrated in the Catholic countries of Europe. Since Hungary is a Catholic country and has a small percentage of members of the Reformed Church, All Saints Day is celebrated here rather than Reformation Day.

The CCC office and school have Nov.1st off (since it is a major holiday where places are closed). Gary had a meeting at the office in the afternoon anyway, but we decided to go hiking beforehand in the hills near his office. We enjoyed it because usually all of our Saturdays are filled with doing house and yard work. It was a beautiful day for hiking too!Ethan had lots of fun with this rock, mostly just picking it up and throwing it down over and over again. I know that these 2 pictures are similar, but I liked his smile in the one above where he was having fun with the rock, and I like how he is looking straight at the camera and reaching out in the picture below.

Pumpkin Pictures

2010-11-07T23:11:00.001+01:00

Here are some pictures that we took of Ethan in October.