Cute Christmas Pictures

Here are a few Christmassy pictures from this month that I thought were cute, but they didn’t really fit on the other blog posts. :-)

Ethan and Sienna playing the tambourine and bells.  Check out Sienna’s “Dorothy” shoes that my mom got her.

We tried a lot to get a family photo with us dressed up, but most attempts were unsuccessful.  How in the world do families get a good picture of the whole family when they have 3 or 4 young kids?!

Christmas Day

We had a good-sized group over for Christmas dinner.  Since there were 6 boys all under age eight (5 of them not being in school yet), I thought it would be good for them to burn some energy off at the beginning.  So the kids played outside in the snow when they arrived.

Some of the kids ate at the “big” table while some ate at the “little” table.  Before it was over Joshua and Nathan ended up on their mom’s laps, and Sienna ended up in her booster seat.  So, William was the only one left at the “little” table. 

After we ate Gary played the guitar while we all song Christmas songs.  The kids played instruments (well, at least some of the kids did :-)).

It was great having the Custers, Strellmans, Luiza’s mother from Romania, and Amanda over!

It is such a blessing to have the freedom to celebrate the birth of Christ and sing Christian songs without worrying if my neighbor will call the police (many people in certain parts of the world are not able to openly celebrate like us).

I hope all of you reading this had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Adam

The people at Campus Crusade’s headquarters here celebrate Christmas Adam, which is the day before Christmas Eve (Adam came before Eve… get it? :-)).  We usually have a dinner and then sing songs or have some kind of program.  In recent years Gary and I have not been able to pay much attention beyond eating with having young kids.  In fact, this year we were out in the hallway for most of the program because that is where the kids were.

Ethan counting to 10 while the other kids (except William and Sienna) ran down the hall.  I’m not sure what they were playing since there was no place to hide.  I think it was a version of tag.  

Ethan followed one of the older kids back into the main room where everyone was while Gary and I were still out in the hall with Sienna.  Unknown to us, the little kids had been told to come up front.  Then Ethan said with a loud voice, “I’m a kid!”  We were told that it was really funny and everyone laughed.  When we did make it back in the room, the kids were singing.

At the end of each song Ethan kept asking Greg if he was going to play the bongo drum.  Either he ended up asking if he could play it or Greg thought he was asking that, so Ethan helped play the last song on the drum.  He really enjoyed that.

Snow

A couple of weeks ago we had a decent amount of snow.  I’m not sure who was more excited… me or Ethan.

Sienna doesn’t remember the snow from last year, so this was kind of like her first experience trying to play in it. Her snow suit and boots are all too big for her, so she had a hard time even walking around. And, if she fell down, she couldn’t get herself back up. She wanted to go back inside after being out a very short time. I ended up bringing her snack outside so we could stay a little longer. She loves to eat!

Ethan trying to help Sienna up… unsuccessfully. 

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Gary and Ethan got the Christmas tree put up the Saturday after Thanksgiving and then we decorated it the following Saturday.

Ethan was eager to help Daddy out in every aspect of decorating the tree. 

Trying to figure out the lights

  This picture totally captures Ethan and Sienna’s personality or maybe it’s just the difference in being boy and girl.  All she wanted to do during this part was to read.  Ethan loves to read, but in this case he would rather “work” on something or “figure something out”.

We finished decorating the tree on Sunday after our guests left from celebrating Advent.Ethan and Sienna each hung the Christmas ornament that Grandma gave them for their first Christmas.

We tried to get some pictures of the kids after decorating the tree, but most didn’t turn out.  Sienna isn’t much for sitting still for Mommy’s 10 million pictures.  We thought this one was pretty cute though.

Thanksgiving

The American missionaries here celebrate Thanksgiving.  Though we celebrate the holiday, there are certain things that are different because of living overseas.  The main one is that you can’t go to the grocery store to buy a turkey.  But we can order one from the butcher in our village.  He has gotten used to the Americans here coming and ordering turkeys from him this time of the year.  A Hungarian friend said that the butcher told her that he sold 40-some turkeys last year for Thanksgiving.  A long time ago, you would have picked up your turkey with the neck still attached.  When we picked ours up, the neck was cut off and placed inside the turkey, and the giblets and insides had all been taken out.

One interesting thing about getting the turkey was that we didn’t get to decide what size turkey we wanted.  The butcher just said that it would be between 6 and 9 kilograms (13-20 pounds).  He also didn’t tell us how much it would cost.  When Gary went to pick it up, he asked for the smallest turkey he had, and the butcher gave him an 18 pound turkey!  The price was shocking too.

We were glad to have the Custer family join us for Thanksgiving this year. 

My 1st turkey

Some of you may be wondering how I could have gone this long without cooking a turkey.  Before Gary and I got married, we would always be invited to someone else’s house for Thanksgiving. Since we’ve been married, we’ve only been in Hungary for 2 Thanksgivings (this was our 3rd) due to being gone for furloughs and recruiting trips that were over Thanksgiving.

I’m not a huge fan of the traditional Thanksgiving food (LOTS of starches), but the food was good.  Michelle and I spent a long time cooking since everything has to be done from scratch.  She even made the onions from scratch that go on the green bean casserole. 

Gary read a Thanksgiving book to the kids. 

After the book they drew hand turkeys.

It’s fun being able to do more things in regards to holidays as the kids are getting older.  I’m eager to see what all Ethan is able to understand with Advent this year.

There are soooo many things to be thankful to God for.  I’m not even going to begin to write them on this blog or I will be writing for a very long time!

Pumpkin Pics

I thought it would be fun to compare some pictures of Ethan at 20 months and Sienna at 20 months.  Since they have the same birthday it is fun to look at pictures of them wearing the same coat at the exact same age.

   Above is Sienna at 20 months, and below is Ethan at 20 months (from two years ago).  Notice how much bigger the coat is on her than on him.

Here is another picture of Sienna from this fall.

Here are a few pictures of Ethan from this fall. 

And here they are together