Brothers/Tesók

We thought you may be interested in seeing these two pictures. They show Oliver and Benjamin at approximately the same age.
Gondoltuk, érdekel titeket ez a két kép. Olivér és Benjámin körülbelül egyidősek rajtuk.

The first one was taken in Yosemite National Park in the summer of 2004.
Az első a Yosemite Nemzeti Parkban készült 2004. nyarán.


The second one was taken a few weeks ago at Vitány Vár, a castle near Tatabánya.
A második egy pár hete készült Vitány Várnál, Tatabányától nem messze.


We'll let you decide whether you think our boys look alike or not. :)
Mindenki eldöntheti magának, hogy a fiúk hasonlítanak-e egymásra avagy nem. :)

9 months/hónap!

Benjamin is 9 months old today! It is an interesting age, as out of his total life of a year and a half, he has spent an equal amount of time inside my tummy and outside! :) He is doing well and is still a content, happy little fellow. He has started to crawl and today was the first time that he moved from one room to the other (time to start packing things away!) Here are a few pictures of him!
Benjámin ma 9 hónapos! Érdekes ez a kor, életének összesen másfél évéből ugyanannyit töltött bent a pocakomban mint kint! :) Említett személy igen jól érzi magát, továbbra is kiegyensúlyozott, vidám kis fickó. Már elkezdett mászni, és ma volt az első alkalom, hogy egyik szobából átjött a másikba (kezdhetjük a pakolást)! Imhol néhány kép róla! :)

We are still alive!/Még élünk!

Hi all,

Sorry that we have kind of disappeared from the world of blogs in the past few weeks. Life is in full swing! Apart from our regular activities and jobs we have had a lot of visitors (among others Matthew's brother and his family; you may want to visit their blog at www.aaronjen.blogspot.com). We spent the last weekend at Vajta at an OM retreat. This picture was taken there. Soon we'll be back with more photos and updates; right now we just wanted to let you know that we are still alive! :)

Sziasztok!

Bocsánat, hogy az elmúlt hetekben kicsit eltűntünk a blogok világából. Zajlik az élet, a szokásos programok, feladatok mellett sok látogatónk is volt (többek közt Matt tesójáék; érdemes megnézni az ő blogjukat is a www.aaronjen.blogspot.com címen). Most hétvégén Vajtán voltunk egy OM-es konferencián, ott készült ez a családi fotó. Hamarosan újabb képekkel és hírekkel jelentkezünk, most csak életjelet akartunk adni magunkról! :)

From the attic

May 1st is the labor day here in Hungary, and in many other parts of the world. We had some guests over for a barbecue. We had a good time. Here are a couple pictures, which I think turned out mighty fine.Oliver and Zsigmond in the attic of our "barn." It used to be a butcher house, later it was an upholsterer's workshop but we hope that in the near future it will simply be history. The building occupies 70% of our yard. But until we knock it down, Oliver loves to go up into the attic and get dirty.
Here he is playing with the light. I think these look like pictures for a 1980s Steven Spielberg movie.

Mustache

I decided to surprise Melinda the other day. She said, "no kissing until you take that off!" I left it on for the evening. I would have forgotten about it except that she kept giggling. I don't know, I think I like it!

Dove Club

You may have heard that we've started a once a month English club here in Tatabánya. We had our April club on the 14th. Though we had many special guests (9 American students from the Calvary Chapel Bible school here in Hungary) Eric Spreng, our good friend from Fort Wayne, IN was our VERY special guest. He had everyone laughing with his funny stories.

We have an English language Dove Club Blog set up. The link is also in the side bar. Be sure to check this out from time to time to see what we're up to. So far, I think it has been a great tool for meeting and getting to know students here in Tatabánya.

The next one will be May 19th and my very own little brother, Aaron, along with his lovely wife, Jen, will be our special guests. But the REALLY special guest will be their 4 month old, Ella. At the moment, they are in Central Asia and have a compelling story to tell. If you want to check out their blog, click this.

Eric Spreng

Here's Eric, the fabulous, rockin' the Dove Club!

Eric was a huge hit with Oliver. He asked Eric to read Green Eggs and ham at every nap time!

It was hard to get us all in the picture.

Hanging out in Tatabánya!

Illy

Here we go again with another coffee entry. I would have to say that Illy is my favorite espresso if you were asking. I doubt that you were, but if you were, Illy would be my answer.

In Budapest at the airport Terminal 1, I found this massive, chrome espresso bar. It was very exciting! And since Eric Spreng took for-ever to come out from behind those mirrored glass doors (that is why I was there, to pick up Eric), I had the rare opportunity to enjoy coffee at its finest.

I could write more than you care to read about Illy. Everything about it is near perfect. Even the cups they serve their coffee in are like no other.

Anyway, as a side to my coffee obsession, it is also worth noting that Terminal 1 was where I arrived into Hungary on March 30, 1993 for the first time! Back then it was a very dark, dirty airport. But even then, I liked it. It was small, classic and had a nice view of the airstrip. When Terminal 2a and 2b were fully operational, they closed Terminal 1 and I figured it would just become a warehouse. But 1.5 years ago, they reopened it, fully remodeled, to handle the new marked of inter-European budget airlines.

Thanks for reading, I'll try to get somethings up from Eric's visit soon. ~matthew

Here in Hungary, the Monday after Easter is an observed holiday. If the weather permits, Hungarians celebrate by having a cook out in the park.

This year not only did the weather permit, but it was beautiful. We went out to a clearing in the forest near our house with the church. We had about 30 people come out. We threw a frisbee around, talked, played with the kids and, perhaps most importantly, ate.

In Hungary, they take smoked bacon fat, put it out a stick with an onion and cook it over the fire. As the bacon fat melts, you try and let it drip on a piece of bread. In the end you have a smoky, salty, greasy slice of bread with onion and bacon on it. For you Americans it may not sound good, but trust me, it is!

Húsvéti Kirándulás

We cooked other things as well, like sausage and hot dogs. We ate lots of cookies and snacks as well. A real picnic. Enjoy some of the pictures here as well as the wrestling match between Zsolt and Szilveszter.

New Blog

Welcome to our new blog at Blogger. It looks like it's going to be a lot easier and nicer to post to. We hope you enjoy it. Come back often, and don't forget to bookmark this new page. ~matthew