Last weekend, BKV, the Budapest Transportation Department, celebrated its 40th anniversary. So our friends took us to the BKV traffic Museum. It was so awesome. Thanks T & Z! Here are some pictures:

Yesterday we went downtown to see the Easter market at Vörösmarty tér.  On the way we stopped to play on one of the many awesome (and somewhat dangerous) playground toys they have in Hungary.

We also happened to see the city’s annual pillow fight.

It was so awesome to have a visit from our Szegedi friends (the Georges) and to share an early Easter dinner.

Seth has been working hard on reading and writing.  Here’s three of his latest words.  :)

Az idő szokatlanul szép volt ezen a napon.  Amikor felmentünk ezzel a mozgólépcsővel a HÉV végénél, láthattuk a kék éget.  Miután összetalálkoztam néhány ismerősömmel, gondoltam, hogy alkamas lefényképezni a Batthyányi tér környezetét és a napi munkát végző embereket, akik elsuhantak mellettem.  Talán többet kellene magyarul írnom.  :)

While I was out of town this weekend for some meetings, Joanna came and stayed with Laura and the boys.  Joanna hanging out with the kids for a weekend = FUN.  Besides learning some new funky dances, the boys went to the city zoo.  (Jo, I lifted some of your pictures from facebook.  :)  THANK YOU Joanna for serving us!  It was a beatuiful weekend, and Seth and Jacob were excited to finally  be able to wear their hokie hats.

At the Zoo.

Reading the Map

Jake and Dori discussing Hungarian politics.

On Friday night, while I was gone, Laura had a női búli, and she made the best cheesecake ever known to humankind.

Milyen magas vagy?

Backwards pants

To all of our Hungarian friends who read this blog, I would like to say THANK YOU to your ancestors for creating Tárkonyos Leves (Taragon Soup). 

Here’s some pictures from the last couple days….

Jet Lag.  We had three friends from California and Virginia visiting on Wed. & Thurs.  Below, Tom is experiencing the jet lag head-bob while riding the train from Vác to Budapest.

On the HÉV.

Meeting in the Parliament.  Thanks Kristof for giving us the insider tour!

Waiting at school for basketball practice at school:

Basketball Practice: (Seth in blue, Jacob in orange)

Go Team!  “egy….kettő…három….MACI!”

AngolEst:  Thursday Night English Club in the tea house.

Mario sang a song called Humble King. 

Tom shared some amazing stories about their work with street kids in Kiev Ukraine over the last 10 or so years.

Here is Jacob’s class.  (Jake is in the top row, third from the right)

Here’s Seth’s class.  (Middle row, beside the teacher on the right.)

Laura and I celebrated our 10.3 year anniversary this past weekend.  Thank you Joanna for keeping the boys and being such a tremendous blessing!!!!!  We went to a place called Bük, which is right in the middle of Nowhere, Hungary.  The big attraction is the thermal spring (you know Hungary has the second highest concentration of thermal springs in the world).  Well, we didn’t actually enjoy the thermal waters, but we enjoyed the country side a lot!  Bük is close to the border of Austria, so we drove across and caught sight of the Alp foothills.  Here’s some pics:



Here’s a view of the abandoned border stations!!

Nathan is the puzzle king of the house.  Lately he’s been putting them together back-side up.  Crazy.

This may be Jacob’s first step toward waterpolo:

Here are Seth and Jacob thinking about all the people in this city:

Some environmental adjustments lately:  We are gaining something like 12 minutes of sunlight every week.  Ahhhhhhhh.  :)  The sun setting at 3:30 is just wrong.  It’s also been above freezing for several days now.  We’re a little sad to see the snow melting, but the igloo in the back yard is still standing strong (without a roof).

Happy New Year!  I hope you are leaping into 2008 with eager expectation.  For the new year I’d like to carve out three 45 minute slots per week for swimming and possibly swim the 5 Kilometer race across lake Balaton in the summer.  Never thought I would enjoy swimming for exercise, but it has really grown on me while living in the water polo capital of the world.   

I’m also adding a couple new components to my journaling this year.  Journaling has been so helpful for me over the years with the inward, outward, and upward journey.  I’m also really glad moleskin notebooks are back in business!!

Thirdly, I’d like to create more integration between this blog and our present communities, our work with Nexus, and our spiritual and family journey here in Budapest.  I’ve mapped out a plan for this, and I’m going to give it a try for a month and see if the plan needs adjusting. 

Fourthly, we of course still have some concrete goals for working hard on the Hungarian language. 

I’ve heard that 46% of us are still keeping our resolutions after six months.  That sounds conservative to me.  So here is a helpful acronym for goal planning from the project management world- S.M.A.R.T.:

• Specific - goals should be specific and clear as opposed to general.
• Measurable - goals need to be capable of being measured in some fashion.
• Adjustable - there needs to be a way to adjust your goals according to your rate of progress…if it is faster or slower than originally anticipated. 
• Realistic - goals can be set beyond you present ability but are attainable over the present length of time.  Research says that difficult goals usually lead to improved performance as long as those goals do not exceed your ability to attain them. 
• Time-based - there should be a clear time-frame (short-term, intermediate-term, long-term.)  There should be clear target dates set from the beginning.  

And you know, thinking of goals in positive terms instead of negative terms is always more effective.  And process goals are usually better than outcome goals (improving effort or performance vs. winning a competition).  And finally, most goals deserve a good strategy.

With our minds we plan our ways,
But God directs our steps.
-Proverbs 16:9