Happy Holidays!!!

Hello Everyone! I know I know I am waaay over due for a blog post. I have so much to catch up on. It's now a little over a week away from Christmas and I can hardly wait. This is my absolute favorite time of year. We wanted our first Christmas away from home to seem as much like home as possible. We bought a little tree, and decorated it and our apartment a little. This morning Jules and I made gingerbread houses and lets just say it was a lot harder than we thought. I plan to do some Christmas baking here in the next few days too.

Yesterday Derek's sister Sarah had her first baby!!! We are so excited for Sarah and Eric, and so excited to be Aunt and Uncle to the cute little guy. Can't wait to meet him!! April can not come fast enough. That's all for now, but I will post more about the McKinlay's trip to visit us, and Dr's awesome year!! Love you all, and Happy Holidays!!!

HOCKEY

Well, we are three games into the regular season now. Derek is doing great. He already has his first goal and assist. The team is 1-2 and they have another tough road game tomorrow. Cross your fingers they get a big W. They have had 2 of their 3 games on the road, so I haven't been able to watch. Before the regular season started they had a memorial tournament at the rink. Their team won the tournament, and Derek was named Forward of the tournament. He got a really nice (and expensive) piece of Handmade Hungarian China as his award. Its apparently worth $400 Euro which is about $600. WOW, what a cool keepsake from our time here in Hungary. Here are a few pictures from the games and tournament.

Bory Var Castle

On our days off, Derek and I usually like to do something fun and adventuresome. This last Monday we chose to go explore Bory Var Castle here is Szekesfehervar. It is about a hundred years old, and was built by a man named Bory Var. He was the engineer, architect and builder of this small castle. Its so amazing to me what people are capable of. The castle was beautiful, but we both agreed the grounds were probably more beautiful back in the day. After the castle we went and had massages at the local Thermal Bath. We both had hour long massages, and they were only $25 each. Can you believe that? We will definitely be back.

Bory Var 

Staircase inside castle

Castle District

Last weekend we decided to go into Budapest again. It is becoming a favorite place of mine. Their are endless amounts of places to discover and explore. This time we hiked up the hills to Castle District. From the top, there were the most amazing views of the Danube and the Pest side of Budapest. (It is actually two cities, Buda and Pest) I would love to come back here at night, and take some pictures. They would be amazing.We ended the night at a little Italian place called Cucina, we will be back! Great food!

 Lots of cool Graffiti everywhere.

 Some of the view, that's the bridge in some of my previous pictures.

 You can pay to take this trolly up the hill, or hike, and get some good ole fashioned exercise like we did !

 Outside Castle District

 This temple was gorgeous!!!

 Check out the roof, tons of tiny tiles in all colors, it was beautiful, imagine the work it took to build this!

 St. Stephan, he is kind of a big deal here !

 Parliament Building where the Prime Minister lives currently

 Bruised, but not broken :)

Bumps, and Bruises

Last weekend Derek had his first away game. I woke up the next morning to see a very black eye. He is fine, just a few stitches, and a black eye. Pray this doesn't happen again!!

Cupcakes

So, I have found that I have a ton of free time. So one thing I wanna do is become a better chef/baker. It is a little hard here to shop for ingredients though because everything is in Hungarian. The best thing I have found is translate your grocery list before going to the grocery store. This works most of the time, but sometimes the translation is wrong. I have now made two things successfully without burning them in our oven, that has no temperature gauge. Vanilla cupcakes, and blueberry muffins. I now want to branch out a bit, and become a little more adventurous. Here are my cupcakes.

Dr ... 

Balaton and Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday, we decided to go back to Lake Balaton with our friends Harlan and Jules. They have two adorable kids, Hudson, and Quinn. We love hanging out with them! We had a great day, got some sun, and relaxed.

St. Stephen's Day in Budapest

This weekend, was a huge holiday in Hungary. They celebrated their Birthday. We decided to head into Budapest and check it out. There were tons of people there for the festivities. It was just like the 4th of July. They had a great fireworks show, and lots of fun booths set up with great Hungarian snacks and treats.

 Our friends from Canada Alex, and Tyler. (check out the short shorts in the background)

 Marzipan Truffles

 Alex and I

 Beautiful bridges at dusk

 Four Seasons Budapest

 Treats :)

 Cotton Candy

 Fireworks