Valerie & I had a chance to get away this weekend. We got a great deal at the Le Meridien Hotel in downtown Budapest on priceline.com!!! It is a gorgeous hotel in the heart of the city and you can see the wonderful view.
We planned this back in the summer and it was perfect timing given that I’m leaving for the US on Monday. It gave us a chance to work through all the details, pray together, and have some time together before we go!!
Yesterday was a turning point in trying to make decisions about my back. In talking with some friends yesterday, I came to the following conclusions:
1. ) I don’t want to have the surgery here in Hungary – I realized that if there were complications with the surgery, then I don’t want to be in the hospital here. While this is not very likely, if I can choose not to, I should.
2) I don’t want to put my family through another unplanned 3-4 week back “incident.” It is very difficult on Valerie and the kids when I just go out of commission with little or no warning.
3) I want to be pro-active and stop waiting. I’ve been struggling with back problems for 14 years. I’m tired of waiting for things to get better.
4) October is a window of time where I could do something about this. November is much busier and if I have a choice, now is the time.
Therefore, I’m headed to the US on Monday to meet with a doctor in Dallas. It might just be a long distance visit to the doctor, but at least I will get some answers. I might have surgery. I might not. At least, I’m not just waiting.
I’m so thankful to my brother-in-law, Shannon Cooke. He is an orthopedic surgeon in Abilene, Texas and has been helping me get in touch with the doctor in Dallas. He is also going to help me through the process. I couldn’t have got this far without you Shannon. Your wisdom and support have been so encouraging.
Please pray for my family as this is a busy time and they have already been through a lot. We are in agreement that this is the best way to go, but it doesn’t mean it will be easy.
Also, pray that the doctor will have wisdom and that the course of action will be clear.
I’ll try to keep you posted. Keep checking.
Today was another warning flag that Kendall, my 12 year old daughter, is growing up. She is going on her first multi-night trip with her school.
At 6:30am this morning, I took her to the train station where she met up with the other 7th and 8th graders at her school. They are going on a mission trip to another Hungarian town named Bodrog. It is about 3-4 hours away. She is super excited about it and is looking forward to spending time with her friends as well as working with the underprivledged kids there. They will do some service projects today and then play games and just hang out with the kids tomorow. Hopefully, they will have plenty of opportunities to share the gospel with the kids there.
We look forward to hearing the stories of what God does and of all the fun they had.
This morning I checked my webstats just out of curiosity and low and behold, I had 288 visits in one day. I’ve never had more than 100 so I knew something was up. When I looked at where people had come from, I saw that I was linked to from John Lopez who is a writer for the Houston Chronicle! He has a blog on the Chronicle’s website and he wrote about the Astros’ big win the other night. Somehow he found my blog entry about watching the game. Here’s a quote from his column.
Astros fans from all corners of the world checked in for this one. None regretted a moment of it.
The words “Astros fans” was a link to my blog. He has two other links in the sentence which are to a blog in Illinois & Washington DC. I’m not sure how Budapest, DC, & Illinois make up “all corners of the world,” but there it is.
It’s pretty cool to make the paper. I guess this is the online version of cutting the article out and putting it in my scrapbook.
At 7pm last night, our whole family gathered in the living room to watch the Astros and the Braves play in the Division Series (around the computer, not the TV). Since Valerie grew up there, she is a huge fan, and I’m a pretty big fan since I was born there. Also, the kids were excited because we went to a game this summer while we were in Houston so the kids had been to the stadium.
It started out pretty bad. At 9pm when the kids went to bed, it was 6-1 Braves. It was pretty much over! I kept watching just in case. In the bottom of the 8th, at about 10pm, Lance Berkman hit an unbelievable GRAND SLAM (two Grand Slams in one game). Then, at about 10:20 or so, Ausmus hit a Home Run with two outs in the ninth to tie the game.
At this point, Valerie was back watching with me again. Then came the 10th – 18th innings with no runs scored. Valerie held on until about midnight in the 15th inning. Every inning, we would groan and moan that it has to get over soon. I stuck it out until 1am to see homer by Chris Burke to win it for the Astros!!! 6 hours later. WOW!!!
I’m regretting my decision to stay up a little this morning, but as soon as I get waked up, I’ll be glad!!!! What a game!! The longest playoff game in history.
I’m not sure the Astros will have anything left to play the Cardinals with, but they sure have a ton of momentum.
Okay, not better than sliced bread, but just sliced bread.
Most of the bread in Budapest comes in large loafs like this one. Therefore, our days are filled with slicing bread. We have a huge Chicago Cutlery bread knife that we brought when we moved and yet we still have struggled for 2 years with slicing thin slices without tearing up the bread. We waste every other slice because the bread crumbles or it is too think to go in the toaster.
Yesterday, we had the novel thought that maybe we needed a new knife. Valerie bought one for $10 and it has changed our lives. Now slicing bread is super easy and we can get it thin. I think Valerie probably sliced 10-15 slices this morning that we didn’t even need because it was so easy.
We felt really stupid. How could we go for 2 years with inferior tools? Another chapter in life overseas. Another lesson learned.
The weather here in Budapest has been unbelivable. It is October 9th and yet the temperature is still in the 70′s.
When we walked out of church yesterday, the city was calling our name. It was just too pretty to go home. We stopped by one of our favorite restaurants and all they had was inside seats and we couldn’t handle that on such a beautiful day.
So, we went home and had lunch on our porch. Valerie whipped up a feast of sandwiches, cheeses, pickles, and pasta salad. The weather was beautiful and the lunch was great!!!
It can’t last forever. I’m sure in a few weeks, the porch will be closed until April.
I wanted to let you know about another Budapest blogger and our friend Jessie. She moved to Budapest with Exxon/Mobil this past summer. We are still unsure how, but she was given our name before she moved here and Valerie began swapping emails with her. She told us the name of the guy who gave her our name and we don’t know the guy. Weird. We thought it was someone that I used to work with at Exxon, but it wasn’t. God brought us together.
It has been fun to see her experience this new culture. It reminds us of how far we have come in only 2 years. Valerie has been showing her the ropes at the grocery stores (is it sour cream, yogurt, or cream cheese?) and just having fun hanging out. We celebrated Jessie’s birthday last Sunday at our house and had a great time hanging out.
Stop by Jessie’s blog for more insights into life in Budapest and tell her that I sent you!!! You can also read more about her birthday celebration.
Trent played in his first Middle School Soccer Game yesterday. He is not quite in Middle School yet, but in order to have enough players they invited the 5th graders to play. It has been the focus of Trent’s life since practices began.
On Monday, we traveled across town to the American International School of Budapest. It is a beautiful facility with great sports fields. The great thing is that we beat them 4-3 and it wasn’t even as close as that.
Trent played fullback and stopped a bunch of charges by the other team. It was a lot of fun!
In two weeks, the team travels to Vienna to take on the Vienna Christian School. ROAD TRIP!!!!!
