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.

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!!!!!

I met with the doctor today and told him how the last two weeks have gone. Basically, my pain has been greatly reduced and most of the time I’m out of pain altogether. I’ve had a couple of days where my leg pain was there all day long (although I was still able to go to work, etc . . .) and I also had some back pain when I did something to aggravate it (sleeping funny, or playing a game with the kids where we were crawling on the floor, etc . . .) . I wouldn’t want to live long term in this condition, but it is much better than before. I can go to work and mostly function this way, but I would like to get back to where I can run, play with the kids and be more active.

As I expected, the doctor didn’t encourage me to do the surgery. He said that it was basically about how much pain I could tolerate and what I wanted my quality of life to be like. He said to keep living life and when it gets to the point that it isn’t improving and I don’t want it like that anymore, come back and see him. It is basically up to me what I can handle and what quality of life that I want. My kids are still young and I have a lot of life to live so I want to fix this problem sooner rather than later if I can.

He said that it is possible that it would get totally better, but I figure that this isn’t very likely given my history.

I’m trying to get with a US doctor through my brother-in-law who is an orthopedic surgeon.

Also, I had trouble communicating with the doctor at the appointment. His English is adequate, but he struggles in communicating the more complicated things. I didn’t feel like I could ask all of the questions I had because he wouldn’t fully understand them. His answers were fairly simple because he didn’t have all of the words. This makes me lean towards trying to get this done in the US. Also, since my back is feeling better, I’m sure I could make the trip without too much trouble.

Continue to pray that we will have wisdom.

Well, I just finished two full days at the office. That hasn't happened in a while. My back is feeling a ton better and I'm almost totally pain free!!! I still have a little pain down my leg, but it is relatively minor. As I look back on when I've had back problems in the past, this is the pattern. I'm totally out of comission for 2-3 weeks and then I'm back to normal just like nothing happened. I'm hoping not to repeat the pattern. I go back to the doctor next week and I want to understand why this went away and what will make it come back. At times, I feel like avoiding surgery now is just postponing the inevitible.

Anyway, it is good to be back in the routine. I'm lacking a little stamina, but at least I'm back in the game. I have all day meetings the next 3 days so I guess I'll have to keep it up.

Thanks for all your prayers. I need them!!

Amazingly, Valerie's parents got NO RAIN at all in Eagle Lake. After being right in the bullseye of the storm before it turned, they went to missing it alltogether. I don't think anyone would have predicted that a few days ago. I think that they at least expected to get some of the strong feeder bands.

They spent yesterday watering the lawn while they took down the boards on the windows.

Now, hopefully the citizens of the Houston area will realize that they can't all return at the same time or there will be similar gridlock and gas shortages. For some reason Americans always think that orders are for someone else. When the governor, the mayor and everyone else say, "Don't come home," people think, "Surely they don't mean ME."; "If he understood MY situation, he would let ME come home!"; "I have to go to work", etc . .

My prediction is gridlock and gas shortages.