Mother's Day Happenings

We started mother's day preparations on a Sunday afternoon finger painting cards for the grandma's. You can see the starts of their fingerprint flower cards in the background. The kids wanted to paint big pictures after the cards.

 TJ's butterfly

 This is from our Muffins with Mom preschool day.

 Mother's Day weekend we headed to Olympia but had to first stop at Latin Farms for Fritters and feeding animals.

 This picture is for Papa Dean. Amelia passed over the horses and cars and went straight for the motor bike.

 Love the new baby goats in Spring (check out the fantastic WA weather. We got two weeks of that).

 Tricycle races

 Mother's Day Dinner on the porch 

 I made a few bird houses for mom to put up at the beach house

 TJ's kindergarten picture and poem for me.

May Happenings

 TJ and Russell built a "Merry Little Vampire." The worked on it all morning, Then presented it to me.

 Waiting for the Hazel Dell Band of Parades to start

 The kids ended up with lots of candy

 I love this army float with Russell watching

 Connie, Carol and I at Susan's wedding (Susan in Carols daughter).

Vienna to the End

We traveled by train from Budapest to Vienna on Thursday. The train ride was only three hours and our hotel was walking distance from the train station. I love public transportation here. It would have been a nightmare to try and drive. 

There are many famous statues in Vienna. I'm standing in front of the statue in between the art museum and the natural history museum.

Trevor in front of Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) of Autria's
living quarters. Trevor and I actually went in and took a tour of this building. It was very fascinating. The empress was quite a mystery to the public. She had a tragic life and ended up getting assassinated in her late 50's. We saw where she lived, the dresses she wore, and medicine she took.

In front of the imperial gardens.

The parliament building is in the background

A rather fancy statue in front of the parliament building

St. Stephen's Cathedral, too big to get it all in the picture

inside

still trying to get the entire building in the picture

world famous Opera House

In front of a Mozart Statue

Where's  Emy? In front of the Hofburg Palace under construction.

An exhausted pregnant woman at the park

by a small stage where we saw a fantastic evening musical performance

Motzart performed in this Palace for royalty

After two nights in Vienna, we took a train back to Budapest to meet up with Tom and Andrea again. Here in a picture from Sunday, in front of the Szged branch building. We attended two sacrament meeting in the area. Even though I did not understand a bit of the language, I understood the spirit, which was very strong.

In front of the other branch building an hour and a half away. 

We loved our time with Tom and Andrea. The trip was an opportunity of a life time. We were thankful to my parents for taking such good care of the kids while we were gone. We are thankful for the example on service Tom and Adrea set for us.

Hortobagy & La Traviata!

 We left Eger early in the morning to get to Hortobagy, a small horse town. We went to the Máta Stud Farm in time to get tickets for the 12:00 wagon tour.  There were very interesting demonstration of Hungarian horsemanship and whipping.

 Hungarian "longhorns" The wagon tour came right up to this group of cows

 This is where the horse in Rapunzel learned his tricks.

 My second horse ride of the trip

 Trevor's first :)

 After the horse show we drove a few hours to get back to Budapest. We checked into our hotel, got cleaned up, and met downstairs for a delicious dinner before heading to the Budapest Opera house to see La Traviata.

The Opera house was very ornate. It's the most beautiful theater I've ever been in.

Castle Day

 Our fist stop on "Castle Day" was in Szentendre. The little town was quite interesting with lots of little shops. I bought most of my souvenirs from our trip here.

We then drove to the Castle at Visagrad

Got in the car and drove to Esztergom, the "Rome" of Hungary. The Basilica is the largest church in Hungary.

Told you it was large

largest painting done on a single canvase

St. István getting crowned

In the car again to drive to Hollókő.

I liked this castle best because we got to go all over it

We ended the day in Eger and checked into our Hungarian Guest House for the evening. In all our hotels the rooms are very European with beds close to the floor and showers without curtains.