Parachuting Santas, oh my!

The Serb-Orthodox calendar runs 13 days afte the traditional Christian calendar.  For us this meant celebrating Christmas for over 6 weeks.  It was hard to explain to Foster that "Santa only comes one time a year," when he kept seeing Santas and Christmas lights and decorations popping up all over after the 25th. It was a kids' dream come true. And in Banja Luka Santas don't just arrive in their sleight but by parachute too.  

Foster loves airplanes and this time last year he was getting to fly in one! But after we told him that people would be jumping out of the airplanes, he wanted nothing to do with them and it was hard to even get him to check out the plane when it was on the ground.

The next day however, he donned his pilot uniform and was kicking Kai and I out of the plane as parachuters!

We Love Budapest

We had so many vacation days in January we didn't even know what do do with them. There are the U.S. holidays and then the many Bosnian holidays.  We decided to brave the cold and head to Budapest.  We were not ready for the below freezing temps and had to do an emergency shopping run for long underwear and better gloves, but once we got the right "gear" we were set. We learned that we could do about 30 minutes outside before we had to find a place to warm up. Luckily, there were lots of great indoor activities for the boys and good places to eat and drink for us.

The first day we went to a cool kids' museum where there were all of these real life areas for the kids to play. From real fire hydrants, to a pizza restaurant and even a grocery store where you could go and buy things and then check out and a dentist's office.  It was fun, even for the parents.  We went a circus, which the boys loved, but both promptly fell asleep for the last act. Foster was in awe of the tigers that jumped through the fire. We also went the subway museum. Budapest is one of the first cities with an electric underground system. We have some public transport fans in our family who loved this.

Lastly, we spent a whole day at an indoor water park. There were some great slides which Foster loved and Kai ultimately did too.  Kai wasn't sure at first but after a few times he kept wanting to do more.  

Looking forward to another Budapest visit this spring or summer!

6.5 hours in the car--such a trooper, but he needed some distractions for the last 30 minutes. He insisted on the bindi/egg.