Europe we LOVE YOU: day 2//August 25th//Budapest

Parliament Building.

So I started our trip feeling pretty haggard, as I mentioned in the last post, since I hadn't slept for 48 hours in essence.

On the blue line heading into Budapest our first morning.

subway map.

But we made it to Budapest. We got a 24 hour "csoport jegy" (group ticket) for all the public transportation from a BKV (public transport) counter in the airport and then headed out to the curb to look for our bus that would then take us to a metro station where we were boarded the "blue line" metro and road it all the way into the city to Déak Ferenc Tér. This the a hub metro stop where you have access to all the other metro lines. It is also the metro stop that I lived right off of as an LDS missionary for the time that I spent serving in Budapest itself.
It was SO AMAZING to be back, just as I hoped it would be. It felt, in a way, like I'd never left, it was that familiar.

Blue line stop.

Blue line typical escalators.

One of the many long red line escalators.

I forgot how much I loved everything, the buses, the people, the language, the smells (yes even the bad ones), the nénis (a term that means aunt but is used for all the older women), the villamos (lightrail), the mile long escalators (not really but they are insanely steep and long), the smell of baking pastries coming off EVERY SINGLE metro stop.

Princess Pastries.

We were pretty starving by the time we got into the city. And when we spotted a new Princess Pastry shop inside the Déak Ferenc Tér stop (for those who know, this is in addition to the one at the top of the metro station, before you ride the longer escalators out) and stopped to buy some pastries.  They were just as good as they'd always been. And eating túró again was really nice too. (this is a curd-like creamy/cheese substance that is often sweetened and used in desserts. for me it was an acquired taste but many love it right away. and I absolutely love it now.)

We met our "landlord" for our stay, Ádám, at his mom's art gallery, around the corner from the stop and just across from where we'd be staying. We couldn't check in until 2 pm but arranged to drop all our bags off there until then. This is when we found out the lift in our building was broken and that our water heater had broken...we received refunds for each day because of it but the hot water and lift would have been nice too... We found apartments through airbnb for all of our living accommodations and it suited our needs and pocketbooks VERY WELL. We'd highly recommend it.

He sent us in the direction of an Apple store on Andrássy Út nearby because my phone had basically shut me out when we were in the Budapest airport.  One of the people there was (thankfully) able to get it worked out for me and we were on our way again.

We headed from there to the nearest metro stop, this time we took the "red line" to the Széll Kálmán Tér stop that would let us off at Moszkva Tér aka the stop for the LDS mission home.  A very memory-evoking ride for me.  We were sad to see the square was completely torn up beyond recognition for renovation. And I had to snap a shot of  Chinese place Kevin and I ate several times with our district when were both missionaries. When people find out we met serving together on our mission we assume that they assume things (if you know what I mean) so he good-naturedly tells everyone we had our first date at this restaurant while we were serving.

The Chinese restaurant from our "first date" story.

When I was serving in the city I worked as part of a special group called the "outreach group" a group of girl and boy missionaries that works solely with young single adult age people.  All of our lessons, weekly free English classes we taught and Outreach activities were at the mission home.  The mission home in Budapest is unique in that is a several story building that housing, an LDS chapel (two floors), the CES floor (the area for young single adults//18-30 years old), the mission office floor, and the mission home (top two floors). A busy building.
We got to the building and a couple of elders were coming out as we were heading in.  Not only did we want to see the place again, "memories...!", but a good friend of my youngest brothers is currently serving in Hungary and we brought a package from her family that we needed to drop off (shipping is insanely expensive). We also had to pass along some contact info for a relative of an acquaintance of ours from our church in Texas who was hoping to have missionaries meet and get family history info from her half-sister who lived just outside of Budapest.
It was CRAZY how many memories came flooding back. Everything seemed to spark it.  It looked and smelled exactly the same.  The bathrooms. The lesson rooms, the chapel. All of it.  So much to remember. We took Annie and Cole on a full tour of the place (excepting the mission home of course), met a couple missionaries including the brand new office couple.  Since Kevin and I ate most of our traditional Hungarian food in the homes of Hungarians and the only real Hungarian restaurant we knew had gone out of business when WE were in the country we asked the elders if they knew of any good Hungarian restaurants in the city. They recommended a brand new one right near Moszkva (again for those who know, across the street from the Mammut) that had a napi menu, meaning that they offered one meal each day and it changed every day.

LDS Mission Home/Office.

one of the rooms on the church levels

the private garage behind the building. 

leaving the mission home.

We were ready for some real food so we headed over to Kiss Péntek. And we completely lucked out their meal for the day was Paprikás Csirke (pepper chicken, when I say pepper though, I mean the spice we see here, paprika. It is THE SPICE of Hungary, in fact if you get the good stuff in the states you'll see it's from Hungary too, they don't use it as a garnish like we do though, it's what makes their sauces red.) served with their traditional pasta, nokedli. It was really really delicious. We were feeling pretty dead at this point but we had more time before we could check into our apartment.

paprikás csirke

So we headed back on the metro to get back to Déak Ferenc Tér because I hadn't gotten to see my old apartment building yet.
*It was SO NICE to be able to fully utilize public transportation while we were in Budapest, we were ALL OVER THE CITY and were able to do and see so much because we could get everywhere fast.  For those unfamiliar with Budapest, if you visit, it's pretty darn "user friendly" in my opinion and I would say getting a pass while there is a must.
It was fun to be indulged in telling tales of my time living in the city while we checked out my apartment building and took pictures.

view of the street I lived on, facing the metro stop.

my apartment building.

upward view of my apartment building, we lived on the top floor.

me and my building.

view of the street towards Fashion Street.

We still had more time so we decided, since it was just around the corner that we'd do Szent István Bazilika: St. Stephen's Basilica (more here) until we could check into our apartment.  We had decided at this point that we would take a brief nap to see if we could revive ourselves a little bit.  We were full on loopy zombies at this point.
I knew the basilica was beautiful but I'd forgotten just how beautiful and big it was.  I forgot how ornately buildings of worship used to be built. (For all the "big item sites" we visited on our trip I'll be doing separate posts for them. I'll add links as soon as they are done. So that's all I'll say for now.)

outside view.

one inside view.

We staggered out of the basilica to meet back at the gallery to get our stuff and head to our apartment. It was the very last floor, of course, and in true Hungarian style, each floor had two flights of stairs to reach the next one.  We did SO many stairs this trip.  We were again grateful we only had carry on bags.
Our apartment was SO Hungarian.  And the views, I still can't get over the views.  It was amazing.
We took a much needed nap and all woke up feeling so much more ready to head out again about dinner time.

rad wall in the lobby of the building we stayed in (I didn't even count these stairs).

a room with a view.

We jumped on the metro again, this time the "yellow line", the oldest line and completely adorable in my opinion.  Many of the must see sights are off of this line.

yellow line.

riding the yellow line.

We headed first to Hősök Tére: Hero's Square, it was as beautiful as ever. (more here)

Hero's Square.

Annie and Cole + Hero's Square.

Then as dusk was setting it we went to check out a site I had somehow missed for the most part when I was living in Budapest before, then as dusk was setting it we headed to Vajdahunyad Vár: Vajdahunyad Castle. It was beautiful as were the church and museums inside it's walls.  (more to come on that) We took a peek at the Széchenyi fűrdő (bathhouses) trying to decide if we wanted to head back the next day but found them to be cool structures with lots of pools, so we didn't go back.

Vajdahunyad Castle.

Then we got back on the "yellow line" and jumped off quickly to see the exterior of the Opera Ház: Opera House(more to come), since it was still summer break for the company and nothing was being performed, too bad too, because the interior is INCREDIBLE (like straight out of Phantom of the Opera down to the red plush paneling and curtains) and seeing the opera (which I got to do while there as a missionary was like less than $10 a ticket).

This is how all the stops on the yellow line look. Love it.

The Opera House.

We were hungry again at this point so we headed back towards our apartment and ended up on Andrássy Út getting some kalács-es (chimney bread, it's cooked rotating on a cone-shaped rod so outside is crisp and the inside is soft and then while hot dipped in cinnamon and sugar, crushed nuts, coconut, chocolate sugar, or vanilla sugar and it is AS GOOD as it sounds). Then we found a Turkish resturant that served gyros-es. (I fell in love with gyros-es on my mission and haven't found a place in my part of America that even comes CLOSE to the ones you get there.)
I got a plate style (which means it's served over a bed of french fries and Kevin got traditional wrapped in a pita.  It was every bit as good as I remembered, the cream and spicy sauce were AMAZING. We also got my favorite ever bottled water, Szentkirály and Kevin's favorite ever Citrom Fanta (citrus).

Our gyros dinners.

best water ever.

After dinner we went to see Parliament building(more to come) and the views from Parliament of the city divided by the Duna River.  Ah so beautiful.  It's not hard to fall in love with this city.

View from Parliament.

We ran in a Spar (one of the grocery stores) to get some breakfast foods for the next day. And of course while we were there we HAD to get our hands on some TúróRudi (a Hungarian treat, chocolate covered "rods" of túró. Just the sight of the this section of the store made my heart happy.

best part of the grocery store.

We headed home, exhausted again and, after all the stairs, caught one more of the amazing views from our windows before passing out.  Such a fun and exhausting day.

the wind on the escalators can be amazing.

nighttime view from our apartment.

Europe we LOVE YOU: day one//august 24th//in transit

Trippin' in the Chicago airport.

I've never professed to love travel.
Destinations, yes, but travel, absolutely not. Due in large part (I believe) to my propensity to get motion sick.
But traveling without the kiddos is remarkably...less intense to put it simply.

waiting to board our flight slc>>chicago.

on our flight slc>>chicago.

Annie, Cole and I had a flight out of SLC about 8:30 am Monday morning and met Kevin (who flew from Houston) at the airport in Chicago. He'd been there for hours already and "had" to show us the trippy tunnel from one side of the airport to the other and the dinosaur, as they are the most exciting things in the entire airport Kevin found out while he waited for us and our flight out.

I spy my three traveling companions. 

Our United flights had in-plane or on-app free TV shows and movies...which was a very good thing since, despite my best efforts (eye mask, sleeping pill, noise canceling headphones, white noise app) was not able to sleep a wink on any of our flights. Pretty amazing especially considering sister had kept me up all but about 2 hours the night before (as I mentioned here). None of my traveling companions had the same problem, I really should have taken sleeping pictures, nothing more flattering than a "sleeping on a flight" picture... At least they had the new Cinderella, Inside Out, and McFarland, USA (none of which I'd seen) on the flights.

on our flight chicago>>budapest.

annie+cole chicago>>budapest.

We approached Budapest just as it was getting to be midnight for our body clocks and morning in Europe.  I caught glimpses (aisle seat) of ten story communist housing but none of the big buildings or even the Duna River that runs between Buda and Pest.
I couldn't help but remember the first time I'd flown into Budapest years earlier, serving as a full-time LDS missionary in Hungary for 18 months. At the time I hoped (I love big cities), but didn't know, that I'd serve more than a third of my mission in the city.  
All the flight attendants huddled around the windows to catch sights of the beautiful city and, much like my second descent into Budapest, I hadn't slept a wink, and all I could think was "I'm going to have to talk to all those people, in Hungarian..." I was scared to death.
This time I was not scared to death, a little nervous, I suppose, to see how our trip overall unfolded.  Hoping we'd be able to figure everything out, especially in the places we'd never been and where the language was truly foreign to us.
I was nervous to see how my city felt this time around though. Would I find out that I'd just remembered it better than it was? Would I remember it? Would it feel foreign again? Most of all would I still completely love it?
Our flight got in as scheduled and we quickly made our way through the airport to find a public transport ticket counter so we could make our way into the city.  We all decided to pack a carryon and one small bag so we didn't have to do any baggage checking even though we all got one free checked bag with our tickets. Each couple had an empty duffel in case we picked up enough stuff to need an extra bag on the way home, we didn't end up using them. But, later on our flights within Europe we were reminded again and again that an American "carry on" is NOT the same as a European "carry on".  Ha.
I digress.  We were off.

Budapest airport...I spy a water bottle falling out of Cole's backpack, not for the first (or the last) time. :)

normalcy suits me best.

My family is a movie quoting family, hard-core.

One of our favorites from childhood is, 
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder." (Robin Hood)

I felt this to the most intense degree on our recent amazing adventure.

Taking it back a bit…

This summer was a rough one for this mama. I had NO IDEA how healthy it was for the boys to have some time away from each other until Lee stopped having preschool two mornings a week this summer…

The days dragged on because honestly, I was burnt out and maxed out before days had even really begun, like pre-10 am.

I was tired, quick to anger, slow to remember patience and often didn't feel much more than fleeting moments of joy in my chosen/given occupation/role: motherhood.
I felt guilty (of course) and unfulfilled and guilty some more.

Several months earlier, as the result of a string of events, Kevin and I had decided to and subsequently booked a trip to visit a few cities in Europe at the end of the summer with my sis and BIL. Hello dream vacation for this Europe loving soul.

My angel mother had graciously agreed to watch our three children while we were gone for ELEVEN DAYS.
(None of us knew at the time that this would end up being at the end of a summer completely filled with event hosting, world travel, missionary children coming and going, children moving cross-country, children starting college, as well as more than a handful of family weddings and mission farewells and homecomings outside our immediate family.)

Also worth noting: this was my first time leaving my kids, ever.

Kevin and I have historically been awful with prioritizing "us" time, even before we had kids. We were married but we we’re dating, you know what I mean?
But we'd finally worked consistent date nights into our monthly schedule last winter and of course it was the best decision ever.
Thus, more capable and used to thinking of us:couple us and not always just us:family of five us, we felt like this trip would be a really incredible time to spend with each other. And we recognized a good window of opportunity when we saw one, I wasn't pregnant nor did I have a newborn for the first time in over FOUR YEARS.

My trepidations (as worrying is first nature for me, working on it becoming less than second nature…) were laid aside and we were going.  And we felt really good about our decision.

We spent A LOT of time the coming months planning and preparing.

Researching cities, sites and travel guides, booking airbnb apartments, getting train tickets, public transport info, skip the line museum passes, etc....

We were as ready as we'd ever be and to be frank, most of me wasn't concerned about leaving the kids. Except for my parents' sake. Like I said I became so burnt out this summer I felt like I was hanging on by a thread, an “at the end of the summer I’m going to get a break, and an amazing one at that” thread.
The end of August finally came and, just as all my friends were getting their kids ready for the start of another school year (the joy of having only babies and preschoolers), we made the drive (read: trek) out to Utah and I spent about a week there with the kids before I flew out.
Sister seemed determined to help me feel ready to go by uncharacteristically waking up several times every night and even staying up all but 2 hours or so of the night before we flew out of town in the morning.
This post isn't intended to be about our trip though; I will post PLENTY about that soon.

It was wonderful to be back in Europe and seeing old favorite and new favorite places. Being able to come and go and do as we pleased was fantastic. I mean really, really nice.
Meal after meal without interruption of our conversations and eating when things were warm. Being able to go all day without taking out time for naps, unless I wanted one. Not having to wonder if the kids were going to get up during the night. Ha. Such luxuries.
I saw people everywhere with babies though, the airports, the streets, etc... And I'd feel this stab of missing my kids. I'd even sometimes watch home videos of them on my phone as we got ready for bed.  But I felt SO separated from them, literally worlds away. It felt weird. It was odd not to share each moment of my days with my children, not to hear their voices in the morning and all day long. Not to have them ask me questions or feed them, or change diapers, or wipe noses, or clean up the same messes a hundred times. It was weird not to share my experiences with them. I’d see something and instantly think of how Lee or Drew would have been SO EXCITED.

A little over halfway into our trip we finally connected with my Mom and were able to Facetime with the kids a bit, whew.  Here we were in ROME and I just wanted to spend the rest of my day talking to my kids.  They were ESTATIC to see our faces, Drew cried when one of us was out of view.

Their smiles, their tales, their voices, their intense love all of it was wonderful. Ah. I missed them, officially and intensely.

About a week before the end of our time away I got hit with a crazy stomach sickness that dragged on throughout the rest of our trip.
One day I was feeling particularly bad, just wanting to be home, in MY bed with MY bathroom, not missing my once in a lifetime trip sights huddled in the corner of a bathroom….

That evening my sister was Facetiming my mom and my boys came on. I felt such a surge of love. They were concerned for me, asking what was wrong, making me laugh with their funny voices and speech patterns, sister bobbed her head excitedly when she saw my face on the screen.

The mommy siren came wailing on extremely and suddenly all my dreams of world travel and even my perspective of the trip I was on got blasted back into perspective.


 I started thinking again about WHY I do what I do. 

About how, when actually given a chance to put those parental obligations on hold for a bit, how hollow the happiness the adventures bring is comparatively.

Did we see and experiences remarkable, wonderful things? Yes.

Did it bring the kind of lasting, deep-rooted joy and satisfaction of parenting? No.

We were actually a bit surprised.

As we walked down some beautifully quaint and moonlit streets one night in Rome, Kevin and I talked about how wanderlust is fun but not fulfilling. We expected this to feel like a second honeymoon, excitement and happiness just completely brimming over but it wasn't because now, unlike then as newlyweds, a huge part of our family was missing. Don’t misunderstand, we Loved it. We had such an amazing time. But it wasn't forever; it wasn't what we'd always want to do. And especially what we'd want to have as our top priority.

You can't pretend you don't have kids when you're away. Once you’re a parent it doesn’t go away, that obligation and that gifts that come with it are always there, tugging at you, reminding you where you’re needed.

We saw some of the most beautiful things and places in the world and ate really delicious food.

 My art-loving heart was filled with admiration for the works I finally got to see of masters' I'd studied for years and years. And my foodie stomach couldn’t get enough (until I got sick of course).

It was so good. But it wasn't the very best.

There I was in some of the most beautiful and wonderful places I may ever be, and I found that I didn't want to wait too long to get back to wiping tears, giving kisses, changing diapers and breaking up fights day in and day out.
And I understood better, because of my time away, why, for those with the opportunity, being a parent is the greatest and most important position someone can hold. Working to fill that truly divine role brings a depth and breadth to life that can't even be mimicked by any other endeavor, adventure, or attainment.
Here I was on a dream vacation and I craved “mommy normalcy”.

In my exhaustion and weakness, I had allowed myself to get caught up in the glamour of the side of life that so many couples and individuals my age seem to lead; perfect and endless wardrobes, fancy houses, luxury living, consistent exotic travel, designer parties and whatever else looked much more amazing on social media than my life when I was emotionally, physically and mentally fried.

I let my vision slip and couldn’t clearly see the beauty in MY day to day living that meant I was mothering three angel children;

The tight leg hugs that leave physical reminders behind, cause you never can get all the food off a toddler’s mouth.

The laughter of contented play.

The joy of children newly discovering the world.

The love between siblings.

The spirit that comes with a child’s prayer.

The chaotic happiness of wrestling time with Papa.

 I’d started to forget how precious those moments were to me. 

I don’t think we made the wrong choice going.

I don’t think you have to go on an incredible adventure to maintain equilibrium in life either. 

I think we learned a lot about what we need as a couple and a family. 

I think I’m so blessed person to be able to be a mom.

I think that being a mom and wife will continue to be the best and hardest things I do.

I know that God will make right all that is wrong about the world for those sweet and wonderful people I love that want to be parents and can’t.

I know God can help those of us in the brutal “young mother” stage see the good, see the magic and feel His love for us and our children. 

I know too, that life will continue to be real and hard, we had an incredibly difficult drive back home from Utah to Texas after returning from our trip, one I’d like to fade in my memory and my muscle memory (too much travel, my body HATES sitting now) as soon as possible.

I know with God’s help we can progress and change, even and especially in our parenting.

I know I love these three faces (below); captured by Kevin on the most normal of evenings just before we left on our trip, dirty faces, sandwiches, pj’s and all. 

In fact, I LOVE that this “normal night” was captured.  “Mommy normalcy”, I know better now, is exactly my cup of tea.