Friday, January 8, 2010

Happy New Year!





Dear Family, Friends and Visitors, Have a joyful and blessed New Year in 2010!

"May [God] give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.
We will shout for joy when you are victorious and will lift up our banners in the name of our God.
May the LORD grant all your requests.
Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed; he answers him from his holy heavenwith the saving power of his right hand.
Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand firm.
O LORD, save the king! Answer us when we call!"- Psalm 20:4-9

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Our Christmas in 2009

Many of you asked how was our Christmas?
It was wonderful but let us tell you a little bit about it in details if you are interested in.

We had our sweet Aunt Kay from Chicago and Grandma visiting. Thank you for your great gifts and the precious moments we could share together since we don't see each other very often.

To me as a Hungarian probably the day of Christmas eve was the most exciting and intimate. It's neat to combine tradition what we grew up with and establish new customs with our children. I enjoyed making our traditional sweet poppy seed and walnut Hungarian Christmas bread. It takes about 4 hours until it's served. The kids are so funny as they peek into the oven and I have the chance to teach them it's mommy's "beigli" for you guys... When we look through Christmas books and a mom is fixing goodies of course it is called beigli now :)
Anyways, our big dream came true as we put all of them around the table in booster chairs. So the seven of us had fresh waffles with some fruits which disappeared as they gobbled it down quickly. How did it feel? Oh, they all felt like big boys and big girls and we were proud daddy and mommy!

They took a nice long nap in the afternoon which gave me time to bake and Dave to do the grocery.
In the evening we all sat down again. Read the Christmas story, sang (Manna picked up her recorder and the guitar). We opened our sweet grandparents and parents packages from Hungary. Lots of goodies like great grandma's home made prunes and gingerbread cookies. We all loved the sweet shirts, books on cd, gloves and stockings. If you think about it they traveled across the ocean.
After the kids went to bed David and we could exchange our modest gifts and sing some more.
Our hearts were filled with joy and thankfullness.

Christmas day


Couple days before Christmas day we were invited to our friends to the Miyakawas for brunch. It was great to have breakfast with our friends and kids at the same time. And guess what? Dave and my lap was kid free because we had enough people to love on them and feed them.
After eating they went down to the basement with the older kids (rather teenagers). It was a strange but neat feeling that they were out of sight out of mind and you know what we all had the greatest time. In the end we took some fun photos. I think catching their attention was the most hillarious.
It was one of those memorable mornings we will not forget! Thanks!

Christmas day was different because David had to work but he was able to join us for two hours. Cliff and Debbie served breakfast and lunch this day. They also brought their thoughful gifts for each kiddo. Little people to learn how to focus and spark up little conversations as they play. It's also a great way to teach them share or trade (it's one of the hardest as you can imagine but we are working on)
Their favorite was the fireengine. Annabelle got so attached to the firefighter figure that it has to come with us everywhere. They spin around and imitate the sound of the firetruck. It's really funny.

The rest of the day was kind of quiet during their nap and in the evening we were thoroughly enjoyed the "little people's company". I wish all toys could stay new...

Merry Christmas Family, Friends and Visitors!

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."- Isaiah 9:6
We have many favorite Christmas Scripture but the above quoted is this year's choice. It's so comforting to know that Jesus is all above for us and not just at Christmas but everyday of the year.
Here is another one, which really made me think it's from a Christmas card:

If our greates need had been information
God would have sent us an educator.

If our greates need had been technology
God would have sent us a scientist.

If our greates need had been money
God would have sent us an economist.

If our greatest need had been pleasure
God would have ent us an entertainer.

But our greatest need was FORGIVENESS
So God sent us a SAVIOR.

May you see and know how great his love and mercy toward you!

Happy Birthday Grandma Manley!

Grandma Manley is one of our most faithful visitor. Wednesday is her day when she comes and plays with us, sings to us at the table and we have lunch with her. If you don't know her the following poem perfectly describes her. It was so neat to celebrate her in December on her Birthday. We consider her our gift and we would like to enjoy her and cherish her whenever we have the chance to love on her 7 times- David, Manna, Bella, Tomi, Hanna, Lili and Mate
Youthful Grace

You walk with grace,
Humble and fun,
With youth in your eyes,
Always on the run.
Ageless beauty,
From a far off land,
Filled with stories,
More plentiful than sand.
Legendary wisdom,
Shared with us all,
We value your company,
From winter till the fall.
Today we celebrate,
Another special year,
We love you more than ever,
Your heart is always near.
by Martin Dejnicki

We love our therapists!

I would like to dedicate this post to our fantastic, hard working and fun therapists!

Enjoy the following "therapics" of our children's therapies. If you have not heard about First Steps let us introduce it to you briefly. It's a state program, which offers different therapists to come to your home and work with your children if they qualify from birth to age 3.
http://www.in.gov/fssa/ddrs/2633.htm
Having premature quints some of our kiddos qualified for different reasons e.g. developmental delay or late speech etc.

It has been the the greatest privilege to have these wonderful kid-loving ladies in our home. They bring so much fun, excitement and lots of new challenges every week they come. We love having them here. Some of them come couple times a week since they see our different quints. The cool thing is that they include brother and sisters. Sometimes we do group play. Lots' of messy things at the table. Miss Barb says the messier it is the better it is for them :)
We all love Miss Shiela's "happy happy" stamp on our hands and her cheerful cd's. Miss Renee brings her awesome slide and the best push/ ride on toys.
We love reading books and do focus play with Miss Carla early on Wednesday mornings. One cold December morning as I went to get Annabelle to get her ready for speech sure enough she was sound asleep not like her two sisters. So we had a little girls' party that morning as I brought all three of them down. I told them we have to get ready with breakfast and change because Miss Carla is coming soon. You should have seen them. They got so excited, put the step stool by the front door and were looking through the window. They were waiting for her more than for Santa Claus.
Our team of therapists is such a great blessing because we believe the Lord put this team together.
Not just the kids but us parents learn so much about how to work with our children, challenge them with age appropriate activities, help their language to come and how to reduce their frustration etc.
I think if I can choose another career I would be a therapists myself too. Thanks to David, Grandma, Papa Cliff and Debbie I have lots of help to provide the extra attention they daily need to grow in their skills and various areas.
I think for me personally one of the biggest blessings in having multiple babies is that I got to know these amazing ladies through First Steps. They accompany me, inspire me everyday they come and we learn so much from them as they provide the right insight to understand our children better.

Snow how fun!

Thanks to lots of great help David and I had a wonderful December. We were able to go out a lot in this Christmas season. We went to some Christmas concerts, shows, get togethers with some friends and a Christmas musical in our church. This was the best Christmas gift for each other. You can see a glimps of that in the photos above.
As we got the first snow we took them out on our fenced deck. Our little red sled came handy. We all had so much fun. They learned lots of new "winter vocabulary" like glove(kesztyu), hat (sapka), boots (csizma), jacket (kabat) etc.
Considering the fact that earlier they would not tolarate hats on their head now they put them on all the time inside (in fact Annabelle makes everybody wear one:)
We had a blast sledding...they were feeling and tasting the snow.
You can see some of these precious moments in the slideshow above.

Thanksgiving at Uncle Mike's

Here are some great verses from the Bible as we were thinking about Thanksgiving.
"Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
- 1 Cor 15:57
Well, we often experience this when Dave and I feel like we can not bear any more whining, hair pulling or fighting over toys or books.

or for example we are learning how to "give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for [us] in Christ Jesus."1 Thessalonians 5:18

This Thanksgiving was a lot of fun because we had the chance to get together with David's folks at his brother (Mike)'s place in New Palestine. On the way we were listening to some Vivaldi on to quiet their rather loud excitement in our van.
Our kiddos fit right into their kid friendly and fun enviroment and played well with our three and five year old nieces and their kitchen set. Kylie and Samantha were the most loving little hostesses and the best teachers of their own toys.

Hanna's favorite was their goldfish. She was drawn to it.
Annabelle and Tomi had a tea party with all the tiny pots and cups. They loved getting into everything and I loved seeing them learning as they explored everyting. Mate loved the building blocks and grandpa Manley was teaching him the different colors. Lili was fascinated with the backpacks and bracelets. Grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles were all just loving on them and fed them wonderful Thanksgiving meal. I did not do any head count but a remaining toddler dish on the table made me think one of our quints was too busy to eat lunch. Sure enough as we asked around and was wondering who fed Hanna it turned out that she was never fed. Annabelle mastered eating on her own. She would not even accept help from us any more. She enjoys being a big girl now.
In the end of the day heading home you can imagine how tired everybody was after playing hard and eating well. We did not even have to listen to any music any more.

Enjoy the slide show above!