Our Home Away From Home

Welcome to our home in Vienna. My family has requested pictures and here they are. This is our entry. You come in the door you can barely see on the right hand side. The entry is big enough to put another bedroom and it is kinda wasted space but that is how it is. We are on the "M" level in our apt. building and actually have a really nice elevator right outside our door. Matt's kids loved it and it is handy when we have our little grocery carts filled. (those are our grocery carts you can see on the right by the front door). We have loved our little apartment and I hope it shows as well as it really looks.

View of my sweet little kitchen looking into the entry and on through to the living room. This kitchen has enough dishes and silverware etc.to feed up to at least 50 people. The knives are sharper than the ones in my kitchen in Utah...thats really pathetic!

View into our kitchen from the entry hall. Back in the corner on the right is our washer and dryer. We are very fortunate to have both. Usually you only have a washer...a dryer is luxury. There is a drying rack out on our deck, and I have used it, but I love my dryer.

A view of the livingroom, I am standing by the front window and looking into the entry. On the right is our piano that kept Matt's kids entertained and on the left we have about 40 folding chairs. Our students come over on Sunday for dinner and then again on Wednesday for class.

View of our livingroom from the entry hall. Our front window overlooks a small park and playground. To the left where you see a round clock on the wall is a door that leads out to a small deck.

A couple of different views of our "master" bedroom. I am converted to the comforters over here. They are warm and no one can steal all the covers because we each have our own!

Our guest room. This room has the two beds you can see but there are also two hide-away beds the are used as chairs at other times in this room.

This is our office and guest bedroom. There is a trundle bed under the bed you can see...with this comes my sincere apology to anyone that has slept on it...the trundle is comfortable enough but trying to get out of it in the morning is a trick. I did not know this until I slept on it when Matt and Jenny and family were here!

Our "big" bathroom, which is connected from the master bedroom and the entry hall.

Our "small" bathroom.

Budapest

There is so much I did not know about Budapest before we knew we were coming on this trip. I did not realize it is actually two cities divided by the Danube River. Pest, seen here from the Buda side, is on the plain. The Buda side is the "hilly" side. Now, of course, the two cities are combined to be the Budapest we know. Lots of history here, both golden and sad.

Buda is the "hilly" side of the Danube.

On our way over the bridge into Pest....Tom is really little compared to the lion he is standing by.

This is one of the bridges that connects Buda with Pest. It is called the Chain Bridge. If you see a book about bridges, this one will be mentioned.

Our first stop on the first day of our trip to Budapest was a little history lesson given at this monument called "Hero Square". All of these bronze statues are of leaders and heros of Budapest/Hungary.

This is the Budapest Parliment Building. It is on the Pest side but this picture is taken across the Danube on the Buda side. Kinda impressive isn't it. Our guide told us that the wing on the left side is not used at all. The building was built when Budapest had more politicians!

Probably my favorite part of our trip to Budapest...the Dohany Synagogue. It was designed by a Catholic, therefore it looks more like a Catholic church than a Jewish Synagogue...they even make jokes about it being a "Catholic Synagogue".

Out behind the Dohany Synagogue is this weeping willow tree made out of stainless steel and silver. It is called the Holocaust Memorial Tree. The shape of the tree symbolizes a reversed menorah. Each leaf has a name of someone that died during the Holocaust. Tony Curtis, the actor, gave the money to have this tree put up in memory of his Hungarian father that perished. This picture does not do it justice...take my word that it is breath-taking.

The Nazi soldiers took the Jews down to the Danube River and had them take off their clothes and either shot them and then pushed them into the river or they just pushed them into the icy river. This memorial is made up of bronze shoes of all sizes and shapes to remind us of this awful time in the history of the Jewish people in WWII.

This is the market in Pest. If you want meat or fresh veggies, this is the place to go. Upstairs there are places to eat and a bazillion craft shops selling Hungarian crafts largely made in China. It was still fun to walk through, or at least I thought it was!

On the Buda side is this building. It was the Dept. of Defense building during WWII. It was heavily damaged and there was no money to repair it...so it just sits there with its plywood roof. Only the first floor survived and it still shows bullet holes from the war.

This is the palace on the Buda side. It was built by the Hungarian people for Maria Teresia, their ruler, but she lived in Vienna and never moved to Buda. It was never lived in and had very little use. It was bombed in WWII and repaired but still is not used.

Here is the whole gang we are traveling with. We have 16 students, 15 girls and 1 boy...Eric "stands out" where ever we go!

Of course how could I have a blog post without telling you what we ate?! Well here it is...happy little me and my vegetable strudel and Tom with his paprika chicken.

The Start of the Holman Brothers Annual 1 Mile Fun Run

Here are Josh and Logan during their 1 mile run. Josh made it in 10:15 or somethings like that and Logan in 10:49 I think. Matt is all proud because he made it in 7:37 I think. Ty was in Sunday clothes and so couldn't run. I'm not very impressed with any of them. When I was their age, I ran a 6 minute mile as part of a PE class at USU. So I'm waiting to see if any of them can beat the old man. If they can, I'll give each of them... I give them everything they could want already so what is left to give!? My admiration or something else with no monetary value. Notice Tim Holman in the background. Cousin Travis was there also. I think we ought to have them join in the next 1 mile race. Mau wanted to join in but Kristy thankfully restrained him--he would have expired in the first 100 yrds.

Dad's death, funeral, and burial

As I note on the next post, we moved into my parents' home on April 16th to help my dad take care of my mother, who was in rehab at the time learning how to walk again after a fall damaged a nerve in her left leg. Then we noticed dad was jaundiced, took him to the doctor, and learned the next day he had pancreatic cancer. He died 2 weeks later. We had a very nice funeral. Below are pictures from the burial two days later in the Logan Cemetary. Josh gave a very nice family prayer at the funeral, Nicholle gave the opening prayer for the funeral, Jane, Miles Holman, the bishop and I spoke, Diane Critchfield sang Oh My Father, and Doug Critchfield gave the closing prayer. Ty, Josh, and Logan, along with Travis and Tim Holman, and Kevin Holman were pallbearers. Here you see Logan dedicating the grave. All in all, a nice family-oriented time as we celebrated my father's life, and comforted my mother.The Honor Guard that came was the best I have ever seen at a funeral. They did a great job of honoring military veterans and adding some great pomp and ceremony to the service. The three volleys of rifle fire scared some of the grandchildren, but it was very impressive.

So What Else Could Happen!?

So much has happened in the last 1 1/2 months. Probably the busiest of our lives, or at least with some of the most and most dramatic changes. I will make several posts, this being the most current. We moved into our new home, my parents home, on April 16th, totally redid the basement and Linda turned it into a beautiful, comfortable home for us. The new carpet and lamanet (?) floors were (notice the past tense) beautiful--until last night when the drain you see below flooded and ruined the kitchen floor and bedroom carpet. Service Master is doing the clean up with the insurance paying (after our $1,000 deductible) for clean up, new carpet and new flooring. So we are going to spend the next week or two with our home messed up--again. But it is okay. We have been blessed in sooo many ways we can't complain.

Grandpa Tom's early birthday dinner

Since Nicholle and kids were in Utah, and because Matt, Jenny, and children sent me Omaha steaks, we decided to celebrate my birthday 2 weeks early! It was one of the few nice days we have had this Spring, in the mid-60s. Notice I'm on the patio without our picnic tables. We have started giving away stuff since we are moving this monthReal steak for the big people (including Sam and Amanda) and tube steak for Connor and Madison.

At the table with Grandpa Holman. Notice everyone is about done except Nicholle (lower right) who was taking care of kids. She finally got to her steak. The wait was worth it!

Thanks Matt, Jenny, and kids! It has been a fun birthday already. Omaha steaks from just one of my children; I can hardly wait to see what the others send me!

We are selling our home!

Just over a week ago, we put our home on the market. We have lived here for almost 25 years and it is the home our children remember most as "home." It is the only home our grandchildren have known for us. In fact, Blakie-Bones was living here when he was born while Matt, Jenny, & Amy lived here & waited for Matt's security clearance on his current job. We have lots of great memories and will really miss the backyard. But Linda is retiring this year and I will in 3 years and we want to be able to go on missions, visit our children and grandchildren without worrying about the lawn, or shoveling snow, etc. We are also ready for a single story home; stairs in a 4-level home could become as problem as we get older. We've already had an offer but countered and they didn't respond. Of course we are selling when prices are way down; they dropped $15,000 from 3 months ago when we first started thinking about this.

We may have big news about where we will be moving soon, if everything falls into place!