Updates from last fall

In the summer we have reformed our leadership team with the help of the Wootens and decided to go on a retreat to get to know each other better. We have brought our families to Alsópáhok and had a lot of fun and just a great time being together.




I (Peti) went on a hike and had a good time with my best friend, Gyuri. Gyuri has been leading the church in Bucharest, Romania since 2007 and I miss seeing him. We both have a passion for hiking and had a great time doing it together at Rám-szakadék.




Every year we organize a Saint Nicolas party with the church. It was a blast in 2010 again.




We also make Christmas services special. Both of our kids took part in the performance.




Christmas is one of our favorite times of the year if not the most favorite. We have great times to celebrate with many people including our leadership team...




and both of our families,



This concludes 2010. It was a great year and we were blessed beyond what we could imagine. God gave good times and challenges but in the midst of all that we were very joyful.

Updates from 2011 coming soon...

Updates August-September 2010

Time with Virág's Family from Israel

Last August we met some of Virág's relatives. Milli and her family live in Israel and visited Hungary (where the family is from) for the first time in their lives. Together we have visited some of the places that the family lived, went to school, etc. We took them to Szentendre as well which is a beautiful little artists' town north of Budapest by the river.

We really enjoyed our time with them...



First Ever Father-Son Hiking Retreat

I (Peti) have been reading a lot on father-son relationships and decided to do more for that (personally and help the congregation too). We spent four days in the country (Börzsöny) and had a great time with the dads and the sons.



Paiting Eni's Classroom

As the school started Virág and Eni's teacher started talking about improving their classroom and us, parents helping. Then the idea came not only to paint the room plain but to come up with a design to make it more kids friendly. We got the parents convinced worked for a whole week, ran into some challenged (plaster falling off the ceiling) but managed to get something real valuable done. When the kids came back from a week long camp they were surprised and pleased to see their new classroom.
Here is the sequence of the painting job:



International Leadership Conference - Miami



Virág also spoke at the ILC's Women's Program. You can watch her below starting at 29:08

Watch live streaming video from disciplestoday at livestream.com

That's it for now. More coming your way...

More updates from last Summer

Schema Training in Kiev
Last July we had the opportunity to attend Schema Therapy training session taught by John & Karen Louis. It was in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.




Dobogókő Excursion with Friends




Peti's Birthday Party, July 30, 2010

I (Peti) have turned 37 last July. We had a cookout to celebrate with some friends.



Family Vacation

We've done a lot of different things in our family vacation. Visited Peti's family in Veszprém and went out for a two day retreat to Fenyőfő in the Bakony mountains.
We went on a hike through the Cuha creek valley where you had to cross the creek multiple times. That was greatest fun for our kids. Unfortunately Enikő and Grandpa fell in the water at one point.

Then we were off to lake Balaton when we met with some friends including the Orsós family visiting from Bucharest. We had great weather and a lot of fun at the beach.

After that we went to Szálka to visit Virág's family and to celebrate Grandma's 60th birthday. We went on a hike, had a great time at the lake and the kids played a lot with the cousins.






Here is a slide show of all the pictures we took on vacation:



That's it for now from the Szabad Family Blog.

Last Summer - summary (it was a year ago)

Grandma's 80th Birthday
We have celebrated my (Peti's) grandmother's 80th birthday. She is my only living grandparent and we were happy to be there with her. The whole family gathered close to 30 people.



Croatia trip
We went to spend time with the church in Zagreb and the Croatian and Ukrainian leaders together with the Wootens. We all brought our kids and that made it a real memorable family time.



Teen/Preteen Camp
We have asked the Wootens (Shawn and Lena) to lead our teen camp this year. We had a fantastic time. Learned a lot from them and it was a real turning point in the life of the teen ministry.



Day Camp for Kids
After the Teen & Preteen Camp we had a week long Day Camp for school age kids right at our church building. The Wootens gave the idea and Virág ran with it.




Family Bowling

Since we love bowling on the Wii so much and our kids never bowled we decided to take them to real bowling. It was a very different experience, but a lot of fun.



That's it for now. We will continue to catch up on the Szabad Family story later.

Peti & Virág

Change of name - Peti's Blog to Szabad Family Blog

Hi,

You might have noticed that I haven't been updating my blog for over a year (or actually you didn't notice anything since I wasn't updating the blog).
But there is good news. Virág (my wife) and I have decided to change the blog and start one for our entire family.
So here is the change of name to Szabad Family Blog. We'd like to post all kinds of things related to our family of four on the blog from now on. In the process Virág and I get to do this together which will be a great thing to do for us as a couple.
We will start with where we've left it. Update you from what happened in our family since last summer.

Peti

Adventure in Challenge Park

The last couple of weeks have been incredibly busy. Sooooo many things happened and I didn't have time to update my blog. That's just life.
We've spent most of the last two weeks with the Wootens. In Hungary and Croatia. We will spend the next two weeks with them in Hungary and the Ukraine.
I will publish some of the events of the last two weeks. Hope you enjoy them.

On the 26th of June a Saturday morning we went to Csillebérc and decided to see how tough we are by going to the Challenge Park. Our kids had the greatest fun and we actually were very challenged by the different courses up in the trees.
We had fun as you can see in these pictures:



Here are some videos as well:

Diana & Robi:

Challenge Park #1 - Diana & Robi from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Enikő:

Challenge Park #2 - Enikő from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Andrew:

Challenge Park #3 - Andrew from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Enikő:

Challenge Park #4 - Enikő from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Virág:

Challenge Park #5 - Virág from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Lena:

Challenge Park #6 - Lena from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Virág:

Challenge Park #7 - Virág from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

and finally Andrew:

Challenge Park #8 - Andrew from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

We had tremendous fun. Got extremely tired and there were points on some of the courses where I didn't know how I would find the strength to finish. But God has provided.
I am very encouraged by our growing friendship with the Wootens. Their love for us and for our family is amazing. May God bless them for being there for us.

Robi's First Pentathlon Competition

My son, Robi (9 years old) has recently joined MAFC (my former team for playing volleyball) to train and compete in pentathlon. This is the sport where you have to compete in five different events (swimming, fencing, shooting, horseback-riding and running). Very cool sport. At Robi's age they only do two events, swimming and running. Last Saturday we went to Robi's first competition. He has been only training for two months and has improved a lot for those two months. But we still didn't have any huge expectations for him. He did really well. At the swimming event he was faced with an enormous challenge. When he jumped in his goggles fell from his eyes down to his nose and mouth. That made swimming a lot harder than regular condition. He swam the first two laps like that before adjusting the goggles back to his eyes. Obviously he had no prior experience in competitions. I was so proud of him, for the fact that he endured the challenge of the goggles and still didn't give up but continued to swim. Even with that Robi came in 25 out of 30 kids after the swimming and was able to improve to finish on the 24th place after running.

So here are the videos that I took during the event. First the swimming:


Szabad Robi Öttusa Diákseregszemle úszás from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Then the running (he's number is 25):


Szabad Robi Öttusa Diákseregszemle futás from Peter Szabad on Vimeo.

Here are the final results of the meet:

There is definitely room for improvement, but it is a good start and I am a proud Daddy to be able to be a part of it.