Y'all been requesting pictures of the house so here's a photo tour of our home here in Budapest. We're mostly settle now, although there's still things I'm hunting for. We feel lucky to have found a home that is so new and with so many "American" touches. Here's the front elevation and gate.
Most homes here have gates with buzzers. The buzzer rings a phone inside the home and theoretically the homeowner can buzz the visitor in with a press of the button. That's assuming the homeowner is smart enough to figure out the system, which yours truly is not. When I have visitors, I make a mad dash to open the gate, much to the horror of our landlord. Every time he comes and I run out in the cold to open the gate in my bare feet, he about has a litter of kittens. He's a sweet old man and can't stand that I would expose my feet to such cold, but as you can see, it's not that far from the front door and the gate.
The home is build like a split level. At the entry way, you can go up a 1/2 flight of stairs to the right and enter the guest quarters (Kyle's bedroom) or you can turn left and go to the living room and kitchen. Plus, there is a set of stairs that take you down to the storage room and then eventually down into the laundry, sauna and garage.
Here is the living room and kitchen that you access through the double doors from the entry.
For those that will appreciate the rarity of this site: here's my American-sized fridge, complete with built-in ice maker!
The owner of this house designed and built it along with his wife and they did a great job designing ingenous space-saving built-ins. I wasn't expecting to have so much space and storage. We feel really blessed to have found a home with such good design, storage and openness, especially because it is so rare here.
The kitchen has french doors that lead out to the wrap-around patio and down into the back yard with a pool. Currently, the pool is covered and not in use, but everyone is pretty excited for the weather to be nice enough to roll back the screen and test it out. In the meantime, we are hoping for a good storm to give us enough snow to build our very own snowman. The yard goes back quite a ways and the kids like running round down there.
Moving on...if you return to the entry way and go up the 1/2 flight of stairs you enter into the 2nd kitchen and guest room, which has been designed to be used as a seperate living space. 
We are currently using the 2nd kitchen as a TV/Game room for the kids. This room leads directly into the Kyle's bedroom, which will also serve as a guest room, if/when we have guests. There is a ensuite bath and walk-in closet here as well. 
Going back out on to the stairs, if you go up another flight of stairs, you enter into the kids floor. Lincoln and David's rooms are here along with a bathroom. The hallway overlooks the 1st floor. One of my favorite things about this space is all the book shelves serving as a half wall. 
Our room is up another 1/2 flight of stairs on the top floor. I didn't bother taking any pictures because we don't actually have much up there right now. We left our king-sized bed in storage for fear that it wouldn't fit. It would have, by the way. Oh well. So now we are awaiting the arrival of our bed that we ordered 4 weeks ago. They say it will be another 2 weeks. Yeah, 6 weeks for a bed. *shrug* I don't get it either.
So, that's the tour. We enjoy living here. The location is great. Five minutes from school and 10-15 mins from work. We shared a backyard fence with another Exxon expat family with kids the boys' age. If necessary, Adam can take public transport, which picks up at the top of the street (about 50 yards). We live up in the hills but not so high up that we worry about getting down when there's snow. There's a 2-car garage and space on the street for visitors, when necessary. It's so much better than I'd ever hoped. So good, in fact, that even our side neighbor's half-finished yard of projects didn't discourage us from renting this place the minute we saw it.
