Saturday, January 26, 2008

Curt's Birthday

Today is his 43rd birthday. Fortunately everyone slept in a bit allowing me to get a lot done between 7am and 8am. I cooked bacon (nothing like the smell and taste of bacon - something we have very rarely), Mexican style scrabbled eggs with mozzarella in corn tortillas, fresh smoothies and cafe lattes. Curt got breakfast in bed! He also got his two birthday presents: skateboard t-shirts picked out by Terence and Mia. He can always use new t-shirts.

After Terence's soccer practice and Mia's dance class we went to Budapest's new IMAX theater to see a dinosaur film in 3D. It was great but Ali and I dozed off for the last 20 minutes. It was nice to have a nap!

Tonight Curt and I will go out with 10 friends for dinner to one of our favorite restaurants: Trattoria Toscana (Italian - as you can probably guess by the name).

Last of Ali's Birthday Photos

Not sure what these 2 silly girls are doing, but here they are with the birthday cake made by their nanny, Erika Takacs.

Present opening time.



Ali still has trouble smiling on command. Surprising with all the photos taken of her! This is her newest 'smile'. It looks painful.


She loves the butterfly wings that she got for her birthday.


And her absolute favorite gift is her new baby pram. She is such a good little mommy and is always telling her babies to 'shhhh' as she tries to put them to sleep.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Ali's Birthday Morning and Nursery School

When Ali woke up we greeted her with 2 candles in her favorite breakfast - pancakes.

Here are the photos that they took of her at Heidi Ovoda (her nursery school)

Lunch
The birthday chair and nap
Present time! Norbi (aka Shoo Shoo) is always by her side.

Birthday Girls with Mom

My 2 birthday girls. Photos are from this evening after Ali's birthday celebration (photos coming soon). What a busy week in our home. Saturday will be Curt's birthday!


And, blowing kisses


No, Mia hasn't outgrown her clothes. She's wearing a traditional Indian outfit (with skirt) that we brought her back from our recent trip to Mumbai. She loves the outfit and has worn it every night since she received it on Tuesday. When she first tried it on she did worry that it was too small for her. I explained that the belly was supposed to show and it fit perfect. She looks so sweet in it - especially since she still has such a big belly.

Ali's Cupcakes

Ali wanted blue (more like 'boo') frosting on her cupcakes. Here are a few all packaged and ready to take to nursery school.

Mia's Birthday - Packed with Fun


It's become a Clements family tradition that for each child's birthday they get to go out alone for dinner to a restaurant of their choice with mom and dad - no siblings. We only start this from around the age of 5 as before this they can't sit still to even eat at a restaurant so it doesn't make sense.

Mia had a difficult time choosing one restaurant as she loves all food. Therefore her request was to go to a 'mommy / daddy restaurant'.

This was a funny request but she really wanted to see where Curt and I go with our friends when we get dressed up and go out. So, we decided on one of our favorites: Tom George on Oktober 6 utca. When I told her that this was the restaurant that I chose she asked me, "Are we going to be able to dance?" I couldn't refrain from laughing and told her that there wasn't dancing as it was a restaurant. She replied, "Well, I want to dance" then asked, "Will there be music? If there's music then we can dance, or at least I can dance next to the table." I told her that would be fine. I realized that she was hoping to go to a Ball. Curt and I often have to go to these charity balls and she sees us get all dressed up and she always asks me what we do at these 'balls'. I usually explain that the night consists of eating and dancing and chatting with friends. This must have been what she had in mind! Again, she's only 5!

However, she first had to wake up to her favorite breakfast (soft boiled eggs and toast) with candles. I thought this video was funny.



I picked her up from school with a bunch of big helium balloons. She asked if she could get her nails done by our friend Eszter before going with me downtown to meet dad. Here we are having her nails done, per her birthday wish.

We had an hour before dinner so I took her to Vorosmarty ter where they just opened a gigantic new H&M. It's quite cheap so I let her pick out a few things totaling an equivalent of about $15. She skipped the clothes, the jewelry and went straight to the makeup. They have a whole section of Hello Kitty make-up, lotions, perfumes that are very kid / preteen oriented. She picked out a small perfume set, a compact with mirror and a lip gloss. Oh, I also got her a little pink makeup bag to put it all in.

We then walked over to Tom George where we met Curt. Mia insisted on sitting at the bar for a drink. She loved the big bowl of peanuts and couldn't believe they just gave them to us for free!
We brought several of her gifts to the restaurant to open. She was so thrilled. She was the hit amongst the waitresses as she tried so hard to act like a little grown up. One of her presents was a box of bangles that we got in India. She put them all on and showed them off to all the girls in the restaurant!


After dinner they surprised her with ice cream, a big flaming candle and the Happy Birthday song on the load speakers. The whole restaurant clapped for her at the end. She blushed and giggled.




It's good to see she's still such a kid and needed to run around after all the sitting still in the 'mommy / daddy restaurant'!

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Alexandra Turns 2

Ali's 2nd birthday is today. It is official. The Clements' home no longer has any babies! She was greeted this morning with a few birthday presents (a Weeble fire truck and some play princess jewelry) then 2 candles in her birthday pancake! Last night we made more cupcakes for her with blue frosting, per her request. We tried adding red food coloring to the blue to make purple but it turned out more like silver. We'll save those for Curt's birthday! ;-)

This morning she went to nursery school where they are having a big party for her. She took 20 cupcakes and her big sister, Mia. Mia still has many friends there as the nursery school goes up through Kindergarten (age 6 - 7). I let her skip French school as she really wanted to be with Ali at school to help celebrate.

After I pick Terence up from school, we will pick up the girls with 3 big helium balloons for Ali. Tonight we will celebrate at home as a family. I'll make her favorite dinner of salmon. Sides will be very strange as she likes some bazaar foods: pickles (she loves the little ones), cherry tomatoes, french fries, beans (either chickpeas, peas or the big white ones - still not sure). We'll have cake afterwards then she can open her main present. A big baby pram! She'll love pushing her babies (and Mia's) around the house.

Pictures of the girls' birthdays will be posted very soon. I had to send my camera in with Ali today so they could capture it all for me.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Mia's Last Day of Being 4

I get really sad the day before one of the kid's birthdays. I have to really absorb the way they look, act, sound, etc as it's the last day that they'll be of this age. Today is Mia's last day of being 4 years old. I must have stared at her a bit too much today after school because she kept asking me why I was staring at her. I kept having to explain that I wanted to always remember her being 4 years old as it's been such a wonderful year. It really has been a great year. Mia's such a good sister, friend, daughter... She's such a caring young individual that is always (almost always) so happy. I love her with all my heart but wish that she didn't grow up so quickly.

This evening - while dinner was cooking - I had to interview her about how she felt on her last day of being 4 years old. The result is very entertaining. Completely unprompted!


I must have been telling them repeatedly that I needed more time for the dinner to come out tasting delicious... Mia is such a foodie that she kept telling Ali and Terence not to bother me too much while I was in the kitchen. She knew I needed some time to concentrate while chopping and throwing everything together to cook before I could come and play with all of them. Note: after these videos we frosted and sprinkled about 30-40 cupcakes (even Ali helped). Mia is taking most of them to share with her classmates tomorrow at school. There are about 23 or 24 kids in Mia's class at the French school.

Then Terence needed to be on camera. This is the same kid that usually hides when the camera is facing his direction.



I think he prefers video over still photos. It also excited him to know that I'd let him view the video on the plasma afterwards.

Last India Post

This is what Curt ran into and cut his forehead open on. Our room is behind him. Our room was the only one with this big box outside of it.

Being creative. Curt and I in the rickshaw's side mirror.




The above photos are: vegetables sold street side in the Santa Cruz market, kites stuck in the trees during kite fighting week, upstairs storage (Curt loved how they shouted up the style and shoe size and the storage guy threw the boxes down), an 11 year old beautiful girl who had no home and was trying to sell henna tattoos for a little bit of money on Juhu beach.



We liked the Say Cheeze sign. Notice the bamboo scaffolding behind Curt.
And, me in a rickshaw.


McDelivery motorcycles. You can get everything delivered in India.



This is a video from our rickshaw one afternoon.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Our Stay in India and a great WINE discovery


Upon arrival


Watching the sunset one evening before we headed out for dinner


The other direction



It was a very comfortable hotel stay and I cannot wait to take the kids to visit - maybe on the way down to GOA! Just a new dream that we have...



Sounds a bit like an oxymoron. But this fantastic Indian wine was introduced to us by new friends Tom and Fabiola who we met during our stay in Mumbai. Fabiola is Canadian Chilean and Tom is South African Canadian. We had lots of fun one night at dinner at an amazing restaurant about 100 meters from the Marriott. A small local seafood hangout that they discovered during their longterm stay - since early November 2007. Tom and Emil (not with us that night) are both pilots delivering private jets and training private jets' pilots. As you can imagine, their clientele in India is huge. This wine was 1/3 of the cost of any other imported wine so it became a hit with all of us. You can find more about Miazma here.

AURUS Review

Aurus has got to be one of my five favorite restaurants in the world after experiencing it's amazing service, cozy yet chic atmosphere and excellent food last week. It was recommended by two of my friends from Bombay (they still can't get used to calling it Mumbai). As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts (I think it was on 'Day 1 in India') it was a bit challenging to find. Knowing that it's on Juhu Tara Road is a bit helpful as it's a short stretch between two other Juhu something Roads. There are 2 security guards outside the doors but the Aurus sign is inside a candlelit walkway so unless you are standing right outside on the sidewalk, you'd definitely miss it. I found a review of the restaurant online. Funny enough, the sites is called Burrp. Both Curt and I agreed that what we loved about Aurus was the food items were simple but the sauces and flavor combinations were out of this world! Next time I go back I may have to skip the champagne as it was unusually expensive. Must be a big import tax on it or something.

Here's a photo of what I saw when I looked up from our table on their terrace.