Sunday in Somlo

Last weekend we went back to our favorite little get away: Sue and Peter's vineyard in Somlo. We went up with our long time friends, the McGanns, who are back in town from Tampa, FL.

I am starting backwards... On Sunday we went to Veronika's first communion party. As there was a big crowd of us, we opted to skip the early morning church part and instead join them for lunch and the after party celebration. Veronika is the daughter of Laci and Rita who have now become great friends. Their family of 4 (Veronika has an older brother) live in Somlo and take care of the Tatrallyay's and the Neider's (and a few other's) vinyards. They are one of the loveliest families around! Here is our joyful Sunday with them.

The above shots are of the girls (Ali and Mia with their BFF, Keira) all ready to go and the adults, below, all dressed up for the party.

Below is Veronika - neither she or any of her family members speak English so it's great practice for us and the kids.

Food and drinks. Above is Curt with Peter and in the back is Bill and Laci (back right). Below T is with his buddy Liam (10 yrs old) enjoying all the delicious home made Hungarian foods.

Lovely Rita must have cooked for a week. My favorite was her walnut cake (top left). The top right is Rita with me and Kerry.

Curt is always so good at playing with the kids. He played 2-on-2 kick ball with Terence, Liam and Riley (12 1/2 yrs old and in the red above between Curt and T).

A typical well in a Hungarian home's garden. Above right is Peter and Sue.

THEN, Laci pulled out Old Betty. This is what I nicknamed the big red tractor that everyone had a turn riding. The funny part was that instead of just letting everyone have a ride, he set up obstacle courses for each driver to go forward through and then reverse through. The kids did it in 1st gear but the adults had to do it in FULL speed. Very funny for all of us...

T went first and did a great job.

Mia also rocked it and handled it much better than I would have thought. However, the video of her is not working for some reason but I do have the below still shot.


Then, it was Curt's turn. Peter was running to close the gate as Bill drove it prior to Curt and ran into it several times as he couldn't figure out the brake (was required with the clutch). Peter didn't want anyone else making the same mistake. The gate withstood the Old Betty but his car probably wouldn't have... PS Curt managed to avoid hitting the gate...

I love taking our kids up there for old-fashioned fun. No video games, TV, electronics. It was another fantastic weekend in the beautiful Hungarian countryside.

Mia's Dance Recital

Last Sunday morning was Mia's end of year dance recital through her dance group called DCA (Dance Craze Academy). This is her 2nd year there and I cannot say she's a super dancer nor is it her absolute passion but she does have a lot of fun. She has a lot of friends in her dance group plus she's made loads of friends (it's in English so a lot of English speaking friends) through the program.

I didn't take the first 2 photos but they were sent to me by Wendy who has a daughter in the younger aged group. Wendy's hubby, Carl, is a manager in our cargo division.

She doesn't have a rash... All the girls wore pink and sparkly make up for the show.


Here are several short video clips of some of the performances she was in.

After the performance she received her certificate from the dance instructors.

This is the entire group on stage. On the back wall is this year's theme: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

They've Arrived

Curt's nephew Steve and his buddy Eric are taking their summer break and spending it in and around Hungary. They arrived on Tuesday and have had a great introduction so far into Budapest day and night life. Today we move them into their new flat near the Margit Bridge.

Steve is in the above photo on the right

T's Saturday Tournament

This weekend was very busy with Mia's dance recital on Sunday and T's football (or Soccer back in the US) tournament on Saturday. He plays for the French league and this Saturday's tournie was against 3 other teams: the AISB (American International School of Budapest), ISB (International School of Budapest) and the BISB (British International School of Budapest). T's age group got the 2nd place medal. Or, so he thinks. Curt watched only for an hour then had to run some errands. He came to get me and Ali so we could come to watch him but we only caught the last 20 - 30 minutes of his final game. At least we made it for the awards ceremony. As these things always become a social event for parents - especially when we don't see each other all the time - I missed the announcement but T confirmed it was the 2nd place (bronze) medal.

We were lucky with the weather as it's been raining on and off all weekend. As soon as we got in our car it started to rain but it was the perfect temperature all morning during his tournament. He had to be there on Saturday morning from 8:30am which was not easy as he had a friend spend the night and they whispered and giggled up in his room until far too late. They finished their tournament at about 1pm.

Here are the photos of the awards ceremony.

Waiting for their medals.

Another one to add to his collection. He loves these things and must have about 7 or 8 from football and skiing. He still doesn't have any from tennis or any other sports but I am assuming he may start playing in tennis tournaments next year.

His team. Not sure why they wore different color jerseys. I think maybe they had two teams in their category...

The AISB campus. It's by far the nicest in Budapest and they keep building on to it! Not only is it the nicest but it's also the priciest at about 18,000USD / year / child. This is even from grade 1.

2 more... This is T later in the day after he and Curt got home from the store. He slept in the car (we opened all the doors of course) in the drive for almost an hour!

Wednesday Night - Girls Get Together

During the week, our dear friend Nicola visited for literally only 24 hours. She's a great friend who used to live here with here husband. While living here, their first daughter, Hannah, was born. After only a short couple of years and lots and lots of fun, they had to relocate (boo hoo). This is the expat life...

The reason for her short return was to check in on her apartment in town. She had a tenant that recently moved out and wanted to check in on what work needed to be done to it before renting it out again in September. Lucky for us she's letting Curt's nephew, Stephen and his buddy, live their rent free for the summer. I guess it all works out as we've had a lot of her stuff in storage in our warehouse rent-free. What comes around, goes around.

So, she left her 2 babies (her second one was born a year after she returned to England) behind with the nanny and came over to Budapest for work and fun.

During the evening we decided to hit one of our favorite squares - St Istvan Basilica. It's where the big church is where all 3 of our babies got christened. The square and setting are just beautiful. There are a few bar / cafes where you can sit out and take in the incredible European scenery that I love so much.

Nicky and I had planned to meet up with our friend, Kim Cooper, and got to the restaurant first. Within 2 minutes of sitting down and ordering our bottle of champagne, someone walked up to me and half shouted, "Erika!". I looked up to find my dear old friend Kim Maly who moved away from Budapest in 2002 to return to her Australian roots. I knew she was in town and Curt and I had already made plans to see her tonight (Saturday). On Wednesday, when we ran into each other, she had plans to meet up with another friend, Karin, for her birthday. Since she got their first and was alone I insisted she join in on our champagne to begin the birthday celebration.

Well, one drink turned into two and before we knew it they invited us to join them at Cafe Kor (one of my favorite restaurants in town) for dinner.

It turned out to be a fantastic night and even the the 2 friends I came with and the 2 friends I ran into didn't know each other, we all had a great time! They, of course, realized they knew of each other and as expat life goes had one or two degrees of separation.

Here are some of the snaps from the evening. It was chillier than usual and very windy as you can tell from the photos.

Left: Kim C, Nicky and me. Right: Kim M and me

Nicky with a cut out from the paper. She got it for her Scottish hubby who drives but has yet to get his license! Right now he's working in Ukraine where it's illegal for him to drive as a foreigner so he has a car with a chauffeur that was part of his employment package. This is very common in many parts of the world.

The 5 of us and me with Nicky

Dinner at Kor. Nothing but delicious every time.

Gabor, the owner, who knows all of us too well as we are all frequent customers. He became extra popular at the end of the evening as he insisted on paying for all of our drinks throughout the evening.

Not wanting the evening to end. Since 3 of us had babies to wake up to in the am, we headed home. The other 2 continued on from the restaurant. Crazy girls!

One More Ball Photo

I just received this and it is far better than my blurry shot of the ball's committee members. I'm the one on the right (if you can't tell).

T's First Big Mac

Terence is now 8 years old (as of 2 months ago) and he is starting to have a teenager's appetite. He can really eat! Some days I feel like he's going to eat us out of the home. There are definitely certain foods he won't eat like chocolate and green beans but he does now try just about everything and he's discovering that he is liking more and more foods every day. He still absolutely loves fish and sushi. He's discovered his love for prawns and yesterday had some really spicy ones at a restaurant which he never would have even tried about 8 months ago.

Lately, he's been begging us to let him try a Big Mac. We honestly didn't think he'd manage to eat the entire thing so I've been putting it off. Finally, last week I got him one. We didn't have time to eat in the McDonald's so we brought it home. I told him to keep it in the box as it was messy. When we got home he quickly unwrapped it and dug in. He loved it and thought it wasn't big at all. His exact words were, "Mom, this is only about 5 cm. It's not big at all!" He ate the entire thing in about 10 mins! I got this snap to prove it.

Mia's Photography

Mia recently borrowed my digital camera to take pictures through her eyes. It was actually really funny going through the approximately 150 photos to see what she thought was photo-worthy. Many of them were just of the neighborhood, plants, signs, etc. But, these actually made me smile.

The first 4 are from her bedroom's balcony. I absolutely love this first snap of the geraniums growing from her window box.

The rest below are her views from her balcony. From top left in clockwise order: Terence's tudor, Rafael's car parked out in front of our house; my flower garden; the jacuzzi

And, it's never complete without a self portrait of her feet / shoes!

Out of Touch

Sorry we've been so out of touch lately. I have not been in blog mode...

Life has been busy. Mia is getting ready for her big dance performance on June 7th. She'll be on stage and it'll be a fun day that she's been preparing hard for it. We are really looking forward to it!

On June 6th, Terence has a big football (aka soccer) tournament. He plays for the French league and will be playing the Brits, the Americans and the German in an all day tournament up at the American International School of Budapest. We'll be there cheering him on!

At the same time, I'm filling out the thousands of pages (or so it seems) of school registration documents to get all 3 signed up for 2009 / 2010. That's right - all 3! Even Ali will go to the French school next year.

Must run now. We have a three day weekend in Budapest and are going to meet some friends for Sunday brunch in 30 minutes.

Love to you all... More photos and details coming soon. I promise.

Curt and I at the Ball

This is the only photo of Curt and I from the Ball. I was so busy running around, catching up with friends and taking pictures that I failed to get one of me with my hubby. A friend of mine sent me this last night. It was taken about 11:30pm - right before the live auction.

Namaste Fund Raising Ball

On Saturday night we attended the International Women's Annual Fund Raising Ball at the Intercontinental Budapest Hotel. As in the past, I volunteered my time to help with the ball coordination and Move One was a main sponsor.

It was a great evening and for an excellent cause: Feed a Child. The Feed a Child Program helps kids from underprivileged families. Hungarian children who cannot afford a lunch at school will benefit from the monies raised at Saturday's event. It costs 5000 huf / month to help a child with his / her daily school lunches. Hopefully from the help of all the generous guests on Saturday's event, we will raise around 2 - 3 million HUF. That will help feed a lot of hungry kids!

As in tradition, the IWCA tries to come up with a theme to set the ball apart from all the other black tie / ball gown balls that happen in town. This year's theme was Namaste - Indian wear. Here are some of my favorite photos.

There were 10 people per table. This was the female portion of our table. Friends Fiona, Kim, Fiona, me, Henrietta.

Our fab Move One team / supporters of the Feed a Child cause.

Paul, Curt and Peter. I thought Curt looked great! Actually, they all looked excellent!

More friends.

The ball committe with the IWCA president. Sorry it's so blurry. I will get (and post) a better one soon.

Our table

Indian decorations and entertainment.