Thanks McGuigans

for making our visit to Kansas City a fantastic one!!

All of us after dinner at Jake and ? (what's the name of the restaurant we ate at again?) The kids loved it as they got little plates of sliced cheddar cheese, saltines and grapes shortly after we sat down.

Aunt Sally with Aunt Kat

Happy Birthday to Nana!
Nana in between her 2 sisters (Mary and Sally), Kat and Curt's cousin Julie

More McGuigan cousins and their spouses and kids.


Uncle Mike with Blossom. Our troop heading to dinner. The 5 of us walked there with Mike and Blossom.


Thanks Jim for showing us around Kansas City. Don't forget Ali and her giant scoop of ice cream! 2 seconds after this photo was taken her entire scoop fell out of her cone and she said, "Oh Shit"

Ali Counting

As I've mentioned numerous times, Ali was counting and speaking Hungarian really well before our UK / US journey began. After 7 weeks speaking only English, she progressed leaps and bounds. Here she is counting in mid-Aug 2008 (2 years and almost 7 months of age) in the car in Virginia (sorry about the bumpiness).



Can you hear me fighting the giggles at the the last part?

Ali in the Ocean

Our entire family loves the ocean. We enjoy spending our summers in Kiawah Island, South Carolina for several reasons. 1. It's a private beach so it's not overly crowded and much cleaner and safer than a public beach. 2. It has 10 miles of white sand beaches. 3. The ocean is warm, warm, warm. 4. The ocean is relatively safe. Occasionally when a storm is coming or at high tide the waves may get a bit wild but overall they aren't the kind to knock you down and keep you rolling underwater while you say a little prayer. Also, there aren't any hidden dips or valleys under the water for the kids to fall into while walking out. 5. It has fantastic bike paths all over for us to go on long rides with the kids. 6. Camp Kiawah. The kids cannot get enough. Even when friends and family come they still want to go for the day. It's an all-American camp where they learn camp songs, go on treasure and scavenger hunts, tie dye, play tug of war, etc. 7. The food. Great seafood (we especially love the crab cakes). 8. Our favorite restaurant Cassique. 9. A fab spot for catching up with all of our loved ones.

I'll slowly catch you all up on our recent summer holiday photos in Kiawah.

This first set are of little Ali who is not as courageous as she was last summer at the age of 1 1/2 but she did love the sand and playing in the shallow area.

Testing out the boogie board with Dad.


This is what she looks like after she gets salt water in her eyes. Not a happy camper.


Her solution: goggles! Much better.

Pokemon Still a Hit

Each of the kids are allowed to take one cuddly animal (if they want), a small bag of toys and a favorite book and / or toy when we go on vacation. Terence decided he couldn't leave home without his Pokemon cards. While in the US, we picked up a few new packets for him. I found him one morning in his bedroom in Kiawah, South Carolina, laying them out and comparing their point values, pictures, etc. He can sit and do this for hours.

Look at how he can sit. Those are his feet under his elbows! I don't remember ever being able to sit in a chair like that!

A Big Thank You to Joe and Evy

...for having us over to your lovely home in Staunton, Virginia. Staunton is a town I had never been to before but it is only about a 2 hour drive from Washington DC in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. The drive from where we were staying (near Washington DC's Dulles Airport) was a very scenic drive making us wish were doing it in mid-October to see all the trees in their autumn foliage.

Jon and Evy Harman are the parents of our good friend (and Director of our Relo Division), Jon Harman. They have really done a lot for the town of Staunton and have settled into this area (where Joe is originally from) years ago.

The kids enjoyed spending our first day out at the Frontier Cultural Museum even though it was a very hot day. We followed it with a walk through the very quaint Staunton where Evy and Joe's b&b is as well as a restaurant they now lease out. They have many other properties and treasures (including their sold jewelry shop) throughout the downtown area.

The highlight for us all was their massive, beautiful, old home and their wonderful hospitality. The kids had the best hide-and-seek game ever and really enjoyed making dinner and dessert with Evy.

Thank you both for having us. Looking forward to seeing you again in the near future.

The kids loved the giant staircase. This was the main staircase. They also had another back staircase down to the kitchen plus a huge attic (with proper stairs going up into it).



Downtown Staunton shots. Believe it or not that is Mia squeezed into Ali's buggy napping with her thumb in her mouth. She managed to sleep through our entire lunch!


Their fish pond.


All of us.

Terence's School Work

As parents I think we are always trying to predict what our kids will end up doing with their lives, how they will make decisions and, of course, how they will do in school (and eventually their profession). At 7 years old and only in 2nd grade I cannot tell which direction Terence, our oldest child, will go with school. He is right now completely on the fence and can either turn out to be an excellent student or a student who barely passes through school. Of course I hope he (as well as our 2 daughters) will excel but let's face it: school is not for everyone. The best sign so far that we have that he will do okay is that he loves to go through his school work with us, with family, with just about anyone. He loves to explain the exercises in his work books and how he did with each of them.

He insisted that we bring ALL his books back to the US so he can share them with Nana and Papa (Curt's parents) but we could only manage to fit about half of them into our suitcase without going completely over the airline's weight limit. Here he is with them in Kansas going through some of his books.



Sometimes he doesn't even notice if who ever he is with is not paying much attention as he is always fully engrossed and examining each page carefully.

3 Great Quotes

Last night at bed time, the kids were all picking out the book(s) that they wanted to have read. Ali picked one up, took a long look at the cover, turned to me and asked, 'Mama, this book in French?' Her English still needs some work and is a bit choppy but it's getting really good. At first I thought she said something different as I didn't think that she even knew what French was or that we had different books in different languages at home. I looked at the book and the weirder part was that it was in French. How on earth did she know that?

Last week I was cutting Mia's finger nails. She tried to keep me from cutting them and when I finally cut off her long claws (as we call them when they get too long), she looked down and asked, "Why did you cut all of them off short? Now how am I going to pick my nose?"

Terence's quote today was about a marble. After examining a big bag of marbles (these are the popular toy that they bring into school and play with on the playground) that he just bought at the store with his own money, he noticed one was just a half a marble. The other half was simply missing. He commented on how funny this was and how he'd never seen a marble shaped like this. He told me then that it was a Chinese marble and he heard that this is how Chinese marbles were shaped. Where do they get this stuff?

I think these 3 quotes give you a good insight into each of their personalities. They always keep us laughing and on our toes.

Back to School

Yesterday was BACK TO SCHOOL at the French school in Budapest. Terence started in 2nd grade (aka CE1). They assign times for each grade to arrive on the first day of school. The 1st and 2nd grades assembled on the playground at 9am whereas Mia's K class started at 9:30am.

We only found out who Terence's new teacher was upon arrival. There are three 2nd grade classes and he has one of the two female teachers who I've heard is very strict but excellent. This works perfectly for me.

The photo above is the list of the 24 kids in Terence's class with their DOBs and their nationality. Unfortunately, it seems Terence is class is made up of mostly Hungarian kids. I'm only saying 'unfortunately' as I worry that Terence will spend more time speaking in Hungarian than he will French but hopefully the teacher will put a lid on that.

After the head master introduced the teachers, he followed up with each child's name who would be in the teacher's class. The kids went over to the teacher one by one until the entire class was standing with her. Together, the class and parents (if the chose) went to their new classroom. I was only one of about 2 or 3 moms taking pictures.

Here is the hallway chaos (kids hanging up their jumpers) and the classroom. There was no assigned seating on the first day and to my disappointment, Terence chose the very last row. I'm sure that will change. He's sitting next to his buddy, Trevor, who also speaks English and Hungarian.

Here is Mia's new classroom. This is her 3rd year now at the French school and the first year she didn't cry. She was so happy and has a lot of her friends in her class. In Kindergarten and all the Pre-K classes they split the class in half so half started Tues, the other half on Thursday (they all have today, Wed, off) and then combined on Friday. I think this is a little less overwhelming for the students, teachers and parents.

"Okay Mom, you can go now"

Washing Stage

Why does every kid seem to go through that 'washing' stage? I remember Terence did it, then Mia and now Ali seems to want to 'wash' everything!

Often she's into washing cups and dishes (she's broken a couple so now we have to be careful to only let her do the plastic ones). She also likes to wash the tables and chairs and yesterday I found her under a heap of bubbles while she was scrubbing her little plastic motorbike like crazy. She gets a look of determination on her face and she just scrubs and scrubs and scrubs away.

Good-Bye Treehouse

Our beautiful tree house no longer stands tall and beautifully in the corner of our backyard.

After it was built (5 years ago), the neighbors (who we had not yet even met) came around to complain about the fact that they could see the top of it and that it was within 3 meters of the property line (a rule here). Not understanding this way of thinking as it was only a play structure and not a new addition to our home, we argued it. The city's district 2A land checker people (not sure of their exact title) even came out one afternoon to view it personally. This was only about 3 months after it was built and they brought the kids (we only had Terence and Mia then) to tears as they explained to these 2 small children that they'd probably be making us take it down. Our lawyer has been great at appealing their letters. We probably could have continued to fight them but while we were away we received another letter indicating that we had 2 weeks to take it down or we'd be fined a fee of 600,000HUF (just under US$4,000). I surrendered and decided that the fight wasn't worth it anymore. We've had some great years with our lovely, unique tree house that I designed and had built by a carpenter here but it was time to say au revoir. It's been weathered and has been in need of some minor work so it's just been easier to have it taken down. Now we are in the process of looking for a new little playhouse that will hopefully satisfy our extremely picky, unfriendly neighbors. Curt hopes to have it covered with hubcaps and flashing x-mas lights facing their garden.

For those of you that never had the chance to visit and see our fun tree house in person, here are some photos...

As of yesterday...

Ali's Pretty Hairstyle

As many of you already know, Ali returned to her Hungarian nursery school on Thursday, August 21st. After 7 weeks away from Hungary (1 week in the UK and the other 6 weeks in the US) she has just about forgotten her Magyar.

When we first started our journey she was speaking mostly Hungarian and we were constantly trying to correct her so she didn't get it mixed up. After our time away her English has flourished but her Hungarian needs a lot of work. She still understands everything that is said to her but she's struggling to find her Hungarian words. I'm not worried as I know in a couple of weeks they'll come flying back into her head.

One of the little things that I love about her school is that her new nursery teacher, Erika (so many Erika's in her life), is the best French braider. Mia used to have Erika as a teacher - 3 years ago - and she'd come home with beautiful braids every day. Now, Ali is coming home with the beautiful hairstyles. The funniest part about it is that I can barely even put Ali's hair into a ponytail without her screaming but she'll sit for 10 - 15 minutes for her teacher while she gets a double French braid.

Had to share these photos of her so you can see how adorable (and grown up) she looks.

With her big sister and her bottom toothed smile (by the way, Mia is still sporting 3 of her little braids from Kiawah!!! We have to wash them carefully as she doesn't want to take them out. I think she has a maximum of 3 - 4 days of life left in them.)

Girls Snoozing

Why are they always so sweet when they are sleeping??

Found the 2 princesses had crawled in bed together and zonked out lying next to each other. This was about 3 nights ago and Ali has fallen asleep in Mia's bed every night since. I think it's comforting to her. As soon as I find them asleep, I move Ali back into her own bed (which is in the same room) where she stays until morning.