Curt's Packing Job

I thought this was funny and had to capture the moment. Curt's had 3 business trips (4 countries) in 3 weeks. We are both trying to get out to all our offices this year to give support to the managers, staff, meet the clients, etc. Many of our offices have not had the proper support from HQ so it's time we get in to train and get to know everyone as not all staff get to Budapest HQs.

Anyhow, for those of you that know Curt and I know that we are both quite similar in personality. Neither of us are very good with organization. My friend, Kerry, who is unusually organized and neat comes to our home and cringes when she watches me look for something simple like car keys, my camera, a DVD and have no clue where to begin my search. In our defense, we have never permanently lost anything important! Things have definitely went missing for periods of time but they always turn up... eventually....

I'm obviously getting off topic here as the point of this post is to show Curt's packing technique. Not that mine is drastically different or better but I think it's funny. He sort of spreads everything out in the family room and then packs. It's hard in Hungary as there are no built in closets in most of the homes. We've had a lot of cabinets built but unfortunately our bedroom is so small that a lot of our clothes are not in our bedroom and not even on the same floor as our bedroom. So, we get a good work out on the stairs when looking for a particular clothing item.

You can see one of the balloons left from T's birthday. Erika and Fanny must have blown up about 30 after he went to bed on Saturday night so he'd wake up to a house full of balloons and decorations!

Owl in our Tree

On Wednesday evening Curt was home earlier than usual and got to hang out on the trampoline with the kids before bedtime. Suddenly I heard them all saying "Look!" and "Is that an owl?" and "It's huge!" Then Mia discovered her talent for talking to owls or hooing at them as the one that we saw (we think the mother) replied every time.

Last night the owl returned, however, the kids were pretty sure that it was a smaller owl. Therefore, they assumed that it was the baby. You can see from the video that there are 2 nests in the tree. The kids guessed that the big nest was for the mommy and daddy and the little one belongs to the baby (or babies). He stayed near the nest and replied to the kids' hoos. It was very funny watching them. This video below is from yesterday at about 7:40pm. It's so nice having longer days! It's still rather dark but think it's still viewable.




PS It's great having longer days but much harder to get the kids to bed at a reasonable hour. Who wants to start getting ready for bed when it's not yet dark outside?

PPS Curt is traveling this week. He's in Macedonia for an internal conference. Wish I had went but was too hard to juggle. He's home Saturday evening.

More of T's 8th Birthday

Terence's birthday this year fell on a Sunday. As we went out to visit with Tracy over at the Cooper's home on Saturday night, Erika came to babysit. Since it was a Saturday night she let Terence stay up late as a birthday treat. In addition we lost one hour on Sunday morning due to our day light savings time. He was, therefore, very tired on Sunday morning when he woke up to me and the girls singing to him and blowing horns while he was in bed.

Present opening time!

Saturday night with Erika and Fanny (Erika's daughter), presents and kids champagne!

ps I just noticed where his hand is in this photo. Excuse him...

A Weekend Visitor

Our dear friend Tracy came into Budapest for a 2 night visit and we just loved every minute of it. She flew in from Panama City (in Panama!) Saturday afternoon at about 5pm. Kim and I picked her up at the airport, drove her up to our neighborhood and began the celebrations with a big curry dinner on Saturday night at Kim and Jon's home. It was lovely spending the time with her and catching up. We really do miss her and her family so much! They lived in Budapest for about 3 years and they were great friends during that time. Matthew, her hubby, and Curt had great laughs together. George and Daisy, their 2 adorable children, got along so well with our trio. And, of course, I never ran out of things to talk about and laugh about with Tracy. It's not every day that one makes a 'family' friend! Thanks Tracy for making the effort to stop by Budapest on the way to your mom's birthday celebration in England! We loved having you back!

from left to right: Sam, Tracy, Jenny, Fiona, me and Kim

Jon in the kitchen getting the curry feast ready.


Airport pick up.

Present Opening

Posting a short video of T opening up one of his birthday presents this morning.

8 Years of Terence Reed Clements

Some of my favorite moments in our son Terence's first 8 years. Happy Birthday my sweet boy! He turns 8 on March 29th.

PS I have only had time to find a few of my favorites. Will write my thoughts down tomorrow or Monday.

a favorite video of him singing his favorite song in April 2005 (Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt)

this photo was taken this morning on a Hummer that we are test driving (just for fun) for one week.

Friends in High Places

One of my tennis partners, Margret, is getting ready to move to Berlin. Her hubby is with the UN and they've had some incredible postings. Berlin is their 4th or5th location to live in. I was honored to be included in a small farewell luncheon earlier this week with her and some of her very important friends. The hostess of the luncheon was the Belgian ambassador's wife. I pulled up to the house which is one of the most beautiful homes in Buda and sort of had to pull my jaw off the ground before pressing the buzzer. I was then not greeted by Beatrice but by her butler. We had an incredible 3 course meal which started with a souffle and small green salad. The main course was salmon wrapped with cod and a shrimp / lobster sauce. I think I hummed as I ate (like a happy baby) as it was delicious and so nice to sit down to a fabulous warm lunch!

Below is a photo of our little group which consisted of mostly diplomats. I knew 5 of the women (including Margret of course) from tennis. The others were lovely and most knew me through the community and Move One so I felt very welcome. Margret is the woman sitting in the middle with the orange jacket.

Mia with her friend Olivia

Mia is lucky that one of her nearest and dearest classmates lives just 4 houses down from us. Her name is Olivia and her mother is Hungarian and her father is French. Olivia, therefore, speaks Hungarian and French perfectly. Mia and Olivia have sort of their own language where they mix Hungarian and French. It's very funny to hear them.

Since Olivia lives so near to us she comes over to play often. She's the oldest in her family of 3 kids. Since her little sister arrived in September, we have helped them out a lot with pick ups / drop offs to school, play dates, etc. They also helped us with Terence and Mia while we were traveling in Dubai last month.

One night recently Olivia came over with her entire family. The moms and dads enjoyed getting to know each other over some nibbles and champagne and the kids ran around. Olivia's parents were trying to get her to come while her and Mia played this high-five game. Curt video taped. You can hear Olivia's baby sister in the background crying...

Anyhow, I thought it was cute of the 2 girls. Olivia had also dressed up but changed back into her clothes just before leaving. Mia loves dressing up and designing outfits for herself, her sister and her girlfriends.

Crazy Clouds of Budapest

Many of you that either live here, have recently visited or keep in touch with a resident of Hungary knows that the weather has been unusual and unpredictable here over the last month or so. This morning we even woke up to snow which was really not something we were prepared for. I had even put away the snow boots and winter coats. Last week, after I picked up Curt from his Poland / Czech Republic trip, we crossed the bridge from Pest to Buda with this amazing sky. For those of you that spend time with me know that I am hugely into nature. I love trees, flowers, sunsets, clouds... anything to do with nature. Curt sometimes thinks I've been smoking whacky tobacky as I can ohhh and ahhh over clouds for much longer than the average person. Anyhow, here are some recent ohhhs and ahhhs that I recently experienced.

Above - from the Erzsebet bridge.

All of these shots were taken from our moving car.

The below was taken in mid-Feb from our home.

Ali Loves Boy Shorts

While skiing in Zell am See the 3 kids all shared 1 bedroom in our hotel. They had a huge closet and I unpacked and gave them all a section for their clothes. Ali really loves dressing herself and one morning she took it upon herself to get herself dressed while we were all still sleeping. She didn't get to her pants as she was so happy with her underwear choice - which turned out to be a pair of Terence's boxer shorts. She loved them and ended up wearing them all day. I wondered what the other parents and the babysitters in the children's playroom thought as the tops poked out (especially when she bet over) revealing spiderman. Not a typical choice for a little girl...

After returning, I lucked out by finding boy shorts at H&M. Actually they had tons so she must not be the only one to dig boy shorts instead of the other typical bikini style for girls.

Here she is just this evening getting ready for bathtime. The undershirt is a HUGE requirement under her shirts at Hungarian nursery school. I get scolded if I forget to send her with an undershirt like the one she's wearing in this picture.

Best of Budapest party last night

We went to the annual Best of Budapest Gala last night. We've been invited to this event for a number of years as we have proudly received the prestigious awards Best Moving Company of Budapest and Best Relocation Company of Budapest! Over the years we have become good friends with the organizers of this event, Peter and Joyce Freed (she's American from Alabama). Additionally, every year we have gotten better and better seats. We started in the nose bleed section (last table in the back row sort of thing) about 9 years ago and this year we were happy to be sitting at one of the head tables on the stage. It's a very well attended event at the Hotel Intercontinental. Last night there were approximately 500 people there including the owners of Budapest's best restaurants, hotels, etc. We ate, drank, socialized (a lot) and danced (or at least I did with my girlfriends).

Here are a few snaps that I took throughout the evening.

Curt sitting next to me while a famous Hungarian woman entertained us with some beautiful songs.

Above left are our hosts, Peter and Joyce. And, Curt and I standing next to an old City taxi car which was on display in the hotel. City Taxi won best taxi company and were also big sponsors of the event.

Ballet Hair

Every Saturday morning Mia takes a dance class with a group called the Dance Craze Academy (DCA). She also takes dance every Monday after school from 3pm - 4pm (at school). The DCA is a great group that she's been with for 2 years now and really enjoys it. It's in English and she has a few friends from her school but she also has made friends with a lot of other kids that are American, British, Hungarian, etc. Many of Curt's and my friends' children go to DCA so Mia has met them in other social environments (bbqs, etc). Anyhow, it's a lot of fun and at the end of the year's course they put on a great show. This year's theme is something like Slumber Party or Sleep Over or something. Sandra, who runs the DCA, does a great job so I'm sure it will be fantastic.

Last Saturday they brought in a photographer to get photos of the students in their costumes. The photos will be available for parents at or around the time of the show which is a great souvenir. Last week was a bit of a hectic one for me and I missed Sandra's message about moms having to do the kids' hair at home so they would look nice in their photos. Mia went with Curt with very wild, sloppy hair. Well, we had another chance yesterday. I guess Mia's group only took half their pictures last week and the other half were done yesterday. So, I was prepared to do a nice hairstyle for Mia. I asked her to select a style that she'd like me to do and she asked for a 'real dancer's hairstyle'. She didn't know it was called a bun. I have never attempted a bun before so I went on to youtube.com and found a few helpful how-to videos. It was actually really easy! Here is how it turned out.

I was pleasantly surprised when she returned home with it still in tact (3 1/2 hrs later).