Ali's New Haircut

We finally did it... We took Ali for her very first haircut. She is 3 1/2 years old and has never had one hair cut off her pretty little head. We decided to do a major cut and donate the 9 inches that were chopped off. She handled it sooo well. All of us were there to support her. I especially love how she held her daddy's hand while getting a shampoo.

It was a bit emotional for me but I adore her new haircut. She looks adorable with her big girl haircut. It'll make the hot summer months so much easier for her (and me without having to do all the braids and ponytails...)

More Fun with Stephen

These were taken on Saturday at Ali's nursery school's sommerfest. Stephen is Curt's nephew and was there working (manning our Move One bouncy truck).

Stephen thought the view was beautiful.

And Ali in the truck.

End of Year School Fete

At the end of the school year, the French school always has a school party ('fete' in French). This year, due to the weather, they had to move the entire party from the planned outdoor venue to inside. It was a bit chaotic but the kids had fun. During the party, Mia's dance group (the one through school) had an onstage performance. The video is coming soon. It was so cute to watch them.

This first phoot was taken of Mia just before she went on stage. She looks so nervous!

They were asked to wear either pink or blue shirts and shorts.

Heartbreaker

This is one of the photos that I received from Mia's dance school. I'm always a big fan of black and white photos. I absolute adore this one...

Heidi Ovoda Sommerfest

I have gotten behind on my blog updates...again. I still have two camera's with full memory chips that I have yet to copy onto our computers (for posting). I plan to do it before our departure on Thursday.

In the meantime, I had to post this cute video of Ali on Saturday. Her nursery school, Heidi Ovoda, had a great end of year summer festival called Sommerfest. It included a performance by each of the classes. Ali's was the youngest to perform and you will see from the video below that she was one of the main stars! Can you believe that she kissed a boy?! This is Norbi who she refers to by his nickname 'Shoo-Shoo'. You have probably seen photos and heard stories about the two of them. They are very, very close. Norbi's parents are celebrities in Hungary so the entire thing is very funny...

Enjoy the cute clip.

Wednesday Afternoon Fun

Had an afternoon with 9 kids yesterday. It wasn't a straight forward 'hang out and play' sort of day as T had tennis from 12 - 1pm; Mia had dance from 12-2pm then a bday party from 3-5:30pm; Ali was in nursery school until 3:30pm when she came home with Keira; Liam had a party from 3-5:30pm; Riley had a party from noon-7pm; Fiona came with her trio and left them with us for 2 1/2 hrs while she went house hunting with a realtor (in our area)... So, it was a lot of in and out but it was lots of fun and the kids all had a home base from 1pm - 9:30pm! Our 3 kids were the only (out of the 9) to have to wake up for school this morning. Tomorrow is their last day so we are dragging...

Anyhow, it was a fun day. Again, my video didn't work. I took a great one of 4 of the boys (T, Tom, Liam and Riley) playing this fun game on the trampoline where 2 were on it and 2 were outside on the ground. They'd have to throw the soccer ball back and forth and counted points for every time the ball hit the ground. It was great to watch and I wish I could have shared the video. Oh well, next time...

The kids ate pizza, played a ton and managed to get in the hot tub for a long time (before the rain storm started at about 8:30pm). Then, they all moved in to play video games and / or watch a movie.

Crazy Last Week in Budapest

This has been the busiest week in Budapest ever. Not only is it our last week at school (for Terence and Mia) but it's our last week in Budapest before our 2 month long holiday to the US. So, there is lots to fit in...

On Monday, Mia's class invited the parents for a picnic from 11:30am. Since the weather was cold and rainy we had to remain indoors. Her class performed some lovely songs and stories for us then we sat together and ate lunch. After the kids danced, shared cakes, etc. I took 2 videos but for some reason they were corrupt and didn't work... bummer. Therefore, the only 2 snaps I have are these from her class. The first is her posing and the second is her and some of her classmates with their teacher Agnes. They were getting ready to do another song...

After school, Mia, Ali and I went to visit Linda and her new baby, Matilda, while T went and played with Liam in the afternoon.

Linda is the daughter of Marcsi (the owner of the Heidi nursery school) and the sister of Brigi. Both Linda and Brigi teach at the nursery school. This is Linda's first baby with her husband Szabolcs. Little Matilda was 2 weeks old when we finally got to go and visit her on Monday. The girls loved seeing her but Mia especially wanted to hold and cuddle her. She loves babies!

This is Linda with little Matilda.

lots of cuddles and also present opening time. Mia, Ali and their friend, Keira, all helped Linda open the baby presents.

Camp for Mia

Over the weekend Mia went to camp with her Dance Craze Academy group. The theme of the camp was High School Musical and they went out to Lake Velence (about 1 hour outside of Budapest) from Saturday 9am - Sunday 5pm. Her BFF, Keira, is in town visiting so she went to the camp too. Here are some photos of them getting picked up with the bus on Saturday morning. They came home Sunday shattered but full of fun stories about bicycling, swimming, painting, baking, dancing (of course) and they even had a disco party on Saturday night.

He's Finally 21!!

These are 'Happy Birthday' banners in our entrance way....

Steve is finally 21. I know he had a fab time in Prague but we needed to celebrate Clements' style and give him a proper meal and homemade dessert to really celebrate numero 2 . 1 . He returned today - on Father's Day - to Budapest so he got an invitation over to our home for a full birthday spread: apricot dijon chicken, roasted potatoes, salad, homemade bread rolls,

So here it is.

Champagne . . . and wine . . .

And, home made cake with home made chocolate frosting....



I love how he cut it like a pizza...

Ali's Friends

Every morning (M-F) while Ali waits for Marcsi to pick her up with the Heidi Ovoda (nursery school) bus, she tries to figure out which of her doo-doos (kids picked up this word at the French school - it sort of means cuddly animal) she will take with her for the day. Fortunately none of our kids have ever been attached to one comfort doo-doo (ie blanket, cuddly animal, pacifier, etc). I don't think it would work in our household as too much seems to always go missing and / or temporarily lost. We have been lucky with their flexibility in this sense and have always tried to dissuade them from ever getting attached to one thing. We've seen too many cases with friends when their child's attached item went missing and their child's whole world collapses. Actually, one of the girls' favorite books is Knuffle Bunny (we also have Knuffle Bunny Too) and it's about this topic exactly... Anyhow, I'm off on a tangent... as always...

It's funny to watch what doo-doo Ali decides to take for the day to school. Recently she's been attached to this rubbery lizard which we picked up in Kiawah 2 summer's ago. It's a favorite toy for the pool as it's rubbery and you can throw it far. The kids love throwing it and swimming after it...

Ali recently found it, slept with it for about 3 nights in a row and took it along to school for a couple of days. It didn't last but it was pretty funny while it did. A rubbery lizard is probably not a favorite 'doo-doo' for most 3 year old girls!

PS She now loves hair bands (even though she calls them by their Hungarian word which I cannot remember right now). They are the best at keeping her massive amounts of hair out of her pretty face. However, we will be getting it all cut off before our big trip to the US this summer...

My Green Thumb

After 7 years of living in our home, I finally figured out which window / area of the house to put my orchids in to get them to rebloom!! I'm now rotating them around so when they lose their flowers they get sent up to the front window or T's bedroom window (he's so excited that they like to rebloom in his room) until they get buds. Then, they are brought back into the family room for us to all enjoy (bottom right).

The other flower which I have not moved but is very happy to rebloom on it's own is a beautiful Medinilla. I had never heard of these before but loved it when I saw it. When I bought it (about 1 1/2 years ago) it had a few of these big heavy flowers hanging off of it. The flowers, like the orchids, stayed in bloom for a long time. However, once they died off, the plant, again like the orchid, that remained was not so pretty. I'm so thrilled that it has another flower on it that we are all enjoying. Even the kids get excited when our flowers - both indoor and outdoor - rebloom.



Curt and I recently found a Dogwood tree at the plant nursery. We are so excited as they remind us of the states when we were kids. You don't see many Dogwood trees around here. We've planted the gorgeous tree (about 5 ft tall) and hope that it'll be happy in our garden for years to come....

Two Fun Videos

Just a glimpse at some fun to come. Terence and Mia were in the same end of year French school olympics day. They do it every year yet this was Mia's first year as they never offered it to the younger grades. This was T's 3rd year at Olympics.

They had three grades together so Mia was the youngest group and T was the oldest group. They mixed the teams (I think there were about 8 total) with kids from all three classes so they were somewhat even. I absolutely loved the tug-of-war competition. It's always been one of my favorite activities to watch or participate in... I just loved watching them and can watch these videos of them over and over again. I'm posting these first and will post the rest of the fantastic photos and videos sometime in the very near future (this is the 'fun to come' part).

The first one is Mia's group who gave it a great effort but ended up losing after a tough struggle. She's in the blue jumper in the middle.

Here is T's group. He was in the front and you can tell he tried really hard. You can hear all the parents cheering them on and shouting 'Allez' in French. This means 'Go!' or 'let's go'. The French women that I play tennis with usually say 'allez' when we are starting a new game to pump themselves up...

The great thing was that several moms came up to me to compliment me on T's strength, coordination and athleticism. For those of you that know him know that he's never been a really strong or coordinated athlete despite having two athletic parents. However, I'm starting to see him slowly improving and developing. This makes me very happy...

His hands were burning after that long tug!