Church with Grandma

Today, Grandma and Grandpa Singing Bee when to church with Q-dawg and all the kids but Spooner and the Goob, who were home sick with me.  As Grandma sat and listened to the Hungarian speakers, Grandma started dozing.  Hava leaned over and whispered loudly, "Grandma!  It's not time to pray yet!"

They experienced the two extremes of bus drivers today after doing the Singing-Bee dash between buses: one that was super nice and waited for the whole crew to make their way all across the overpass, and the other who took off as Q-dawg was rounding the back corner of the bus, only moments away.  Fortunately the first was on the way to church so they weren't late, and just spent more time waiting on the way home.

Happy Father's Day isn't celebrated here, obviously :).

Back to church...

Nothing like a good first Sunday back to get things back to normal:

-Woke up around 5 am with Spooner, the little chunky-monkey.  He sleeps pretty well when he falls asleep without nursing to sleep, but, when he nurses to sleep, seems to dream about milk all night long and keeps waking up.  Sigh.  He's a cutie!  At least this way he is all "tanked up" for the journey to church :).

-Hava, who had fallen asleep around 7 pm the night before, was up and spry by 6 am, and managed to keep her passionate voice to what would pass as a whisper for her and normal volume for everyone else. "Mom!" she whispered, "I'm up because I am a light sleeper."  Pointing to the rest of her sleeping siblings, "They are all dark sleepers so they are still asleep."  Four year old logic is always very unique.

-Pipalicious, showing slight signs of "queeziness" this morning, vomits on the bus en route...
...caught it all on her dress, and was able to change her since we were the only ones on the bus.

-We leave Avot at the next bus stop to catch the bus back home with Pipalicious while we carry on to church.  Whew!

-We realize we didn't send the keys to the house home with Avot, so call Landlady Zsuzsanna and let her know that our daughters are locked out and, if she could let them in, that would be great.  Zsuzsanna was already planning on dropping by to let the roofer look at the roof, so it ended up being a good thing that she was there so she could let Avot and Pipalicious in.  Apparently, Avot was able to climb our high fence (it goes up to my nose) in a levi skirt, and get Pipalicious over, too.  I would have liked to see that one.

- We get to church with plenty of time to get all the toys out in the nursery :).

- I pick the opening hymn.  I think, "We'll sing 'You can make the pathway bright' since we have been practicing it at scripture time this week as a family," not realizing that, apparently, the Hungarians in our branch are unfamiliar with it.  Q-dawg is leading the music since Avot is home sick, so he stands up to lead, while I play an intro (accidentally starting a little too fast).  Q-dawg starts...and we're off!  It's a race to the finish.  Q-dawg is getting faster, and faster, and faster!  I whisper during softer parts, "It's too fast!  I can't play this fast!"  I try to slow it down, but it feels like we just keep going faster.  No one is singing that I can hear, and I am messing up all over the place.  I think this is just Q-dawg making one of his points about how church songs should always be played up to tempo.  Q-dawg chortles as he sits down.  When I get next to him, after the Sacrament hymn, I lean over and whisper, "We need to have a little talk about tempos."  Apparently, he thought he was just trying to keep up with me!  He hadn't heard any of my whispers, and had just felt like I was the one going faster.  And the Hungarians probably just sat back and wondered, as they watched this crazy American couple racing to the end of the song :).  We both had a good chuckle about that one.

-Lek bore his testimony in Hungarian!  The branch president smiled the whole way through.  He had asked if Lek could do it a couple weeks ago, and Lek had his dad translate it for him so he could share it.  He was tokjo! (Awesome!)

-Chugger-dude threw up twice in the bathroom...sorry, fellow church goers!  Apparently, Pipalicious's illness was not an isolated incident :S.  Hate it when that happens! I told him to keep washing his hands and try to stay away from everyone else....

-I make it through nursery, singing songs, and giving out lots and lots of cookies. Hey, I know how to buy the love of little ones :).  The Spirit was there, so that is what matters, eh :)?

-Made it to all our bus stops with a little breathing room, and Papaya only kicked two ladies on the bus in her final "throws of passion" before passing out into blessed slumber on my lap.  Thank goodness!

Then it was a day full of food, resting, skype, and family home evening.  Liliputian gave a great lesson on the creation that she prepared all by herself.  Avot shared that she had translated two hymns from Hungarian to English during her time at home, and had uncovered the mystery as to why the Hungarian version of "Come Thou Font of Every Blessing" has four verses in Hungarian and only three in English. (Apparently, because Hungarian just generally takes so much longer to say things, it took them another verse to get in the gist of the entire song.  Go figure!)  Hava was thrilled that her assignment was to gather everyone and used our recorder as a gathering call.  (Q-dawg loves recorders...or not :).)  Papaya was upset about something when we told her she was leading the music, but, when she realized we were going on without her help (heaven forbid), she stormed back into place at the front of the room, and waved her arms enthusiastically. 

(Side note on Papaya: I think we made it through home evening with only two time-outs for that little one.  Sweet.  I keep thinking "two" is not too bad and just cute, and then get one like this and wonder if one or the other of us is going to survive.  Tonight we caught her escaping through a hole in the fence, behind a tree, into our neighbor's yard.  Earlier today, when we got on the bus on our last leg to church, she charged to the back of the bus ahead of us, and, when we were all settled and had been going for some time, she came back to join the rest of us where we sat half-way back, unfortunately oblivious to the fact that she was not with us.  Nice.)

Back to FHE, for sharing time, Lek shared his gospel immersion experiences for the week: bearing his testimony today and spending 18 hours home teaching, six on one night visiting one family, and twelve hours yesterday (Saturday) visiting 5 families.  Not bad...only an average of 3 hours per visit.  As Q-dawg said, it is a good thing that they are doing it to serve, and not for their personal convenience :).  Uphill, both ways, on bikes borrowed from the missionaries again.  Lek's still doesn't have a seat on his :).  Missionary work, right?

The Goob shared his testimony (one of my favorite parts) and we will have treat and games tomorrow night.  Apparently, we didn't do Pipalicious's game last week ("Duck, Duck, Goose" or "Kacsa, Kasca, Liba" as we say it in Hungarian), so we will do that one and Chugger-dude's request: wrestling with music.  The latter is not the most spiritual of activities (the music is "Eye of the Tiger" and "Rocky" and some other one I can't remember right now), but the kids love it! Avot and I are "referees" and "medics" as we watch the general melee.

Q-dawg is giving a talk in Stake Conference next Sunday, so that will be a treat!  I also heard the following story from Avot today:  Last Friday, at a youth activity, she was being introduced to a senior couple.  After a brief conversation, the sister missionary says, "Oh!  You're that family."  Smiling, I think :).  I can only imagine what that means...

It's good to be back!

Hungarian Folk Dance Night

Tonight we went to the stake center to enjoy a Hungarian Folk Dance night, and, even though it was a crazy day, it was worth going.  Q-dawg and I were running a little late to start with, having gone into Budapest to see the movie "Les Miserables" earlier that day. We were still on the bus on the way home, when we called home and had the older kids hurry and get the little ones ready to walk the little over a mile route to the train and meet us there.

I ordered the tickets (in Hungarian...tokjo!--awesome--) and must have been pathetic enough, because the ticket lady had mercy on me and gave me the large family discount,...without me even asking!  While I did that, Q-dawg ran back to meet up with the kids and help any stragglers. Miraculously, they all made it to the train station in time.  At the top, they were so warm, most of them took their coats off to cool off.

Side note: I'll be expecting several more bags of warm clothes to be dropped off at our door in the next week...the other day, a lady up the street recognized Q-dawg as the father of "all those kids that run around in shorts."  Tokjo again.  We've had at least three bags now that I can remember being dropped off, "because we saw your kids didn't have any coats."

We got on the train, and headed into Budapest.

Here's Papaya enjoying her seat...kind of.  Note the boots.  They are Liliputian's but they were the closest and quickest to get on, so that is what she tramped around in...sockless, too.  Don't let any sweet little hungarian nenis see!

Pipalicious sporting Q-dawg's flat cap.

The next leg was on the metro, which was unremarkable from the usual craziness that surrounds us, other than the following situation.  Lek was watching Chugger-dude and Papaya do acrobatics on the seat across from him.  They were in between Q-dawg and an elderly gentleman who got on the Metro with a scowl...and it just deepened the more he watched our kids.  He kept inching further and further away.  Lek couldn't handle it anymore and said, "Chugger-dude! Stop doing that with Papaya.  It's not nice to do that in public."

I responded, "Lek, Dad is there.  Let him take care of it.

Lek pleaded in exasperation, "But he's not taking care of it!  He doesn't even care!"

True.  Touché.

We got to the dance an hour late, but apparently just in time for the family fun.  They had great crafts for the little ones going the whole time in the back, a snack-ish dinner around 6 pm, and then a couple came to teach us Hungarian folk dancing.  It was so fun!  I felt like I was one of the BYU Young Ambassadors...almost :).  It was wonderful to be in a room full of people enjoying something that had been passed down for hundreds of years, a shared culture that brought them together and defined them.  It was beautiful.

Dances are hard to catch on camera, but here are a couple shots...

 

They would teach us the steps in a big circle and then have us pair up and do those same steps in the actual dance to the Hungarian folk music.  I loved it!

One of the more amusing songs that they had us sing was "Down on the street, down, down, down. Need palinka (hard Hungarian liquor), Need! Need! Need!"

More than one person in that room thought it ironically amusing that a group of LDS people would be singing that song :).  The people leading the dance were not LDS, but they were so wonderful and fun.  What a great night.

Fun ending notes:
-Our Hungarian friend and tutor, Noémi, offered to take Avot and the three youngest girls home, which made for a nicer trip home.  Woohoo!
-The dance music after the Hungarian section was more modern...and very American :).  I thought it was great to do the line dance to "Cotton-Eye Joe" with a bunch of Hungarians. They really got into it!
-I keep forgetting to post how I love how Hungarians tend to say, "Hello!" to everyone when they come into a store, doctor's office, or room, and then a general "Goodbye!" when they leave.  It is a warm, inclusive custom that I think would be fun to start in the US :).  Let's do it!

Hava's jokes

Last week, the Goob and Chugger-dude sat across from lady that spoke English, and they had a great conversation.  She was lively and polite, and the boys enjoyed it thoroughly (and I think she did, too.)  This week, as we all piled on the crowded busz on our final leg of the journey home, there were three seats made available (and a few more right afterward) to accommodate our large family. (That is one thing about Hungarians that I love...everyone, and I mean everyone, is polite and accommodating to me when I have a baby in my arms or with little ones in tow.)  Two of those seats were directly in front of the same woman.

The Goob tried to get back there, but Hava beat him to it.  She plopped herself right down and started talking...and talking and talking and talking.  And I don't think just that lady heard what she had to say.  I was halfway back the busz and I could hear her clearly.  I think the whole busz could hear her cute little voice chattering away. 

One of the first things she declared was: "I'm not shy."  No way.

Then she and Chugger-dude started in on the jokes.  Chugger-dude started it with some cool ones he heard from the Goob in Cub Scouts last week. (I have officially delegated responsibility of Cub Scouting Chugger-dude to the Goob, to teach him all sorts of things that boys need to know.  It's awesome and frees up a little more of my load...whew!) 

The jokes are classics, and we've been listening to them all week :):
"Why did the person throw the horse out the window?  He wanted to see a horse fly!"
"Why did the person throw the house out the window?  He wanted to see a house fly!"
 ...and so it goes, through dragonflies and clocks ("to see time fly!")

Hava was not going to let herself be limited by those, though!

My favorite that I heard bellowed over the busz: "Why did the humungous train station go out the window?" "Because it wanted to see a humungous uni-sus (our family term for the cross between a unicorn and a pegasus) busz google-plex buildings die."

The nice lady sat and smiled kindly.  That's why we call her the nice lady :).

"Daddy pok!" and Sunday at the Singing Bees

Today, after a crazy day at church, we came home to the whirlwind disaster we had left with our dramatic exit (always).

We settled around our table on the floor, enjoying our left-over Sunday morning cinnamon rolls (courtesy of Avot who got up at 5 am to make them...whew!).  Some of the plates had a mere two-bites worth left, but each bite is precious so they all disappeared.  As we did, Papaya started exclaiming, "Pok!  Pok!"...the hungarian word for "spider."  Sure enough!  There, crawling on our new "manners" poster on the wall was a tiny spider.  The kids watched the spider's antics for a while, and then Papaya called out, "Daddy pok!"

"No, Papaya," the kids said.  "It's just a baby pok!"

Then we looked higher.

Sure enough.   Daddy pok.  Where is Aunt Niesha R. when you need her :)?

Side note on our Sunday...the latest busz adventure: Our first bus on the way to church accidentally made an extra stop that added seven minutes to our trip.  So much for our excitement that it was on time when we got on it! :)  The next bus had already left before we even got off our first bus.  Half an hour to wait.

We made some phone calls, and let them know we would be late.   We arrived at 9:10 am, where, we learned later, the first counselor in the branch presidency had been stalling until we got there.  I had a few sweet offers to help with Spooner, but, since he was still a bit sick (lingering cough) I declined and kept him to myself and one handed the sacrament hymn.  Let me tell you, even playing that much is a blessing in our branch!

Now we are all enjoying a leisurely Sunday afternoon: Q-dawg is napping, Lek hopefully is too (he stayed up late skyping), the Goob and Liliputian are playing chess in the other room (while Liliputian puts Spooner to sleep like a pro), Hava is locking Pipalicious out of the house, and Papaya is trying to climb onto Avot's shoulders to be a "shoulder angel."  Avot is blogging on one of her latest and newest blogs, "Joyous Praising" and I am here blogging as well, obviously :). (This is Avot's fourth blog.  That girl loves to write!  I love her poems.)

One of Pipalicious's pictures on her photography spree...lovely, eh?

Chugger-dude comes in every few minutes to see if "it is done with quiet time."  I finally told him I would say "no" every time he came in, so I haven't seen him for about 10 minutes.  Whew!

I love the sabbath!

Snowy memories

First of all, we have learned how to dress warmly, which is particularly easy to do when people like Misty send such beautiful hats and blankets for our baby!  It was like getting a soft warm hug from Grantsville :)!

Spooner loved them so much, he wanted to eat them :).  He "christened" it the first night he used it by spitting up all over it.  Go, Spooner!

As Q-dawg alluded to in one of his comments on an earlier blog, we had quite the snow adventure last Monday.  A delightful family in the ward invited all of us over for dinner and FHE.  Nice, eh?  They are vegetarian and vegan, so it took a little creativity to bring a dish with what we had on hand, but we loaded up all our kids and food and warm clothes and headed out about 2:15.  Q-dawg had worked wonders trying to figure out a good route there, and we were able to make it to their house by 3:30.

They had buckets of toys, two giant exercise balls, a dog outside, and a play area, so my kids thought they were in heaven!  The Mensaros's were wonderful, and we relaxed, played and chatted...well, Q-dawg chatted, I tried to, and the kids exchanged a few words and lots of playing with their kids.  Avot and Lek interacted with the kids and talked occasionally with the adults,  but spent most of the time sitting and listening.

FHE and dinner was sweet and wonderful.  It was nice to feel the shared love of the gospel that brought us together, despite our inabilities at times to communicate effectively (Nora was very patient!). Their oldest daughter and I shared the same favorite song, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" (which is in the Hungarian hymnbook!), so we sang that for the opening hymn.  So cool!

We ended the evening around 7 pm, so we could walk the little over 2 miles to the bus to catch it home.  It had started to rain pretty heavily, and then turned to snow as we walked...

...and walked...

...and walked.

Q-dawg had figured out some directions to get us there and had written them down, but we missed a street name or something and found ourselves just headed into a general direction :).  Up hills, down hills, through muddy streets, winding around corners we walked.  Hava made it the entire way on her own! (She has built up her walking muscles apparently :).)  We didn't have any emergency potty breaks, Q-dawg fearlessly kept leading us on, the Goob kept me busy with a long and involved explanation of the Book of Mormon-based computer game he wants to make to help people over come their addictions to computer games (creative).  We made it at last to a street Q-dawg recognized and only had 30 minutes to wait at that stop.  We ate the leftover bread and talked happily under a beautiful tree that overshadowed the bus-stop.  The snowflakes were incredibly big and the effect was wonderful.

Here are some pictures Lek took of a recent snowfall that helps create the mood for the story :).  Beautiful pictures, eh?  He is quite the photographer.

 

When we got to the bus station where we transfer, we figured we either had 4 minutes or 34 minutes to do our "Singing Bee dash" across the skybridge. 

It was 34 minutes.

It was now around 9 pm, and the kids were getting a little tired.  Hava slumped tiredly in the stroller while Papaya went crazy with tired-ness, trying to either slide down into a ditch behind the bus stop or make a break for the busy road.  Spooner was delightfully snuggly and seemed to be just fine.

Much to Lek's chagrin, to pass the time we decided to sing our choir songs.  We delighted the fellow passengers just up the street with rousing renditions of "Matchmaker," "Carrot Stew," and "Love Potion No. 9," to name a few.  So fun!  Q-dawg is doing a great job helping the kids overcome their inhibitions with all our public singing :).

At one point at our time at that "layover", another woman came into the bus stop that we were singing at, and she had quite the nasty cough.  We now have it (although, realistically, it didn't necessarily come from her), and the poor little ones are all dragging.  Sigh.  We have done pretty well staying away from sickness so far, so I am not really whining.  It is just hard to see little ones miserable, even if they are so cute!

We got home late, but safe!  What fun!

I think I already posted this picture below, but loved it enough to post it again, just in case I didn't.

Here the groups is, getting ready to go sledding!

Shopping blues

Alright, so one thing I miss is our van...for one reason only.

I don't miss driving (haven't enjoyed that for years), don't miss spending $120 to fill it up with gas, don't miss wondering if it is going to start one more time or get me one last place (although that was pretty exciting at times :)...).

I miss being able to put all my groceries in it and not have to worry about how I am getting it home :).

I thought about this yesterday as, walking with a full backpack, full stroller (no child in it), and bags draped on the side of it, I pushed it uphill to get to the bus-stop.  I thought about it as I pushed that same stroller-full up and down the street looking for the elusive bus-stop, cursing the fact that I had done the research for this particular bus-trip, and not Q-dawg, the expert.  Unlike his research, mine was a little full of holes :S.

I thought about it as we finally found the bus we wanted (the last of two we could get) at a stop that was not marked for pick-up for that route (if that makes any sense), hurried to get to it, pushed the stroller on into a mass of standing people.  Standing-room only,...sweet.

I thought about it as we stopped three more times in front of masses of swarming students and they tried to squeeze themselves on like sardines all around my full stroller and my pregnant loaded self.  Apparently, when they say this is a "bus route for school hours" that is exactly what it means, and the students use it to get home...and don't care how squishy it gets :).

I thought about it as the aroma around me smelled more and more like boys without deodorant, as we all hung on tightly to the hand holds overhead as the bus swerved around the round-abouts, and I tried to wedge my feet around the bottom of the stroller so it wouldn't topple or careen into some unwary student around me.

I thought about it as we pushed the stroller home, having made it to our bus-stop, and gotten off, and realized...I need to do this again in a few days :).

Needless to say, shopping for 10 people with a backpack and a stroller has been great for my keeping in shape.  The grocery store in our new town is twice as far as in Pécel (a little over a mile, I think), and down a big hill and up another, although the route is pretty :).  Even though I am going more often to the store, I don't think my spending has gone up (except for Milka chocolate bars--the baby really likes those, and they don't take up much space), because I always have to think about how I am going to get all that food home.  It's amazing how that can curb a person's spending.

Unfortunately, I am in nesting/stock-up mode, and want to make sure I don't leave my kids (who will already be at the home alone for quite a while when I have a baby) with no food :S.  They have a few meals for "treats" (frozen cordon blue and cold cereal), but the basics for everything else need to be here...we can't just buy for the week like we were, just in case I have the baby at the end of that time period and the food is gone.  Fun challenge!

The bus route is a little more of an out-of-the-ordinary experience--we were also picking up two "smoking/coffee" type tables to put together for our table and 10 cushions so we can sit on them an eat eastern style. (Pictures to come!  This pregnant body sighed and gave up when I saw that I would have to get out of my chair, crawl on the floor on hands and knees to get to the back of the computer to insert the SD card with pictures...sorry, mom and dad!  I can do it later when I have the laptop, and can sit and insert it.  Lazy, I know :)...) Normally, I will just walk to one of the two stores that I mentioned were a little over a mile away.

Nothing really comes in bulk in the stores I have found, although, at the store by the cushion/coffee table store, I found a flour bag that was actually 5 kg! (That's about 15 lbs.)  The most I could find before was 2 kg at a time.  Although it is great that we can burn all the packaging for the smaller things, it makes it trickier to transport everything.  We have to buy our milk and juice by the liter (picture to come of our fridge), and a family of 10 goes through 2 liters of milk (if we each just get under a cup in one meal...imagine that, Mark and Adam :)!).  Hence, the full fridge.  I panic, at this stage of pregnancy, when I only see a couple liters of milk and a liter of juice in the fridge.   Lek helped me feel better today when he said that he could run to the market for me if I was gone and they ran out.  Whew.

Oh, note about the cushions...at the store, they had a pretty "natural" tan-ish color and then vivid red.  I really wanted to get the natural, but thoughts of spaghetti, punch and chili spills just wouldn't leave my mind.  I sighed and loaded up 10 bright red cushions into the stroller.  Q-dawg was equally reluctant when he saw the blood-red stack, but, upon hearing my reasoning, agreed with my decision.

One other thing we did buy this week and that Q-dawg and I won't have to carry is our (drumroll, please...) brand new washing machine!!!  Woohoo!  It is being delivered tomorrow between 11 and 1 pm, and I am sooooooo excited.  It holds 6 kg, unlike most of the 5 kg ones we looked at, and was just around $300 (30% off it's usual $450 price).  At first, I was just holding off on doing laundry until I got it, but then, looking at our one pathetic clothes rack, realized that I should get some going a little earlier tonight to get it drying before we get the machine to wash the rest.  Fortunately, our cellar is very warm and dry--the perfect place for drying clothes, so hopefully the clothes should dry quickly.  It will help that the washing machine will be able to spin them drier than my arms can squeeze.  Although all the squeezing has been great for the muscles on my upper arm (they look the best they have in years!), by the end of a batch, my wringing is pretty pathetic.

The laundry went well, though...I have a bathtub to do it in.  Woohoo!  It was so nice!  I just need to find out what the Hungarian word for "bleach" is to try and save some of our pathetic used-to-be white socks.  Everything else seems to be getting nice and clean with this method.  I do find it hard, though, to sit and scrub dirt-stained socks when there are gaping holes in the bottom.  Kids can really be hard on socks, and it's hard to know when "wear it up, use it out, make it do, or do without"has it's limits :).