"Yo-yos," creating, and violent FHE games

 I purchased some walkie-talkies for the little ones. The older kids had some and the little ones loved to borrow them, although it did stress the older ones out a little.  So I looked on my trusty Amazon site and found a set of three for a decent price and ordered them. I was debating whether or not to save them for Christmas or not but decided to pull them out yesterday.  What fun!

Zuli loves her "yo-yo" as she calls it.  The boys also are a little obsessed and it works wonders to get them to do things by saying "you can play with your walkie-talkies after you finish...."  It is super cute that they are made so a little two year old can handle it, although she often misses the timing of when to start and stop talking :D.

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Chugger-dude had his first day when he actually had to push himself to keep up.  Of course, that is probably also because he inserted a two hour trip to the cemetery with the kids with Lily when they were first trying out their walkie-talkies.  He likes to take his day at a mellow pace and it caught up with him by the end of the day, after fitting in cross country practice, football scrimmage with a local pick-up group and then finishing his jobs and geometry homework around 10 pm.  It has been fun to see the kids being externally mentored thrive in this different environment, although Chugger-dude did say that if it wasn't for the sports, he would rather work at home because it seemed to be more challenging and do more for him.  We are teaching Biology, reading classics and doing supplemental math at home in addition to his high school classes since the school wouldn't allow us to put him in the classes he was ready for and had some remedial substitution.  Okay, not remedial, but still...Chugger-dude could really measure up to the challenge.  For English they are reading "Hunger Games" this semester.  I had him read "The Chosen" and "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" (sp?) this month.  I am content, though.  We can use the system when we need it and I own that I am his primary mentor and he is primarily in charge of his education so we need not be limited to it. :D

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Liliputian has decided to take a turn at sewing and so we purchased a bunch of fabric and just need to carve out time when the fabric can rest unmolested on the kitchen table long enough to be cut out, lol.  For some reason that has felt really hard to do, lately!  She bought a pattern for a dress and I think she will look smashing in it.  It may end up that it doesn't get much done on it until Oma comes to visit when the baby is born in a month, but we are determined to give it a good headstart. :D

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Piper bounced around the house with boundless energy last night, engaging in one intense interaction after another with her more mellow siblings :D.  Fortunately she was able to use some up doing an intense job on her "dinner help" of straightening up the front room and mud room. I love when she does that, although I feel a little like I am taking advantage of it.  She insists that it is therapeutic for her and I enjoy the super-clean result but she does go a little into overdrive when she is in that mood.

Yesterday I was able to be her "secretary"/typist for an interview of a local official for a school class.  She selected some kind of village clerk and it was fun to learn more from a less-prominent public figure.  It was also funny since the lady wasn't serving in an elected role so she probably hadn't thought much about some of the questions Piper threw at her like the role of government and some philosophical reactions to words by the Founding Fathers.  The lady was super nice and it was fun to overhear the interaction on speaker phone as I typed up the lady's responses.  

Piper also made a killer shrimp avocado salad much to many people's dismay but those of us with more mature tastes were super happy.  It has been fun to have her and Lily try new recipes each week.  Lily is treating us to a crispy herb chicken and crockpot mashed potatoes tonight....yum!

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Papaya and Hava have fun riding the bus or walking to and from school with Chugger-dude every day and I have enjoyed being able to take time to do their hair in french braids or otherwise every day. It has been a good time for us to connect. It has been harder to do our family reading times with all the coming and going and online classes but we manage to squeeze it in two to three times a week.  It helps to have one of our readings from a fantasy novel that they are excited to hear how it ends :D.

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Last night, Zsa-man got to pick the game for FHE and we played "Mr. Boogety", a game where you turn out all the lights at night so it is super dark; someone goes out and hides; and then we all go and try and find them. If someone finds them, you call out "Mr Boogety!" and run for the base before the person who is "it" tags you. It can get pretty intense with our small house and narrow stairway, but it still remains a favorite.  We can't really play it during the summer since it gets dark so late, but we are in the seasons where it works so we play it about every other week for FHE.  Fortunately we also squeeze in some "Farmer in the Dell," "Big Booty" and "Fruit Basket" although that last one has become markedly less enjoyable during this latter stage of my pregnancy.  Getting up and down quickly is not one of my strong-points, needless to say :D.  Okay, sitting is also uncomfortable after a while.  As is standing.  And laying down.  Alright...just super excited to have my body back with a cute little crying snuggler for us all to enjoy :D.  The other day as we were at the doctor's office for Chugger-dude, I overheard a new infant cry and my heart just seemed to gush open with anticipation.  I just love these little ones so much!!

Back to Mr. Boogety, Zsa-man had a fun time outlining some specific rules since he was "in charge" (we are all pretty good over here at assuming command):

-no pushing little kids down the stairs

-no jumping out and scaring little kids 

-leave the upstairs bathroom light on

Good rules, although we expanded the "no pushing little kids down the stairs" to include everyone, since that seemed something like a no brainer ;).

Eating the Mojo

Painful, but now I can say that I did it:

Eating the Mojo at Rudy's is a local tradition

The Goob, Lek and Chugger-dude had done it. It was time to get our names on the wall.

No problem!

I didn't find it that painless.

Mark was a trooper and did it with us

Take that, Lek.  Matched you.

Sick Fun!

Okay...this sick bug is crazy.

After a month and a half of off and on traveling with family (so cool!) we came home on Sept. 25th with hand, foot and mouth disease.  Then it was a quick follow-up with a recurring flu/cough bug that we just can't kick!  I will think we are good and then BAM! That night someone else will start with a fever or a cough.  Hmmmmmm....The up side is that we are spending some sweet together time that is pretty low-key around here :).

"Low key" defined:
-I was helping Chugger-dude finish up his cooking merit badge.  As he was reciting the causes and side-effects of food poisoning (and how to prevent them), my eye caught the food that had been left out on the counter for a few hours following lunch.  Nice :).

-I straightened and cleaned out our cupboards and countertops that are just reaching their first birthday!!!  I spent the time going back and forth between reflecting on the time before counter-tops, lights and floor and wondering how in the world it could have become this dirty after just one year!  Our fridge looks like it has survived 10 years!  Lots of good use, right?  The shelves have literally groaned as I put gallon after gallon of milk on it following our weekly grocery trip.

-Hava and Papaya have been out "adventuring" as much as they can in our back yard and piddling stream that is very low at the end of the season here.  Binks will try and follow them as much as possible and Chugger-dude is enjoying his rollerblades while he chases the two little boys around whenever he is outside.

-Spooner loves to snuggle and curls up in my lap whenever I am sitting, which makes eating a little difficult but it is cute.

-Hava told me the following yesterday morning when she woke up: "I stayed awake for a long time just watching you and listening to you snore.  Oh!  It wasn't your snoring that woke me up.  I just didn't want to sleep for a long time."
Sigh.  Unfortunately when I am sick and stuffed it makes the snoring worse :(.  No wonder my throat is parched and dry in the morning: I have been making noise all night.

-The Goob and Chugger-dude have really stepped it up and become the men of the house.  Q-dawg is gone for most of the week with Liliputian and Pipalicious out in the wilderness.  With me being sick, the boys have stepped up on their own to offer to help me with things.  It has been so sweet! The Goob is hungry for competition so he ropes Chugger-dude into all sorts of competitions that often end with one of them angry and one of them crying but they still keep doing it and the over-all effect seems to be positive :).

-Papaya has designated herself as "master salad builder"-

This is the salad she made for herself last night.  Yes, those are pickles.  She cleaned out everything in the fridge that she could think of that would go in her salad.  So adorable!   She made salads for Hava and me as well.  They were very good!

(Hey Kelder!  Grab some lettuce and follow your little sis's example for dinner: work wonders!)

Bink's Style Enchiladas

I was in the process of making chicken enchiladas on Sunday and Binks wanted to be involved.  I put him on the counter-top right in front of me and he quickly picked up on the idea of picking up tortilla shells and handing them to me to be filled.

However, he had his own little addition to the process.

He tasted each one.

Some he tasted more, some less, but each tortilla had at least one little tear in it from Binks.

Now, for any of you who have visited my house (and eaten there), this kind of thing has never happened before. It was so darn cute, though, and I knew that my mom had already seen the process and didn't seem to be squeemish about Bink's additional step, so I let him do it :).  Again and again.  Twenty tortilla shells later.

So cute.

Lunch with the Foodies

Lunch with some fun ladies in our ward!  They call themselves the "Foodies" and like to try different places to eat. This one was Vietnamese, and I loved it, especially the flavors and lots of veggies!  Wow.  I really have come a long way from not even liking onions and cheese as a teenager :).

Lunch buddies

Meet my lunch buddies...jealous :)?

I was sitting directly across from them.  We exchanged all kinds of food back and forth: half-eaten bits of cheese, squished wads of bread,...you name it :).  They were just being so cute together!  At one point, Papaya had her little hand on Hava's arm and they were talking and singing together.  Sigh.  I love these stages.  Do you think my grandkids will share partially eaten food with me, too? :)

You can see the remnants of Papaya's self-face-painting job.  Q-dawg and I had just come back home from a date that fell through (we were going to go to Budapest to see Les Mis in the big screen, but our bus never showed up after 20 minutes of waiting past its scheduled arrival), and I walked into our bedroom to find Papaya sitting on our blankets with the sackful of "taboo," top of the shelf permanent and dry-erase markers spread out at her feet.  At least she decided to decorate her face and not the blankets! She quickly started singing, "clean up, clean up" and picking up the markers. 

Q-dawg got a better picture of her but I accidentally erased it. It's truly a miracle that anything gets on this blog :).

Dinner with the Missionaries

We had the missionaries over this past Monday.  It is fun to have company, and the missionaries seem happy to be there too.  One of them, in particular, seems to like it...I think it is because he is having such a hard time speaking Hungarian, and it is nice to speak in English for a while.  I know how he feels :).

Lek always works hard to make a nice dinner for them. This time he spent about two hours before making tortillas.

Here's where he starts...making them nice and round using one of our plates as a "cutter"

Here is the army of tortilla shells...well, a lot of them.  He still had about 20 to go at this point.

Then he cooks them up in a relatively dry skillet...not much oil.

And, presto!  Here they are!

Isn't he awesome? :)

Here is Pipalicious, suiting up during the missionaries "armor of God" lesson.

(Don't forget to notice the feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace...Santa style.) It's amazing what missionaries can find left in their apartment :)!

Little girls, Lek, and Spaghetti Sundays

Papaya, Hava, and Pipalicious have some beautiful blue dresses that they got for Easter from their grandparents in Utah last year.  I love them and they wear them every Sunday.  One week, someone commented in Hungarian, "They're beautiful!  Are they angels in a play?"  Fun!

Hava was given a huge set of ponies as a present from her grandparents in Norway, and they are played with every day.  Unfortunately/fortunately, it has become a lesson in sharing :S.  Papaya also loves the horses and it is hard for her (and me) to see why, if Hava is carrying 14 horses in her hands, Papaya cannot have 2 to play with :). Ahhhh.  I don't force the sharing...most of the time.  However, I do put them in time-out a lot if it creates fighting.  Good news, though.  The sharing is happening more often, and Hava will come running in to me, excitedly saying, "I shared!"  Woohoo!

Papaya is adorable and a monster: the wonder of two-year-olds!  She likes to pretend to nurse her little doll baby, rock it to sleep, and push it around in a stroller.  Today in nursery, she was giving it a bath in the little play dishes they had in nursery--probably because she has seen it before in our house! :)  She loves to call things "big huge!", like the hymn books at church.  When she wants something hard to write on, she calls out: "Big Huge!" and toddles over to wherever a hymnbook is, puts it underneath her drawing book, and is content.  She also loves to sing.  Any time she sees notes in something (like in the little board book she had a church today) she starts singing nonsense words at the top of her lungs.  She is particularly good at the glorias in "Angels we have heard on High" and the "Valassz Jo" (or whatever the Hungarian version of "Choose the Right" is) after we practiced it for  a week as a hymn during scripture reading time.

Speaking of scripture reading time singing, Lek has been practicing conducting the music for us.  He is getting really good at it quite quickly!  He is great at following a piano, and making sure he is getting the down beat.  He can even sing some in Hungarian while he is conducting!  Woohoo!

I must have Lek on the brain, because it reminded me of something else...This last week in science, we were studying about the physical make-up of the earth: crust, core, and all.  We were discussing magnetism and its effects on the planet.  We learned that, among other things, it protects the earth from the "cosmetic rays" of the sun, right, Lek?  We don't want any of those rays plastering us with eyeshadow and lipstick, right? :)  We love having Lek around because he is so good-natured and loves to laugh with us, even when it was his mistake :).  He'll never forget about the effects of magnetism on the cosmic rays of the sun, I think!

Lek has developed the amazing "pizza breadsticks": breadsticks covered with cheese, garlic and fried sausages that taste like bacon.  Yummalicious!  We have them about once a week, along with ground beef/pork roll-ups and Spaghetti Sundays, the last being one of my favorite traditions.  A few years ago, I got into a kick where I wasn't making spaghetti...no reason.  I just hadn't made it for a while.  Q-dawg made a couple comments about spaghetti, in his non-invasive, polite way, and I didn't pay much mind to it (nice wife, eh :)?).

Anyway, he gave up on me and decided that he would make spaghetti every Sunday to give me a break.  Now that Lek has mastered breadsticks (the normal kind, too), we have it every Sunday, and no one complains!  Woohoo!

Dinner with the Singing Bees

19:12--"Mom!!  Is dinner ready?"  How should I know?  Lek is on dinner.  I started the chili at 17:00, Q-dawg met with the landlady at 18:00, who showed up an hour early (fortunately, I was already comfortable with how clean the house was), and then I did a little catch-up on the blog.  Lek had arrived home around 17:45 from grocery shopping with Q-dawg, and started bread sticks, so I figured I was good.

Maybe I should feel happy with the power of "say-so" to make all meals officially ready?

So, we gather.  The chili has boiled down to a comfortable paste that any spoon could stand upright in...although it didn't taste so much like chili, as like spaghetti sauce with beans instead of meat :).  The "chili seasoning" packet that I thought I picked up so carefully at the store was feisty hot, apparently.  Fortunately, I had learned my lesson from the previous chili packet and tasted the seasoning with a little on my pinkie finger before liberally applying to the brew.  Zowie! That's not going in this pot!  (The Goob was thrilled to find out it was spicy and kept sampling it.  He even "shared" with Papaya, much to his delight...and her chagrin.)

The breadsticks are a mile high and beautifully done.  Lek has found another talent.

Q-dawg asks Liliputian to choose our customary song to start our meal.  "Mary, Mary" she says. Q-dawg starts singing "Mary, Mary, where you goin' to?" from the Beatles as Liliputian starts singing "Mary, Mary hush see the child" from the LDS song book. 

Just so you know, they don't work as a round,...in case you were wondering.

We finish the song, and Liliputian prays for us, while Papaya happily alternates between taking a bite and then folding her arms with her eyes squished closed.

We start to eat.  It looks like someone came through sprinkling cheese and breadstick crumbs like confetti...and we have just begun.  Papaya does her customary spillage quota (fortunately, it's just water this meal...the hot chocolate from breakfast was a little more challenging to clean-up).  Lek leaps to assist her, preventing her from using the clean kitchen towel on the floor and substituting a washcloth.

Avot declares, as the meal begins: "Mom, this is delicious!"  When I look at her skeptically, she says, "It is!  Of course, mine is, but I don't know about theirs," indicating the Goob on one side, and Chugger-dude on the other. 

"His has hot spices in it, and his has coconut, but mine is delicious!"

Mealtime is never boring at our house.

I've been done for 20 minutes. Hava is still negotiating an acceptable number of "bites until done" with Q-dawg.  I am in denial in this room, "airing" it out from the anti-mold spray we just applied to the walls, and imagining a fairy-tale world when I walk back out there, and the Goob has already done his dinner help, and everyone else has done their dishes.  Maybe if I wait long enough...

...everyone will have disappeared and I will just get to do it all after we put the kids to bed with Q-dawg , who has a tender place in his heart for me stuck at the sink at the end of the day :).

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 :).

Cool things about this Sunday

I am sitting next to Chugger-dude, the cucumber salad making genius.  He started today by just cutting off the ends of the uburke (cucumber), and, as I was still posting, he started cutting the thin slices necessary for this feast.  He has helped me before, alternately putting in salt, sugar, and vinegar, and helping me taste it. (He always says, "I think it needs more sugar.")

Well, today, he did it all on his own, with me on the sidelines advising and tasting, and he did a pretty spankin' good job!  What a kid.

On the way back from the train, on the last leg of our trip home, I heard Hava yelling up to me from behind, "Momma, momma, momma!"  When she breathlessly caught up, she said, "Chugger-dude found a lizard with a caterpillar in its mouth!"  So cool!  Apparently, Liliputian took the whole "discovery" one step further, and caught it.  She ran up to show me her prize, the poor lizard dangling from her outstretched fingers and being jounced the whole way :).  It looked about as big as a caterpillar, so that would have been a sight to see it eating one...

We actually made the train today on our way home from church, and didn't have to wait!  And that, after missing the first villamos (trolley) by moments.  We did do a brisk walk (I was feeling a little less sore) to the train station, and it pulled up just as we got to the top of the stairs opposite the loading platform.  We must have been quite the sight, all dolled up for church, flying across the grass to try and catch the train. :)  I think we get more strange looks when we are dressed up for church than any other time.  The men, particularly, stick out with their white shirts and ties, I noticed today, with quite a few looks going their way.

Church went really well.  Apparently, I just need to spend the meeting drawing "coloring pages" for my kids, and they all sit and watch and then color their own page.  It was one of the most peaceful meetings I have enjoyed for some time.

Papaya knows how to open the fridge, and loves to help herself to milk.  Cutie.  She is so independent!  We save a chair for her at each meal (one of the precious three), and she often refuses to sit on it, preferring to sit on the floor with "everyone else."  Convincing her to either don the bib or take off her clothes so she doesn't get too messy is a battle.  I don't mind most meals, but with spaghetti or porridge it is a must!  (Remember, I do all my own laundry...)

Oh! Speaking of laundry, with our move, we will be renting a truck, so we can coincide picking up a washing machine at the same time!  Woohoo!  We are looking at the place Monday and taking notes of which furniture and "stuff" we will need for that house, and then we will coordinate with their "ksl.com" items a pick-up and moving-in all for one day.  Q-dawg seems to remember it needs a kitchen table and chairs, among some other things, and, after this house, I am not so sad that "furnished" isn't as comprehensive as it was here :).  No need to worry about other people's furniture :), and we have learned how to do without quite a few things.

The boys have gallantly offered to share one of the two rooms (we will be using the main room as a bedroom for the girls), and then Q-dawg, the baby, and I will be in the other room.  I hope it goes well.  It will be nice to have so much room...

Time for spaghetti Sunday, courtesy of Daddy, along with yummy breadsticks and cucumber salad!  Gotta go!

Bounty of our yard

As I stood there waiting for the troops to gather for breakfast, I felt a tug on my leg. 

Papaya was trying to lift it up, so I looked down to figure out what she was up to.  She lifted up on my leg again, pointed to the walnut on the floor next to her, and showed me a little stomp with her foot.  Apparently, she wants me to crack open the walnut on the floor...with my bare foot.  I don't think so :). 

She has watched her siblings closely, apparently, as they pick walnuts off the tree in our backyard, stomp on them and eat them.

Q-dawg took care of it, but it reminded me of another thing I have to be grateful for...the fruit trees in our yard.  The kids have enjoyed the apples in particular, but the last of the summer pears are also tasty.  What a nice supplement to our pretty basic food we have right now!