Szombathely, Pentecost

We've been to Szombathely on the last weekend of May, as Peter had a race there.

We left home on Thursday, spent 2 hours with lunch and in the Decathlon store in Budapest and then drove along in the afternoon. The ride was uneventful and we got there in time to have a nice walk and icecream and a relaxed evening.

Friday was race day.

Saturday morning it was raining, 8 °C so we had a lazy morning :) Luckily the rain stopped at noon so we could go to the local Children's Day, which was moved from an open-air historical park to a public culture house (read: ex-movie). Moira immediately glued herself to a drawing table and came up with a nice drawing - she spent 3x the time most other kids spent drawing there. Then she saw someone with face paintings so she wanted to have one, too. I told her she can have something painted on her palm (we did not have any face wash packed), so after waiting in the queue for almost an hour she had a nice tiny fairy painted on her palm.

Meanwhile Aniko & Peter tried their luck with some skill's games, based on tales The Frog King and The Hare and the Hedgehog. Then we met and Moira decided she wanted a tiara/veil she saw on another girl, about this style. So Aniko handcrafted one for her from paper, scarlet terry velvet and some gauze, while we played chess with Peter. Guess what, we could not make her not wear the veil from then on :D

Saturday

Sunday we got up late, packed things ready to go and then left to Holdfényliget in Gyöngyösfalu (Moira in her veil). There was a program for kids there, too, that included handcrafting, painting, tales, and the biggest fun, barefoot walking around the lake, on different grounds. You could try walking on straw, metals, tree-trunks, basalt, pebbles, sand, pine needles, mud, bricks, big stones, etc., about 5 meters each. That was so much fun they walked the whole course 3 times :) We spent about 3 hours there but did not try the forest cable climbing courses this time as there were many a folks waiting to get on - we will be here in the summer, too, so will have time to play.

Moira walking barefoot on straw

Handcrafting

Skills games

Getting home seemed a little bit too long a drive, Moira had a good sleep enroute :) It was good we had a free Monday so we could have a rest...

Children's Day performance

Children's Day conflicts this year with Whit Sunday, so the usual yearly performance of the local kids' groups was re-scheduled to 24th May, and Moira had the chance to perform dancing.

It was set to 12:30. I never understand why the organizers think that small children should perform or take part or behold at noon or shortly after. I think they should be having lunch and then a good sleep or at least a siesta. But it seems those who sketch up these events do not have a small kid or don't know anyone with a small kid...

In our case however it was perfect this time as Peter and I have jut finished running by that time, so we walked to the stage to meet the girls there. When we got there we saw only 5 of the dancers gathered but later almost all the girls arrived so they could perform as usual, there was no need to quickly rearrange formations.
This time they performed only 1 set, based on a song from a Jungle Book musical, very popular here in Hungary. The story goes like: they are the wolves and they are a big tribe, everyone in the tribe/family is equal and they protect eachother. They wear grey-ish clothes with fur-like things on them to look like wolves.
Moira - as she is one of the youngest - is set in the second line, but she does everything in a nice way. Moves with elegance, acts like being very strong when needed, pretends to howl like a wolf and basically enjoys the whole thing very much. Well she turned in the wrong direction in a spin once but well, who cares, she is only 5 years old! And she was not embarrassed after that either so could continue without any trouble. In fact many times she dances more precisely and elegantly than those older than she is.

I tried to capture the performance on camera but - as always - all the tall people on Earth invaded the first rows so I had to go quite far to get a decent view. It seems I must buy a tripod for the camera for this reason...

Peter had fun watching the show from the side of the stage and as I saw he especially liked watching the hiphop dancers after Moira's set :) Then we had lunch and went home - no wonder they both had a biiiiiig sleep :D

Indexed

I love thisisindexed.com. Jessica is truly one of the bests of Internet.
Here's a recent one from her, titled Fate = Decisions:

Simply great, isn't it?

Thin ice & the lazy days

The last training session in the year was a free-for-all ice time for the kids, brother/sisters/parents (and pets). So we took our chance and tried ice.

Ice is wicked. Period.

It is slippery and fast. And using hockey skates I spent most of the time preventing falling ahead. I just missed some blade length as I was used to the frame length of my inline.
However Moira enjoyed it and skated quite a lot, Anikó also entered the rink and had fun, mainly laughing at herself trying to get around (she did quite well though but she won't admit that) and Peter was scorching around as usual, this time they played games on ice on hockey blades, too.
In the end we opened some champagne just to realize yet again many many people don't like it at all :)

Aniko holding firm. As if I could stand firm...

The kids, Peter in center in dark blue/black, Moira bit to the right in pink.

Peter and Aniko asleep :D

Ah and the next day coach Endre decided to go to hospital with 6 hours remaining in the year, and used an appendicitis to make it happen. Nice way to spend New Year's Eve, isn't it... :D

It has been unusually cold outside for at least 2 weeks now, in the -10 & -5 range. Though this may sound like a warm spring to some Canadians but we are freezing here. It made me change my training schedule to skip running and use a stationery bike instead in the gym. I just hate the seat :s

Late September

Peter is in school.

It started September 1, he was nervous but also happy to see 3-4 kids in the class whom he had known earlier. And by now he also noticed the pretty girls :)
The things they learn prove quite easy for him usually, he is almost bored. But I keep telling him to use it as a practice, repeating things he has known earlier to earn more from them. And he follows dad's advice :)

The other day we went to library with him and he was amused by the sheer amount of books he could find there, he choose 3 to take home. One big-size book with nice drawings of how the human body works, a short detective story aimed at age 7-9 printed with quite big letters for easier reading - and one book about the history of Ferrari, with lots of pictures :D

He is getting tired now more often though. I guess it is not the school but all the changes he has to keep up with, socializing, finding his place in the class, getting in touch with a growing number of people. However, on trainings he performs as usual - like a Duracell ad. But waking up in the morning is HARD :)

Moira took up dancing recently, only one occasion a week but she loves it. She keeps on telling me 'and when the music went zooom we did this and then came tadaaam and we moved liked this' and so on... for hours! So I am pretty sure she likes it :) She enticed 2 of her classmates and so she had some company, too.

She always does that. She convinces someone, usually 2 or 3 other girls form the class to do this or do that together. This is exactly how she started skating. She told her best friends Peter skates a lot and that she loves skating and it is big fun. (Note the fact she had no experience on skates at all that time) So they went home and told their parents they want to learn skating with her :) Nice huh? She gets what she wants, easily...
The kindergarten teachers told us she is a true 'captain', she pulls others to follow her, and given the fact she draws a lot (and she does that quite ahead of her age's requirements) her mates try to follow and mimic her drawings. And she is a great story-teller, too - but sometimes she tells a bit too colourful ones, so you have to double-check everything she tells :D

Hols

Been silent - we've been on hols lately.

There were a lot we have done during 18 days. Beach, hikes, castles, sports, horses, karts, swimming pool, open-fire evenings, outdoor fun... lots of, really. And I don't think I should list them all here - just looks too tiring. Or maybe better do that? Now I'm uncertain - or am I not? :)

Generally, we had nice weather, hot when on beaches, 'normal' otherwise, then hot again but we were hiking in the forests so didn't feel that.

The whole holidays were organized so that we could attend the next two rounds of the championships, so Peter wouldn't have to miss any. I'll detail those in separate posts.

All in all it was 3 places we stayed at, 6 nights each, 1566 kms at a whopping 65 km/h average. We had fun, much fun and yes, I would go again tomorrow without thinking for a moment.

Paranormal

Anikó received a call that we should take the car back to the merchant as some parts were to be changed, according to the factory. These affected some ABS coding and some temperature sensors.

This happened around noon and I didn't know about it until the evening when she told me. However, while driving around in town during the afternoon the car started to whistle & beep and display "Stop - engine temperature too high" while I knew it couldn't be that hot, driving short distances in not too warm weather. It usually doesn't even reach the 3rd sign on the 7-step ladder display but now it definetely did. Well, the car insisted I should stop - I did not, I knew I was more clever than a stupido software :D
Imagine when I told Anikó about it and she told me about the phone call... must have been some paranormal event that the sensor went wrong exactly the same day they called us to change it... Uri Geller around? :D

So I've phoned the merchant next morning and luckily they had the sensor on stock, so I could take the car there and it was changed in 45 minutes or so. The ABS coding will take a longer time and is scheduled next Thursday. I don't like the combination "software" and "ABS" too much...

Farewell

Péter is leaving nursery-school this summer and they held a nice farewell "party" last Saturday in the nursery.

His group of children performed for about 50 minutes, singing & reciting several songs and poems. They were divided into 4 groups, according to four seasons and the poem were matching their groups. He told us a nice, lengthy and rather well-known poem by Petőfi Sándor, a reclaimed poet of the 18th century, killed in the war of independence of 1848-49.
At the end of the party, when the teachers expressed some nice thoughts about the group leaving, we could see him standing there, deeply touched, almost dropping a tear... but sure he felt great during these years. He loved it for sure.
Now... school begins in September, a whole new challenge. We will see...

Mother's day

Last Tuesday Moira's group has held the annual Mother's Day in the nursery.
Anikó dressed her up in a lovely dress and she had 2 plaits and a complete make-up. And she loved it. During the ceremony - while they were going around in circles, telling rhymes and poems - she took every opportunity to turn to her mum and smile at her (ok, I received some smiles too). So we were able to take quite a few good photos of her.
She enjoyed the ceremony very very much and (I'm telling it at low voice) she dominated it. She knew every poem, she did everything perfect and she felt herself perfect.
And of course it is a wonderful topic for her to jabber about for at least a week :)

A new car

A Citroën C4 5-door.

Anikó have seen it in an ad 2 weeks ago. She called the agency and fixed all details. So we had a test run, checked if they would take in our 'old' Renault (they did) and then paperwork began. My travel to Germany postponed it a little bit but just 1 day after arriving home we have received it, all administration done, good-bye to Renault and welcome Citroën.

It is black, has run 10k miles only, has all kinds of extras and was quite cheap, costing only the half of the new price. It is smaller than the Laguna but we think we need less luggages with the kids getting older (of course we may be very very wrong).
We will see :)

Now we need to find a friendly name for it. The Alfa was called 'Alfredo', then the Renault was a 'René'. Anyone?