Happy Hump Day! On another note, Happy St. Stephen's Day to the Budapesters, who are standing by the Danube waiting for the fireworks to begin momentarily (http://www.budapest-tourist-guide.com/20th-August.html). It's Weds the 20th and I am pleased to report that we have officially survived our first tropical storm here in not-too-sunny florida. Seems that Miss Faye is a fiesty broad, and is not much help on the tracking front. However she decides to fizzle out, we're just happy she skipped landing in Lutz. We didn't really get too worked up, just bought a few gallons of drinking water and stocked up on the dry goods. Apparently September is the kookiest month of hurricane season, so it's probably a good idea to get a plan together. I'm not sure where we should even hide out in the event that we really get hit - perhaps that might be worth looking into.

The boys had their first day of school Monday, and then got to stay home for a 'snow day-hee.hee-I mean 'hurricane day' on Tuesday. They were back at it this morning, with Liam hopping on the bus around 7:20am, and Riley being delivered to the front door around 8:50am. I tried to snag a photo of Liam embarking for the first time onto the big yellow bus, an idea which he vehemently nixed in a millisecond. Think his exact words were 'Mom, it's the second day of school and you're going to make me look like a total dork, thanks alot!' What can I say-it was a milestone moment for me, guess it didn't have the same feel for him :)

It's about a 25-30 minute drive to Riley's school, which means two hours in the car if I have to go there and back twice a day. We saw all the other guys waiting for the bus this morning, and I think I've convinced him to give it a shot tomorrow. The drop-off and pick-up lines in front of his school are completely bonkers (see video below), so I would be very happy to start the bus gig ASAP. It's obviously a much bigger deal for him, since he's in middle school and doesn't have the hand-holding that Liam does in elementary school to get him from A to B. Both buses pick them up right in front of the house, which is great. Everything is so organized, it's actually strange for me. When they canceled school for Tuesday, we got notes from both principals and a call from the school district. Then we got another call from the school district last night to tell us that we are back to business today. Made me chuckle to think about the French school, where I would find out school was canceled when I arrived that morning.

Here are a couple photos of the boys this morning (Monday was way too kooky to get the first day photo)...

School pick-up - discuss... So, Bill and I went to pick Riley up after the first day (school's in session 9:00-4:15) and were completely shocked when we got there and found about 150 cars in the pick-up line. It took us almost 30 minutes to get through the line, and that was after we ducked out of it halfway through to park at the high school next door so we could walk over and get him. It's a school of 1,200 kids, and it's friggin' huge. Poor guy, I think he was really overwhelmed the first day. He made it through the day though, changing classes every period, and figured out how to get through the lunch line, etc.. He opted for the a la carte lunch instead of the standard $2.75 attempt at a hot meal, and therefore could only afford fries and a Gatorade. I gave him $4 today to see what he can come up with. We will start packing lunch from next week (Liam concurs as the pizza was 'like cardboard'). Riley reported that while he didn't really make any friends on the first day, he didn't make any enemies either :) Remember middle school? What a nightmare. Never mind trying to learn, it's just an exercise in prepubescent survival. Even though I had plenty of friends, I was always trying to figure out where I fit in. Ugh!

And there's no help from Mom, you just have to figure it out. In some ways, I guess it's a good exercise for both of them, as they've been so coddled for the last seven years. I dropped Riley off at his homeroom class Monday morning and walked out crying, as expected. Bill's responds with, "it's not like it's first grade". Guess what, when your a mom, every year is first grade. Even when he's 35 and headed off to start a new job, it will be like first grade all over again.

Mr. Bill waiting patiently for the line to move

After we dropped the guys off Monday morning, Daddy took Keira and I to Dunkin'Donuts (America runs on Dunkin) for a healthy breakfast of chocolate-covered M&M donuts. Keira arrived four days ago and is already completely in love with American cuisine, most of which is derived from her two favorite food groups, chocolate and sugar. On a coffee note, I am of the strong opinion that Dunkin' Donut's coffee tastes better than Starbucks, and at about 1/2 the price. Whatever the economics, those donuts are yummy!

Yes, Keira is definitely adapting to her new surroundings just swimmingly, as seen here...

I hadn't seen her swim since before we left Hungary, and while they told me she was swimming like a fish, I was totally shocked when she started jumping and diving into the pool from a pretty good height. Bill's dad is in the pool with her. We haven't been able to keep her out of the water, with the exception of breaks for meals.

She asks about Linda daily, and wants to know how many sleeps it will be until Linda gets here (Dec.26th, so quite a few), but I think that she definitely grasps that this is where we live now. It was questionable for awhile, since the idea of our new house in Florida seemed like just another vacation, but once she saw her bedroom and realized that all our stuff is here, it registered.

She reminded me this morning, like every morning since we arrived, that I need to find her a new school and some new friends. I am diligently trying to do just that, since she will be bored out of her marbles hanging out at home with me. I was hoping that I could keep her for a few months and start her in January, but that's not going to happen. I've been unimpressed thus far with the pre-K options, but am visiting a few more places tomorrow. One is a montessori school about four miles up the road in Land'O'Lakes, Florida. She will just go for the mornings, 9am-12pm Mon-Fri.

Here's some more footage of the little lady, having a bubble bath this morning. I tried to keep it PG for the kids at home, but 1/10 of her little behind got in there somehow. Egads!!!! I can just here my mother-in-law now :) Sorry, but I'm totally over the ultra-conservative, way-too-prudish, goofiness that has become the norm in this great country.

And now, an exciting tour of my bathroom. Must tell you that I've been sharing a tiny bathroom in Bp. with my entire family forever, so this is indeed very exciting for me. The boys keep trying to come down and use my shower, brush their teeth, etc.. and I keep sending them back up the stairs to their own bathrooms.

Before I wrap it up, a big fat HAPPY BIRTHDAY shout out to my good friends John Fekete and Peter Tatrallyay, who will celebrate tomorrow. John's hitting the BIG FOUR-OH!! Gettin' up there old man. Have fun guys!! It's a good thing you're not in the same city, one could imagine that it would get ugly.

Riley's birthday is Friday, and we will most likely celebrate with a seafood dinner somewhere. Bill's dad is giving him golf clubs, so we will probably give him a gift certificate for the Lutz Executive Golf Center (.14 miles away - you can throw a golf ball from our house and hit it) so he can get some lessons, hit some buckets of balls, and get out on the course. They offer a golf clinic for kids every Sunday afternoon, and he can play 18 holes for $15, which is exactly what he needs when he's just starting out. He's very excited, although he's planning to keep the tennis up as well.

Still haven't posted the photos from the wedding two weeks ago, that will be the next task. Enjoy the rest of your week (and/or summer holiday, for those of you who haven't had to head 'back to school' yet). xoxo.

Gossip Girl new promo

must watch tv...

September 1st

It's almost here, and I'm not embarrassed to say that I will be watching :)

May have jinxed this thing. I wished for cooler weather and we woke up this morning to cold and windy, with a bunch of rain tossed in for fun. Looks like the greyest bit has blown over, so now we're all doing the anti-rain dance, hoping Linda and Szabolcs will have an okay first day of their happily ever after. We're still trying to get ready here, have to take Keira down to get her hair done in a few minutes. Bill is busy ironing and I'm blogging, that seems fair, no?

Had a nice evening with our friends Mary and Ivan last night - good banter about life in the home country, sushi and whatnot.

Liam playing with a great creature-building set called Zolo a Go-Go. Must try and track that one down, they had so much fun playing with it.

Here are a couple of silly videos of the monkeys. Riley is a huge sushi fan, although his appetite is getting to the point where we won't be able to afford offering it to him :) Liam decided he would give it a whirl last night, starting easy with the prawn nigiri, but he abandoned ship before he ate the first one. He ended up enjoying his own culinary creation (see video)

News to me, the whole thing about edamame (枝豆) being soybeans.

Have eaten them a million times and never pondered, just thought they were some derivitive of snow pea. I was still doubting it this morning, so had to wiki it to verify. What did the universe ever do without wiki-ability?

Had another startling revelation this morning - my twelve-year-old son has the same size foot as me. Saw our flip-flops sitting next to eachother by the door yesterday and realized they are exactly the same size (same ones, but we bought them at different times). OMG, how did that happen? Pretty soon he will be towering over me, and driving, and making his way in the world, and leaving me.

Count to ten, Kerry! For at this very moment, he's sitting next to me, writing in his journal about his trip back to Budapest and asking me how to spell the word 'flight' - think we have a good way to go before sending him off into the big wide world. Can't imagine that they are back to school in a week. What happened to the summer?

Anyone keeping up with Anderson Cooper's Lohan bashing of late? First on Regis and Kelly, and then a follow up on his own show, AC360. I love it (and him).....someone with a voice finally speaking out about the garbage that is reality television. Impossible to fathom that they would give that creature her own show, but obviously someone is watching. And I saw an interview the other day with Lindsay's little sister Ali (upon whom all of Dina's energies are focused at the moment) - one word, and it is YIKES. Sorry to digress, but I just saw another headline on AOL about it. Wonder what we ever did without celebrity sensationalism to ponder - imagine how intelligent I might be without People.com in my life :) For more in-depth coverage of this mind-boggling newsflash/feud, here's a link:http://www.hollywoodgrind.com/anderson-cooper-hates-living-lohan/

Back on task (I'm so easily distracted by hollywood gossip garbage)...

Few photos/videos of the anarchy at our house this week.

Keira and Sonia haven't hung out in a long time, probably since the last time they visited Budapest in February. Within milliseconds, they were right back where they left off. Sonia had been here a whole ten minutes before they announced that they would like to plop themselves in front of the TV with chocolate milk, a ritual they both love. In Hungarian, chocolate milk (Nesquik powder, or 'bunny milk' as we also call it) is called kakao. Sonia, although she knows what it's called, has nicknamed it kakayo. And thus a twenty minute debate quickly ensued as to the proper pronunciation of this magical drink. They finally agreed to disagree and moved on with their day, but not before each one presented a strong case for her own version of the word. LOVE these funny little moments.

In unrelated news, here's a very unusual shot. Almost looks like brotherly love (I'm certain one of them punched the other within minutes of the photo being taken).

Not much else reportable at the moment, we are having an overall lay-low time here and trying to catch up with as many people as possible in the next week.

We're headed to the Kalandpalya with the Feketes on Monday, an awesome rope course through the tops of the trees tucked way up in the Buda hills (http://www.kalandpalya.com/interface.html), then back to our place for an adhoc bbq, where undoubtedly too much Vilmos will be consumed. Strange sidenote - on their website, they have a great video of the ropes course, set to the tune of death and destruction via Iron Maiden's 'Two Minutes to Midnight', which I must confess I rocked out to at some stage in the good ole' metalhead days of yore. You have to wonder, how did they pick such a random song that is soooo not appropriate to advertise entertainment for children.

Tuesday the boys are going to Lake Balaton to spend a few days with their friend Barnabas and his family. I'm hoping for some version of a girls night out on Tuesday, although it won't be anything wild, as most of the girlies aren't in Budapest at the moment. Keira and I will head to Siofok (also the Lake Balaton) on Wednesday for a couple days, and we will all head back together Thursday evening. We will pack up and close up the house on Friday and head to the airport Saturday morning. Two weeks gone again, in the blink of an eye.

Our house is still for rent or sale by the way, in the event that someone stumbles across this and is looking for a fantastic pad in Budapest, Hungary. Here's the link to my 'rent/buy this house' blog: http://whowouldntlovethishouse.blogspot.com/

Will wrap for now, as I'm all over the place and unable to focus. On a final note, twenty days to the season premiere of Gossip Girl. Imagine that I don't even have to wait a week and download it, I can watch it with the rest of the losers in America who find it entertaining. You have to at least respect the fact that I'm not a closet fan, that I'm happy to admit to being as deep as a puddle :) Having said that, it's a fabulous show and I don't care that I'm a 37-year-old woman watching high school drama (it's pretty sophisticated high school drama). Trust me, if you watch a few episodes, you may just like it. It's not Veronica Mars, which is still top three of my all-time favorites, but it's pretty darn fun to watch. Link to some of the season premiere promos: http://www.gossipgirlinsider.com/2008/07/gossip-girl-promos-season-two-premiere/

Okay, really going to wrap it up now, but not before I share my utter disdain for whatever technical glitch is preventing me from sending videos from YouTube directly to my blog - I'm so annoyed, and nobody seems to know why it's not working, on either the YouTube or Blogger end of things. Arghhh! Will post again tomorrow or Monday with some wedding photos. xo.

Hi all. Reporting from hot and sunny, but not-so-humid, Budapest. We arrived on Monday to hot and muggy, but we got some rain and it's been unbelievably beautiful since then, like May weather. Hope it will stay this cool through the weekend, would make the wedding festivities alot more comfortable. Our flights over were good, and we're happy to be back for a couple weeks. It's 8am on Friday and I've been up since 4:00, but 11pm-4am is the best night's sleep I've had since we landed. Not sure why, but I'm the only one who seems to get pummeled by the jet lag. Anyway, we've had a fairly uneventful week, trying to clean the house and dig out the jungle which is our garden. Can't believe how many cobwebs and how much dust can accumulate in a month with the house locked up tight. The kids have had a great week, just hanging out with friends and entertaining themselves outside. We lucked out big-time, as our great friends the Feketes, who live in Moscow, are still in town (actually John arrives this morning), so they've had a blast catching up with Sean (my fairy Godson, who's nine) and Sonia (Keira's long lost girlfriend - she's five).


We went to see on Tuesday with some other friends, Peti and Barnabas, which was lots of fun. Have a bunch of photos/video, nothing exciting, but a peek at what we're up to.








Also have a TON of photos/videos of Keira's trip to Italy, but no idea how I could ever post all the great ones - they must have taken a million in the course of a week. We are SO VERY HAPPY to have our little princess back. Goes without saying, but she puts the sun in my shine, and I'm afraid I won't be convinced any time soon to let her out of my sight for any extended period of time. Seems like she changed so much in a month, although I know she didn't. The first few days were a bit hard for her, as she couldn't express herself in English the way she wanted to, and eventually I just told her to tell me in Hungarian. Funny, how much being submersed in one language for a month changes the way your brain spits out the other ones. Haven't noticed it as much with the boys, but then they have been using lots of Hungarian while we've been in Florida (they still use it with eachother).


Having lunch at Chili's at JFK. We had a seven hour layover, always fun.

Plugged in (to the PSP), and charging (the iPod)...


Queenie in her new bikini...check out the gut on that girl. She loves her new suit, will only take it off to sleep at the moment.


Here's my favorite video of Keira's travels to/from Olaszorszag (oh-lahs-or-sah-g = Italy)...

So, Keira spent a week of her summer in Lajatico, Italy, which is a small village in Tuscany, about 30 miles from Pisa. She went with Linda and Szabolcs (who are getting married - yes, married - tomorrow - sorry for obscure Sixteen Candles reference, couldn't help myself) and Szabolcs' daughter Blanka, who is nine. Now that you folks back home are trying to figure out how one might possibly pronounce Szabolcs, say it with me, sah-bol-ch. She got to go to Pisa, as well as Volterra and SanGimignano (apparently she was the only one who figured out how to pronounce the last one). Linda gave me a disc with all the photos and videos from their trip and it took me a good 90 minutes this morning to look through them all. They had so much fun...sightseeing, swimming, eating, swimming, waterparking, swimming, trampolining, swimming, amusementparking, swimming... Keira definitely had the best summer getaway, hands down. And Linda made her a big book of her adventures, complete with a journal for every day and photos of their trip. They stayed in an amazing villa, complete with ginormous swimming pool. Have dreamt of a holiday under the Tuscan sun forever, can't believe my darling 4-year-old beat me to it.
Here's a map, and their coat of arms (fittingly, a girly theme)

Here's the little lady standing in front of the leaning tower of Pisa

And a bunch more shots of her Italian adventure.

Sziastok! Thought I would check in before we head back to Bp. tomorrow. We had a pretty quiet week here, not much to report actually. Bill's mom and dad arrived on Weds, so Bill and I took advantage of our babysitters and went out on a hot date night last night. Found a great seafood restaurant about ten minutes from here, in a strip mall of all places, next to my favorite shopping place on earth, Kohl's Dept. Store. It's very hard to get used to the idea, but even the best restaurants out where we live are in strip malls. So much for the glamour and glitz of places like Goa or Spoon in Budapest.

Anyway, we had an incredible meal of fancy flatbread, salad, and crab cakes (Bill had huge shrimp and ginormous scallops), washed down with a big fat pitcher of yummy white sangria. We took a stroll after dinner (up and down the strip mall - soooo romantic) and grabbed a bottle of wine at a funny little wine shop before heading home. Got a horrible Pinot Grigio with a screw-top, and I know it will shock most of you, but I drank it anyway :) The boys ended up at Chuck E. Cheese with their ever-indulging grandparents, followed up by a trip to Coldstone Creamery. They have the best ice cream ever, but way too much for one human to consume in one sitting - check out their signature creations: http://www.coldstonecreamery.com/icecream/signature_creations.html - Pure evil, I'm telling you!!

The boys also got their mobile phones yesterday, and are very excited. Since they are getting on the school bus from Aug.18th, and since 'all their friends have had them for a hundred years' (slight exaggeration on their part), it was about time that we got with the program. Dad stepped up to the plate bigtime and splurged on phones that are much nicer than either of our phones, but they make it such a deal when you are signing up for a two-year contract, it's hard not to buy one step up. It only costs another $20/month to add two phones to our plan, so as long as they don't abuse the minutes, the only real cash outlay is the phones. T-Mobile is also introducing a new online system in the next few weeks, whereby I can monitor their usage, the times they can use the phones, etc... Pretty cool. We also each have 5 numbers to program into 'MyFaves', which we can call for free anytime.

In other worthy news of the week, we bought chaise lounge chairs. Seriously, I hadn't seen them anywhere, but we got the deal of the century at Bed, Bath and Beyond - 40% off clearance price minus an extra 20% because I bought the floor model with a few dents and dings. Here are Riley and I checkin' out the comfort level...

Even more exciting, our little baby palm trees got a haircut this week. Check out the before and after pics...yes folks, these are the headlines from Chez McGann this week - try to contain yourselves...

And now... please don't think that I didn't save the juiciest tidbit of news for last... here is rare footage of a cumulous cloud in the shape of a grizzly bear. Can you say, 'here's a girl that needs to get a job, or something to occupy her otherwise easily stimulated grey matter'. What in the world?

Might as well wrap up this edge-of-your-seat update with some shots of 'where the magic happens'. Took these photos yesterday because I'm soliciting ideas from a professional on what to do with the empty corner by the window. Found a sofa and ottoman that I love, but not sure if it really works with the rustic pine furniture. I definitely don't want to go out and buy new furniture, so I have to come up with something that will look okay with it.

Here it is, what do you think? Too foo-foo? I DO NOT have a great eye for this stuff, and not a whole lot going for me in the decorating dept. I just like it because it looks cozy and inviting. Also hadn't contemplated that it's a silk fabric, which means the dogs will probably scratch it up in a NY minute. Not very practical...but it's 50% off - that counts for something, no?

Will close with a couple videos of the danger brothers doing surfboard stunts into the pool.

Have a great weekend! Will try to update from the other side of the pond. I can't wait to see my little princess on Monday! I just talked to her on Skype, and she's having a ball, as usual. She went to the zoo with her boyfriend Boti on Thursday, and she's off to the waterpark again tomorrow. Rough summer. I'm sure it will take her a few days to get used to speaking English again. Linda's wedding is next Saturday, and Keira will be a flower girl (I think there are nine). Should be fun - in ten years, I've never been to a real Hungarian wedding. Will take lots of photos. Don't want to even think about Keira and Linda saying goodbye, but at least we know that Linda and Szabolcs will be here on Dec.26th. And we all know that Christmas is right around the corner. xoxo.