January surprise

One of the first exciting things to happen to us this year was a surprise visit from my friend Krisztina and her family. They were flying home from spending Christmas in Cleveland and missed their connecting flight in San Francisco. After spending a night in an airport hotel, they gave us a call and we happened to be free to get together.

We met up at Fisherman's Wharf and took the kids to the Aquarium at Pier 39. We had never been there, so it was fun to see the kids touching the sea stars and sharks and rays.


We saw the sea lions together. Then we shared a lovely seafood lunch at the Wharf. Tonka and Sándor were fast friends. It was a great day and a great surprise.

Kevin, Sári, Tonka, Mária, Téa, Krisztina

Saving fish, the English language, and my life

I have many excuses for the lack of postings lately, including tiredness, laziness, computer problems, and a husband who has been working almost every evening and weekend since February. (Julian works on the same PC on which our photos are also stored, which is why this posting has no photo attached.)

Charlotte would like to wish everyone a happy Earth Day! She has learned all about what she can do to save the Earth. More specifically, she has learned all about what I should be doing to save the Earth. She had a complete meltdown yesterday when I did not let her walk to school. "Now all the fish in the oceans will die and we'll never be able to eat fish again!" I promised that we would walk one day before the end of the school year. It may only be a mile and a half, but we usually run late even when it's just a 5-minute drive.

Charlotte's other fascination at the moment is looking up words in the Oxford English Dictionary. She then writes them on a slip of paper with the page number so that she can find them more easily the next time. This fascination has worked to my advantage though. She insisted that she learned about "syllable-cation" in school yesterday. I showed her "syllabification" in the dictionary and she actually believed me without a fight.

Alexander asked me yesterday, "will you be dead when I'm 15?" I responded that I hoped to still be alive and we discussed what my age would be. So he stated with certainty, "well then you'll be dead when I'm a grown-up." I reminded him that I'm a grown-up and my mother is still alive, so there's hope that his mother will be too. He has been finding me very boring lately, so I hope it's not wishful thinking on his part.

All dressed up

We girls sure do know how to accessorize!

The dreams of a 4-year-old

About 15 minutes after bedtime tonight, Alexander appeared in the kitchen.

Alexander: Do you know what I want to be when I grow up?

Me: (Expecting him to say "a firefighter") What would you like to be?

Alexander: (After pondering silently for a few moments) Are superheroes real?

Me: (Trying to hide my smile) No, they are not real. They are in stories. Maybe you could be a writer and write stories about superheroes.

Alexander: (Says nothing and gives me a grumpy look)

Me: (Ushering him back to bed) What kind of superhero would you want to be? One that can fly or run very fast?

Alexander: No, one that makes wheelbarrows.

I'm a Soccer Kid

I had so much fun in my SoccerKids class! Coach Shawn and Coach Janessa were so silly, but they taught us all about how to kick the ball, how to smush it while saying "stop right there, ball," how to shoot, and everything else we needed to learn to be great 4-year-old soccer players.

And I also learned to never use my hands!

But wait - there's more!

Of course we didn't just sit around in our pajamas reading books all day. We did many other fun things with Najm and Najp.

They took us to the San Francisco Zoo. We visited almost the entire zoo. We even went to the Children's Zoo and petted the sheep and goats. (We normally skip it with Mummy.)


It may not look like we're having much fun, but that's just because we didn't want to stop our fun to take a photo. After the zoo we went to the beach and tired ourselves out a little more.


Then it rained for the rest of the visit, so we played lots of games and put puzzles together too.

Najm and Najp

Last week Najm and Najp came for a short visit. We did lots of fun things together. We especially liked it when they read stories to us.

We miss you, Najm and Najp!