Austria, October 2009
Hallowe'en 2009 - Clara's first Jack-o-lantern
November 2009 - Portrait of Mummy
November 2009 - Hamburg
December 2009Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Fall 2009
Austria, October 2009 Hallowe'en 2009 - Clara's first Jack-o-lantern November 2009 - Portrait of Mummy November 2009 - HamburgDecember 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
School's out, moved house, Clara turned two, and came to Canada! (Busy two weeks)
These pics are in reverse order and for some reason I can't change them, but anyway....
Helping Nagyi water the flowers
Out for a walk in the neighbourhood in TO
Reading with Nagyi
Getting warmed up by Daddy after a swim
Swimming with Mummy at Nagyi and Papo's house - about 10 minutes after we arrived from the airport!
Birthday balloons
Playing in the playground in our new garden (we have an enormous shared garden, more like a park really)
Our playground
Our building - ours is the apartment you see just above the tops of the trees
Reading with Nagyi
Getting warmed up by Daddy after a swim
Swimming with Mummy at Nagyi and Papo's house - about 10 minutes after we arrived from the airport!
Birthday balloons
Playing in the playground in our new garden (we have an enormous shared garden, more like a park really)
Our playground
Our building - ours is the apartment you see just above the tops of the trees
View from the main balcony, looking towards Clara's bedroom balcony (which we plan to turn into a little garden)
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Birthday party
Had Clara's birthday party on Monday, and I think it was a success! Everyone seemed to have a good time. There was lots of food, decorations, and play stations set up: play-doh station, magnetic letters stations, train set, puzzle station, farm, and of course the usual push-each-other-around-in-the-doll-stroller activity. Clara had 7 little friends over between the ages of 21 months and nearly 5 years old: Molly and Simon, Quinn and Keller, Roman, Andris, and Szonya. She had a great time, and loved helping to get everything ready. She helped make the caterpillar cake, set up the play stations, decorate, and even helped sweep up afterwards! And she even let us put on her new dress from Nagyi and the hair bows from Mummy, that just coincidentally are a perfect match.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Weird week
This has been a long, weird week. Nagyi is here visiting us from Toronto, which is really nice. Clara has been so excited anticipating her arrival on the airplane, and gets a kick out of seeing her still here every morning! Very funny! (Although, she is quite insistent that it has to be Agi who makes her breakfast, as usual).
Work is crazy and exhausting. The school year is almost over and we are supposed to be packing to move to a new school building over the summer. But in the last 2 weeks they've made announcements that it's only 80% likely to happen this summer, then 60%, then 50%, and now I think the latest is 40%. If we don't move in the summer, we will move in October, over a weekend! (THAT will be INSANE!!! Not to mention impossible to pull off!) Which will completely throw off the whole schedule and staffing, since we are currently split on 2 separate campuses (upper and lower elementary), and with the plan to be on just one next year, some people are going to be working in both sections of the school, and the entire schedule is built around that. If we don't move, none of that can happen, which will mean that everyone will have to do exactly what they are doing this year, with the same schedule and same teaching posts, but then in October the schedule and the teaching posts (and therefore some of the kids' teachers) will suddenly change! Crazy idea!!!
In the meantime, we've already made arrangements for us ESL teachers and the Learning Resource teacher to take kids on various field trips so that the classroom teachers can each have a full day to pack their classrooms. But since nobody really knows if we're moving or not, it's all become very confusing. Pack, don't pack, wait another week, but you've only got tomorrow free to do it, etc etc. (Did I mention that we also had to endure a 'packing training' session by a professional packer? Lol!) Needless to say, teachers are getting very stressed out (this is, of course, in addition to all the usual insaneness of the last few weeks of school!), and we are getting exhausted by all these field trips! So far I've been on two in the past week, have 2 more coming this week, plus one day of substituting grade two so those teachers can pack. It's all a bit chaotic. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be doing my own end-of-year ESL assessments, which take between 3 and 5 class periods per group of kids, with 4 groups, but then there have been absences here and there so those kids need to make it up another time.....whew! Oh yeah, and report cards are due this week too. And yearbook photos (of which I have taken none all year - oops!) And end-of-year administration evaluation questionnaires. And end-of-year personal goal reflections. And I've been going to weekly 3 hour meetings about curriculum as part of a 'task force' (that term makes me giggle every time I use it!) on curricular changes. Which means I need to make sub plans every week, which of course takes 3 times longer than just doing it myself! And I've been trying to fit in chiropractor appointments too, but the chiropractor only works on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1-3 pm!
Oh, and I also had my teacher evaluation by the director on Thursday, which was another thing to add to the madness. And when I went to pick up the kids from their classroom teacher to bring them to the ESL room for their ESL lesson, she had changed the plans and was taking them all to bake banana bread instead! Of course when I told her I really needed them for this lesson since the director was coming to evaluate me, she said I could take them, but as you can imagine, I had to practically drag them upstairs for a guided reading lesson when all their classmates were baking! And then the director came 15 minutes late and missed the whole guided reading lesson part and just caught the little follow-up sorting activity!
Can't wait for the year to be over - just 2 more weeks!!!!!
Outside of all that, things are equally crazy. We are moving in 2 weeks and have not a single thing prepared (ie, nothing packed, nothing sorted, nothing organised, have done nothing about the extra pieces of furniture we need to sell before then). Had a couple of moving companies come give us quotes, and finally got that squared away last night. But they don't pack, we need to do it ourselves. (One company did pack, but it cost an extra $800, so we've decided to pay Agi and her friend who cleans for us to come and help me pack and unpack instead - much cheaper and they'll probably do a better job and know where to put things when we get there).
Then this week Grandma Valezy was robbed at her apartment! She is fine, nothing happened to her, and in fact she didn't realise at the time that it was happening, but when she did find out, she was of course extremely upset. Two men came posing as plumbers wanting to check the pipes for some kind of problem in the building. While one distracted her in the kitchen by getting her to empty the cupboard where the pipes are, the other one supposedly went to the upstairs neighbour's, but really went into the living room and searched through the cupboards. They took Grandma and Grandpa's wedding rings, and a necklace that Grandma had that had been her mother's. Her 3 most prized possessions. Very sad indeed. She was really shaken up by the whole incident, so much so in fact that the police wanted to call an ambulance for her. But Nagyi was able to calm her down and she stayed overnight there with her. She's doing a bit better now, though still very sad about it.
In addition to all of that, Clara's birthday party has to be squeezed in sometime before the end of the school year, since everyone will be flying out the next day. We had decided to have it next weekend, but then found out that another teacher is having their daughter's party (she is 3 weeks older than Clara) on that day, and since it really is that little girl's birthday, and not really Clara's for a few more weeks, we decided to change ours to this weekend. (Decided this at 10pm Thursday night!) So have been scrambling last night and today to get all the supplies we need, since it is a long weekend and everything will be closed - no last minute buys. Party is on Monday afternoon. Going to attempt a cake. Will see how it goes.
And on Sunday, my old student from Germany, Manami, is coming to visit with her Mom and sister. They are moving back to Japan this summer and were hoping I'd be coming to Dresden before then, but we're not, so they decided to surprise Manami with a trip to Budapest to visit us instead! They are arriving in Budapest Saturday afternoon and leaving on Monday late afternoon. They are staying at a hotel on the island and we will spend Sunday together. I'm actually really excited to see her, she's such a great kid.
Anyway, I really must go clean. Unfortunately, this is not a week that the cleaner comes, so not really the best weekend for all these people coming over, but c'est la vie!
Work is crazy and exhausting. The school year is almost over and we are supposed to be packing to move to a new school building over the summer. But in the last 2 weeks they've made announcements that it's only 80% likely to happen this summer, then 60%, then 50%, and now I think the latest is 40%. If we don't move in the summer, we will move in October, over a weekend! (THAT will be INSANE!!! Not to mention impossible to pull off!) Which will completely throw off the whole schedule and staffing, since we are currently split on 2 separate campuses (upper and lower elementary), and with the plan to be on just one next year, some people are going to be working in both sections of the school, and the entire schedule is built around that. If we don't move, none of that can happen, which will mean that everyone will have to do exactly what they are doing this year, with the same schedule and same teaching posts, but then in October the schedule and the teaching posts (and therefore some of the kids' teachers) will suddenly change! Crazy idea!!!
In the meantime, we've already made arrangements for us ESL teachers and the Learning Resource teacher to take kids on various field trips so that the classroom teachers can each have a full day to pack their classrooms. But since nobody really knows if we're moving or not, it's all become very confusing. Pack, don't pack, wait another week, but you've only got tomorrow free to do it, etc etc. (Did I mention that we also had to endure a 'packing training' session by a professional packer? Lol!) Needless to say, teachers are getting very stressed out (this is, of course, in addition to all the usual insaneness of the last few weeks of school!), and we are getting exhausted by all these field trips! So far I've been on two in the past week, have 2 more coming this week, plus one day of substituting grade two so those teachers can pack. It's all a bit chaotic. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be doing my own end-of-year ESL assessments, which take between 3 and 5 class periods per group of kids, with 4 groups, but then there have been absences here and there so those kids need to make it up another time.....whew! Oh yeah, and report cards are due this week too. And yearbook photos (of which I have taken none all year - oops!) And end-of-year administration evaluation questionnaires. And end-of-year personal goal reflections. And I've been going to weekly 3 hour meetings about curriculum as part of a 'task force' (that term makes me giggle every time I use it!) on curricular changes. Which means I need to make sub plans every week, which of course takes 3 times longer than just doing it myself! And I've been trying to fit in chiropractor appointments too, but the chiropractor only works on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1-3 pm!
Oh, and I also had my teacher evaluation by the director on Thursday, which was another thing to add to the madness. And when I went to pick up the kids from their classroom teacher to bring them to the ESL room for their ESL lesson, she had changed the plans and was taking them all to bake banana bread instead! Of course when I told her I really needed them for this lesson since the director was coming to evaluate me, she said I could take them, but as you can imagine, I had to practically drag them upstairs for a guided reading lesson when all their classmates were baking! And then the director came 15 minutes late and missed the whole guided reading lesson part and just caught the little follow-up sorting activity!
Can't wait for the year to be over - just 2 more weeks!!!!!
Outside of all that, things are equally crazy. We are moving in 2 weeks and have not a single thing prepared (ie, nothing packed, nothing sorted, nothing organised, have done nothing about the extra pieces of furniture we need to sell before then). Had a couple of moving companies come give us quotes, and finally got that squared away last night. But they don't pack, we need to do it ourselves. (One company did pack, but it cost an extra $800, so we've decided to pay Agi and her friend who cleans for us to come and help me pack and unpack instead - much cheaper and they'll probably do a better job and know where to put things when we get there).
Then this week Grandma Valezy was robbed at her apartment! She is fine, nothing happened to her, and in fact she didn't realise at the time that it was happening, but when she did find out, she was of course extremely upset. Two men came posing as plumbers wanting to check the pipes for some kind of problem in the building. While one distracted her in the kitchen by getting her to empty the cupboard where the pipes are, the other one supposedly went to the upstairs neighbour's, but really went into the living room and searched through the cupboards. They took Grandma and Grandpa's wedding rings, and a necklace that Grandma had that had been her mother's. Her 3 most prized possessions. Very sad indeed. She was really shaken up by the whole incident, so much so in fact that the police wanted to call an ambulance for her. But Nagyi was able to calm her down and she stayed overnight there with her. She's doing a bit better now, though still very sad about it.
In addition to all of that, Clara's birthday party has to be squeezed in sometime before the end of the school year, since everyone will be flying out the next day. We had decided to have it next weekend, but then found out that another teacher is having their daughter's party (she is 3 weeks older than Clara) on that day, and since it really is that little girl's birthday, and not really Clara's for a few more weeks, we decided to change ours to this weekend. (Decided this at 10pm Thursday night!) So have been scrambling last night and today to get all the supplies we need, since it is a long weekend and everything will be closed - no last minute buys. Party is on Monday afternoon. Going to attempt a cake. Will see how it goes.
And on Sunday, my old student from Germany, Manami, is coming to visit with her Mom and sister. They are moving back to Japan this summer and were hoping I'd be coming to Dresden before then, but we're not, so they decided to surprise Manami with a trip to Budapest to visit us instead! They are arriving in Budapest Saturday afternoon and leaving on Monday late afternoon. They are staying at a hotel on the island and we will spend Sunday together. I'm actually really excited to see her, she's such a great kid.
Anyway, I really must go clean. Unfortunately, this is not a week that the cleaner comes, so not really the best weekend for all these people coming over, but c'est la vie!
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
May flowers part 2
Almost forgot to mention that we took a lovely family weekend getaway trip to Vienna at the beginning of the month to go to the zoo there. They have a wonerful zoo, the oldest in the world, and it even has a baby panda, so was quite exciting. These pictures were taken in Vienna, at the Botanical gardens and around Schoenbrunn park.
Some silly woman brought her dog along in her purse. Clara was thrilled!
Some silly woman brought her dog along in her purse. Clara was thrilled!May Flowers
The month of May has been gorgeous here in Budapest. We are realising that for all the times we've visited Budapest, we'd never been here in the spring before. What we have missed! The weather is wonderful - high 20s to 30 every day, no rain (though the plants would probably like some), and beautiful blue skies. Summer heat and polution layers haven't yet set in ;-)
We are getting ready to move into a new apartment in June, so have been doing some planning/organizing around that. Otherwise, just enjoying the lovely weather, mostly at playgrounds around town. We have been going to the 'pancake playground' (as Clara calls our favourite coffee shop, since they have an indoor and outdoor play area as well as mickey mouse shaped pancakes for the kids) a lot on weekends, where Clara can do her own thing and we can eat and relax in relative peace. And yummy food and drinks too!
Nagyi (grandma Valezy) is here visiting now for 2 weeks, just arrived on Sunday. For weeks Clara has been anticipating Nagyi's arrival on the airplane and talking about it incessantly. She warmed up to her right away this time, probably thanks in large part to all her Skyping over the last 6 months (we joke that Clara is such an information-age baby that she even has e-grandparents!). Though she did get a bit nervous when, on Monday afternoon, they (Clara, Nagyi, and Agi her nanny) set off for the playground and parted ways with Agi along the way. Nagyi reported that Clara was great about saying goodbye to Agi and waving to her going off on the tram, but as soon as she was gone, she started to have some regrets and got really quiet. She tried hard to be brave and didn't cry all the way until they actually reached the playground, at which point she lost all composure and started wailing for Agi. Perhaps it was a bit soon after all, but she was fine by the time we got there to pick them up after school and has been fine ever since, so I think she's over it. She spent most of this afternoon alone with Nagyi and they even went to music alone together because Mummy had a late meeting and couldn't go. All seems well.
Pics will have to come later, I'm being summoned.
We are getting ready to move into a new apartment in June, so have been doing some planning/organizing around that. Otherwise, just enjoying the lovely weather, mostly at playgrounds around town. We have been going to the 'pancake playground' (as Clara calls our favourite coffee shop, since they have an indoor and outdoor play area as well as mickey mouse shaped pancakes for the kids) a lot on weekends, where Clara can do her own thing and we can eat and relax in relative peace. And yummy food and drinks too!
Nagyi (grandma Valezy) is here visiting now for 2 weeks, just arrived on Sunday. For weeks Clara has been anticipating Nagyi's arrival on the airplane and talking about it incessantly. She warmed up to her right away this time, probably thanks in large part to all her Skyping over the last 6 months (we joke that Clara is such an information-age baby that she even has e-grandparents!). Though she did get a bit nervous when, on Monday afternoon, they (Clara, Nagyi, and Agi her nanny) set off for the playground and parted ways with Agi along the way. Nagyi reported that Clara was great about saying goodbye to Agi and waving to her going off on the tram, but as soon as she was gone, she started to have some regrets and got really quiet. She tried hard to be brave and didn't cry all the way until they actually reached the playground, at which point she lost all composure and started wailing for Agi. Perhaps it was a bit soon after all, but she was fine by the time we got there to pick them up after school and has been fine ever since, so I think she's over it. She spent most of this afternoon alone with Nagyi and they even went to music alone together because Mummy had a late meeting and couldn't go. All seems well.
Pics will have to come later, I'm being summoned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)