7 Quick Takes about Feeling Pressured, Scaring Away the Menfolk, and Guessing the Identity of the Ringmaster

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

I got a new phone! Well, new to me, anyway. It's a refurbished phone 3 generations newer than my previous phone and I love love love that the camera is so much better.

I'll tell you what is stressful, though: shopping for a phone case. I don't know why, but I feel so much pressure to pick The Right One that is totally representative of my personality. Which is dumb because a case is $10 (not exactly a once-in-a-lifetime purchase if I change my mind) and I'm literally wearing hand-me-downs from my 14-year-old so it's not like I care about customizing all other aspects of my appearance.

(I ended up going with this one. It's not flashy but it looks really nice with the rose gold color of my phone.)

—2—

Speaking of my appearance, I can honestly say I've had better weeks.

Right now I've got a swollen lump on my eyelid (no pictures, sorry/you're welcome.) It's about the size of a pea, which doesn't sound that big but when compared to the size of your eye it really is.

I've also got a nasty poison ivy rash all over my ankles from pulling weeds in the yard. This was kind of a shock because I'd never before gotten a rash and there's so much poison ivy around here I'd kind of assumed I was immune. The oozing blisters on my calves, however, say otherwise.

The family was playing Taboo (a word guessing game,) and when the clue-giver said "It's gross," the first and second responses were "Mom's eye" and "Mom's leg."

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, forgetting to put on my wedding ring before I leave the house now isn't that big a deal. The gentlemen are keeping their distance, regardless.

—3—

While my oldest three were visiting their grandparents for a week and a half, Phillip and I took the littles to a children's theme park geared toward the 8-and-under crowd.

I've been ridiculously excited about this trip all summer, and the kids loved it just like I knew they would. At 2, 4, and 6, they are the perfect ages for this.

We all had such a good time. We rode the teacups. We went on the carousel. We took the train around the park and I saw a 7-year-old wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt. (Must listen to a lot of Dark Side of the Moon under the slide at recess or something.)

I also spied this freak-out room at the park and decided I really need one of these installed in my house.

A dark, quiet place for overstimulated children to decompress.

Just to be clear, in my house the room would be for me.

—4—

When my older kids came home, I arrived at the airport to pick them up with plenty of time to spare.

But when I got to ticketing, the agent looked at me and said "You know this flight arrives in 20 minutes, don't you?" They were over an hour early. How does that even happen on a 3-hour flight??

So I got my special ticket, booked it through security, grabbed my stuff as it came through the X-ray machine and ran through the terminal (luckily, I was wearing my cross-training flip flops.)

I got to their gate at 4:10, five minutes after the agent told me they were supposed to land, and there was no one there. No plane. No boarding agent. Nothing. Confused, I looked up the flight status on my phone and they were only going to be 15 minutes early, not an hour like the guy had told me.

FYI, the first thing my daughter said when I hugged them hello was, "What's wrong with your eye??" It's good to have them home.

—5—

My 14-year-old is really bad at hearing song lyrics correctly. When she knows she's heard way wrong she sometimes tells us about it and we have a good laugh.

Most recently, the Spice Girls came on the radio and she shared that for a long time she thought they were singing, "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get rid of my friends."


I was trying to remember the names of the Spice Girls as I watched this video, using my memories of '90s pop culture and what they were wearing for context clues.

The one in athletic pants must be Sporty Spice, and I know Victoria Beckham was Posh Spice, and I remembered there was a Baby Spice who was probably the one in pigtails... but what about the girl wearing the sequined leotard? Circus Spice? I had no idea. I had to look it up.

—6—

We listed a small assortment of ceramic floor tiles on our local Freecycle group, and I was thrilled when someone wanted them since there weren't enough of them to actually tile anything.

The time we arranged for her to come over and pick them up, though, happened to be the exact time my 2-year-old was outside scraping dirt off the driveway with a garden hoe while wearing a bike helmet. She looked a little suspicious as she pulled in.

Probably not what she expected to see when picking up the tiles.

But her surprise was probably just because I'm such a good mom. By leaving full-size gardening tools lying around and letting the kids roam, we provide so many enrichment opportunities for imaginative play, sometimes I even surprise myself.

—7—

Next week the kids head back to school, and it's always a little sad to say goodbye to summer.

All the school supplies have been bought and put in backpacks. We went to the classroom meet-and-greet for my 1st grader's teacher. My 12- and 14-year-old went to an end-of-summer party at the beach with our church's youth group.

However, my 10-year-old did point out that it's only a party if you do it at the beginning of summer. At the end, it's called a funeral.

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7 Quick Takes about Eye Conditions You Can't Take Seriously, Getting Stabby with Crayolas, and Kids Who Take an Active Role in Protecting Your Property

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

During the summer, we often send our older kids to see my parents in Minnesota if we can't all make it there for a visit.

When minors fly alone, it's quite a production. They get special bar coded bracelets at ticketing. I have to sign a bazillion forms including a description of their clothing. Then I have to accompany them through security and hand them to a flight attendant at the gate.

As you can imagine, my 14-year-old was not happy about being tagged like cattle and treated like a baby. As we approached security and were told that everyone age 14 and up had to remove her shoes, I tried to cheer her up: "Hey, they may not think you can get to Gate A16 on your own, but at least they suspect you might be able to blow up the plane!"

As for me, I really enjoyed it. It was all the fun of going to the airport without the hassle of actually being on vacation! Wait a minute.

—2—

Last week I started to notice some swelling and redness under my eye. It looked like I'd been punched, although I was pretty sure I hadn't been. Then my eyelid started hurting, and I discovered a stye inside my eyelid. A few days later, the same thing started happening in my other eye, too.

I Googled it and am 90% sure I know what's going on. I have an eye condition called blepharitis.

It's painful and ugly but I can't say it without laughing. Just try it. Turn to the person next to you and say with a completely straight face, "Bad news, I have blepharitis." You can't do it.

Neither can I.

—3—

I may be a terrible gardener, but I've been out in the yard a lot this week working like a dog trying to pull out some invasive vines that made their way in when I wasn't looking.

When I came in from pulling vines completely overheated, sweaty, and disgusting, Phillip gave me the side-eye and asked "Why do they always make it look attractive in the movies when a girl is all hot and sweaty?"

He was more thinking out loud than asking.

And while I was flattered, I also kind of wondered that myself. Who was the first person to look at a red-faced woman with soggy pits and perspiration matted in her hair and think "Oh yeah, we could make that sexy on film."

—4—

At playgroup my 6-year-old started doing an adult coloring page, so I went over to the table, grabbed one for myself, and joined her.

Apparently, adult coloring is very ill-suited to my Type A personality.

I want progress! I want results! A page that is so intricate I can color forever and have practically nothing to show for it makes me want to scream. It's like a hamster wheel for adults.

This took half an hour. Or at least it felt like it.

Just as my frustration was reaching peak levels and I was about to stab somebody with a marker, someone walked past and commented, "Aren't those relaxing?"

Um, yeah. Totally.

—5—

I don't often get jealous of people (with the exception of writers who I feel are more hilarious than me) but I do get jealous of couples who leisurely do their grocery shopping together.

I can't remember the last time I wandered through the produce aisle with Phillip without a care in the world, but it's now become my life's goal. When that happens, I'll know I've arrived at the good life.

Not to say I don't enjoy my children. I just don't enjoy trying to cram cilantro in a produce bag while three of them run through the aisles manhandling the peaches and standing on the cart leaning so far back they get beheaded by someone going in the opposite direction.

On such a trip this week, I spotted one of those couples and felt a keen pang of jealousy. True, the woman was obviously 9 months pregnant and waddling so slowly she was almost not moving. Didn't matter. Still jealous.

—6—

Earlier this week I wrote a post called Honest Slogans for Parenting Products, and while I hope you'll go read it because I think it's funny, what you really need to know is that when writing the post I went to a stock photo site to look for pictures of a Moby wrap, searched "baby carrier," and got this:

Close, but not exactly what I was looking for.

—7—

Our house has a security system, a relic of the previous homeowner. We keep it turned off, but every time the power flickers or goes out, the alarm randomly goes off scaring the crap out of us and bothering most of the neighborhood because there's also a big siren on the outside of the house.

This week Phillip finally removed the circuit board, so I suppose I should say our house had a security system.

At this point we're just not worried about people breaking in. The kids make such a mess that the place usually looks like it's been ransacked; if a break-in ever did occur the thieves would take one look around and leave, figuring someone else already beat them to it.

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Honest Slogans for Parenting Products

If you're a parent, you're also a marketer. 

You call chores a "game" or a "race" and suddenly your kids are fighting over the vacuum. You announce Stuffed Zucchini Night by saying "Yay! Pizza boats for dinner!" (which may or may not work, but at least you tried.) You have the ability to get kids excited about a trip to the post office using nothing but a hyper-enthusiastic voice. 

Basically, we're liars so our kids will buy what we're selling.

And that is why it's especially ironic that advertisers use our own tricks to sell us the parenting products we use every day. If we dropped the pretenses and companies were completely honest with us, we might start hearing slogans like these:

Band-Aids: Fine. Whatever. I can't even see it, but there. NOW does your leg feel better?

Baby Einstein Videos: You'll love this series of random objects set to Beethoven on the marimba that will keep your child quiet for 27 minutes.

photo credit

Sophie the Giraffe: Like catnip, but for babies.

Jogging Stroller: So people think you're athletic when they look in your garage.

photo credit Your Best Digs

Baby Gate: You'll get hurt every time you go through it and your spouse will never learn how to open it!

photo credit

Kraft Mac & Cheese: Because sometimes you're tired.

Toddler Art Easel: Mocking you silently from the corner while you scrub crayon off the wall.

photo credit

Baby Swing: The only place any baby has ever slept.

Swaddler: Like a straitjacket, but with pictures of duckies.

photo credit

Sippy Cup: No library book or important document is safe from our loose interpretation of the phrase "spill-proof."

Moby Wrap: Sometimes you just feel like doing a very complicated ribbon dance in public.

photo credit

Bib: Prevent 6 square inches of your child's shirt from getting as disgusting as the rest of them.

Bedside Co-sleeper: For decorative purposes only. Babies sleep horizontally with a foot in your trachea.

Baby Socks: New parents, meet your nemesis.

Slime: Seasoned parents, meet your nemesis.

Inflatable Kiddie Pool: Pops after 10 minutes! Guaranteed to make your child have to poop!

Hearing this kind of thing on a radio jingle or a commercial break for Stranger Things might be a little weird at first, but I think the honesty would be refreshing. 

Then we'd know exactly what it is we're buying. Just don't tell it to the kids.

What other honest parenting product slogans would you add to the list?

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Turkmenistan

When I started taking the kids on a pretend trip around the world every summer, I envisioned doing countries like France, China, and Japan. You know, countries I knew the location of.

But that's apparently not what my kids had in mind, because they chose Turkmenistan for this week. Which meant we all had a lot to learn.

I've included links to the resources we used to learn; please feel free to use them! Some of the links are affiliate links, which means if you buy anything using them I receive a small commission for referring you.

Monday

Turkmenistan is just a little larger than the state of California. The kids located it on the oversized wall map and filled out the passport pages I made for them. On the passport pages, there are spaces to write what the capital is, what the bordering countries and waters are, that kind of thing.

But I also ask them to design a visa, like you'd get in your actual passport when you traveled there for real. Here's my son's:

He did that because Turkeminstan, once part of the USSR, is now a communist dictatorship whose first "president for life" has been compared to Kim Jong Un. Which, we learned last summer when studying North Korea, is bad.

Next up was the flag of Turkmenistan, one of the most complicated flags known to man. I literally laughed out loud when I looked it up the night before to see what they would have to draw this time:

Sheer ridiculousness.

There's a lot of symbolism to the Turkmen flag, obviously, and a good place for the kids to read about some of it is here.

While they were drawing the flag for 100 hours, we listened to Turkmenistan's national anthem under the USSR, and then the current national anthem written by the president for life.

Making the cuisine of another country is always the hardest part of these weeks for me, mostly because I'm not a good cook and I don't enjoy cooking. But I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Turkmen cuisine is really easy and I actually enjoyed it.

For lunch, we made somsas. They're kind of like a Turkmen version of Chinese dumplings. The kids liked folding them into triangles and the 2-year-old helped put them on the pan.

They were gone in about three minutes.

Tuesday

One of the most interesting things about Turkmenistan is that it's the only religious dictatorship I've ever heard of. Which means that an interesting type of communism and Islam are practiced there.

Backing up a little, we read The Fall of the Soviet Union to review what happened before Turkmenistan became independent.

During the Soviet era, mosques were closed and religious observance was banned, but when The Great Leader Saparmurat Turkmenbashi (seriously, that's what the president for life called himself) took over he made great efforts to bring Islam back.

He even wrote a book called the Rukhnama, a moral treatise that he required be placed alongside the Quran in all mosques and is the textbook in schools. Even more amazingly, our library had a copy and we checked it out. Can you believe that??

We finished by watching this video on the spread of world religions:

And that night, another tasty and simple recipe for dinner followed. I made Turkmen pilaf and it was delicious.

Wednesday

Since Turkmen is only spoken by about 4 million people, it's a little hard to find resources on. But I tried.

We at least learned 'please' and 'thank you' here, and watched a YouTube video on counting in Turkmen. The numbers 1-10 are very similar to Turkish, which we just learned a few weeks ago, so it was actually pretty confusing.


But we did our best.

The Turkmen language was once written in the Arabic script, then in Cyrillic script under the USSR, and in a Latin-based alphabet called New Turkmen: you can see all of them here if you're interested.

Thursday

We wrapped up this week a day early because my three oldest were flying to visit their grandparents on Friday. For our last farewell today, we watched an eclectic assortment of YouTube videos featuring different interesting places and things in Turkmenistan.

Video #1:  In the Kara Kum Desert (also called the Black Sand Desert) that covers 80% of the country, there is a 40-year-old huge flaming crater called the Darvaza gas crater. Otherwise known appropriately as the Door to Hell.

Video #2: Tourists to Turkmenistan (yeah, those exist) often come to see the ruins of Merv. In the 13th century it was among the biggest and most important cities in the world. Total surprise when the Soviets found it while looking for oil in the desert.

Video #3: Turkmenistan borders the Caspian Sea... which is actually a lake. This video explains why that's even an important distinction to make, and has an awesome cameo of Vladimir Putin.

Video #4: The Ashgabat earthquake in 1948 killed 10% of population of the entire country, including the future Great Leader's mother. The country is actually quite earthquake-prone.

Video #5: The akhal-teke horse is called "the most beautiful horse in the world," and comes from Turkmenistan. It's kind of a national emblem: it even appears in the middle of their country's coat of arms.

After watching this hodgepodge of videos, I gave the kids a choice:

1. Design your own Turkmen emblem featuring the akhal-teke horse, or 
2. Research what makes a building earthquake-resistant and design one for me.

My 14-year-old started to draft a building but had to go to work and then it just never got finished:

Looks like it would've been nice.

My 12-year-old sketched a statue of the Great Leader Turkmenbashi riding an akal-teke horse in his signature "thoughtful" pose which we saw featured in many of his official photographs:

I don't know why he's riding side saddle. He just is.

My 10-year-old made a building with our architectural legos and explained to me how earthquake-proof buildings should have a light roof and make use of the 'X' shape to retain strength:

And my 6-year-old just wanted to copy the existing Turkmen coat of arms so that's what she did:

Official crest courtesy of Wikimedia Commons on the left; my 6-year-old's replica on the right.

I think I can safely say she's the only non-Turkmen 6-year-old in the world who knows what the national emblem of Turkmenistan looks like.

We finished off the week by eating shurpa for dinner.

Capping off a very successful week of ethnic food.

I know I'm adding shurpa to my regular meal rotation as it was fast, easy, and good. You just dump everything in a pot and let it simmer for a while, which is my cooking style exactly.

When my kids return from their vacation, I plan to give my oldest a library copy of the novel Unknown Sands: Journeys Around the World's Most Isolated Country. This novel/memoir contains just the right mix of factual information and real-life story for my 14-year-old. I just had to screen it first for appropriateness because it came from the adult section of the library.

(I also tried Sacred Horses: Memoirs of a Turkmen Cowboy, but I found the author's voice/attitude so off-putting I couldn't get past the second chapter. I wanted to like it, though.)

Wrapping up another summer of fake traveling the world is always a mixed bag. Yay for no more work and planning activities and driving the librarians crazy! However, I miss it because the kids really do pick up a lot and we have fun.

And I know for a fact that without it, I never would've learned this much about Turkmenistan. Like, ever.

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7 Quick Takes about Apologizing to Robots, Cautionary Notes about Water Balloons, and Not Putting Limits on What You Can Be When You Grow Up

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Lately I've been getting these bizarre telemarketer calls that open with a joke. For example, here's the last one I got:

[phone rings]

Me: [tripping over Duplos and barely making it there in time to pick it up] Hello?

Syrupy sweet female robot voice: Oh my gosh, getting a hold of you is harder than getting my husband to cook dinner!

Me: Uhhhh... sorry?

After a pause, robot voice goes on to say something else, but by that point I'm so confused (and a little irritated that I just got punked by a robot,) I reflexively hang up.

I don't even know what the call is for, so the weird jokes aren't working, marketing execs.

—2—

It was time for the annual washing of the car seats so I brought in the five-point harnesses belonging to my 2- and 4-year-old and enlisted the older kids' help in taking them apart. (Which, by the way, is probably one billion percent more effective at preventing teen pregnancy than that unit in health class where you carry around a fake baby for a week.)

"Don't worry, you guys," I told the kids as they struggled with all the belts and clips and clasps. "By the time you have kids the car seats will be way better."

My 10-year-old son surveyed the mess while shaking his head and soberly said, "I hope so."

—3—

We've been trying to get through a busy couple of weeks, but next week I'm going to focus on school supplies.

The plan is to buy everything online this year, (I still have PTSD from that one time I took the kids to Wal-Mart three days before school started) and I've got the lists all printed out and ready.

Well, except for my high schooler.

Apparently there is no supply list for high school. My first reaction was to be elated but my second was... not so elated. I certainly don't miss the lists calling for "Crayola Crayons (the 10-count boxes are fine)" when the teacher knows full well that Crayola doesn't even make 10-packs, and I can do without demands for "24 pencils — TICONDEROGA BRAND ONLY!!!!" in all caps... but it would be helpful to at least have some general guidelines.

Because if you ask a teenager what they need for school the answer will be, "I dunno. Pens, I guess. Some paper. Maybe, like, a folder or something. I'll figure it out." Okay, then. You'd better.

—4—

My friend Holli has a nice neighborhood pool and a big problem: her toddler hates the water, making it nearly impossible for them to go. Her older kids can't go by themselves because it's not lifeguarded, so being the charitable person that I am, I offered to take them while the baby napped.

Just kidding, it was totally selfish because I wanted to go to the pool and so did my kids.

I brought all of these children myself.

I looked like the Pied Piper of Hamlin leading all the kids to the water, and just to make sure the pool would be totally full one of Holli's kids also brought along a giant inflatable flamingo.

—5—

If I've learned anything about summer, it's that you always think water balloons are a better idea than they actually are.

It starts when you're shopping for something unrelated and see a 100-count package for $1, and before the logical part of your brain kicks in you're tossing one, two, or maybe even five packs in your cart because yay, water balloons! summer memories! Not even thinking for a second that you're going to have to tie all of those balloons with preschoolers clinging to your legs wailing "whennnnn can we do waaaaater ballooooons?"

You poor fool.

Luckily, I remembered that from last time and told the kids we were having a water balloon fight but first they should expect to spend significant time prepping and I expected them all to help. The kids exceeded my expectations, formed an assembly line, and finished 100 balloons in about 15 minutes.

Of course, the actual fight took 10 seconds and three people were crying by the end, but has there ever been a water balloon fight in the history of water balloon fights that went any other way?

—6—

For the past decade plus, we've had a rectangular computer desk in a small bay window area. If you can visualize a rectangular desk in a bay window, you'll understand why it's been a spectacular pain in the butt: there's a huge gap between the desk and the window where everything constantly falls.

This week we finally got a new computer desk that fits the space (and just like I expected, we found years of lost game pieces, toddler socks, plastic toy food, and marbles when we moved out the old one) and I love it!

Next we just have to get rid of the ugly file cabinet and printer stand, also relics of our college years.

My 6- and 4-year-old love the new desk, too. They like to fill up the shelves with books, pretend it's a circulation desk, and "play librarian." 

Sometimes they also "play blogger," but that game doesn't last as long because there's only so much they can do without actually knowing what a blog is.

—7—

My preschooler's Sunday School teachers helped him fill out this "About Me" sheet in class this week:

He handed it to me with a proud grin as I picked him up and I looked it over, reading out loud so he'd know I was interested. "Let's see... your favorite color is red... your favorite food is chicken... your favorite animal is coyote and... you want to be a policeman when you grow up—"

"That's wrong," he stopped me.

"It is?"

"Yeah. I want to be a coyote when I grow up."

I foresee some problems with his career plans but on the bright side, I don't think that requires a bachelor's degree so we just saved some money on post-secondary education.

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Hungary

Every summer, I pretend to take my kids on a trip around the world using books, recipes, music, and whatever crafts I can get my hands on.

Is it work? Absolutely. But it gives the kids something to do other than laze around in their pajamas reading. Now they laze around in their pajamas learning about countries, which is a little bit of an improvement, I guess.

The kids chose Hungary for this week, probably because we did Turkey last week and they're hilarious like that.

(You're welcome to follow along and use our ideas at home. Links in this post are affiliate links, meaning that if you buy anything using them I get a cut at no extra cost to you.)

Monday

After researching for a bit, I knew that the first thing we had to do is figure out why Hungary is called that. Did you know that Hungarians actually call their country Magyarország? Not similar at all.

We watched this video by way of explanation, and then this video of singing Hungarian provinces just for fun and to hear and see the Hungarian (or Magyar) language.

Then we turned to the map to find Hungary and fill out our passport pages. These pages are free to download and print: you can make a fancy cover and binding, or you can just staple them together in the corner like I did this year.

Download the Passport Pages
The kids designed and colored the Hungarian flag while I read to them from some books on Hungary I'd checked out sight unseen online from the library.

The problem with reserving books online is that you can't see what year they're written. Actually, that's not true. I think you can, but I didn't pay attention, and ended up with Take a Trip to Hungary which was written in 1986. 

Hungary was still communist then, meaning that almost none of the information was still accurate. But thanks goodness we still learned a lot from Hungary: A Portrait of the Country through its Festivals and Traditions.

We talked about St. Stephen's Day (which is only a few weeks away on August 20th) and the fact that for Christmas Hungarian kids hang a boot in the window on December 6th (which is the name day of St. Mikulás, the Hungarian Santa.)

We decided to try our hand at making Beigli, a very pretty New Year's Eve roll that is constructed sort of similar to a cinnamon roll.

As you can see, my Beigli turned out beautifully and the filling definitely did not ooze out in the oven and come out looking like something from Ghostbusters.

Not ectoplasm. Probably.

After they were cut, they looked slightly better. Still not beautiful, but presentable.

A marginal improvement.

At least they tasted good.

Tuesday

Hungarian is one of the hardest languages to learn, which fascinated my 14-year-old because she loves languages and she loves a challenge. I knew today would be right up her alley.

We read 13 Fascinating Facts about the Hungarian Language and then explored some Hungarian grammar basics and why Hungarian isn't remotely related to any of the nearby European languages:


Of course most of this video went right over the heads of my younger children (frankly, I had to watch it a few times before I understood it all,) but it was only 6 minutes long.

We then learned how to say 'yes,' 'no,' 'please,' and 'thank you' here, and practiced counting to ten in Hungarian here.

Then we watched an animated, singing Hungarian alphabet video (Magyar ábécé) and I asked the kids, "Did you notice anything about the Hungarian alphabet?

The answer is that it has a billion letters and goes on forever. (It's actually only 44, but it felt like a billion. By the end the song was starting to sound like the Lambchop's "This Is the Song That Doesn't End," which you'll be singing all day now if you were born before 1990.)

Hungarian also glues letters together to form other letters, meaning that you've got some crazy-looking letters like 'dsz.' That one is still taking me a while to wrap my head around.

I tasked the kids with writing the Hungarian letters on paper strips (I gave them a modern alphabet to copy and also an alphabet of old Hungarian runes just for fun) and then we put them all in order to make a 6-foot long paper chain.

While we were busy doing that, my 2- and 4-year-old were sitting on the table writing "letters" of their own:

I told the kids they could play around on this online Hungarian learning site, which they will take me up on only if I tell them it's their only option for screen time for the rest of the day. 

Except my 14-year-old, of course.

For dinner I made Gulyásleves (i.e: goulash) using this recipe. When I sat down to write this post, I couldn't figure out why I didn't have a picture of it, but then I remembered that was the day that I was simultaneously cooking a goulash on the stove, mowing the lawn, and keeping 6 kids alive. 

The goulash even turned out well and everybody liked it. You may kiss my ring now.

Wednesday

Ahead of time I'd research famous Hungarians and chose four to focus on. I gave my four oldest kids a biography to read (we used these books on Joseph Pulitzer, Harry Houdini, and Erno Rubik: Rubik's Cube Creator, plus Google to learn about Franz Liszt) and set a timer for 20 minutes.

When time was up, I gave them 10 more minutes to compose their thoughts and dress up like their assigned person. They were going to introduce themselves, and they were going to do it in character.

They were all hilarious, creative, and very informative. My 14-year-old is possibly too old for this but she was a good sport and her presentation was seriously awesome.

Thursday

After watching a 30-minute Rick Steves' Budapest: The Best of Hungary on YouTube, we watched a short video about the underground caves below the thermal baths dotting Budapest.

We read a nonficiton book about caves called, creatively enough, Cave, and then I tasked the kids with making a cave out of couch cushions.

I wasn't sure quite what they were going to do since our cushions are part of a fort more often than they are part of our sofas and I thought they'd exhausted all their architectural ideas, but they figured out something pretty cool involving draping a sheet in a doorway that all of them could fit in at once.

Until it fell down and 15 minutes of screaming ensued.

I was impressed with their ingenuity, although my favorite cave they've ever made has to be this one.

Friday

We briefly discussed the history of Hungary, at least from WWII onward.

If I were trying to pretend like I had it all together this week, I'd tell you we read Peter in Peril: Courage and Hope in World War Two, a graphic novel telling the true story of a Jewish boy in Hungary during the Nazi occupation.

If I were honest, I'd tell you I lost the book and that part never happened. I know it's here somewhere because I had it yesterday, though, and I'm so annoyed because it looked like a such a good book! I did tell the kids that whoever finds it gets a popsicle, though, so it should turn up soon.

Then we talked briefly about the Soviet occupation that followed immediately after WWII. Hungary has not had an easy time. We reviewed what we knew about communism from studying communist countries like China and North Korea, and then we watched a slideshow of photos from the seige of Budapest.

During the communist years religion was discouraged, but today Hungary is mostly Christian (2/3 Catholic and 25% Calvinist.) We reviewed the basics of Catholicism with the help of this video and introduced Calvinism to the kids with this Minute Faith video. Both led to a great discussion of our differences and similarities with other faiths and what the kids' thoughts are on our beliefs. I admit that's kind of one of my favorite parts of doing these pretend trips around the world.

I made Főzelék for dinner (Hungarian lentil stew) and it was a little boring. Maybe next time I'll add a little more salt.

Some of our kids aren't crazy about lentils so there were some full bowls still left, but it was healthy and it's a traditional New Year's meal in Hungary for good luck in the coming year. So joke's on the kids who didn't eat it.

This week we listened to the following music:

• Hungarian Gypsy Melodies CD
• Franz Liszt CD

and read the following books whenever the mood struck us:

• The Good Master by Kate Seredy
• The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy
• Hungarian Heroes and Legends by Joseph Domjan
• The Little Rooster and the Diamond Button by Celia Barker Lottridge
• The Amazing Pig by Paul Galdone

Pretending to visit Hungary for a week was entertaining and educational. My favorite part was learning about the language and the kids' favorite part was the Beigli rolls (I didn't ask them but I think it's safe to assume.) Thanks for following along with us!

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