Vidor is 3!!!

My special and most favorite big boy just turned 3 ... He is an amazing child who fills my heart with love and joy.

He is my cuddler.

He is my big helper.

He is my assistant in baking and cooking.

He is my shadow when we are gardening.

He is my daredevil.

He is a boy who would fetch me stars ... but only when he wants to.

He is a loving brother.

He is my emotional and sensitive darling.

He is my son who tells me 'I love you' many times a day.

He is my dirt monster who hates shoes and lives for the outdoors. He may have a bit of Gypsy blood in him ;o)

He is my adventurer who loves the open space .... his eyes have to see far and wide ... trains, airplanes, birds, boats ... nothing goes unnoticed.

He loves a good laugh and to be goofy.




He understands how special he is ... and he is so patient. He may take a glance at his dessert ... but only one and only from the corner of his eyes while being sang to.








Vidor's 3rd Birthday was probably among the most talked about event of the summer ... especially because we have been anticipating it since America's Birthday (4th of July). The terms 'today' 'tomorrow', and 'yesterday' may make some cloudy sense for 2-3-4-year olds, but the term 'your birthday is next' is just HUGE. So since July, we have been talking about cake flavors and themes on daily basis, and the ideas changed more times than I remember.

At the end we celebrated with special friends sharing dinner, Cars cake, treasure hunt and playtime! It was a lot of fun!

Ingredients for a perfect summer night

This is the story of our first camp fire, marshmallow roasting, and sleepover all wrapped into one fabulous night filled with lots of love and laughter and sticky hands and hair.

Step one: Assemble the fire pit that we just bought. It was about 97 degrees on that day and I felt kind of silly buying a fire pit and being so determined to build a fire (but everybody went along and respected that I had a PLAN for the night). The guy at the checkout looked and me like I may have already had a heatstroke.
Anyways, this is my main assistant - my darling husband - and assistant No. 1. Guzer (he primarily just wanted to take a look and position himself in a way that nobody can see the screw holes).

Assistant No. 2, my crafty Vidor, who actually lined up and tightened all the screws.

Step Two: Getting firewood. The boys were eager to help with the unloading.

Guzer carrying his small pieces.

Now that's one big pile of wood. Proud of his accomplishment, Bendeguz just loved the sight of all this manly stuff...

Step Three: Taking a little water break. In the top right corner are Vidor's swim trunks, therefore he was absent from this picture. Lutza and her lovely sleepover friend shared all kinds of new tricks with Bendeguz.

Step Four: Get out the guitar. Okay .... this was just too bizarre - because we never talked about the connection between guitars and campfires. Apparently Lutza and Vidor saw a cartoon where the characters camped out in the backyard and played the guitar (I assumed with crossed legs - which shows Vidor's sensitivity to details). So the guitar/ukulele became one of the most passed around item of the night.

Concentrating .... and peaking from the corner of his eye.

Step Five: Enjoy the goodness.....

Stuck in hair, on clothes and any possible place they touched.

Oh, the classic bite.

And sweet friends sharing the fun of a special summer night.

"And while she plays the guitar, I will keep my eyes on my marshmallow ... just in case."

Step Six: Scrub four children clean and get ready for the night ... and it was a night. With being so hot, the two giggling ladies stayed up till 11.00.

Finally something is happening

After all those dark and gray days of June, we finally get to enjoy some sunny summer weather. And our garden does too. The children and I have planted all kinds of goodies in the spring and we were all anxious to harvest something finally.

There is nothing better than eating peas from the vine or picking your own zucchini and green beans for dinner. Lutza and Vidor truly enjoy harvesting but they don't particularly care for eating the veggies. Bendeguz, on the other hand loves to eat the stuff he picks. He takes a handful of pea pods and we have to walk to the front steps to eat them. I can see that he is quite fond of those little green tubes and it is so sweet to watch him enjoy every bite.

Can't wait for our garden to turn into a pumpkin patch and to be able to make at least one apple pie from the apples growing on our tree...

Raindrops = Movie morning

In our house the weather plays a strong determining factor in what we do on any given day. If the sun is out and it is warm, that's the only time the kids want to eat pop sickles. If the sun is out, regardless of the temperature, we can go barefoot. When it is raining, we have to eat pop-corn and watch movies.

We woke up this morning and the kids spotted about five raindrops on the ground. Now on this 'rainy' day I was imagining us eating warm blueberry pancakes and maybe cleaning up the playroom. But not my darling children .... I should have learned it by now. They wished for pop-corn and a movie. Now at 6.20 you just CAN'T turn the TV on and skip breakfast - in my point of view. Good thing that I have a lovely husband who helps me see things differently: 'pop-corn is whole grain and with a cup of milk it is just as good as any cinnamon toast or blueberry pancake'.

So the kids are watching 'Sword in the Stone' and eating their whole grains ;o) at 7 a.m.

Zoo day - Horray!!!

It was one of those days when we felt like doing something cool ... and the zoo sounded just like the thing for that day. This was the first time we took the children - I know it is embarrassing, but somehow we always had excuses to just say 'oh, maybe next year' (mostly made up by me). It is just simple ... zoos make me sad. I just can't stomach to have fun and fully enjoy looking at animals that are pulled away from their natural environment and put in a fake one for the enjoyment of humans. I just can't.

So I worked hard on not letting these feelings spoil the day. The kids were super excited and of course talking about the zoo created sweet anticipation in them. When we stepped into the gate, I could already sense that they wanted to spot something 'look mommy, it's a bird'. 'Oh, would you look at that, a sparrow'. I had to fight off smiling, it was so funny that we are standing right front of a huge giraffe and the kids are looking at sparrows. I love them so much!!! They have no idea how much.

The rest of our zoo experience was similar - Vidor was only interested in feeling the water that the penguins were swimming in, but did not even take a second glance at the animals; Lutza kept finding spiders and spider webs, ants and all kinds of bugs just so all three of them can drop on their tummies and watch them crawl away. Forget the animals, the highlight of the day was the carousel ... that just brought smiles and excitement to all of their faces.

And my feelings about the zoo did not change ... a female orangutan put her hand on the inside of the glass where I put mine on the outside. She knew that I knew how she feelt .... she saw tears coming out of my eyes and she signed on her own face to show tears coming of her eyes ... broke my heart.

So zoo visit may be even more painful in the future .... next time I think I will wait until the kids ask to go.

It takes a cul-de-sac

How many babies does it take to fill up a tiny pool??? Four dressed ones and one naked boy (of course he is mine, that Vidor)!!

I don't think I have yelled it out in cyberspace yet how happy I am with our choice of moving into this neighborhood. So here it goes "I LOVE MY NEIGHBORHOOD". I would have never expected this little community to be so warm and welcoming ... and it is even more ... because of all the real people who live in it.

Our small cul-de-sac is fully of lively and happy kids. We never feel alone or bored here ... we can just knock on one of our friend's door and soon there are 5-6 children running and riding around. Playdates, afternoon snacks, picnics on the driveway, bubble blowing, playing in the sprinklers, blue berry eating, sidewalk drawing .... laughing and crying ... we share it all. My sweet neighbors would take my children for a couple of hours so I can work on my paper ... they care for scraped knees, thirsty throats and hungry tummies ... it's like having 5 mommies and 5 daddies for each child. I love it!!!

I appreciate all of these special people tremendously!!!

Happy Birthday America!!

We love celebrations and for the most part they spread out evenly throughout the year. But for a while there was a big gap between an early summer and a late summer birthday that left us with no official excuses for streamers and cake. So last year Lutza and I came up with the idea that instead of celebrating Independence Day, we are going to call it America's birthday.

So this year 4th of July became an official birthday. The kids have been talking about our little party for weeks: they invited their friends, chose the cake and when the day came, they were busy decorating the house with streamers.

Oh, what fun we had. With 9 kids running around it was a party. We put candles on one of the cakes and sang the Star Spangled Banner ... it was so cute.

Between 4 families we had a bunch of fireworks ..... some were received with joy - mostly by the boys - and others were watched from a distance with covered ears. My sweet Vidor got hooked from sparkler one and moved onto some bigger stuff (excuse my ignorance for not knowing what they were) and I think he officially graduated as the Assistant Firework Lighter for his Daddy. Lutza was pretty bold too, but Bendeguz was 'All-Done' after the first loud one ... surprisingly by the time we ran out, he began to like it.