Summer South of Slovakia

The weather here has warmed up quite a bit and finally feels like summer! On Monday we took advantage of a nice, pretty day and headed to the Barlang-furdo Termal (Cave Bath). It has an outdoor water area for the kids, and an inside cave swimming area (some thermal springs) when families are ready to escape the blazing sun. It also has a deli and spa. Between play times, the kids ate snacks, and then we ordered langos (fried bread with various toppings—we got one with Nutella, one with peach jam, and one with powdered sugar...yum!)! Here are some pictures from our day:

We played from 9:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.! They were wiped out! On Tuesday, they each woke up a little later (7 a.m.), took naps at rest time, and were just plum lazy. We didn't complain :) I must mention that I feel like we had a successful parenting moment because no one got sun burned!

Besides the Cave Bath, this week we've busied ourselves with our usual trip to Tesco and the various playgrounds. Tomorrow we will make our Friday Fun trip to Pizza Hungaria for lunch to devour three 32-centimeter pizzas. This place not only has great food, but also a trampoline and play area for the kids while we wait. Bonus!

Learning time is going well with the kids. Each morning after we get dressed, have breakfast, and brush our teeth, we all sit down for some learning time. Gareth takes Annie Kate upstairs, and I keep Vivian and Matthew downstairs. I picked up a few ABC workbooks at the dollar spot from Target before we came, and those have worked out perfectly. Vivian and Matthew work on one letter a day and then review letters we've already practiced. Matthew is very clever and already knew how to count to 12 in English, as well as recognize many letters of the alphabet. For him, we've worked on putting those letters in ABC order and learning the sounds of each one. He has also learned how to count to 100!

Vivian has now learned how to write her name and recognize the letters in her name. She can also put many of the letters in the correct order. We are working on identifying those letters and learning the sounds each one makes. She has learned all the colors in English, and her first English word was heart! She's a girly girl! Vivian can now count to 10 in English and we're working on getting to 20. She making good progress!

Annie Kate is a funny gal. Before we met them, some information we received about her that was translated into English said that she needs “A Dancing Kindergarten.” We laugh now knowing how true that is of her. She loves anything that is a song. Gareth spends a lot of learning time singing the “ABC Song,” “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” or his version of “1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Indians” to “1, 2, 3, Annie Kate, 4, 5, 6, Vivian, 7, 8, 9, Matthew, 10 Annie Kate!” She can now count to 10 in English. She knows some of her colors. She knows words like door, open, close, fan, and shoes. He has a lot of patience with her, and I'm already praying for her teacher this fall. Who knows, maybe she'll be a great student when she gets around classmates her age! She does get along well with other kids at the park and on the playground.

One game they all love is Alphabet Bingo! We play each afternoon after rest time. Now everything is called Bingo! Uno is Bingo! The board game Sorry! is Bingo! They just love saying it and collecting stickers when they've actually won at the real Bingo!

Well, we had our first instance with someone not liking dinner. Annie Kate was the helper for dinner and she helped me put together this soup. She ate a lot of cabbage as I was chopping it up and she was putting it the pot. She put the beans in and helped with the tomatoes, but when it came time to eat it, she kept saying, “Nem, jo” (I don't like it). We thought it was just the beans, so we helped her pick those out, but she just couldn't do it. I wasn’t' sure how she'd react to not getting anything different or getting any fruit cocktail like her siblings got when they finished, but she was fine. She dipped her toast in the soup and ate that, sat while we ate, and then got up when we were all finished. She has been known to throw a temper tantrum (one actually occurred about three hours prior), and I'm thankful this didn't cause it. She handled it all quite well. It was hard to not make her a sandwich, but I don't want to start fixing different things for each kid. She didn't ask for anything else which made it easier.

Like we've mentioned before, we are enjoying our time here and thankful for things to do that are close to where we live, but we are ready to be in our own space with friends and family around us. This week has gone by pretty quickly, and we are so glad to see that we are down to now 10 days in this apartment in Miskolc before we head to Budapest for 4 days!

P.S. Bath times are now tear-free!