Day 17

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Today began just like the past two, only with one extra little girl in the house.  I was able to get them all awake, dressed, fed, and out the door on time for art camp.  I came back home and Melinda and I cleaned up the kitchen before I headed back up there to pick them up.  We had made plans to go swimming at my moms house with my nephew after art camp.  I prepared some chicken to grill for lunch and my mom made some side dishes to go along with it.

Ally's pastel drawing of our dog, Nala.

Ally's painting of downtown Forney.

While I was grilling outside, my mom got Melinda started on a sewing project.  My mother is an excellent seamstress and makes amazing quilts and other sewing items.  She was very excited to teach Melinda how to sew on her sewing machine.  She had a simple project ready and they got started while I was grilling.  Melinda said it was a lot of fun, but was very hard.  I agree!  I enjoy the end result, but do not like all the work involved.

Placing the fabric together to be sewn.

Making sure everything is lined up just right.

Excited and ready to start sewing.

Cutting out the stars to sew onto the place mats.

Finishing up a place mat.

I had to pull the girls out of the pool in order to get ready for their piano lessons at 2:00 p.m.  Their first request was to ask if they can get back in once they're done with piano.  Swimming is one of their very favorite things to do during the summer time.  Once we got back from piano, they cleaned up their room before we headed back to my moms house.  Melinda had stayed with my mom while we left in order to continue working on her sewing project.  When we got back, she was still working on her project.  Robert and I had workout at 5:00 p.m., so all of the girls stayed with mom to continue working and swimming while we were gone.  When we got back home, all the girls came back home so we could have dinner.  We put on  Family Ties while we ate and I think Melinda is beginning to catch on to the dialogue more and more each day.  We have the closed caption on so that she can read along with what they are saying at the same time.  See, we're learning while watching television at the dinner table.  (that makes it alright, right?)

After dinner and the bedtime routine, I sat down to start my blog.  Melinda was asking what our plans for tomorrow are and we decided to make tomorrow the day to make CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES!!!!!  Looks like I'll be making another trip to the grocery store to get some milk to go along with those cookies.  All this talk of chocolate chip cookies reminded me of all the chocolate that Melinda brought us from Hungary.  There was one that caught my eye as we were putting everything into the refrigerator and I had Melinda dig through the pile to find the one I wanted.  The hazelnut is what caught my eye.  Also, I found it interesting that they list the calories as 'Energy' instead of 'Calories'.  It makes me feel better about eating it....don't worry, Mr. Trainer, Sir.  I was just getting some energy!

Tibi (which is a nickname for Tibor)

Tonight's conversation consisted of different types of fruit, the amount of sugar in a Dr. Pepper, and nicknames.  Melinda was telling us that some of the fruits that they have taste a little different than what we were describing them as.  She said that it is because the countries that they import them from must pick them well before they are ripe to compensate for the lengthy travel time.  Then, we were trying to tell her that there is a lot of sugar in a Dr. Pepper and looked up pictures online of how many sugar cubes are in a 12 ounce can.  Finally, Melinda was telling us all the different nicknames she has at home with her family and friends.  I told her that Robert is known as 'Little Robert' with his family and sometimes 'Fred' with mine.  (one of my aunts couldn't remember Roberts name when she first met him, so she decided to go with Fred)