Helping around the house

My time in Cleveland was not just party, party, party, gifts, gifts, gifts, party, party, party. I tried to do my part and help out.


I went around the house watering the plants until I started drinking out of the watering can.

Then I helped Nagymama, Sari and Sandor bake some cookies. I did a really good job of having Nagymama hold me so I could oversee what was going on.

Sari was the star of the baking. She had all the right gear. How can I compete with a culinary artist decked out like this? I did pretty well eating the cookies.

It's a family affair

This is a transition posting. I'm going to almost seamlessly lead the conversation from my time in Toronto to my time in Cleveland. The theme for this transition is going to be family. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pics with the big family in Toronto at the Kidpalooza Christmas.




Here I am with core Toronto family.


Here I am with almost core Cleveland family. We are just missing Julian Bacsi.

We then had a Mafia party at Nagymama and Nagypapa's house. This is the extended Cleveland+ family. For more on the Strada-Mafia get-together you can read my Keresztmama's posting.

"What? That's it? Harumph. Hardly seamless." Something like that is going through your head right now. Sorry about that. It's because I don't have that initial picture of Kidpalooza in Toronto. If I had that, it would have been awesome. I would have had this whole yin-yang complete circle of life thing going. But I didn't. So I don't.

Christmas with family and more family

Christmas Eve was a good time spent with tons of family. Az anyam has four cousins with a total of 12 kids among them. I was the youngest. I'm thinking of signing them up for my world domination plans.


Amanda tried to teach me how to play with Legos. As much as I enjoyed that, I'll stick with Logos. As Heraclitus said, "Though wisdom is common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own." Or as Yoda said, "Try not. Do, or do not, there is no try. " Or as Lloyd Williams said, "Shama Lama Ding Dong." But that is neither here nor there.

The important thing I learned from this shindig was the importance of being able to climb stairs. Noah and Jacob were kind enough to help me. Just like before, I used meeting older kids as an inspiration to better learn stairs.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6543255202367180270&hl=en

Az anyam and az apam are no longer using gates on the stairs at home as I've learned how to climb up and down them with ease.

It's the most spectacular day of the year

Every once in a great while there is an event so amazing, razzle-dazzle, grand, histrionic, impressive, magnificent, marked, stunning, stupendous, marvelous, miraculous, prodigious, remarkable, sensational, splendid, striking, fabulous, thrilling, astonishing, astounding, breathtaking, daring, dramatic, eye-catching, fantastic and wondrous that it is worth putting the rest of the Christmas posts on hold for an extra day. We just had such an event.

No, it wasn't Chris Dodd and Joe Biden dropping from the presidential race. Really, who saw that coming? No, it wasn't the Lexus Sign and Drive event, although there were some dazzling deals at my tri-state Lexus dealership. It is this - I went to bed at 6:45 last night. I didn't wake up until 6:45 this morning. This staggering happening led to a very happy family. There are naturally no photos of this, so I'm including a picture of the happy family from Christmas.

Now we're cookin'

I'm a big fan of cooking. I love to play with az anyam's dishes. While in Canada I enjoyed playing with Mama's dishes. Now I also get to.....that'll be in a future post.


Christmas morning I got a double surprise. Not only did I get to have pancakes for breakfast, I also got to make the pancakes with Emi Neni.

Sidney who?

No, Pak Bacsi, this is not an Alias reference. It is a reference to a hack who plays for a team in Pittsburgh in a sport I will someday dominate.

Living in Connecticut I don't get the full Mate experience of being half-Canadian. I was fortunate enough to get some hockey equipment from Keresztpapa and Martha Neni for Christmas. Not only is hockey the national winter sport of Canada, it is the most popular spectator sport in Finland*. If it is good enough for the Grand Duchy of Finland, it sure is good enough for me.


I had to ease myself into the whole hockey thing. I'm used to using a Swiffer and a football, not a hockey stick.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6462120410665338046&hl=en

Then I moved on to a smaller ball.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4837454976162593621&hl=en

*At least according to some undocumented source on Wikipedia