Weather and other things

 We have been so amazed and happy with how mild it has been in Budapest since our return!  I'm going to spend a little time sharing what we have been up to since we left Davenport on February 6.

We had a great visit with our son, Colin and his wife, Kirsten in Tacoma.  We always enjoy going to the state of Washington, because it is beautiful there, but even more so because now there are 3 grandchildren awaiting us when we go.  Colin and Kirsten added twins, Luke and Ella, on December 27, so they were about 6 weeks old when we arrived.

Ella resting on brother, Luke

Grandpa holding Luke
Grandma holding Ella, Nile in the middle

 Merrill and I were busy helping holding, rocking, jiggling and whatever it took to help babies sleep.  Lots of diaper changes and bottles were fed as well as making many pb and j sandwiches for big brother, Nile.  It is a once in a lifetime experience and it was our pleasure to be able to spend 12 days in Tacoma.  There was one day of snow, shortly after we got there.  However, there were no below zero days and for that we were grateful.

We left Tacoma for Budapest on March 18.  We had a rather auspicious beginning to our long day of travel.  United Airlines had a complete computer failure at the check-in desks for nearly 2 hours.  It delayed our flight leaving and of course, then we thought we might not make our connecting flight as well.  We were the last ones to board our overseas flight, so once we made that flight, we were very happy.  The computer failure seemed like the perfect plot for a terrorist take over of the airline industry.  Too bad, I'm not a writer!

We have enjoyed very mild weather since we arrived in Budapest.  It has been an unusually mild winter here.  It has been a relief to feel like I wanted to be outside... for more than 5 seconds!  We've had some sunny warm days and also, rainy days, but all of it much warmer than we have seen on weather reports from home.  I have seen forsythia in bloom and also some of the trees are beginning to flower.  Our landlady has been working in her yard to ready it for spring and we had a nice rain this evening to freshen it up.

What's new in the library?  We found out when we returned that it was time to install new software to manage the books in the library.  Our partner in the library, Rusty, has been busy working on it and within the next week, we expect to start using it in our day to day operations.  It's a good thing someone (Rusty) is young and can be our IT expert... that's not a job description I can fill!

Merrill and I are going to start an English discussion group in April, based on movies or parts of movies that we will show.  We have had requests for this kind of activity because some Hungarians would like to be more fluent in English.   It seems like a natural extension of a library whose primary resources are in English.