The year be ticking away....

It's good to be home with nowhere to go for another couple days. Between Christmas and now we spent a full day in Debrecen with Agi's parents, where we recreated the Hungarian Christmas tree experience. Its awesome, in only an awesome way that Smokey the Bear can nervously appreciate. Take a little fir Christmas tree that is now thoroughly dried out and brittle. Tie a bunch of cheap Chinese fire sparklers to the branches. Light. Sing and take pictures, all while crossing your fingers that the sparks now shooting off the tree/kindling don't set it & the apartment on fire. AWESOME TRADITION! It was well worth the 4 hour round trip, particularly since I love love love being able to drive 110 MPH on the freeways here. Really had a lot of fun visiting with Agi's folks and her younger brother & fiance.

ON the 27th and 28th, I took the family to Zagreb, Croatia, where I had scheduled our company Christmas dinner for my Croatian office staff. This was an 8 hour round trip. We all went to a steakhouse outside Zagreb dedicated to all things "western" in the best US sense of the word. Restaurant was called Fort Apache, and was decorated in a period style best described as "1880's saloon". Everything paneled in wood, with animal heads on the walls, plank wood chairs and tables, and 42 oz porterhouse steaks. I was in heaven. As were our two vizsla's when we brought them back the bones the next day. Since we have a very small cozy apartment there (to save the company money on hotels for my frequent work trips) we all stayed overnight and the kids had a blast at the "adventure" of it. As did Agi.

The apartment itself is located in a 1970's-era HUGE communist apartment building, all cement. The apartment is on the 11th floor, with a great little view from the balcony of a soccer field and park. The apartment (all 500 square feet of it) was gutted and rebuilt before we took over it. Looks really nice inside! I've got to hand it to the Yugoslavian communists. They planned and built their commie-era housing a whole lot better than the Hungarians did. While the Hungarian buildings of this era all have very cramped lobbies and dark hallways (reminding me of what substandard public housing in Cabrini-Green must look like) this building has huge lobbies on each floor, lots of light, and they've been thoroughly updated with security cameras in all stairwells, lobbies, and elevators. Each floor is secured for just the residents on that floor, and each floor has its own locked entryways and access points. Very secure. We like. It was also built to withstand a 9.0 earthquake.

It's now 10 PM on Sunday night and I've wrapped up my last Sunday of the year. I've had to conduct our church services for the last two months. Had a bit of a scare today when my main speaker ended up in bed with a bad bad case of the cold. Thankfully his mission-companion wife roped in an elder to stand in, so I wasn't put into the awkward position of having to ad-lib for 20 minutes at the end of the meeting. The topics for the day were goal setting and procrastination, and dare-say I am a pro in this category. I've been telling myself for a while now that I need to prepare a couple of good solid talks and just always have them ready for situations just like this. I guess I'll do that in 2008. Promise :-) .

Andrew was the youth speaker (funny, how when your dad is in the branch presidency, you seem to be youth speaker a whole lot more often...) and did a good job. He talked about goal-setting for preparing for a mission.

We have our Branch New Year's Eve party tomorrow night at our BP's house. It's always fun & a cool tradition for us. We've got a great little branch here in Budapest. Agi's going to make her famous mashed potatoes for the party. SHe throws in just the right amount of milk, pepper, sour cream, and a little grated cheese. Never any leftovers.

Speaking of leftovers, I've been having fun mowing through our leftover Christmas ham. We tried to make the best reproduction of a Honey-Baked Ham that we could, and Agi got pretty darn close. She found a great recipe online for the honey-baste and we soaked that sucker good while it was cooking.

Hope the whole family had a great Christmas and WILL have a great new year. We love hearing from you guys, and we really enjoy reading your blogs. I love how technology helps us communicate so easily.

I'm in the process of making all the little additions to this page to get a little more personalized. I've been cribbing some of the better ideas from the other blogs I've seen. Hence the cool little bookshelf you now see to your right.

Love all you guys. Hope you enjoy our little musings on life, liberty (or lack thereof) and the pursuit of happiness in SE Europe. Aaron

Christmas morning...

Actually Christmas afternoon here in Budapest. Its now 4 pm and Agi and I are happily recuperating from a long day that started VERY early this morning. We finally got the kids packed off to bed around 9 pm, after our Christmas evening ritual of opening the cousins' gifts (thanks everybody!) and reading the Christmas story from the BofM, Luke, and Matthew.

We then set about to the real work of getting presents out and ready. In Hungary nothing goes under the tree until the kids are off to bed on Christmas Eve. Helps with the Santa Clause story. THe older kids have been great about not spoiling the illusion for Ashton. HE very carefully laid out cookies and milk for the Big Guy (ironically enough, a Big Guy actually ate them not too much later...) and then looked around and mused worriedly about how Santa would get into the house without the benefit of the chimney. I let hem know we'd leave the porch door unlocked, and he was fine with that for 30 seconds. Then came the worry about whether or not he'd find the door. And if the dogs would attack him. And if there were enough cookies out. We squared all that away and got him off to bed.

We got the kids laptops for Christmas this year. I spent four hours upgrading programs and games to them after the kids went down. They really come in handy for their school work, and I was starting to cringe every time I let them near my Mac. A couple of months ago I found a REALLY CHEAP lot of 5 older IBM laptops (T30's), corporate lease-return models that had been refurbished after 30 months of business use somewhere. they came with everything the kids need for school (Office, XP, etc...) and Agi and I added a few bargain bin computer games to the mix. It was quite the surprise for them. We brought them out last after the other presents of socks, books and board games had been opened. And Ali's High School Musical stuff. She's outgrowing her clothes so quickly. As has Andrew.

We'd told Andrew last year that if he got his grades up to consistent 5's (our equivalent of A's) he'd get a laptop either at the end of the winter semester or the end of the year. I appreciated seeing him try so hard, and he did get close. But he knew he didn't quite get to the standard we'd set for him, so he was visibly disappointed as the semester ended and he realized he wasn't going to get a laptop. What sealed it for me was his determination to make even more progress in the second half of the year, in order to get the laptop by June.

The kids have spent the whole day thus far at the dining table playing with their new laptops, with the exception of Ali, who is upstairs rocking out to saccharin-ey High School Music Tunes blasting out of the TV.

At least my Mac is now safely preserved for another year or so.

Now we are facing the fun ordeal of hearing "High School Musical 2" tunes in our heads for the next 12 months. A small price to pay for happy, polite, well-adjusted kids.

We wish everyone out there a very Merry Christmas and wonderful new year!

best,

Aaron & Agi & Andrew & Aidan & Ali & Ashton

MY BIRTHDAY BOY...

Well well. ITs 1236 AM in Budapest and I am now the officially proud owner of a teenager. Andrew turns 13 today. He joins Carina as the only other teenager in the extended Palmer family brood, and Agi & I join Janene and BIll as two more aged, cantankerous parents of said teens. Andrew's been waiting for this day for a long time now. Somehow he thinks it will bestow on him magical mystical teenage powers of moodiness, superhuman strength, and the ability to talk back to his parents with no repercussions. Ha. Looking forward to bursting that bubble.

In all seriousness, he is an extremely good kid. Not many of us have 13 year olds who set good examples for US. He's MORE than happy to point out my weaknesses, whether it be occasionally missing family prayer in the morning or muttering an unmentionable term under my breath when I think no one is around. By his count I owe him a couple hundred bucks from the swear jar. Not my proudest habit. But I am glad he strives to keep me up and up.

The time here in Budapest has been good for the kids. I think they are probably closer to us as a family than they would be otherwise, being in a strange country. Not so strange anymore, after four years, but those early times were great in helping them bond together.

So 13. I have to actually work a little tomorrow (Christmas parties, lunches, and recognition dinners and the like) so I took him out tonight, just the two of us, to grab a bite and see National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets. Utterly predictable, with kinda trite cheesy dialogue, and absolutely loads of fun. I wish Hollywierd would crank out more of these--exciting action flicks with no sex and profanity. Just non-stop action that makes every 13 year old want to study archeology and put on an Indiana Jones hat. We had a great time.

Time to go to bed. In the next 36 hours I have to: entertain 100 distributors of my company's products, prepare a nice presentation for said company, work on the 2008 budgets for 6 countries, celebrate a 13 year old's birthday, and put together a Christmas program for Sunday that has been eluding me for the last two months. Procrastination, thy name is Aaron.

Back from the Mother Country...

The wife and I are back in Budapest from our awesomely awesome weekend in Utah. We spent the weekend at Sundance at a corporate retreat/get-together. We had to sing Karaoke as an initiation. To be perfectly honest, it wasn't as bad as those of you that know me, might think. Oh it was BAD, but but in a good karaoke way. We at least didn't get boo-ed off the stage, like another group did. All in all, good solid fun. We sang (or made weird vocal noises that approximated singing) California Girls. The Beach Boys version. Not the DAvid Lee Roth version.

The cabin we stayed in was nice, the dinner was great, and the other part of my first-time initiation involved getting a watch worth much more than any other article of clothing I've ever put on. So I'm happy. I work for a great company, going on 9 years now.

As usual, we continued our boycotting of purchasing items in Hungary by loading up on all of our family Christmas items in Utah. We waddled through customs again with 5 full luggages of 70 lbs each, and three carry-ons loaded with electronics. Ho ho ho. Apparently we just missed a local airport strike upon arrival. Delta had announced we might be diverted to another airport had the strike started. We literally wouldn't have been allowed from the plane.

However, the strike DID apply to all train traffic, meaning I had to spend my first full day back driving my inlaws back to Debrecen, a round trip of about 300 miles. Just the way I wanted to spend my first day back. IT would have been more tolerable, but my new ipod car adapter sucks. Our old one broke and I haven't been able to find the exact replacement.

We just put up our CHristmas tonight. Count your blessings, fellow Americans. A decent tree in Hungary, with a a stand, runs about 140 bucks. OUCH. I got it stuffed into the back of my ever increasingly dirty Honda and into the garage and up the stairs. We just finished decorating. Only two broken ornaments. Not bad for a typical Palmer family session.

Norm MacDonald is awesome...

Listening to Norm MacDonald is one of life's simple, yet very funny pleasures. I'm sitting in my Juab County house right now at 3 AM, enjoying the not so great side effects of jet-lag. Like being wide-awake at 3 AM.

To back up: I am in Utah for a few days by myself while Agi hangs back in Budapest giving the kids a few more days of 1-parent living before handing them off to the grandparents. I have some winter corporate training to do with my job, followed up by an executive Christmas party over the weekend. Agi is joining me for that. As this is our first invite to this particular party, we get to look forward to a hazing of Christmas karaoke in front of a hooting audience of my peers up at the Sundance ski resort. Yeehaw! I'm sure Agi is thrilled at participating in this once in a lifetime special occasion... :-)

Back to jet-lag. And Norm. I crawled back to the house last night, took one look at the mess I've made in unpacking, and fell asleep at 6 PM, Just woke up. I have 4 hours to kill before heading back up I15 to my office, so I had a couple of choices--either clean the house at 3AM, or finally get around to doing another blog-entry. Guess which one won out... I do need to get to the cleaning though. The house currently looks like Jed Clampett's, what with my wet laundry hanging out to dry all over every available chair, light fixture, and table. Typical me. I went out and bought a washer and dryer set for the house last summer without checking on the type I needed to buy. Now I have an electric dryer gather dust in the garage while the GAS DRYER stub pokes out of the wall, all useless and alone. Of course to save money I bought the thing via classified ad. Good luck getting my money back on that one. Anyone need a good electric dryer?

I digress. Where was I? Flight, jet lag, dirty laundry, Clampett, blog, radio, oh yeah--Dennis Miller & Norm MacDonald.

I've become quite enamored of the Dennis Miller radio show, which cranked up over the summer. He is an absolutely underrated talent, someone I've enjoyed listening to since his weekend update days at SNL. HIs brand of conservative-libertarianism is probably closest to my own political leanings. Anf he's hysterical funny. And brings on guests like Norm and Dana Carvey.

Norm is my favorite comedian. I just love the dry pithy sense of humor. If I was a coffee drinker I would have spit it out my nose at this last joke he kicked out a couple minutes ago:

"Ted Kennedy recently received an 8 million dollar advance to pen his memoirs. When asked if he would cover Chappaquidick, he indicated--'I'll crash off that bridge when I come to it'".

Somebody give this guy a TV show.

I had a great weekend! As is my yearly tradition now, I spend my birthday alone in Utah, thanks to the vagaries of my corporate travel schedule. IT always seems to be right at this time of the year. This year I decided would be different--since my bro Jared's birthday is almost one month a way from mine, I thought it would be cool if he came to SLC and we'd party hard over the weekend. And by "party hard" I mean PARTY HARD! AS IN 'HARD-CORE!" Like, watch BYU lose to MSU in the Energy Solutions Arena! Crash a Walmart at 3 AM looking for socks and Hanna Montana DVD's! Trash the after-party at the Panda Express! and top it all off-- watch Glenn Beck bear testimony at once to both the truthiness of the gospel and the inanity of HillBilly Clinton! WHOOHOO! Nobody can accuse these Palmer Boys of going soft. When we party, we PARTY! One omission--we actually topped it off by having dinner with the family at Kari's house, gabbing up a storm, and playing Nerts around a card table. And by "playing nerts around a card table", I mean snoring in a beanbag chair while others play Nerts around a card table. Awesome end to an awesome weekend.

In all seriousness hanging with Jared this weekend was awesome. We need to do it more often. That pesky distance though, between Budapest & San Diego makes it a liiittle difficult to do. Ah well. Grab the moments when you can. Glenn Beck is lucky he got to be a part of our weekend.

In other just-as-important-if-not-more-important news, the kids in Budapest are doing OK. If by "OK" one means still alive. They have this talent of really getting on Agi's nerves as soon as I leave town. The second I leave, their usual complaining turns into full-blown Doug-and-Wendy-Whiner mode. Agi gets to call and vent, and I get to do some awesome disciplining-by-phone. Not going to lie--there is a bit of a power rush that comes from making a kid apologize to his mother, do his homework, and then send him to bed at 4 PM. ALL OVER THE PHONE! Agi si awesome. She does all the heavy lifting in this department. I am called on, when needed, to use my outside voice and send the kids scurrying for the corners as the occasion calls for.

Seriously, kids are doing very well at school, Hungarian language and all. Andrew reminds me of me at that age. Lazy as sin, yet just smart enough to skate by at school with B+'s and A's. All while spending more effort at avoiding homework than actually doing it. That talent bit my in the arse later when I realized at the university that "holy crap! I do have to study! Now how exactly is that done?"

I fear Andrew will fall into the same mode if he doesn't get the study habits down now, need them or not. This is all the more impressive as we are in Hungary, where the school curriculum makes US curriculum look like Dora the Explorer-level course work. Andrew is in 7th grade and is already tackling chemistry, physics, and "themthar maths that uses the letters!" SO. Agi and I have a never-ending struggle at getting Andrew to study and finish his homework on time.

Now I am just rambling. I am going to sign off now and get about to more important tasks. Like making this place look presentable for Agi when she gets in tomorrow night. I am sure there is nothing she'd rather see, after spending 16 hours on flights fending off the lecherous advances of fake-sleeping drunk germans (you just have to ask her about it...) than a messy house decorated with my semi dry laundry. I should probably also go through the fridge and toss out all the expired mayo and yoghurt. Took me awhile to find the source of the smell.

Happy holidays everybody. And by Happy Holidays I mean Merry Christmas and by everybody I mean the three of you that read this blog. Including Agi.

Love, Aaron. Who is 36 today, and doesn't act a day over 14.