Spring 2011

The girls wanted a dolly...

Fleur, Koen & Elise to Katwijk aan Zee

Easter Egg hunt in the park with the freaky bunny

Easter Brunch with Friends

Efteling!

Our first amusement park visit that the kids enjoyed more than we did! At least Kaemon & Nelson are old enough to run around of their own accord and had a fantastically exciting day!

The Efteling is charming- with a Fairy Tale Forest filled with all the characters from various stories (some quite scary).

My favourite of course: the gingerbread house...

The wolves were uncensored scary villains complete with lolling tongues dripping with saliva (Kaemon could not be convinced to look)

Hansel & Gretel, Those dear little goats unsuspecting that the hungry wolf is at the door: 'DON'T OPEN FOR STRANGERS!'. Kaemon & Nelson breaking the news to mummy goat that her 6 children have been devoured by the wolf.


The big story-telling tree was impressive & Kaemon only chose rides that were 'very slow'

Confirming that the Magic does happen @ the Efteling, we bumped into familiar faces! Marjolein, Justin, Timo, Yara & Marjolein's mum Inge were also doing the Eftel-thing on the very same day!

Elise, Ben, Fleur & Dorien

A gorgeous autumn day...good friends. however, lack of sleep=could not carry a coherent conversation! Nevermind:) It was lovely.

Baby dolls

Quinten's first family photo

My Best Friend's Wedding

And then, the real reason for the trip: Rachael & Shane's Wedding. It was a 4-day event, generating enough stress to be measured on a pressure scale!
The first day: The bride and groom look relatively carefree. A duck boat tour of boston where we caught up with the family and wedding party. The highlight of the tour was Marshalls, a store where you can get last season's designer everything (perfume, clothes, shoes, bags) at a snippet of the original price. The squeals could be heard a block away as Marshalls was spotted from the tour vehicle.

And there they are: Mr & Mrs/Dr Shane & Rachael Allen! Rachy already had so much poise, grace and warmth- combined with Shane, they are a supremely handsome couple with an unfairly excellent gene pool :) Seriously, Rachael was SO gorgeous, she had a 'famous-person-aura' about her. I've done 4 stints as flower girl and this is the 3rd as bridesmaid. Apart from my own wedding, I've never walked down the aisle grinning like an idiot before.

One of 5 bridesmaids, it was a fantastic experience being one of the girls again!! It was a revisit to the early years when I actually had time/attention for makeup hair and nails and that sort of thing.

The reception highlight: dancing the forbidden dance led by a 7 year old: not the lambada, it was the macarena...you can't stop the music!

Holiday week...episode 3

Lent-Bemmel Day
Officially a visit to Nijmegen, but many friends have settled in the nearby villages of Lent and Bemmel. It was a tight schedule but we pulled it off!

10:30-12:00 @ Ester & Raoul's new farm house (no pics unfortunately) where the kids were their annoying best!
12:00-15:00 Lunch @ Leon, Cindy & Guus for a long overdue 'kraamvisite' (when you visit the bedside of the newly born baby). The posse:

15:00-17:00 a legitimate kraamvisite @ Julia with lashes to kill, proud parents Erik & Simone

17:00-20:30 Dinner @ the Chekroun's. We slipped in almost unnoticed to the cheerful chaos that was 5 kids under 8 at the dinner table!

Mustafa is a goooooooooooooooooooood friend. He made for us a chicken tagine (the real deal; just because you cook/present it in a tagine, doesn't mean it's a tagine), a grilled veg salad, and the bread. Eaten from the communal platter, with the hands- this is MY happy meal!

Visit to Nelson's Fiance

We paid a quick visit to nelson's betrothed, Sanne. Nelson likes to wear her clothes, pink pants to be exact. A rather unconventional relationship.



While her mum was out shopping, we tore the place to bits!

For the record, this week was when Kaemon entered the wonderful world of tantrums. The screaming and stamping foot kind. Now I know that rumpelstiltskin was a toddler. Only they can stamp their feet in rage so hard that the ground would split to the core of the earth.

*happy sigh* I like: spontaneous visitors, Aussie company, eating company, sunshine, loud guffawing, people who actually laugh at my jokes, shameless behaviour. Thanks Ingrid for all that!!



And why were we going overboard with the peace sign? Becaue Hiromi was visiting, because we used to learn Japanese, because some people tend to bring out the silly in each other.

A new restaurant on the beach, very cool very cool

A night out with my aussie posse (yes I have one!). We were practising tips learned from America's/Germany's Next Top Model (apparently Heidi kicks Tyra's a$$) but modelling is really harder than most people realise as there was not one normal picture of any of us.

Gerco & Charlotte 4 eva!

I love weddings, yes I do. It's usually the manic happiness making it a shining point in life. Everywhere you turn manic smiles, everyone happy happy joy joy! The bride and groom were radiant and resplendent.

Beautiful Old Mansion in the forest, decorated in Art Deco style and a intruiging Shell-Horn-Mahogany Decor theme (Pau shells, with buffalo horn on massive dressoirs= lavish)

Brings the romance out in all...

I made a token cake (with three boys in the house, when do I ever get a chance to make flowers???????)

the food: the main course, cornish hen with tarragon sauce was...well, cornish hen with tarragon sauce and broccoli and mashed potato. But the entree, tatare of salmon with asparagus, was a delectable coarse chop of fresh salmon, dill that was tart and fragrant, making me want to use words such as delightful, delish and om-nom-nom-nom it's gone!

A lovely sunny day, nice catching up with friends and hanging out in luxury for a day.

Koninginnedag 2009

We had a beautiful day with Renee and Martijn and lounged in this cool Belgian beer cafe with a gorgeous secluded garden perfect for gambolling kids. It was a close to relaxed as one gets with 2 kids and 4 adults!

Only in the car on the way home did the silence fall as we listened to the radio news bulletins. In the morning, many houses had hoisted flags and the royal wimple in honour of Koninginnedag. Seeing the flags lowered to half mast by the end of the day was a sad, but in a way uplifting sight of community solidarity.

Semantically unpredictable sentences as a measure of functional speech intelligibility

...congratulations to Renee for her masters in language and speech pathology, completed in a language she's known for 3 years. Apart from the obvious kudos, I also just wanted to quote the title. It's trippy.

Thanks for the poo

Simone visited, brought gifts, her company, entertained us, and we thanked her by pooing on her. Nelson needs to learn that that's not an accepted method of payment.

Farewell Tracey

It was a night out for the ladies, no kids, no men, just babble and eating and oh the freedom! ;) These are the Playground Mums (sounds like a posse and it kind of is) that have made Oegstgeest a great place for us!