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!

winter

new year's day walk in a forest of snow... the snow has wreaked havoc everwhere, for everyone including us, but it does have a bewitching effect.







Finally, my first W-H-I-T-E Christmas!

we had a visit from Shawn loli & noah and had a short but sweet time. The snow turned the dunes into ski slopes on the beach!!





Quinten my sweet no.3! he's all sunshine and is born with a tan to match. he loves lady gaga (or my singing it...).

BBQ season

Summer is great, the traditional weekend breakfast on the BBQ...yum! We've had a lovely house guest Renee,douwe cooked a meal for the first time in living memory, and the boys moved into bunk beds. Nelson sneaks up to the top bunk and cuddles up to him when Kaemon's fast asleep.

July

We celebrated Oma Vellinga's life who passed away at the age of 92- 1112 kids and 6360 (3 unborn! ;) grandkids & great-grandkids. Much loved, and missed.

Uncles Daan and Dirk visited, and ice cream was the food group of the month.


Neslon is brave, fearless!

Nelson is a picky eater at times, sometimes because the bowl is the wrong colour - but when he loves it, he really LOVES it.

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!

Holiday week...episode 2

Parenting tip: Assuage feelings of guilt and inadequacy by material compensation.
Case Study: We relieved our guilt at abandoning the kids for the weekend by buying them presents.

Outcome: It worked!

Just kidding, of course we don't spoil the kids to make up for leaving them. But when the parents are on holiday, we do put them to work

Japan Day, Amstelveen

Amstelveen is just 25 mins from us, and is home to the largest Japanese community in the NL. We went to see traditional arts such as the making of the longest sushi roll in the world (133 m), excerpts from Memoirs of a Geisha as performed by the Nike Demo Dance Team. Alas, we have no pictures of that. It was as puzzling as the title suggests, set to Mission Impossible music, I kid you not.

The sumos arrived amidst much fanfare and cameras clicking,

Some real famous sumo were there, Kotooshu Katsunori also known as the David Beckham of Sumo, who is incidentally Bulgarian.

and douwe miraculously spoke his few words of Japanese to one sumo surrounded by bodyguards, 'Sumimasen, shashin totte kudasai' and got this lovely photo...

The sushi was alright. I think I got sick from the salmon, always hopeful, eating raw fish from dubious sources.

Flower Power

The small country lanes were crowded with bike-traffic-jams; it was an orgy of photo-taking, as if we'd never seen flowers before. This is our neighbourhood- the famous bloembollen/tulip fields- and it made us go a little ga-ga, hence the bumper photo extravaganza.

Tulips:

...as above...

...as above, above...

That's our transport. Nelson eating tulips, lucky they weren't poppies.

These days we never leave the house with nappies, milk, bubbles, snacks. To do so would be gravely regrettable. Lunch al fresco.

Along with the kids, we brought the KKK: Kick-a$$ Karrot Kake. LUcious cream cheese frosting and deliciously spiced cake with walnuts. Food tastes better in the outdoors, but modestly speaking, this truly was num-num.

...and more tulips

Running through a field of flowers, the classic-money-shot

Holiday week...

Not so much a holiday rather than the week my day care lady took a holiday and I faced a week home with the Kids. My initial trepidation gave way to relief when it seemed really not so bad as I expected...we filled the week with a visit to the kids farm

Shopping malls of varying sorts (still too cold to wander out for hours)

Battling colds (no one was spared, and this week seemed to be the peak of the mucal congestion) and nelson cut TWO teeth!

Fingerpainting (again, initial trepidation but it was really not as bad as I thought). Still, on my first day back at 'work' I slept the first 2.5 hours away recovering.

And experimental kitchenry
Kaemon discovered the deliciousness of Scallops(St Jacobsschelpen) and while I'm happy he's shaping up to be a foodie, in reality it means I have to share the crispy skin, the juicy chicken leg, the prawns, in general, less for the rest of us...

In short, it was an intense week (intenser than the regular intensity) but filled with more sweetness and joy of the everyday variety.