Queens Day

A cold and rather empty Queens Day market

Today was Queens Day in the Netherlands. On Queens Day, we celebrate the Queen's birthday. Traditionally therefore, it is held on the Queen's birthday (tata!). Our current Queen Beatrix though, decided that she would like the 30th of April (her late mother's birthday), to still be Queensday under her rule. This leaves her to celebrate her own birth day (January 31st) with her family, instead of with the whole Dutch people. Beatrix also changed the ceremony on Queens Day. Instead of having a parade of people from all over the country passing by the balcony of the Palace, the royal family pays one or two towns a visit.
Janne and Emma enjoying a pony ride

Veldhoven was not one of these towns, so we had to make do with the regular Queen's Day festivities. These usually include a market on which kids can sell their old toys, a parade of (red-white-blue and orange) decorated bycicles, a balloon flying competition and some more games or rides for kids. As it was dissappointingly cold (yes, still ...) and a lot of people were on vacation (due to two weeks school holiday), there weren't very many people out. Still, we went to the market, ate some popcorn and Emma and Janne got to ride a pony. All in all it was a bit dissappointing. Maybe our 'own' side of Veldhoven makes more out of Queen's Day celebrations. We'll see next year.

Back of the house, with extension on the left and new sliding doors

The house is still making good progress. Most of the upstairs rooms are plastered and ready to be painted. All of the prep work for plastering the ground floor has been done. This Friday, the cement floor will be put in on the ground floor. They started building the kitchen (in the factory).
Final prep work in the kitchen

I'm getting to a point where I feel that I'm becoming knowledgable on much more topics than I would like to be. Topics like heating systems, door handles, ceilings, floors. But, in about 5 more weeks, all this knowledge should be translated in our own, beautiful, new house. If you look at the pics, that might be hard to believe, but we're still being told it'll all work out fine!

Master bedroom, with dressing room on the right