Fun filled weekend

This weekend, we met with friends again. Originally, Monique and Jeroen are Karin's motorcycle friends, but when they moved to Singapore six months after we moved to Taiwan, they also became friends in Asia. They moved back to the Netherlands two years ago, so they can relate to what we are going through at the moment.
In front of the new house (behind the trees)

They were able to fit us into their extremely busy schedule because their 11 year old daughter was competing in the regional (Brabantse) swimming championships (!) which were taking place in Eindhoven. I took the girls to see Evy swim, hoping that maybe it will be a first step in the direction of getting them interested in the sport. I was a competitive swimmer until the age of 13 and I would love for Emma and/or Janne to be able to enjoy the sport as I did (and still do). We'll see. Evy had a good race, she finished 3rd in her series. For me, it was really nice to feel the atmosphere of a swimming competition again. Maybe I'll check with the Veldhoven swimming club Njord, to see if they have so called masters swimming, for 'older' swimmers ...
There's also a really good ice cream shop in our new street

Of course, we also showed them our house, in which now all the walls and ceilings are plastered. It looks a lot better now that everything is white! Within a month or so, we should be able to move. Can't wait to have all our stuff back!
Sitting room looking a lot better

On Sunday, Emma and Janne had their first Dutch cultural experience. We took them to a children's theater performance called 'Dikkie Dik, limonade met prik'. It was a one hour interactive show and the girls loved it. They are already looking forward to the next time we'll take them to the theater. A nice extra was the 'cat play area', which they created for the children in the theater lobby. There were dozens of big soft dog (cat) baskets, some enormous stuffed cats to play on and even an oversized cat litter box (with balls instead of sand) to play in.

We ended the weekend with Pieter's customary raisin pancakes for dinner. Some things never change!