2nd snow this year!

Yesterday and today, it snowed in Holland. Emma and Janne were VERY excited and played out in the snow on both days. Yesterday, they could play with two friends, because our Taiwan friends Florence and Thomas visited us from Belgium with their three boys. We spent a leisurely Saturday, eating, drinking, chatting and even taking a short walk through the neighborhood. The little town we live in is not very exciting, but it is VERY Dutch and therefore worth showing 'foreign' friends :-) Admitted, it's a bit less spectacular than Brussels ...

Fun for four in the fresh snow on Saturday

Janne enjoying the snow on Sunday

Emma is having fun as well

The weekend before, the most exciting thing of this season happened; Sinterklaas arrived in Holland and he even visited our own town of Veldhoven! As a child, I loved the excitement of the Sinterklaas season, from his arrival mid November, until his birthday and following departure from Holland on December 6th. (More details about the Sinterklaas tradition can be found at www.thehollandring.com/sinterklaas.shtml) Now, I love it because Emma and Janne are so enthusiastic about it all :-)

On our way to see Sinterklaas, Emma and Janne dressed as little Peters

On Dec 5th, the eve of Sinterklaas' birthday, all good boys and girls receive (lots of) gifts from Sinterklaas. Once the children stop 'believing', Dec 5th turns into a regular gift-giving evening, where the gifts are supposed to be packaged in some ingenious/funny way and are to be accompanied by a poem.
Here comes Sinterklaas (in Veldhoven)

On the nights between Sinterklaas' arrival and Dec 5, children put their shoe in front of the fireplace, filled with a carrot or hay for Sinterklaas' horse and/or a drawing for Sinterklaas himself. At night, Sinterklaas' helper Black Peter, climbs down the chimney (hence his black color; it's amazing that Santa is not black ...) and exchanges the carrot and drawing for a small gift or some candy. In this period, it's never difficult to get kids out of bed in the morning, as they are very eager to see what Black Peter put in their shoe. It's all a lot of fun, both for young kids and their parents. All parents hope that the children will 'believe' as long as possible, but usually they see through it in first or second grade. Hopefully Emma will have at least one more year of 'believing', before reality replaces fantasy.
Singing for Sinterklaas, IN the fireplace iso in front of it :-)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the girls' school really believes in parent involvement. In the last couple of weeks, I've been at school every week, helping out, driving or decorating. It's fun, but it's also amazing how much help they seem to need and how little the teachers (can) do on their own ...
Janne's class on their fall hike; they all looked a little less clean at the end ...

Full weekend

On Saturday, we went to Alblasserdam, to the occasion of the opening of Pieter's daughter Charlotte's medical centre. From conceptual idea to opening day, it took the four initiators four years to realize their plans. And Pieter was of course beaming with pride that his daughter, as one of the initiators, made this happen! Below are the before and after pictures of the old school building in which the medical centre is now located. More info (in Dutch) and pics at www. gezondheidscentrumalblasserdam.nl
The old school

The new DOK 11 Medical Centre

Today, we celebrated my 41st (sssssht!) birthday. It was a very nice and busy day, with friends and family and kids. The food was not exactly the biggest success ever (I think I saw the kids using my meatballs as marbles ...), but fortunately everybody was very forgiving and they agreed I would probably do much better next time :-)
Birthday Girl - slightly out of focus; maybe that'll make me look younger

Despite the food, I think everybody had a good time. Including the six kids. With a similar toys-everywhere result as last Sunday.
The only quiet moments of the afternoon; the kids are watching Tarzan ...

Last, I want to share this pic of Janne with you. She truelly looks like Klein Duimpje in the Zevenmijlslaarzen. Guess whose boots these are ...
Little Thumb and the Seven-league Boots

Busy times

Again, it's been a while since the last post. Here's a few pics of what we did since then.
We went to my sister's rollerscate show; club members of all ages participated, from 4 up to 50+ years old!

Visiting Pieter's (French) sister and her youngest daughter, Zora
We had friends over for dinner; this is the result of a four adult, four kid (ages 3-5) dinner :-)

Janne calls oma; this looks promissing for when she's 14 or so ...

Now that he is retired, Pieter doesn't need all these ties anymore; we cleaned out over 20 and he still has about 20 left. Next round, we'll bring it down to 10.