Jeugdland

This week, the first week of summer vacation, the city of Veldhoven is organizing Jeugdland (Youth Land). It's a four day event for children aged five to twelve (elementary school). Every day, kids can enjoy a variety of fun and game, including crafts, woodcrafts and especially designed games. Drinks and snacks are included, lunch isn't. Emma has spent most of the past three days inside the handicrafts tent, while Janne has tested her skills at the games. Janne is now in fourth place (of about 25) in her age group and Emma accumulated a nice collection of 'art'. They both love going there and it's wonderful to see how independent they are in finding their way around the Jeugdland grounds.

Organizing this four day event is A LOT of work. Just think about the numbers: 17 games per day x 4 days = 68 games to be designed and made; 10 tables x 3 days = 30 different crafts 'projects' to be thought out and prepared (each of those x 100 ...). At least 60 volunteers are needed every day, to man the games, help the kids with the crafts projects, organize drinks and food, and take care of registration and organization in general. With the number of available volunteers getting lower every year, every year could be the last for this great event. They already had to cancel one other event, due to lack of volunteers. Hopefully Jeugdland will not be next.

Emma did try some of the games (be it only a few)

Janne at work in the crafts tent

No kids event without face painting

Birthday party (part 2)

Yesterday, we celebrated Janne's birthday again. This time with family. Pieter's son and daugther were there with their families and my mother also joined. With all Pieter's kids and grand kids, it's always fun.. Emma and Janne especially enjoy these visits, because they don't get to see their niece and nephews very often. We now have plans for multiple sleeping over visit during summer holiday though!

We are singing, Janne is enjoying the attention

Unwrapping time!

All on the trampo

Emma trying the wave-board with her big brother

We did it!

Us, enjoying a rest after day one of the Walk of the World

We walked the Walk of the World, as the Four Day Nijmegen Marches call themselves. Yesterday, we finished around 3.30 pm, in the pouring rain, but still with a crowd of onlookers. Taking part in this enormous walking event was a GREAT experience. Thanks to our thorough preparation (LOTS of training hours), we walked the 40 km per day with relative ease. The weather was also very cooperative; even though rain was forecasted for days two, three and four, it only really rained on day three. And during the last 15 minutes of day four ...

Walking and taking a rest in the rain; these people offered us a seat under their umbrella and a warm cup of coffee. Really nice!

A pink band in the town of Wijchen

It is genuinely an amazing experience! In every town we came through, it was one big party. There were bands, DJ's and lots and lots of people everywhere. Also along the route, people were sitting in lawn chairs (even in the rain!) with their coffee and sandwiches, just to watch the walkers and cheer them on! In most towns, the mayor was standing on a platform, also cheering us on. Kids standing along the route were handing out sweets, cookies, salty snacks and fruit. There were plenty resting areas and service (WC) points along the route, but lots of people had their chairs out for walkers to sit on and even allowed walkers to use their private bathrooms.

A special resting place, sponsored by FatBoy

Thanks to the many military and civilian groups, their was lots of singing on route as well. The marching rhythm of these walking songs really make for easy walking and it singing also makes time go by very fast. Most popular were Captain Jack, Aluette and Lady in Red (not the one by Chris De Burgh).
No singing, but bagpipe playing, by this Scottish military group

Another group of people that made our Four Day Marches nice, were the volunteers of the Red Cross in Malden (where we were staying). Every night, they taped my feet and took care of Ellen's blisters. Without their daily care, I'm not sure if we would have finished.
I had the balls of my feet taped every day, my friend had her toes taped. It was a daily masterpiece :-)

In the end, what amazed me most, was the scale of the event. Of course, one knows that 40.000 people is a pretty sizable crowd. Still, I was surprised by the fact that there was really not one single moment in which we walked with more than ten feet of empty road ahead of us. We were always surrounded by lots and lots of people.

Crossing a bridge, we had a nice view of a kilometers long dike along the river Maas; I think we could actually see people as far back as 5 miles from the bridge (click on image for larger version)

Crossing the river Maas on a pontoon bridge near Cuyk; the armed forces constructed this bridge especially for this day (click on the image for larger version)

The day after ... Actually, five minutes after the last walker, the cleaning crew and trucks came in to clean up the tremendous mess which the crowd had left. Very efficient cleaning by the city of Nijmegen!

Almost walking time ...

Tomorrow, I will leave for Nijmegen, where I will start the Four Day Marches on Tuesday. We will start around 5 or 6 am and anyone who is interested in our whereabouts, can go to http://www.de4daagselive.nl/40W600 to see how we are progressing and where we are on the route at that moment. I'm not sure how accurate this service is and how it works exactly, but it sounded pretty neat, so I subscribed (for only EUR 6, who can resist ...) More news when I get back or sooner if I get a chance! Wish me luck :-)

Birthday party

Even with her birthday still two weeks away, we had Janne's birthday party today.

In the morning, Janne's birthday was celebrated in school. Janne received her birthday crown, songs were sung, treats were handed out and Janne got a gifts from the lucky dip. Janne was so excited that it was finally her turn to be the center of attention for that half hour celebration!

Striking a pose with her birthday treats

Singing birthday song number five

For Hsinchu Coffee Morning Ladies who think I used to make ornate birthday crowns; look at this one!

Janne had invited her six best friends from school and we had them over for pancakes, making cookies and decorating photo frames. With Emma's birthday party in December, I didn't have enough activities planned, this time we didn't even get to two of the 'agenda items'.

It's quite the fashion in the Netherlands to take the kids (even 5 year olds) to playgrounds or other activity centers. Or one invites an entertainer who brings everything along for a pirate, princess or other theme party. Now that the girls are still young, I like having their birthday parties at home. Admittedly, I did have my own entertainment crew come in; my mom and sister helped out, as did Pieter (baking pancakes of course). Having so many persons to help out was especially nice because we had to change (cleain and re-set) the table about four times in between activities. It was a great group of little girls to have a party with and (I think) they all enjoyed themselves very much. As did we. Less stress this time around :-)

Busy making cookies (or playing with the dough)

A wonderful group of friends!

Reaching new heights with her new Kapla

Zevendorpentocht

Saturday, I walked my last (big) training walk before the Nijmegen Four Day Marches. It was a 50 km (!) walk in Zeeland, a western province of the Netherlands (the one with the islands, water and Deltawerken).The walk is called the Zevendorpentocht (Seven Towns Tour), as it takes you through seven towns on the island of Tholen. It was also the first walk I did with the friend whom I will be walking the Four Day Marches with. It was a very long 50 km, but the scenery was great. Despite the dark clouds and continuous threat of rain, it didn't rain all day. It rained pretty much everywhere else in the Netherlands, but not in Zeeland.

Now, I also know that my friend is a much faster walker than I am ... I managed to keep up with her and her friends (I'm sure they slowed down their pace for me), but I won't be able to keep that up for four days. My conclusion is that it will be best if we each walk our own walk and we'll see each other at the start and (maybe) the finish line. Which is also nice :-)

The tour was very well organized; there were ten stops, at most of which we got something nice to eat (watermelon, broth, peperkoek, zeeuwse bolus)

The tour took us past several flower fields (even through and orchard!)

Tholen, one of the seven pretty towns we walked through

One of the many windmills

Me testing one of the Red Cross posts; they treated my blister

Birthday art

Yesterday, I finally got around to making the invitations for Janne's birthday party. It was quite a bit of work to figure out how to get the result I wanted, but I was quite happy in the end. What do you think?

Kapla

The plain wooden planks of Kapla are always fun to play with. Sometimes Emma and Janne use them to make marble-tracks, to build houses for figurines or they (try to) build one of the examples from the books. I really like this kind of toy, as it makes them use their imagination and creativity, it cannot break down and as they grow older, the complexity of the constructions develops with them. See below the results of this weekend's building efforts. Janne is asking some colored sets of Kapla for her birthday, to build even prettier designs.

'k Heb m'n wagen vol geladen ... (Dutch folk song: I have a cart full of ...)

Proud as can be; too bad we have to break it down to build something else

Tennis clinic

In the last two weeks, one of the local tennis clubs gave some tennis lessons during PE hour in Emma's group, to try bring in new youth members. Emma was very enthusiastic about the classes, so when the club offered a free clinic at their tennis court, she immediately wanted to go. After we explained to her that she could not join the tennis club just yet (swimming and gymnastics is enough for now), she still wanted to try it. So today, Emma had her first 'real' tennis lesson. Actually, it was more of a fun-and-games-with-racket-and-ball activity, but it helped them start developing the basics of tennis. Great fun in the sun! Playing catch with a water balloon

Several weeks ago, we started a family sunflower contest. All four of us planted three sunflower seeds and the person who's sunflower grows the tallest, is the winner. The prize is an ice-cream of choice from our favorite ice-cream store Brown's.
Emma's sunflowers are in the lead, closely followed by Janne's