Mother's Day

To the occasion of Mother's Day, I received breakfast in bed and two beautiful hand-made gifts from Emma and Janne. As I always post pics of Pieter in bed on Father's Day, it's no more than fair, that I also post my pic. So here you are :-)

Antwerp Zoo

This week, me and the girls spent a few days at oma's.
The girls enjoying breakfast at oma's

Oma treated us to a trip to the Antwerp Zoo. The Antwerp Zoo was founded in 1834 and is one of the oldest zoo's in the world. In 1983, the zoo became a national monument, thanks to its beautiful old buildings.
Zoo entrance
To the occasion of baby elephant Kai-Mook's first birthay, there is a very pretty decorated elephant exhibition in the Antwerp Zoo

When I was little, we only lived 25 km from Antwerp, so we visited the zoo regularly. Back then, the zoo was rather old (fashioned) and not exactly known for it's animal friendly living quarters. But as a child, one doesn't really see that. Fortunately, the zoo has invested quite a bit into improving the facilities for the animals (and for the visitors) and although it's still a very small park, it's a lot nicer to visit now. Its small size is mainly due to the fact that the park is located in the centre of the city of Antwerp, next to the central train station. Which does make it very convenient to go to the zoo by train.
Antwerp Central Station is not nearly as big as Grand Central Station in NY city, but it's still a beautiful old building

On a less happy note: oma is in the hospital. She fell in the dressing room of the swimming pool and broke three ribs. At the age of 79, that's a rather serious injury, so she'll be in the hospital for 'at least a couple of days'. We all hope that her good health and strong constitution will help her recover quickly back to her own independent self.

Brussels

Today, we visited Taiwan friends Thomas and Florence in Brussels. Florence cooked us a wonderful lunch and the best Brussels' waffles for dinner. We took the kids (and Boelie) to one of Brussels' many parks and we had a great day. Even though we only see each other twice or so a year, it always feels like yesterday that we talked for the last time. What a joy to have friends like that :-)
Four monkeys in a tree

Queen's Day 2010

It was quite a bit colder compared to last year (and compared to yesterday ... ), but still Queen's Day was fun. Pieter and I spent most of last night decorating Emma and Janne's bikes, so they looked really nice. As the bikes are a couple of sizes bigger than last year, it took longer to decorate them ... We did feel a bit silly today, because we seemed to be the only ones who put so much effort in them. But then, the girls were very excited when they saw their rides this morning, and that's why we did it, right?

Despite the cold, many families showed up for the parade, together with the local marching band. The games at the community centre were fun as well and we had a good time.
Colorful rides, orange girls

Watching tv together

Emma's best friend (at the moment) is a boy in her class who lives on the same block as we do. His mom took the picture below, which is both cute and a bit startling. But mostly cute :-)
Best friends!

Emma's talk

Emma held her first talk in class today. She spoke about the animal shelter. Her teacher called her talk 'excellent', because she was so well organized and because she told her story instead of reading it. We were invited to sit in on her talk and were ever so proud of her performance.
In the middle of her talk

In preparation for her talk, she read a book about the animal shelter and visited a shelter in Eindhoven. Pieter took pictures, which Emma used to make a wall chart as illustration for her talk. Because she was quite nervous about it, we rehearsed her talk every day for the last week. And she did splendidly!
Explaining the pictures

As Janne was at home with an ear infection and Pieter and I both wanted to sit in on Emma's talk, Janne joined us. She was duly impressed with her sisters presentation :-) After a week of better and worse days and some bad nights, we started Janne on antibiotics today to treat her ear infection. Due to several other regular complaints in addition to the ear infection, we now have an appointment with the ENT doctor, for a total check-up of the ENT area.

Boelie up-date

Boelie is now 8 months old and a grown-up dog. She is still very active and loves to go out for walks and play. She had her first 'period' without problems and we enjoy the relative calm now, before she starts dog puberty at the age of 12 months ...

Our active little big dog