Random stuff

Some things in life are just really random.
Why does Stoney love to wear his mother's winter hat? (indoors)


Is this really a comfortable way to watch TV?



What is with all the dances? (this is the pizza dance) Sorry, i turned the camera half way through so the dance starts sideways.





Why do my kids love to eat snow?



Anne with nephew Thijmen


And we got more snow today. Yeah!

Welcome to Leland's cooking show!

So Leland had to give a presentation in his Dutch class (in Dutch obviously) and after some consideration he decided to pick the subject of "making banana bread and cinnamon rolls" He made both recipes and took pictures for his power point presentation. He had two lovely assistants named Stoney and Monty. I won't put up the entire power point presentation here, because it takes too much room, and besides, it is in Dutch.





First item on tonights Cooking show: banana bread.
Before starting make sure you have all the ingredients.


Then you smash the banana's and add other ingredients (i am really butchering the recipe here by the way)


The final mixture goes in the bread pan.


You put the pan in the oven and while the bread is baking, you do the banana bread dance



Second item on tonight's cooking show: Cinnamon rolls.
Again, start with ingredients



mix the ingredients together.


When all ingredients are combined, knead the dough thoroughly.

Let it rise on a warm spot for an hour, then role out the dough.

Put butter and cinnamon on the dough. Roll up, and cut in small rolls. Put in the oven

While the rolls are baking, make the icing.


Tadaa!

Stoney's brithday party

As usual, because Stoney's birthday is smack before Christmas, we hold his Birthday party a few weeks later when life has quieted down some. Well, today was the day. This year, Stoney asked to have his birthday party at the indoor playground that is not far from where we live. Naturally, the kids had a great time.







Don't ask me what they are doing in half of these games because i have not the foggiest idea.



Of course, there was a fair amount of goofing off as well.




All in all it was a great party, excellent for us as parents too, because we didn't have to do a thing. The kids just entertained themselves.

More snow

We are having a nice cold winter here. It's not very usual to get snow here more then once a year or so and this winter we are having one snow storm after another. So the result is that Belgium is running out of salt. ;-)
Yesterday at the boys school we noticed that someone had thrown big huge salt pellets on the side walk (the stuff that you throw in your water jug to soften the water). I guess they couldn't find the regular salt to throw on the pavement. Not sure that the salt pellets will do anything though.
Although it is cold, and we are very thankful for a nice warm house to live in, it does make for fun times outside.




The lakes by the Abbey near our house are completely frozen over again and we went on them to do some more sledding and sliding, but since there is about six inches of snow on top of the ice, I don't feel very secure on it. You can't tell if there are any weak spots under all that snow, so we didn't stay on it very long.

New year's eve>>new year's day>>polar bear club

We celebrated New Year's Eve in the Netherlands at my parents house. They set off tons of fire works in the Netherlands at midnight on New Year's Eve, so we were in for a show. People can buy the type of fire works that in the US are mostly classified as 'proffessional style' fireworks. People set off a lot of aerial fireworks and when it was midnight, we could see the entire skyline lit up with fireworks for more than an hour. It was awesome. Of course we woke up the boys a little before midnight.



On New Year's Day we went to the beach for a while, not to swim obviously, but just to get some fresh air. My parents are only a 15 minute drive from the beach, so it is an easy trip. It was quite deserted, and of course, the boys got their shoes soaked in no time (we didn't take their boots to the Netherlands)


Will i make that jump?



Then there was a little incident. I took an unintentional New Year's dive. We were playing soccer and Monty had shot the ball towards the sea. I ran after it because there was a wave coming. Somehow or another I tripped and landed - face first- right in that wave. After that we went home.