monkey business

We went to the zoo yesterday, me and the boys. Leland had Dutch class.
Both boys had been to this zoo on a schooltrip this year, but Monty hadn't gotten to see the giraffes and Stoney complained that there was lots of stuff he didn't get to do with school, so we went together. First stop were the giraffes, because Monty really wanted to see them this time.

This zoo has twin baby giraffes, which wouldn't be caught in the same picture, but here is one of them:


It was a very warm day and most of them wouldn't cooperate for pictures. They were all laying in the shade and going "we'll be cute again another day."

We did get a lot pictures with stork, of which the zoo had about 20. They were everywhere.


This zoo had a lot of play area's for kids, which let to a lot of monkey business on the boys' part.





There were also a couple of little pull -boats that the boys went on.

And then of course, there were the trampolines:



In other words: we had another great day ;-)

More vacation pictures

a post about lighthouses, strong winds and horses pulling a rescue boat

We had a lovely time going on holidays. It was us and the boys and my parents, we went to the Dutch island called Ameland for a week. It's just to the north of the country and you have to take a ferry to get there. We had an amazing time! The weather was not always great, and the wind often cold, but still we enjoyed the trip so much!

On the first day at the island we visited the lighthouse. It was built in 1880. You could climb it (236 steps) and we all did, except my mom who doesn’t like heights. The wind up there was tremendous. Stoney nearly gave me a heart attack when he stuck his head and chest through the railing to look where Oma was down there.

climbing the lighthouse...

very windy up here!!

This picture is taken from the top of the lighthouse, viewing the North Sea. If you look carefully you can see the wizard prison Azkaban in the distance.

view in the other direction

After we climbed the lighthouse we went for a walk in the lighthouse area, where there were several kids’ playgrounds along the trail, resembling a whale, fisher’s boats and a rescue boat. Of course Stoney could be found at the highest point: the crow’s nest.

In the evening we went to a demonstration of the ‘horse rescue boat’. Back in the days when there were no moterized vehicles – and for a long time after that actually – they used to launch the rescue boat into the sea with horses. They did a demonstration of this at the beach.

The horses first pull the boat where it is going to be launched and then they get roped to the sides.

While we waited for the demonstration to start it took the boys’ all of one minute to be soaked to their waist. We had put them in boots and jeans because it really wasn’t that warm, mid sixties and there was a cold wind.

In between, we also we ran into Jack Sparrow.

And then there was a chaotic hour when the launch of the boat kept getting postponed, because they didn’t dare do it at the spot they had originally picked. A number of years ago there was a big accident when horses could not get back to the shore and all drowned, because they got into the sea too deep and the current was too strong. Since then, they are always very careful. The Dutch coast is really treacherous, because it has many sandbanks with deep trenches in between. Anyway, in the end they decided to move the boat launch about 300 meters to the south-west, but in all this chaos, we all lost track of each other. Monty and me stuck together, but everyone else got separated. Leland stayed stationary at the spot where he was, hoping that someone would spot him sticking out above everyone. Eventually he found my mom – or she found him – and then they ran into my dad. Meanwhile Stoney had been lost for over half an hour but he didn’t seem to mind. In the end he just popped up and acted as if nothing happened. He wasn’t one bit concerned about being lost. “What do you mean lost? I was just playing.”

In the end we all found each other back again and stripped the boys of their soaked pants before we got in the car. The combined four boots of them were good for about a gallon of water.

I am going to post more pictures, but I will do it in a separate post, because otherwise our computer will crash trying to upload such a large blog at one time.

fun times

Last Saturday we went to have a barbecue with another family in our ward. They had so much food, I think i gained ten pounds right there!
This family has three boys, of which the oldest is Stoney's age and the youngest Monty's age. They just have one in between as well. This family lives about half an hour away from us, in the middle of nowhere, and have a huge yard. Obviously, the kids had a blast playing together.

This is Stoney and his friend Tristan. We are talking about having their baptisms on the same day, since they are only a couple of months apart.

Naturally, Stoney also felt the need to climb a tree.


I have two weeks of vacation now and we will be going with my parents to an island just north of the Dutch coast. It's a barrier island, like the Outer Banks in NC are. I hope our weather will be nice. Nothing like a beach vacation with rain and cold weather. We'll have to see.
Because this is just what life is like, right as we are going on vacation i have thrown my back out again and i am using heavy painkillers. I had a blessing on Saturday and hopefully that together with the meds will solve the problem soon :-)

Meanwhile, the lilies and sunflowers in our yard are finally blooming.

the rules of the game

Summer in Belgium is quite unpredictable. First we had two weeks of gorgeous weather with high seventees and no rain. It was quite enjoyable. Unfortuantely for the last week we have had pretty much 7 days of rain, not non-stop, but still. And the temperatures dropped to the low sixtees. Even though the boys have gone to their day camp every day this week and had a great time (coming home covered in mud, and with face paint in variations: Sponge Bob, Spiderman and Pirate) we have spend more time in side playing the old fashion board games. The problem however is that Monty is not that good at ... well, anyhthing. Maybe he is just not able to play these games yet, even though the box says: 5-99.
We constantly have to remind him of the rules of the game.

• You can only turn over two cards (memory)
• You can't turn it back around and pick a new one when you don't like your card (memory)
• You can only move your man one space (Chinese checkers)
• You don't get to roll the dice again when you get 1 (any game with dice)
• 2 and 3 doesn't make twelve (any game with dice)
• If someone kicks you off the board, you don't get to throw all other man of the board (sorry)

One way or the other, these games always end up with a temper tantrum of the little man, after which he just runs through the house yelling, screaming and sometimes kicking... Oh if he will only outgrow these temper tantrums over the next year or so.
And yet, he is so cute when he sleeps.

summer vacation

Well, the boys' summer vacation has started. Stoney got an excellnet report card with his highest grade in Dutch -which you wouldn't expect- and his lowest grade in PE -which you also wouldn't expect-. But of course we figured out that he didn't do well in PE because he doesn't follow instructions. "Wadda ye mean, I have to do a summer salt? I wanna pretend to be Kong-fu Panda!"
About Monty... Well, luckily kindergartners don't get report cards here. LOL. Although other then some behavior issues -see previous posts- he is not bad at school work. He is just very insecure. He always says that he can't do something and frequently has a meltdown before he'll finally attempt to do what the teacher asks him to do, and then what do you know, it turns out that he can do what she asked him to do just fine... Something tells me our problems with this little boy are far from over.



For the first couple of weeks of summer break the boys will go to a Day Camp for three or four days a week. I am at work of course and Leland has Dutch class in the morning most days. Besides, if they had only each other to play with for two months I am not sure the four of us would survive the summer.
They love the day camp - it's the same they went to last year. It's out by an old monestary in the forest and they have a great time. They come home - very tired - but also full of stories about games and friends they made. This day camp has their own busses that pick kids up and we live realy close to one of their stops. Best part is, it only cost $4 a day per kid. It's an absolute steel!!
So far, there have been no pooping issues on Monty's side at the Day Camp. Thank goodness. Fingers crossed, he'll behave himself for the rest of the summer. Or even better, for the rest of his life!

we present to you.... The Joust