obstacles found at Monty's bedroom door...

Monty seems to have a thing for putting "fences" in front of his bedroom door. I am sure a psychologist would have a great time analyzing this.
Incidentally, he hates sleeping in his own bed. He much prefers Mommy's bed. Usually he ends up going to sleep in Mommy's bed and then later gets moved to his own bed. On days that he does go to sleep in his own bed, we find some of the following in the door way.

holiday weekend

We had a great time last weekend visiting Opa and Oma in the Netherlands. Well, it didn't start off too great because we had some train troubles getting there. Normally we take three trains to get there, this time one train broke down and we ended up with a total of five trains and part of the way covered by bus. But other then that...

It was my parents 40th wedding anniversary, but I now realize that I have no pictures with my parents. I'll have to see if some else has any.

We had a great time and great weather. One day we went to the beach (but i forgot my camera that day) and one day we went to a little play lake.
Monty spend most of the day digging in the sand and riding on rafts. Stoney spend half of his time riding the zip line and the other half of the time throwing water at girls (and so it begins...)






For the occasion of the 4oth wedding anniversary the entire family (which sounds like a lot of people but really there are only 10 of us) went to a aviary park. Some of the bird were really tame and we could feed them.




We didn't feed the penguins, but we watched them being fed.


This is a picture of the only grand children, that my mom took with regret. My brother Fredo and his wife Nicky (and son Thijmen) are planning to move to Sweden in November so my mom wonders when she will have all three grandchildren together again.




There was also a playground in the park, with some rides and such.




Stoney was pretty miffed about the playground, because we were supposed to have access to all electronic rides with our pass to the aviary, but he found that that statement was not true. Never mind he could go in the water rides, bumper cars, race cars, moon bounce, slides etc. He was perturbed that he could not do all the video games and shooting games etc for free.
he said: "the video games are electronic too, so if they say we can do "all electronic rides" it should include video games and stuff. Besides, the moon bounce is included in electronic rides and it is not even electronic!"
He can get very technical about things.
Anyway, we let them do the shooting game once.



All in all a great weekend. Good for the boys because now they have two weeks of end of the year testing at school.

Monty turned seven!

My little Monty-man turned seven!
We celebrated his birthday with family (meaning Opa and Oma) on Sunday. He got a brand new big boy bike, of which I do not have a picture yet I just realized.



And then we had his birthday party for his friends on Wednesday. It was pirate themed (hence the outfit)


After cake and presents we went to the park...



... for a treasure hunt


... and a water balloon fight

Stay-cation

The second week of the boys' Easter break, i had the week off. Yippee! We did a stay-cation, (staying home during your vacation) because of the age-old problem of being broke.
Luckily the weather has been unlikely warm for Belgium, so we are truly enjoying ourselves. It would have been a perfect week for the beach, but alas.

On Monday the boys played dress up,





and after that we just lazed around in the yard....



On Tuesday we went to the park for a little while, where Stoney climbed a tree (i tell you that kid is a monkey) even though the park maintenance has cut down the lower branches to discourage kids from climbing in it. (the lowest branch is probably six feet high but he still manages to get in there)







In the afternoon we went to the indoor pool. Shame of the beautiful weather, but the only outdoor pool in town does not open till May 1st - a real bummer because Murphy's law tell us that if we have a beautiful spring it will a cold and rainy summer - so who knows if we will ever make it to the outdoor pool this year.
At the pool, Stoney discovered the high diving board - for which i have never gotten the courage to jump off - and he jumped off about 50 times...

On Wednesday we had Stoney's birthday party. I know, his birthday was 4 months ago, but he wanted to hold his B-party in the park so we choose to wait for better weather.
Stoney does not like cake - of any kind - so we put some candles in waffles instead. He loves waffles.





After that we went to the park. It was hot an popsicles were a must.



I must say, i was quite happy that not all the invited kids turned up. They were giving me a headache as it was. All this pushing, wrestling... On the way to the park we came by a small pond. One kid decided to take his shoes and socks off and walk through it. We also came past a corn field, except it has no corn in it at the moment and it's just dirt. Several of Stoney's friends decided to throw dirt at each other... Oh, eight and nine year old boys...


On Thursday we took it easy and made some crafts. I tried to get the boys intrested in some Easter crafts, but no, they wanted to make castles. So we took some empty boxes (in which some of our stuff was shipped to Europe) and made castles. Stoney's castle was supposed to be gray, but we ran out of gray paint and he made the rest brown. Monty's castle is flaming red, orange, blue and green.



On Friday the boys went to the church building with Leland and the missionaries to do some yard work, or that is... they did for a while and after that they just "supervised" from the window.



In the afternoon we did the yearly painting of Easter eggs.






On Saturday there was a primary activity, on Sunday we went to church and then had our easter egg hunt, but i didn't take pictures.

On Monday we were still off of school and work because it was "second Easter day" and that is a bank holiday so everyone is off. It was to freaking hot to do anything, so we just lazed around in the yard. Except Monty who had a burst of energy and wanted to work on "getting strong muscles"

vacation with Oma and Opa

The boys have a two weeks Easter break. One week, last week, the spend with Oma and Opa, who of course spoiled them by taking them all kinds of fun places.

They went to miniature Netherlands.

They have been there once before when Stoney was three and Monty just barely one, but they didn't remember. I do remember that when Stoney was three, he was rather angry that he was not allowed to play with any of the miniature cars and trains. On this occasion the cars and trains were still pretty tempting, and evidently the boys did races trying to keep up with the moving trains and cars...



They also went to a gigantic playground....





They also went to the pool (indoors) and an indoor playground, but there are no pictures of those.
They also spend some time with their cousin Thijmen.


So all in all they had a great week. One more week of easter vacation to go and this week, i have time off from work, so.... yeah!

Spring....!

We have been enjoying some beautiful spring weather. last week we got our first sun burn.
Since this is Belgium, there is no telling how long it will last so we are living it up.









We went on a pedal boat ride, and as soon as we were in the middle of the lake, someone of course had to pee...





And who did most of the pedaling? Not the little boys who wanted to go in the pedal boat, I can tell you that



And look at the beautiful flowers at our church building (arranged by Leland)