Pizza night

Pizza is just not really my thing - much to Leland's regret. If i have to eat a pizza i would like a spinach and mozzarella please (Leland is making retching noises). So we have come up with this great plan. On Wednesday nights i go to French class straight from work (mostly because i don't want to come home and leave 30 minutes later again) so on Wednesday night Leland and the boys have Pizza night.
They have made it tradition to eat pizza on Wednesday while watching a movie. So tomorrow, there will be another Pizza night (although Monty has a stomach flu or something, so he might not eat any) and i will be at French class finding out how i did on my midterm last week . (je ne prefere pas de pizza)

We're okay

ust wanted everyone to know that we are okay and that we are nowhere near this horrific stabbing accident in Dendermonde, Belgium. (About an hour away, but in Belgium, that's about a third of the country length)
Sure makes you wonder what the world is coming too when people start stabbing babies in a nursery. Anyway, we are all good. (Getting rained out, but hey, what's a little rain compared to true tragedies in the world?)

Stoney and Monty's book review of the 'Cat in the Hat'

Reading a book to the boys’ without getting interrupted, is a myth. It’s not that they don’t pay attention to the story and interrupt me with things that are not relevant... No, they are relevant to the story. But it gets so tiring to have to stop reading every other page because there is some kind of comment that apparently must be made (and must be made every time we read the book)

Giving you the example of the Cat in the Hat.

First of Stoney would like to point out that no mommy should leave their kids alone and be ‘out of the house for the day’.

Then Stoney would like to point out that a fish cannot breath out of water, so it probably can’t talk out of water either, and a fish talking is questionable in itself. (page 11)

Then Monty would like us to pause so he can count the items the Cat in the Hat is juggling around on page 15, 17 and 19

On Page 21 it mentions: “That is what the cat said, and then he fell on his head. He came down with a bump, from up there on the ball. And Sally and I saw all the things fall”. Monty would like to state (for the record) that we don’t actually see the cat falling ON his head on that page - we just see him fall-, but not till page 22 do we actually see him hit his head. So in other words, the words are on the wrong page. And i am not allowed to say that the cat fell on his head till page 22.

On Page 25 we read : "you sank our toy ship, sank it deep in the cake,” and Stoney wants to point out that the boat may be in the cake, but is hardly deep in the cake.

And on and on, about the kids facial expressions, the fact that the tea pot cannot be hanging from the kite string and yada yada yada. Till finally we reach the end of the book and they make the one comment that I do want to hear after reading: "Well... What would you do when your mother asked you?" and they both say in unison: "we tell the truth!"

So in conclusion, I guess I better write Dr. Seuss and demand a corrected reprint.

And speaking of hats, here is Monty's latest fashion statement:

It's an empty ice cream box that he wore an entire Saturday

The Big Melt

Two things happened the last couple of days

1. I finally found the last pair of boy winter boots in town
2. All the snow melted

A perfectly course of events, i would say. I found 1 pair of boots, the last ones in the store, for Stoney, two sizes to big, but we figure we double him up on socks. He has worn them Saturday, Sunday and Monday and Monday night it started raining and all the snow disapeared overnight. Go figure.
Temperature wise we are better off i guess, we went from sub zero to high thirties, but i prefer the rain over the snow.
Here are some pictures taken on Saturday:



But alas, all the snow is gone now...

and now a few words about living with SNOW...

Just picture the following scene in your minds eye:
Riding a bicycle at 10 pm (coming home from French class) in the snow, 10 degrees, up hill, on a track narrow as a balance beam with five inches of ice on each side and then getting the hiccups...
Tricky conditions, I tell you.

See, the thing is, Belgium is not really prepared for snow. We got about 6 inches here or so, but i haven't seen a single plow truck. Have seen lots of salt trucks however, and they are spreading the salt very liberally. Result: we are no longer up to our ankles in the snow, we are up to our ankles in salt. On the upside, i don't think we will see a single slug or snail for the next two years because the ground is so saturated with salt that they won't be able to stand crawling on it.

Here are some cool pictures




Unfortunetly i still haven't found any warm boots for the boys. They are sold out pretyy much anywhere. The only kid-size snow boots we found are Mega Mindy (Jenni and Eric might be familiar with her). It's this British kids' show about a super girl called Mindy. Well, naturally we are not putting our boys in Pink Mega Mindy boots, so the hunt continues. Probably, by the time the stores get new supplies of winter boots, the snow will be gone. Allthough it was -4 (fahrenheit!) this morning just east of here, so it might be a while.
Poor kids, we just double them up on socks, sweaters, hats and coats.

snow...

In the category: things you never thought you would hear yourself say:
"Get that Giraffe out of the ice cream!!"


We have been blessed with a about 7 or 8 inches of snow. Nothing like this dusting you see in the picture above. Naturally, since Belgium owes about 2 snow plows for the entire country, it's a royal mess. No school closings or delayed openings here though. That kind of practice is unheard of here.
The kids have been enjoying the snow, but it is very cold. A humid, biting cold. The high for today was 23 (fahrenheit). We still ride our bikes to school en other places, although Monday when we had the most snow fall ift was more walking then riding.
We are not really prepared for this cold, no snow boots or anything like that. But many we will have to invest in some, since the forecast says it's going to stay the same till at least sunday. Don't want my kids to freeze their little toesies off.

Woes of winter...

It's a little unfortunate, but lately i seem to be in a rather cranky mood when i write the blogs. Don't know. I suppose i start writing the blog as a way to vent my frustrations. It's just that i don't really wake up that well when the way to wake up is a *HUGE* fight between two boys about who's toy is who's and who was playing with it first. I prefer an alarm clock. Or actually, i prefer to sleep in all together on a day when i have no thing that i absolutely must accomplish. But anyways...

It's been really cold here and we actually have gotten some snow. Not more then a dusting really, but that is all we can expect here.



See below for some more excellent pictures of the winter wonderland we have been enjoying, but first some more venting. Feel free to skip - no offense taken.
We just seem to have had a lot of bad luck lately. First we decided to move the closet in our bedroom and found the following behind it:

Mold, mold, mold, mold. The Landlord's response was: you just need to keep your house warmer, then that won't happen.
Well, thanks so much for your support. Leland braved the bleach and we got the spot removed.
Then we had Christmas
We have two Christmas days here, 25th and 26th, (first and second Christmas day) On the 25th in the morning we unwrapped some presents. We didn't have a ton, because we did most of our presents at Sinterklaas day in the beginning of December. But thanks to Tammy and Ken and Grandma and Grandpa we had some stuff to unwrap. The boys got some games that they love. They had to be put on hungry hippo restriction though, the noise was driving us crazy. So far so good, a nice quiet Christmas.
In the evening we had the missionaries over for dinner and naturally, we did short circuit. We have an electric stove and the pan with potatoes boiled over (majorly) and there went the power in the entire house. I took a while, but after half an hour we had most of the power back, except for in the stove. We improvised with cooking everything in oven and microwave, which are luckily on a different circuit. Still, it was kind of awkward... The green beans didn't do well in the microwave and became petrified... But oh well. All went well.

Moving on to second Christmas day. We went to my parents in the Netherlands and we left our house at 10, planning to be there shortly before two. We took the train to Mechelen and there had to wait for the train to the Netherlands. It was already delayed at the time so we froze to death standing there for an hour. When we got in the train all was well, it wasn't to busy and we got good seats. But once we were in the Netherlands the train broke down in the middle of a field. We set there for about 15 minutes and then they fixed the problem and we continued on. We should have been smart and have gotten off at the next station, but we didn't. Pretty much no one did. So we continued on and what do you know, the train broke down again in the tunnel under the river Maas by Rotterdam. For crying out loud! We set there for more then half an hour. We lost the electrical feed so there were a few emergency lights on that were working on battery, but we had no air, the windows wouldn't open and the toilets didn't flush. then the train conductor announced that the battery would be dead soon, and then there would be no light in the train whatsoever (we were in the dark tunnel). The conductor also said that the driver hadn't been able to fix the engine, but now he was walking to the back of the train to check the engine there see if that would work. Fifteen minutes later it finally did, we got the power back but now, we couldn't continue towards Rotterdam, because the engine was on the back of the train and apprently they are not allowed to drive in reverse over the regular tracks. We would be going back to the last train station we passed. Then it took another while before the central train comment'or whatever those people are called gave permission for the train to drive back to the last station.... Finally we got there, we all had to get off the train and cram into another small train... Make a long story short, we arrived in Leiden at 4 instead of 2.

On a positive note: The boys were very well behaved during the train ride and the train"not"ride.

Anyway, that's our Christmas. Sometimes it just feels as if our lives are just one blunder after an other (even if we are not always the ones causing the blunders). I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a 'normal' life. But then again, what's normal??

Now to happier notes: The lakes by the Abby behind our house froze over and though we didn't have skates, we had a great time playing on there anyway.


There are four lakes by the Abby and we mostly played on the smaller one. We also went on the larger ones but there the ices was making some ominous noises so we didn't stay on them for very long.