Trivial Stoney

And now to happier moments (since my last blog was pretty down cast)
Can I just say that Stoney knows the most random facts? The type of things that you might need to know during trivial pursuit or something.
A sample:

• He knows that the Roman Empire was over run by Germanic tribes.
• He knows that that F.Y.R.O.M is not yet a candidate for the European Union but Turkey is
• He knows that the largest star in the universe is Beetle Juice
• He can tell you that when Moses was confronting Farao the snakes of Moses ate the snakes of the Farao's wizards (and not the other way around, duh!)
• He knows that Hong Kong belonged to the United Kingdom for 100 years
• He knows that Germany was pretty much responsible for both the first and the second world war. (but then he was about 100 year of on the time they took place)
• He can tell you what the Pony Express was, who Billy the kid was and how the colonization of Oklahoma took place.
• And this one really baffled me: For some reason i cannot remember i mentioned Charles the Great to him. And he says: "Right, the one who's father was Pepin." I had to go look it up on Wikipedia. Indeed, the father of Charles the Great was Pepin

Now not to give you the impression that he is a genius (I think he just has a great memory for facts) he may know these random facts, but it really doesn't show on his report card. He is fairly smart but so easily distracted in class that he often doesn't finish tests. He is good a math but hates doing it. He likes language, but his handwriting is so atrocious that he looses points left, right and center because the teacher can't figure out what he wrote.
Mostly, he loves to read and learns most of these random facts from books, sometimes comic books.

top three of pain

I have been thinking about pain a lot lately. Mostly because I am in a lot of pain most of the time. My lower back is still really painfull; the epidural infiltration they did a month or so ago worked for a little while, but now the pain seems to get worse again. The doctor(s) all assumed that this pain is related to my hernia #2, but I am beginning to think it may not be. Otherwise that epidural would have worked a whole lot better. And it is also quite perculiar that i can sit for hours without pain. That is pretty unusual for a herniated disc in your back. So mostly, i am fine. As long as i sit and lay down i am doing fairly well. The problem is when i start moving. My lower back hurts, my tail bone hurts, my hips hurt, the tops of my legs hurt and then, most strangly enough, it feels like someone put his fist in my lower belly and is squeezing my intestines. Standing is the biggest problem. There has been some improvement from two months ago, when i couldn't stand up long enough to brush my teeth, but standing is still really painfull. And sometimes in life, you have to stand. I was at the bus station a few days ago and it was rather busy. I had to wait for about ten minutes for the bus. I would much rather have sat down, but there were a bunch of 70 or 80 year old ladies sitting on the only available benches. What am i going to do? Kick the 80 year old ladies off the bench with the argument i am about to crumble with pain?

So anyway, i have been thinking about pain a lot. And i need to say that not all pains are created equal. It is amazing for instance, how much a superficial scrape on your knee can hurt.
It is also amazing to me that often I have thought in the past: "this is the worst pain i have ever been in." Only to find that there is a worse pain still.
Somehow or an other mt brain has subconsciously created the top three of "worst pains ever experienced by me". It may be surprising, but my current pains do not make the top three. I guess it is because in the top three i have placed pains that were completely unpredictable and would not go away. The current back pain goes away mostly as soon as i can sit down or lay down.

My top three

#3: Child birth. I gave birth to two children without pain medication and it was indeed a painfull experience. Totally worth the pain though. And in the end, as excruciating as it was, my deliveries were pretty fast.
#2: gall blatter attacks (related to gall stones). It is amazing that a organ so small, with gall stones so small can create such intense pain. I literally thought i was going to die. I thought i had a heart attack or something. My entire ribcage contracted, i felt i couldn't breath i became nauseous... And the thing is this pain would come on from one second into the next, completely unexpected. I remember getting into a pool (it was summer) feeling totally fine and suddenly a pain attack hit me and two minutes later i was retching by the side of the pool.
And at #1 without contest was my second hernia. This goes to show that not all hernias are created equal either. The first hernia was also extremely painful, but nothing like the second one. In this case i didn't think i was dying, because i knew a hernia was by no means deadly, but i did think i was going to pass out from the pain, or go into shock or something. This was a classic hernia in the sense that i had actually very little pain in my back, but the hernia was pressing on the nerves going into my left leg all the way into my toes. I literally felt like someone was hitting my toes with a hammer, that someone was cutting into my calf with a dull blade and then twisting it around... But of course those were not real. There was nothing wrong with my toes or my calf or my hip. It just felt like that. If "normally" someone would be hit with a hammer on their toes, you'd expect them to scream. But no one was hitting me, so i didn't feel justified screaming, but i sure felt like it.
It is still my very top pain ever experienced. Once again on believable that something so small (actually for a hernia it was pretty large) can cause that amount of pain.

In any case, the current pains need to be dealt with. I have another appointment in the hospital, but not till the end of September. Meanwhile i am trying a herbal remedy recommended by someone in my church. Garlic :-) Squeeze a clove of garlic into a glass of milk twice a day and drink. She and another lady, both with hernias, had great benefit from it. In any case, i apoligize for smelling profusely like garlic.

Also, despite my many experiences with pain, i know there are still a lot worse possibilities. I recently read one of those lovely books about medieval times with some very vivid descriptions about someone being drawn and quartered (and not actually dying right away) I felt like puking. Same for this alive disembowelment which was in fashion back then (...retch...). So i know, there are still worse pains and i do not wish to experience them.

Some vacation pictures

First off, my own camera is busted. All pictures come out like this.


Luckily the pictures below were taken with Oma's camera which works just fine.
We had a great time going on vacation. There was climbing, pool, bird shows, ruin visits and lots of fun.

our house

Since none of of our family in the US has ever been to our house in Belgium, i decided to do a little snapshot of our house.
It is not really 'our' house, since we rent it, but since we live here, i am referring to it as our house. It is a three level townhouse, four if you count the basement (which is VERY MUCH an unfinished basement). I guess it is about the size of Tammy's town house, except we have more room in the living room area, because there was an extension build on the ground floor, and less room upstairs where the bedrooms are.

This is our bookshelf. We love our bookshelf. It doesn't hold all of our books yet, but it is a start. The bookshelves are one of the few things we actually bought new in Belgium. (Ikea) Most everything else we either got for free or bought second hand for very little. Yet we have been blessed with a house full of furniture.

One of our second hand purchases is what we call "our vanishing cabinet".

Anything and everything will appear and disappear at random in this cabinet. It is not a reliable place to put your things. You never know when it will show up again.
We kind of ended up with this cabinet by accident, and since it was kind of ugly, we decided to paint flowers on it. Unfortunately we did not have the presence of mind to sand it down first, so the painted flowers are slowly flaking off.

This is our desk. I rather not talk about it. It is our dirty secret (dirty as in very messy)



This is our TV. This too we ended up by accident. Some people we knew were moving to Taiwan and were trying to sell it. But they asked a ridiculous price for it, so no one bought it. So in the end, they were leaving and hadn't sold it, so they just gave it to us.
I would have nevr bought a TV of this size. Leland says it is not THAT big, but according to me, if the cartoons are larger then the kids, it is TOO big.



This is our money wall. Now to avoid misunderstandings, we are not rolling in the dough. Most of this money is worth very little or nothing. There is money from several European countries before tehy switched to teh Euro, Italian, Dutch, France, Luxemburg. Other countries: England, Sweden, Norway, The US, Ethiopia, Ghana, Hong Kong, China, Romania, Afghanistan... I think that's it. We are still missing a Japanese bank note (hint, hint)



This is our game cabinet. It is full of BOARD games. I straighten this thing out every other week, and yet the first time the boys touch it, it turns into a disaster. It is really amazing that we didn't buy a single one of these games. Most were hand-me-downs from my family or people in church. A few were gifts from Santa or gifts from friends at birthdays.

Like many European houses we have rather steep stairs. These are the stairs to the attic, they are not quite as steep as the ones to the first floor.


This is our laundry room, except, is it really a laundry room if it also hath a bath...?

But then, it has a bath, but no toilet. There is a separate "toilet room", Which i believe Americans call a half bath. Which doesn't make a lot of sense either, because it does not have a bath, let alone half a bath (half a bath, all the water would run out!!) So any way, it is a never ending question. Do we call the laundry room with the BATH the bathroom, or do we call the toilet room the bathroom. It is a point of continuing confusion....

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"