A Year Older and Wiser (Mom too!)

This year, I was going to be prepared. I was. I knew Kev's birthday is (relatively speaking) right after Christmas....March sounds far away...but trust me, after all the Sinterklaas / Christmas bills roll in sometime after the new year, I'm already having to think about party themes, invites, etc.........

These past months have been all about Kev's newest passion - football. Since September, he trains every Wednesday and has games every Saturday (usually 8.30 AM!) and in between he wants to play in pick up games in the field near the house, play after school at at the day care, play during recess.......you get the idea.

So, I thought - why not do a football theme party? I did some research and found a football shaped piñata (since that went over so well last year), came up with the idea for how to make football cupcakes for the class party, purchased a ''how to" plan for a football themed scavenger/activity hunt, and decided the boys coming would be old enough to handle using the chocolate fountain that has been collecting dust since we last used it at Thanksgiving  -  2010   .... I came across an idea for make your own pizza's for the lunch......We had all the elements in place around mid-Feb....handmade invites were ready to go out.

I braced myself for another birthday party. At home.

It needs to be said - what was I thinking?! 8 boys from ages 6-8..... You cannot calculate how much energy they generate (and feed off of each other) - but it's exponential. A mathematical impossibility. I was so glad I had my activities all lined up, an agenda to stick to - the plan was to keep things moving along, the fights to a minimum, and the house on it's foundation by the end of the afternoon. I can do this!

Well, maybe I could.......

Make your own pizza's went over well, but as the pizzas were going into the oven, the worst thing possible for a party centered around an outdoor football themed scavenger hunt happened...it started raining, Buckets. In true cats and dogs, let's build an ark kind of way - and it proceeded to continue to do so for the next 3 hours - and all my party planning went out the window.

We stuck to the chocolate fountain. While the (once white) dining room chairs are a little worse for the wear now, it was a hit. We had grapes, strawberries, raspberries, bananas, lady fingers and ribbed potato chips for dipping!

Next year - Not that I want to think about next year, but I think maybe 24 hours had passed before Kevin was talking about ''next year'' - I'm having the party somewhere else. Anywhere else. I'm still vacuuming up confetti from the piñata that we ended up hanging from the ceiling fan.........

Sinterklaas and Christmas 2011

The first post was about our winter in February - then, we skipped ahead to just last week with the School Photo Day, the next post will most likely be about Kev's 7th birthday....so in between I thought "let's copver Sinterklaas and Christmas" - ok,  my reverse timing is random, I know, but I'm trying to catch up with all the photos I've taken and grouped together in anticipation of blog posts - bear with me!

For Sinterklaas this year, Kevin gave a try to writing his own list with words, rather than just cutting out pictures from toy catalogs. I fell in love with this list. Number 1 (though not in that order on the page) was an RC helicopter. That was *the* present for 2011. Also, Lego was high on the wish list, as was anything to do with Cars2...including Lego.

He made his list and I was suprised by what was (and what was not) on it. He explained to me that he wanted to stop where he did becuase he didn't want Sinterklaas (who has to buy presents for all children) to spend too much money on him.

When I realted this story at work (I mean, of course I had to share this one!) one of my colleagues answered a prayer I hadn't yet uttered - she has a helicopter that was still in it's packing and I could have it to give to Kev! Really! When he opened the present on 5 December, it was truly a moment where a picture was worth a 1000 words....

So, as you know from the revois post, we didn't have a White Christmas in 2011 -  we had a house filled with Santas, a real tree and lots of presents -even after Oma said in 2010 she wasn't going to ship over presents again:-) Christmas morning, the living room looked like this:

Also, right around this time, Kevin personified "All I want for Christmas Is my two front teeth" (I had to explain to him there really was this song in English, I wasn't just making it up!)

Anyway, back to Christmas Morning......Kevin woke up and came downstairs (of course wearing his new Christmas PJ's from Oma and Opa)

He opened all his presents, built some lego, showed his mom how to properly ''chill'' in the afternoon,

And then we went to Joe and Nicole to have the most wonderful Christmas Dinner - first time we ever ate a slow cooked, crunchy skinned pork shoulder, chickpeas and yams.....and Little Man cleaned his plate and ate everything!

Merry Merry!

School Photo Day

Kevin is definitely a boy's boy.

1) He loves cars (not only the Pixar kind) - can spot a Porsche from a Ferrari, knows that a Bugatti is one of the most expensive cars in the world
2) All things Soccer (football)  - playing on weekend, training during the week, pick up games during school breaks, after school, going out with Dad, and lately even watching it on TV - all the while telling me which clubs are better - he didn't want to support Ajax earlier this year because they weren't ''very good'' this season...now that they have won the finals, they are OK again.....
3) Lego -building, preserving, remaking sets, leftover bricks, it doesn't matter. All Lego's are good Lego's.
4) Pants - I know my son can walk upright. I see him do it daily - yet his pants tell me the 8 or 9 hours a day I don't see him he must be walking around on his knees. Even given his regular growth spurts, it seems after 3 or 4 washing, the knees in otherwise perfectly good pants are gone.

Now, I'm not a totally useless mother to a boy - I mean, I like the occasional Top Gear, and do my best cheerleader impression along the line every Saturday morning, but exactly how he came to be such a Lego building, car loving, knees walking soccer fanatic is a mystery to me. He's just. all. boy.

I am glad that in one area, I see a small glimmer of myself in my (not so) Little Man - sometimes he just wants to dress up and look polished by wearing more formal clothes for no other reason than he feels like it. He's currently in love with his bright green trousers (not denim jeans) and this year, for school picture day, he wanted to dress nice - in a dress shirt and real (not clip on) tie. Anyone know any good you tube links for tying a windsor knot?

 His twist - he didn't want to tuck the shirt in, because it would ''get all wrinkly''.

I took some photos in the morning at home - and was glad I did, because when I got the proof back from the school.....they had them all lying on their stomachs this year, feet in the air. I mean, cute concept (no shoes, etc) but you can't really see the tie or nice shirt. Mom was a bit bummed - but as his mom, I don't think he can take a bad picture anyway.

These are the proofs, with watermarks, taken from  www.deschoolfotograag.nl.

What do you think?

Winter Wonderland 2011-2012 Recap

For the 3rd winter in a row, this year we had snow and cold enough weather that the man-made lake we live on froze over.

But, this year, unlike 2009/10 and 2010/11 there was no White Christmas, more like a White Valentines day in 2012. After the snow at the end of January, there were several days (weeks) of very cold weather for the Netherlands...like 20 below Celsius! Considering we live at or below sea level here, that's cold, especially when coupled with the ''normal'' icy wind we get about that time every year.














The upside.....the lakes and canals stayed frozen for several weeks and weekends. We got to go sledding, ice skating...all nearby the house in the (cold) fresh air!

The sled we already had, but the ice skates that were double blades, pull on over your sneaker variety were not cutting it this year with Kev's new exacting standards. He wanted ''normal'' skates, with the boot and single blade - which scare mom as I imagine ankle injuries, to say nothing of sliced off fingers due to falls and and blades and children......Ok, I'll stop. You get the idea.

Normally, the first day of snow or ice leads to a run up in all shops and second hand sites making it impossible to find ice skates. This was the issue last year, and I was hesitant to buy a pair of skates that we would get use maybe one weekend or two before the thaw and would then most likely be too small by the time he could use them again next year - but it's so hard to say no to that face!

I was saved by a combi set thing that I found - at all places - at the local DIY store.The adjustable boot spans 4 shoes sizes, so we should get a few years use, and even better - you can swap the ice blades out for roller blades - so you can pretty much use the things year round. Score!

So, from Ice Skates in February......to Rollerblades in April! Love, love, love this idea!