New Year's Resolutions

At Oma's request, I'm going to try to bring back our Blog in 2015.

I'm way out of practice but hopefully with the help of an app, I can try to be more timely in posts.

We've just come back from the US - it was our first American Christmas with the family since 2008(!) and Kevin had a great time. While he did miss somewhere to play outside, and practice football daily, he did pick up playing pool this trip due to the pool table Oma and Opa have in their new house.

The new puppy kept him entertained as did the many rounds of Sonic Go Kart played with Uncle Eric and whoever else he could talk into playing!

The most popular Christmas presents were two pair of Nike shoes, his new OSU hoodie and his football blanket and pillow made by Auntie Andrea. He used it every night we were there and it's now on his bed at home, too!

Mom got to catch up on her Mom time with Oma, drinking lots of coffee and even a few completed Cribbage games this trip.

Our 8 days flew by (as we knew they would) but we did our best to make memories - lots of family time and still a day trip to Ashland, all in long johns, to take the kids outdoor ice skating. 

Don't let the blue sky fool you - it was cold!

Even though it's not something you can buy in December in Oregon, Oma and Opa saved some fireworks from 4th of July so we'd have something to ring in the New Year . Our last full day in the U.S. finished with a bang!

All too soon, it was time to say our goodbyes at the airport. We're going to do our best to try to make it back again for Christmas 2015 - but hopefully there will be a lot of blog posts between now and then!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all of us - including our own Grumpy Cat who is at least patient enough to let Kevin put a Santa hat on him!

Another School Year Done

It was late this year...summer vacation. Not only the weather (we do live in the Netherlands, after all), but school went this year until July 20th. I think that's a good 6 weeks or more after I started seeing all the postings on facebook from my state-side friends.

Little Man really felt it this year, too. Group 3 is full of daily work in all subjects, much less playtime or free time then last year - these are full days, and it took the first couple of months for Little Man to hit his stride and get into the swing of ''real'' school. It only gets more intense from here.....

When I compare it to the US what strikes me about the school systems here is that while the work done at school is pretty intense, there is as yet no concept of home work. Outside of school, kids are free to play, do sports, clubs, etc.....be kids. There are exercises sent home with the kids on the last day of school to keep kids from having the ''dip'' that comes from being out of school for 6 weeks, but it more about encouraging behavior such as writing free association poems, small stories, practicing time tables, etc.....all journal style rather than only doing worksheets.

He's grown so much!

As long as it took this year to roll around, and as short as it can sometimes feel,  I also overall really do like that the breaks here are spread out. It's not 3 months summer vacation (although 6 weeks can really fly by!) - but 6 weeks in Summer, a week in fall, 2 weeks at Christmas, a week between Feb and March, another week at the end of April/May and a week usually in June. I think it works out that roughly for every 6 or 7 weeks of school, there is a week free -  it seems to keep the freedom itch to a minimum, as there is pretty much always a break to look forward to.

The last report card of year was a good one. He's making leaps and bounds in all subjects - he's above the average level in all subjects, but his standout is reading - he's currently reading, at the end of group 3,  at the middle point of group 5, so he's a full year and a half ahead there.

Our nightly bedtime ritual, we read out lound to each other.

He's also done very well on the 2x per year CITO or standardized tests -  that starting from this year help determine which level of school he will go into after group 8. His one big improvement area for next year remains his attention span and listening. On one hand, I think 7 year old boy - what do you expect?! :-) And I think sometimes, alot of the people in his life (teachers and mom included) hold him up to a pretty big yardstick because of his intelligence - this is one area where is ''just'' 7 - and I have to remind myself as grown up as he can be, he really is still 7 and is allowed moments of fruit fly attention span.

Unlike a lot of kids his age, he doesn't talk about what he wants to be when he grows up - the usual firefighter or police officer isn't there, and while he LOVES football (soccer), he's also told me he isn't sure he ever wants to play in a big arena in front of ''all those people''. I love that, for now, each day is it's own adventure, and he's always busy doing, learning, being active.

1st live football match seen in a stadium (Amsterdam Arena)

What has also solidified this year is those parts and characteristics of him that are neither his father nor me, but just - Kevin. Of course, I hope at some point there will be some direction, focus and drive...and that whatever he wants to do will align to his talents and skills, but for, we're both going to take a deep breath, capture these 6 weeks of summer and not yet think about group 4 ..........

Whose Garden is it, anyway?

It's kind of hard to believe, but the house that still feels like it's under projects has been mine since the end of April 2008. I really ''moved in'' in the Spring of 2009, so this our 3rd full year experiencing the seasons and the gardens of this house!

Front Garden

What's to expereince in a modest front garden and a wooden deck terrace in the back? Well, living on the water means more than backyard ice skating in winter - it also means that in planting and balcony boxes follow the duck breeding and nesting season.

Back Garden / Terrace

The first year, I assumed that we had a duck nest in our large wooden planter becuase the house had been unoccupied for a while before we moved in. The second year, we noticed neighbors had baskets or special places set out (which the ducks may or may not use) and had the thought it might be the same duck coming back as the year before.

Nest of 2008

Now, this year we were pretty sure we have a repeat nest builder, although it seems that pretty much anywhere on ther terrace is fair game when it comes to a nest building site.

Nest of 2010

Nest and Hatchlings of 2011

Once they hatch, mom (duck, not me) drops them into the water at the edge of terrace - becuase the babies don't fly, they will not come back to the nest once they leave . From there, we try to keep track of which babies were ''ours'', but the survivial rates are not very high, unfortunately.

Still even at the expense of delayed flower boxes together with a good 30 days where to step onto your own terrace means being greeted by a territorial, hissing duck (!), Kevin looks forward every year to seeing the eggs.

Isn't it the same duck?  Hachlings 2012 - really!

2 years in a row now we've seen the morning when they hatch (even if it looks the the same photo, they are taken a year apart), and mom has to admit it's pretty cool.
In the meantime, I've given up on the idea that anything will grow in those wooden flower pots other than baby ducks, and stick to my moveable rail mounted baskets - from the end of May onwards.....

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!

Football Team Photo - Fall 2011

It´s taken me forever to get around to it.....but over the next few weeks I´m going to try to bring this blog up to date.

Starting in 2011, Kevin joined a league and was playing every Saturday, training every Wednesday. His first team was modeled after Portgual - FC Porto (SV Dios Champions League) Fall 2011. The team finished 4th of the 8 in the pool.

Big Boy Football

Last spring, after Kevin turned 6, the one thing he really wanted to do was play on a football team (soccer). He started in the youngest age group "trapturfjes'' - which, the closest translation I can come up with is something like the 'small grass kickers', that only meets on Saturday mornings for a combination of training and mini games.

The time was decent - 10 to 10.45 - and it was a good intro for him on playing with a team as opposed to just kicking the ball around with dad in nice weather.....
After the summer break, Kev was old enough to move to the next level, where they train once in the week and then on the weekends, play in teams of 4 on 4 and play 3 sets of 12 minute games against one team. They play in the ''champions league'' and adopt the shirts of the teams they mimic. Kev is part of FC Porto (Portugal) and his number this season is 6.

He´s having a blast, and consistently scores during the games (his team is ranked 2nd right now in the league of 8 teams). It´s wonderful to watch him have fun and have a budding talent develop!

For now, I only have a few pics (I know....how is this possible?!) because I find myself cheering rather than taking pics....and I have yet to master cheering, anticipating the right moment to shoot before a goal and hold everything steady....I´m working on it! :-)

Summer of ´11 - Extended Edition

This summer has really flown by! - and I´m using summer in the sense of the normal season plus our stretch October..... Technically, Summer vacation for the kids is already way shorter (6 weeks compared to 3 months stateside) but this summer (from end June to end September) has gone down in the history books for bad weather - like the third worst/wettest summer ever - that´s quite an accomplishment for a country known for it´s rain!

There was no possibility this year for a vacation in the sun (decided lack of both time and money), but towards the end of the school vacation in August, mom finally got a break and decided to book a long weekend and take Kev somewhere new.














Decision criteria:
1) Mom couldn't handle another(!)amusement park
2) Kev loves to travel by train, bus...anything other than the usual car
3) a city that had enough to hold mom's attention and still be interesting for little man

I was leaning towards London at first....right up until the time of the riots. Then it didn't seem like such a good idea. Also, London is always expensive. Even the roach motels go for 5 star prices in other cities. In eastern Europe, there were some good possibilities, but the travel time was sooo long, and the getaway budget didn't stretch to cover flights. We were down to car or train (or slow boat) when I saw an offer for 3 nights in Berlin for the price of 2.

In my years here in The Netherlands, I've been to quite a few cities in Germany, but not yet to Berlin. I was in Junior High when the Wall came down, and I remember the news footage from that time quite vividly. I'd also heard from almost anyone who had ever been how beautiful it was. While the historical significance of the city might be lost on Kev this time around, there is a beautiful zoo and many other sights that I knew he would appreciate after our trip to Paris earlier this year - 6 is NOT too young for culture!

So in the last lazy days of August, before football (soccer) and swimming lessons and school started back up, we headed off to have an adventure........

We went to the famous zoo, toured around the city for 2 days in an open top, hop on hop off bus with 15 stops around the city, ate in the 200 plus meter high tower and watched the sun go down, took our first border crossing 7 plus hour train trip (complete with iPad movies and lots of hands of Uno!), visited the the areas where the wall used to be and the remnants preserved today.....and had a great time!