Happy New Year

Wishing you all a very happy, healty and safe New Year!

Arrived in Austria

When we arrived at the Gerlospass we needed to put our snowchains on the car. Guess who of the tree persons is an engineer?

Finally a lot of snow... This is in front of the chalet. Wow, the snow is great. The kids are loving it.

This morning we left for Augsburg, Germany, our stop before driving to Austria. Since tomorrow is the last day of the year we wanted to arrive on time in our chalet, so we decided to leave today.
At noon, we still had good nice weather, cold but dry, so we decided to have a break for lunch. A good idea, because the weather turned on us.

This and worse was the rest of the trip... But we arrived safely in Augsburg, we had a bite to eat in an old brewery and now we are back at the hotel.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas

Homemade present

Son #1 needed to make a homemade present for a secret santa party in his class. So he checked out the different patterns and his choice were these christmas lights. He crocheted the string and I made the lamps. I hope his secret santa bussy likes the lights. If you like the pattern, it is a freebie from ravelry: you can get it here.

Flowers

This morning a van from the florist stopped at our place and a guy comes out with a big bouquet of flowers... For me???
Yes, they are from my colleagues, thanks guys, they look and smell wonderful.
Yesterday and the day before I still had doctor´s appointments, so today I am taking it easy.

Lucky

Yesterday evening when I wanted to go home after school, I was hit by a car.
The ambulance took me to hospital and I returned yesterday evening.
So today, I am just going to take it easy and stay on the couch, as my whole body hurts...

Christmas market in cave

The boyfriend of our au pair visited her this weekend and we thought we would visit an original Christmas market. The one in Valkenburg (there are actually two) are held in the two local man-maded caves.

The temperature inside is always 12 degrees Celsius, so quite nice. And it is a lovely market to visit. One word of advice, come early! As we left the caves, there were no more people allowed to enter until people left, so the amount of people in the caves is regulated. So outside were huge lines with waiting people...

In the above pic you can see that people used to make sculptures in the caves... In the older parts, you can see wonderful sculptures and paintings, you can even find fossils.

Christmas tree

Our christmas tree arrived last week but we waited with the decoration until sunday, because we celebrated Sinterklaas on Saturday.
And now that it is decorated the christmas sprit has arrived, the whole houses is decorated, the wreath is hanging on the front door, so all we have to wait for is snow...
Hmm, since it is still 5 to 8 degrees Celsius, I don´t think we will have a white christmas...
Oh well, we will not let it spoil the fun, as long as it snows in Austria. More about that in a later post.

Idea = 8, performing it = 2

Since the weather was poor yeaterday, a lot of wind and rain, and the kids were indoors all day, we thought it would be a good idea to take them to the beach. We also took our nephew with us since he stayed with us last night so his parents could have a quite night.
When we drove on the boulevard, I noticed that there were not many people on the beach...
So we unloaded all the boys and walked towards the sea... and were sanded by the wind. Not a real good idea, so we packed them back in the car and had some pancakes for lunch.

Sinterklaas

Yesterday evening, Sinterklaas paid our family a visit. Alle our cousins, nieces and nephews were present and we had a great time.
DH was called to Sinterklaas; because he learned son #1 a dirty Sinterklaas song, so he was naughty...
All the kids got great presents and the ones they wanted, how does Sinterklaas knows what they want???? Son#3 was so excited that after he spoke to Sinterklaas, he fell asleep in Opa´s lap.

That time of year...

How quickly did December creep up on me...

I have so much to do before the holidays, so this will be a busy time, want to crochet some more hats and our au pair made a wonderful scraf for herself, so I am a bit envious, I also want one, oh well, start crocheting Margy. You can do it.

Our christmas tree arrived yesterday, I went to look for one on Saturday, saw the perfect tree, which was way too expensive...(think €245), then looked some more and found the perfect tree within our budget. Will make some pictures when it is decorated. Decorating the tree... will have to put that on our TO DO-list.

Chilly jam

Tonight I made some chilly jam to go with the christmas turkey.

The recepy comes for the Nigella Christmas cook book and is sooooooo yummy. Just love it with turkey or chicken.

Sinterklaas

Yesterday Sinterklaas visited DH´s work. All the kids gathered at the cantine and sang Sinterklaas songs and ate of all the goodies that were lying there, speculaas, pepernoten, banketstaaf, etc.
After Sinterklaas had met every child in person and spoke to them, they all got their presents and opened them all together. Great to see all the kids opening their presents at the same time.
Great afternoon, great Sinterklaas feest. Thanks to all the people that make it possible every year.

Viking hats

As you can see, I am still chrocheting hexagons for my pink and blue African flower afghan. But since it is for myself, it doesn´t matter that it takes this long... LOL

Last week I have been crocheting some viking hats for DH and the boys. We will all go on ski holiday with a viking hat... I bought the pattern from Mamachee on etsy. They look grat, I also made another one is August, so that will be mine and the boys will have a darker grey one. So now that the hats are finsihed I have to make four pairs of horns...

Busy crafting

As you remember, Jules stayed with us last week. I didn´t show a picture of Jules new outfit and his new blanket. I made him a uniform out of an old uniform form the boys. And offcourse a scarf and hat as it is getting colder.

I also made some crochet mustaches for the boys. I found the pattern on the blog of Easy makes me Happy. Great tutorial and it the boys love them.

Yesterday we had diner at De Troubadour in Antwerp. If you ever are in Antwerp and you manage to get reservations, go there. The food and services is great and we have never been dissapointed by them. It got pretty late, so this morning we picked up the boys and now we are having a lazy day indoors.

Thomas The musical

Since son #3 is a big fan of Thomas the engine, I booked tickets to go to the musical when I saw they were coming to Holland. For some reason they don´t perform in Belgium.
Today was the big day. And offcourse Jules tagged along.

The loved the musical and especially son #3 was mesmerised by the whole show, he bsolutely loved it and at the end they had the opportunity to meet the actors.

In the car they were still singing the songs...

Trip to the Beach

Today we went to the beach as the weather here is even better than last summer. It is still warm and you don´t need a jacket on the beach... and this in November !

Jules joined us and he was very naughty because he swam in the sea and now his clothes are all wet... Too bad we were to late to take a picture of Jules swimming in the sea.

Happy Halloween

Bobbejaanland

Yesterday we were invited to spent the day in Bobbejaanland. But because I had a splitting migraine attack, the boys had to go without me. Luckily our au pair didn´t mind joining them, and as you can see by the pictures, the had a wonderful time. Thanks Jelle, you made Halloween come alive for my boy, they just loved the day at Bobbejaanland.

Grandparents day at school

Every day we have grandparents day at school. The kids can show their classrooms to their grandparents and they can see what the kids do all day at school.
Our au pair and I vollunteered to serve coffee and cake to all the 400 grandparents that paid a visit. Fun day, they did great.
And if you wonder who the little funny guy is in the first picture, that is Jules, he is teh mascotte of son #3´ class and he is staying with us for the autumn holiday. Each child has him over to sleep and can tell about the adventures they had with Jules when they go back to school. So this was his first adventure, secretly going to grandparents day, because only grandparents are allowed to come...

I promised some more pictures of the finished quilt after I presented it to its new owner. The quilt was made for my FIL who needs to undergo cancer treatment. The quilt has a pirate theme, guess who´s choice it was?
I used pictures of all the grandsons, there are no girls, just to make sure :-). I also used pieces of their shirts and shirts of their fathers, so all sons and grandsons participated and I also had them draw some pirate ships. Since grandson #4 is too small, his mum tooks his handprints. I for one liked the finished result.

Finished quilt

Yesterday I finished this charm quilt. It is made from pieces of clothing, drawings and pictures and it is for someone very special but I am not spoiling the surprise. So when we have given it to this person, I will post some mre pictures of the quilt itself.

jiu jitsu - Update

The boys got their new colors as you can see, they did their best and now they can show it... They were both very proud as are we.


The boys had jiu jitsu today. Son #1 went for his 5th Kyu 1st half and son #2 6th Kyu 2nd half. They did their best so we will wait for their result next week...

Exams

Yep! they are. Today I had two exams.


We already know the results of one, and I passed, the other one, we get the result in about one and a half week...
But now, I have time to craft again. So I immediately got on the couch with my quilt.

Antwerp Zoo

This morning we paid a visit to the Antwerp Zoo with our au pair. But unfortunately, we were not alone... Normally the zoo is not so popular on Sunday morning but now it was swamped... So we only paid it a short visit.
The lions have their new enclosure so it was nice to see that they have much , more space now. But we learned that the lions mate and his daugther fight him, so he was alone today. Poor guy, intimidated by two females...

Although it seems that he likes being on his own.

Son #3 was a bit tired, since he had to walk quite a distance yesterday, so we cut the walk short and went back home. And as you can see, he was really tired...

jiu jitsu

Yesterday we had a walk through the forest wit the jiu jitsu, you had to do tasks on the way. When we arrived back at base camp the boys could do some games and afterwards we had a BBQ. Great idea, fun afternoon.
And some planking on the way...