Merry Christmas!

Well, we made it. Finally a bit of a break! Although it probably won't be. There is so much that needs to be done. More stuff to get rid of, furniture to bring down to the guest room, cabinets to make functional, etc. Hopefully we will feel more at home after all this work!

We had a nice time celebrating Christmas with Susan. She probably won't be around here much longer. Quit her job, gave up her place to stay, not sure where she is headed though. It has been nice to see a bit more of her recently.

The girls are still pretty afraid of Santa. They liked the presents he brought though! They were even able to wait their turn to open each one up. That was nice to see. Lots of fun new stuff for them to play with, so we need to get rid of some old toys too!

Fun with presents!

Sick Week

Finally time for the long, drawn out cold I guess. Could barely get off the couch today. Every day I figure it will be better the next...but then it gets worse. Hopefully I can make it through work the next two days of teaching. No difficult lessons planned, so that helps. It is the week before Christmas break though...

I started working on a video about making the maple cabinets upstairs. Hopefully it turns out nicely. Hopefully the cabinets turn out nicely. This week I want to have them functional so we can transfer our clothes and bring down the furniture to the guest room. Yesterday we worked on cleaning some stuff out.

The girls are doing well. They are having a lot of fun with their new play kitchen. They just woke up from their nap so I think we will go for a walk before it gets too dark.

December, Finally.

November was a bit of a rough month. Now we have some holidays to enjoy! So far it has been fun. We found the girls a play-kitchen for Sinterklaas that they are having a lot of fun with. We also found a little Christmas tree and decorated it yesterday.

Naomi is still having a bit of a rough time, but she is starting to feel better. Susan came to visit us this weekend and it is nice to have her around.

I made a lot of progress with the maple cabinets this week. We are both really looking forward to those being functional. Thanks to a friend, Karmen, my business logo is also finished. I ordered a wood burning stamp of it that should be here in a month or so. Excited about that!

Sinterklaas celebration with Naomi's family.

Abigail practices her ballet moves.

Decorating the tree.

Back to Diapers

After about four weeks of no peeing in the bed, we stopped using diapers with Abigail, and she peed three times in a row. Hmmm. So she gets a diaper at night again, but she pees so much that she overpowers it and still gets the bed wet. Good thing we have a washer and a dryer nearby (the neighbors have their laundry hanging outside right now - it is frozen solid).

The girls have been having a lot of fun with Sinterklaas this week. He is this Santa Claus-ish character who comes from Spain in a steamboat. He gets on his white horse and parades around with a bunch of slave-elves. Little black people who are funny, special talents, and love to make mistakes. Not racist at all, right? Big controversy in Dutch society about that now. Some areas have the little people paint their face other colors than black this year.

Little kids leave a carrot and some sugar blocks in shoes, along with a bowl of water, by the fireplace for Sinterklaas's horse. They find some tiny cookies or chocolate in return the next morning. Today we will have a celebration with Naomi's family where the girls will get presents...we found a play kitchen for them. The girls had another first this weekend - they walked all the way into town without any help from us. It takes me 20 minutes to do that by myself.

Claire drove her fancy new car up from Switzerland to visit us this weekend. All the Europeans think she is crazy for making an 8 hour drive for the weekend. We already knew Claire was crazy, but it is nice to see her again! Speaking of cars, we were too slow with ours, so someone else bought it. Guess we will have to wait for another one to pop up which will probably take a few months...