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 We had a really nice birthday yesterday. The girls made piles of artwork for me! After a movie by the fire in the morning since it was a bit rainy, we had a nice lunch and then went out to the forest for a walk and some hot cocoa at a restaurant that started up drive-in service. For dinner we fired up the grill for some burgers and finished things off with a bit of cheesecake. 

On Wednesday dance lessons got cancelled as the teacher needed to quarantine, but the girls each had a friend over to play with instead. They played nicely and had a lot of fun outside, although Amélie definitely had a bit of an attitude. 

At school, a couple of my friends got tested positively for covid early in the week, so we will need to wait and see if I get any symptoms. Half of one of my classes is in quarantine. Not sure how they expect to continue with this...

Somehow the very last of our prematurely picked garden tomatoes ripened up this week. I had given up hope!

Big stump.

Drive in restaurant in the forest.

Birthday pancakes.

Digital Detox

 Seems like everyone here has been glued to their news feeds this week. Topics of conversation haven't drifted far beyond the election. Lots of relief once the winner was finally announced. We celebrated last night.

Beautiful weather today - it should not be this warm in November! We will enjoy it anyway though. Back to the forest for some skating this afternoon. 

Amélie is really starting to be able to handle the busyness of her routine. She even played with two different friends this week and didn't have too many moments of bad behavior. Abigail was a pain yesterday though - she had a couple 'Amélie' moments. Hopefully they are doing better today after some rest. Their swimming lessons are on hold now because of Covid. 

More confused crocus in our front yard.

Unseasonably warm weather that we are enjoying!

The national school breakfast to promote healthy eating - the girls just have bread with some form of sugar on top. Hmmm...

Saturday celebration.

Rotten Pumpkins

 We carved those pumpkins a bit early this year, hoping they would make it to Halloween. They didn't. It has been really, really warm. We have barely needed to turn on the heat but the fireplace has been going a couple times a week. Today and tomorrow it is supposed to get up into the mid-60s. After that it should start cooling off though. 

I have been getting a bit frustrated with Sketchup - two steps forward and one step back. The software just doesn't do what I expect. Shouldn't complain though as I am using the free version. Nice to start to get a visual of some of the ideas that are in my head though. Nice way to work through some of the design details. 

Amélie pulled out her first tooth this week! One of the few examples of her being ahead of Abigail. The tooth fairy came, and they thought that was pretty cool! Amélie is doing better and better with school and the busyness of our routine. Hopefully this week she will have the energy to play with a friend on Wednesday. 

Our friend Helene provides childcare for these girls, but their Dad lost his job, so she lost hers too. Very sad for her and those girls, but nice for us, because now Helene can watch our girls on Thursdays.

Sometimes living here can feel a bit like the pages of a storybook.

The first one!

Our couch broke again...hopefully this fix will last.

I guess these have become fall crocus. We have some in the front yard too!

A Very Long Weekend

 We had a whole stretch of what felt like Saturdays during this fall break. Nice to be able to get things done around the house, see some friends, and do some fun stuff too. We went to the zoo and the girls went with Naomi to the Baker's Museum yesterday. We even did a repeat of our fall fire. As a bonus, the time changed so we got an extra hour. 

The leaves are really changing color now, but it has been really warm the past few days. Kind of strange. Windy too. We went to a local fish farm with a playground and ponds that people fish for fun in. Seemed like a pretty depressing place to fish to me, but the girls had fun playing. The fish didn't look too happy - packed into dirty, concrete pits. A number of them had cancer or some kind of weird growths. 

I have still been waking up early. Nice to have a bit of quiet time in the mornings. Watched a good documentary with the girls on Netflix: A Life on Our Planet. One statistic in particular popped out. If you add up the weights of all the mammals on Earth, 60% are livestock, 36% people, and 4% wild. 

Playground at the fish farm.

We carved pumpkins! Already getting moldy because of the warm weather.

The bakers museum.

Submitted.

 I finished up the first twelve submissions of my novel this week. I will wait about a month, and if I don't hear anything back, I can try to tweak things a bit and then do another round of submissions. Not sure what to expect. 

Yesterday we took the girls to a local place we hadn't been to before - a trout farm with a playground and  a candle making studio. The fish part was disappointing - unhealthy looking environment and fish. Then they had a few square, concrete ponds that people could pay to catch fish in. Seems like a terrible way to fish when you grow up in the UP. We did have fun on the playground though. 

It is really nice to have this week of vacation. Naomi is planning to see a couple friends and we reserved a spot at the zoo. The girls are much happier now that they get a break from school, but we will see how long that lasts.

Time to refill the freezer with some enchiladas.

We found some pumpkins to carve. 

Fun at the fish farm.

Agents

 I signed up for a free trial to this writers website this week. They have a nice search engine to find agents and good profile descriptions as well. I narrowed the choices down to 392, then read through each of them, copied the relevant info, and ranked the possibilities. I was surprised that so many potential matches popped up, so this next week I should be able to write up a synopsis and start submitting. Agents take on about 0.1% of their submissions, so the odds are not great, but I will give it a try!

I have been spending way too much time in front of a computer screen, so it would be nice if the sun would come out! Already getting tired of this rainy fall weather. The girls got their winter shoes this week. The guy at the shoe store knows us, so he gave out an extra discount. It can be great to live in a village!

This morning, if we can stay relatively dry, we should be able to get in a bit more tennis. Sure could use some exercise and fresh air.

Our annual fall bonfire.

New shoes!

Abigail tracing a picture at school.

Fires

 It has been a cold, rainy week. The fireplace has kept us warm, though. No need for the central heating yet. Tonight we are planning our annual fall bonfire in the backyard. Hopefully we get a break from the rain!

Yesterday Amélie got to go to another birthday party. She ate more processed sugar than she usually does in a month, I think. She was the only one to give up on her ice cream cone. French fries for dinner. Feeling sick when she got home. Lots of cheap, plastic junk that Amélie's friend probably won't play with, and in return all the kids bring home a plastic bag filled with more plastic junk and processed sugar. I know the kids have fun, but I can think of better ways to have fun. Sad that this is normal.

We are not sure how much longer things will stay open, due to the current spread of the virus. The government makes these really confusing regulations, like "we strongly urge you to wear a face mask when inside a store." I talked to a store owner about this yesterday, and they said that it just makes their job impossible. If they have a face mask on, a lot of people will think, oooh, that looks scary, I won't go in. If they don't wear a face mask, a lot of people will think, hmmm, should I risk it? I won't go in. If the rules were clear one way or the other it wouldn't be such a problem, but the Dutch culture is all about pleasing everyone, so in the end, they compromise everything to death and nobody gets pleased.

Anyway, we will enjoy our last bits of school before they shut it down again too, as they aren't really taking preventative measures to slow things down. Amélie is starting to do better. We have a meeting tomorrow with her teachers as the video chat went so badly. Nice that the school follows up on that. Hopefully we will get some tennis in this morning as we could all use a bit of fresh air!