Horace Silver

I (dad) have taken up taking saxophone lessons again for some time and bought a Selmer Tenor Saxophone. My teacher is a well known saxophone artist and loves funk music.

He sent me a link for a jazz workshop in Den Bosch and I signed up for it. The workshop is great! App. 15 musician with all kinds of instruments forming a complete big band. The goal of the workshop is to learn how to improvise during the solo's. The music we play is of Horace Silver who is, what a coincidence, the founder of the funk music. In the few evenings we played until now we managed to assemble a number of songs like "a song for my father", "senor blues", "psychedelic sally" (which is my favorite) and many more. I have included a small video of our last evening rehersing the song "tokyo blues". As you might hear, we still have some work to do before the "concert"we are going to give end of february..

Snow again!?

Yes, suddenly it started to snow again saturday night and sunday morning the garden was beautiful white again... Ingmar is still ill and dad had to leave work early friday morning to pick him up at the day care center. The same morning we went to see the physiscian again as mom did last monday with Inmgar and he listenend and temperatured but still no alarming news luckily. The cold is just taking very long but he wrote us a recepy to help fight the cold. Saturday Ingmar still had a fever and was very unhappy the whole day long. Sunday it improved, He did not have a fever but drinking and eating is still worrying. In the morning after we had breakfast, Ingmar was interested in the keyboard and played on itWe also went to Waalwijk to look for a cabinet and a couch for the extension. The couch was found but the cabinet is still wanted.. When we got back home Nils and Wende played inside and mom and dad cared about ingmar who was still apprehensive with drinking and eating. We managed to give him at least some fruit.

Skating and renovating

Last week I did not post a blog message due to .. well, the weather actually. The weather was so bad on saturday that we stayed inside and only went outside to do some shopping (the most necessary items such as crisps and cookies). Sunday we went ice skating as the weather turned out to be favourable with a slight sun shining over the ice. Nils had a pair of skates but these were not helping with getting Nils to like skating.. Wende was more persistent and kept the skates on longer. This weekend we went to Maaike and Jaap to help with the electrics on the attick which Jaap changed into two rooms for Maartje and Guusje. The rooms are almost finished and only need a bit of paint. The elctrics are also almost finished, next time we should be able to finish it. The Led lighting is giving us a hard time because of how the power supply is to be switched on or off... (mear technical details) Maaike and Lisette went shopping in the mean time and we had dinner at their place. Sunday we went to see Mellanie and Peter. Their sons Duncan and Jayson have had their birthday and today was the first possibility for us to pay them a visit. For Jayson we bought a nice rucsack of Cars and for Duncan we had a spy gear light which could be attached to your ear and a Lego futuristic race car. One of Peter and Mellanie's friends also came over with their children and all the kids had a lot of fun together. Unfortunately Ingmar was feeling worse than yesterday and developed a fever. Mellanie gave us half of a paracetamol and Ingmar slept on that for at least an hour. When we arrived home Ingmar still felt quite warm and coughed badly.. Maybe we will take him to the doctor tomorrow.

Grand day out (in)

Today, the last day before starting the routine again (school, work etc) we went out to an indoor playground in Hedel which is quite nearby. We drove through the beautiful lanscape of Brabant to Hedel. The snow that had fallen overnight made it a very special sight. Anyway, the indoor playground was also great, there was a area for babies and for children from the age of 2 to 4 and for kids from 4 to 12. Moms and dads could either join them or watch them from a table nearby.

Local bowling star and wishes

See how Lisette is getting to be a bowling star. She even managed to get five strikes in a row. I reached the pro level this afternoon and was granted a bowling ball with stars on it!! This Wii was a great gift from Lisette fro my birthday.. Even Nils is quite good at bowling now.

Yesterday we had a visit from Marc, Leonie and Nils's best (girl)friend Danne. We had a nice afternoon together and the kids played with the Wii and with the toys. Afterwards we had a nice dinner. Lisette had two quiches prepared so it did not take too much effort to present our guests with a nice meal before they went back to Duiven. Before they left we let up a wish balloon wich is a very light paper bag with a stove under it. When lit, the air warms up in the balloon and after a minute or so, the balloon yently drifts away up in the air and continues to rise for at least 10 or 15 minutes. When you release the balloon we all made a wish, there is a small chance they come true but by god we all hope they do.

Happy New year!!

Or merry goodyear as eddy murphy in the movie trading places said (acting as an exchange student from Kameroen). 2009 was a busy year for us as we completed the extension to the house and as soon as that was ready, Ingmar was born. We still have our jobs and the crisis seemed to have passed us by. We do wish there was a cure for the ilnesses some our parents suffer from and we hope the new year will bring good news. Until then, we take it as it is, step by step, day by day and try to support them as much as we can. The transition from 2009 to 2010 was celebrated with our neighbours Cor and Sandra. The ended up with two big holes in the ceiling. Due to the simultanious releas of two corks. For the first time in at least 10 years or so I bought fireworks again and it went off quite well. To be able to enjoy it some other time, I filmed somw of it. I also tried to wake up up Nils just before twelve but in spite of Nils opening his eyes, he just fell back to sleep. So after two or three attempts, I let him sleep.