Lisette, Tom, Laurens and Vera and swimming with the family

Saturday our friends Lisette and Tom came over to visit us. Their eldest son Milan couldn't be here because he had a party to got to. But anyway, Lisette and Tom had Laurens with them but als Vera who had grown so much in the mean time. Nils and Laurens played together and Wende tried to keep up with the two boys. Did not always worked out well but overall they behaved very well. Vera made these lovely noises as she is still in her first year. Ingmar liked her immediately and carefully stroked her hair and shared toys with Vera. Tom read a Rupert story in English and Laurens translated it for Nils and Wende. It was great seeing them again, looking forward to the next time which will maybe at the end of April when The New Cool Collective will play near their place. Sunday morning we had to get used to the change of time for the clock was set 1 hour ahead. After breakfast we went to the swimmingpool with the whole family. Ingmar loved the slide and could not get enough of it. That meant that mom or dad had to go with him everytime. Nils practised his diving skills and that went very well! Wende showed mom how well she can jump from the swingboard.

Nils's first real hockey training

Today was Nils's real first training at the Drunense mixed hockeyclub. Ofcourse the paperazzi were there too!

Land van Jan KLaassen and Grandpa 65!

Saturday we went to see Leonie, Marc and Danne again. They had this great idea to rendezvous at a kids playground called "Land van Jan Klaassen". The playground was quite big with lots of swings and stuff to do. There was also an indoor playground but the weather was so nice that we stayed outside. The only time we went inside was to check out the puppet theater. Nils was so excited he jumped up and down his seat and Wende was shouting along with the other kids, they loved it. Ingmar was simply stunned.. In the mean time we had the chance to talk to Marc and Leonie again (it has been a long time since we've seen each other). Afterwards we went to have dinner at my brother's reataurant "bij kobus" which was close by. We had a great dinner and the kids had a pancake in the shape of a bear's face. We also had the chance to see Nikki who gave birth recently to Ryan. It is a great little guy with lot's of black hair.

Sunday was (at first) spent in the swimming pool and after that we went to De Lier to celebrate grandpa's 65 birthday. We (lisette, Martin etc) bought him a high tech sun dail and grandpa himself bought himself a nice electronic weather station. It was nice weather again so we spent most of the time in the garden enjoying the sun. The kids ran around the house and made sure that it didn't get too quite..

Schnitzel center of europe and carnaval in Hulst

Dad had to go to Würzburg for a training in industrial safety and saw many many schnitzels.. But luckily the Italian cuisine has also infiltrated there.. Saturday we went to the library in Den Bosch and along the way we saw many strange looking creatures as this weekend the carnaval started. Nils and Wende suddenly saw a bunch of bananas running from the railway station chased by a gorilla! We went to see my dad this sunday and there was carnaval as well so we went to the center to see the wagons pass by. Afterwards we bought some food to prepare for dinner and the kids tried the piano, who knows, Nils likes to play self made up tunes..