Dad's work revisited (yearly)

It's tradition that the kids accompany me once a year to my work by train. Yesterday was the day. Early rise and to the train.My brother Jos accompanied us as he wanted to buy some books in The Hague.

The children especially like the new view I have from the 10th floor, the computers of course and the meal in the restaurant.

And they met my colleague Irene again after a year.

The Christmas photo's

Polish Christmas in the Netherlands

The Christmasdays are already over. Time flies.

We had our traditional Polish Christmas Eve at the 24th at our house, with the traditional fish dishes and the breaking of the bread.

Jos just arrived in time from Germany to be with us.

We had a very good dinner made by Gosia.

After diner the kids couldn't wait to unpack the gifts. Santa brought even a gift for Gosia. lucky girl.

Maaike doing 'Boogje op de Balk'

And again Maaike has mastered something new in gymnastics

Dutch Indoor Skating

Like the past few years our town has an indoor skating rink again on the centre of the town.

This year it is even bigger than the past few years.

So it is time to take the skates from the attic and see how the ice is.

After a rusty start I finally got the moves back again.

The next day you feel muscles which you haven't felt in ages!

But we had fun! Robert and I even played curling for the first time in our lives although the stones were rather big.

All the town schools all go to the skating rink with their classes to skate for a few hours.

Anyway I think it's good that our Dutch children know how to skate.

Robert's soccerteam numero uno

Robert's soccerteam did it last saturday.

The BSC team D5 became regional champion.

They won all their matches.

They had the unbelievable score of 143 goals and 0 goals against them.

Not bad.

They were offerend free fries and they got flowers and a medal!

Anyway, many professional soccer teams will never get that kind of unique score!

Congratulations!

Patrick is 10 years old!

One day after Sinterklaas it is already Patrick's birthday. He became a teenager: 10 years old! A big boy now! The parents are of course to blame that these two most important days are so close together. But what can you do?

In the morning Patrick had his friends Jeffrey and Marijn and Joris and Sander from the street coming along as all the children were free from school. (actually to play with their Sinterklaas gifts). Later in the afternoon grandfather and his godfather Luuc and godmother Marina and aunt Marja came along. Even good friend Josefien with Sanne came to congratulate him.

Patrick was content and happy with his gifts and all the attention. So we are happy too. But time seems to fly when you see him grow up so fast!

The Dutch Sinterklaas and Santa

The typical Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas was at the 5th of december.

(I even read that the Dutch introduced Santa with Sinterklaas in the USa some centuries ago. The Americans started to copy this tradition and it finally was reformed by Coca Cola into Santa, am i right?)

Anyway Dutch children receive gifts from the holy Spanish bishop at the 5th of december.

So Patrick, Robert and Maaike were very happy with the gifts.

Sinterklaas had made a mistake and sent the gifts to grandpa's place in stead of our house.

So, we quickly drove to his place where after some searching they found all the gifts and the unpacking could begin as you can see. Even Gosia got a small gift! So she must have been good this year ;-) The kids were looking for the gifts as you can see from this photo.

A weekend at Domburg Dutch beach

The weekend after my birthday we had booked a house at a vacation park just near the sea in the Dutch province Zeeland. We went together with friends from our street "The Buikjes". Their kids play a lot with our kids. It was fun. A good park with a big swimming pool for the kids to hav fun.

It is located at walking distance near the beach.
And as the weather was great:cold but sunny, we could make nice long walks on the beach.

We ended this weekend with a buffet at their local restaurant. We surely will come back at this place again one day.