Playing for Change

Roman Holiday

Last week Gosia gave me a nice present for my 50th birthday.

We went the day after my birthday for 5 days to Rome.

Thanks to our great friends Josefien and Sanne who looked after the kids we could go!

It was a great stay in a great city. We had wonderful weather for this time of the year

(20-22 degrees celcius). What a wonderful city it is! So much culture, history, architecture etc etc. With 5 days you had enough time to see all the famous places like the trevi Fountain, The Pantheon, Vatican City, The Colosseum, The Forum Romanum etc etc.

Some short impressions:

The best cappuccino's; many old churches; Italians think 20 degrees is really c-c-c-cold?; the traffic is really a disaster;!

For more photo check the link at the right side of this blog!

Death of (Grand) Father

At the beginning of october my beloved father, our great grandfather passed away.

We all miss him very much. It is as if one part of the puzzle is missing now that he is gone.

My father had broken his hip after falling with his bike at the end of june.

After that he never really recovered from the fall. We are all very sad and pray that he is happy now with grandmother in heaven.

Granddad 80 years young

At the 5th of May granddad became 80 years young. He didn;t want to let this occasion go unnoticed. So he invited his friends and his sisters and fmaily in law for a party at home.

The weather was great that day so we were lucky

Everyone came and it was a great party

At around the afternoon we went to a good restaurant close to granddad's home

The meal was super and everyone enjoyed the atmosphere

My sister Marja had thought of a good present for my father.

She had an artist made a drawing of grandmother

It was a beautiful drawing

The grandchildren made a big art work with all of granddad's favourite things: included were the sofa, the big television and the remote control

For the photos just check the photos on the right side of theblog called granddad 80 years young.

The battle of the generations

At the end of the soccer season we have the traditional father son match.

The stakes are high and the honour of winning is great

So all the dads give the best they could

So it was the fathers against Robert's team that became the champion this year at C3

Even brothers and sisters can join the team so Patrick played with me against Robert

It was a great match and we dads won!! thanks to Patrick!

A week in Poland

Well, sorry for the delay. I will now try to update the blog with all our recent events. Let me see if I remember it all. At the end of April we went to Poland for a week. We were lucky: the weather was super. It felt like a summer holiday on the beach. We spent lots of time on the old bikes, walking on the promenade, going to the beach and built sand castles. It was a great stay with the family.

We also went two days to Szczecin where we visited Servas friends that we hadn't seen for a few years. The children had grown! we had a very warm welcome and could talk with our friends until late in the evening. we also visited Gosia's friend's family. She also is called Gosia. She is a math professor at the university. She had it all planned for us what we could do in a day. It was a busy schedule but we made it. We also visited a gymnastics club. I was amazed a the high level of the pupils. Maaike was also amazed. We try to organize an exchange with our Dutch gymnastics club.

Maaike won the bronze medal

At the regional championship gymnastics of Brabant Maaike won the bronze medal. Her friends Noortje and Marieke also did very well. For more photos check the link upper right side of the blog.

Patricks birthday

In december we decided to postpone Patrick's birthday to Spring. So in February we celebrated his birthday. It became an active party of 2 hours of sports.

First we played an hour of badminton. The second hour we played the most favourite sport of the Dutch children which is soccer of course.
We had fun and the children too! For more photos check the link to Picasa at the photo albums in the blog .

Dutch family on ice

It has been more than 10 years ago that we Dutch could skate outside on the lakes and ponds. I remember that the last time I skated on the ice was in 1996 when Robert was still 1,5 and in the stroller. Usually the winters are too warm here.

But this winter it has been really cold with a lot of freezing c-c-c-ol days.

So for two weeks we could skate outside! That was fun!

Especially the last weekend when the people heard that the temperatures would rise everybody wanted to take this last opportunity to go outside and skate

Here are some photo's of our family on ice:

And some action videos:

The Proof that my children grow

Every year I have the tradition that I take my children to my work for half a day at Christmas time when it is really quiet at my job. Every year we make the traditional photo in front of the building so that we can see if they have grown. Only this year they changed the nameplate of my work!

Left photo os 2008 and right 2007

So, you have to count the stones in the back to see how much they have grown!

For more photos of my work check the photo's at the right of the blog called a Day at Dad's work.

Maaike performed in Dutch TV Show as Gretl

Yesterday Maaike's group of children who play the Von Trapp kids in the Dutch musical Sound of Music had a performance in a famous Dutch TV Show.

The TV Host asked Maaike which artist she liked better Pia Douwes or Madonna. As Maaike didn't know the Dutch muscial star Pia Douwes she said Madonna. And the last question was if she earned a lot of money with her musical performances. Maaike answered: well, the pay is not bad. ;-)