Milestone: Biking to School

As I wrote before, being able to bike is quite the milestone in the Netherlands. Well, Tobias reached that one a while back. Yet, he did nog bike to school on his own bike yet. He kept telling me he would start doing that when he is five... This picture is not Tobias on his way to school, but he did bike to school for the first time last Thursday. He didn't pick the best day to start, because is was pouring down with rain and by the time we got there he was soaking wet, but we made is nonetheless. Tobias was soooooo proud.

It took Tobias quite some serious training to reach this point. A week or two ago two friends came over to play. They suggested they'd ride their bikes. Tobias was not quite as well trained yet and he could not keep up. That night he practised until dinnertime. He was biking up and down the alleyway behind our house in the dark! He did that for almost two weeks and I guess by that time he figured he was ready for the real biking-world: Biking to school.

I have to admit I am quite proud too (but terrified at the same time....).


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Pooped...

Gijs is one of Tobias' best friends at the moment. He lives a few houses down from us and he also is in the same school and class as Tobias. So, they see eachother on a daily basis. A lot of times they will play together after school, sometimes outside, but recently, being the fall and all, more inside than out. This picture was taken after a lot of playing outside and as you can see both boys are pretty pooped. They kind of just crashed on the couch and watched a movie (I think it was Cars this time).


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Electric Guitar

Tobias has had a guitar of his own for quite some time now as you can see here. It is still working, all the strings still there, just a few scrapes and bruises here and there, but in all Tobias has been quite careful with it, as I think he should be with any musical instrument. Recently he has been grabbing it every once in a while to play a tune for his sister. He'll strum the guitar and sometimes sing a song like "When you're smiling", which is pretty definitely Lorelei's favorite song at the moment.

Well, the other day I was playing my electric guitar. Tobias has take an interest in the electric guitar in the past, but he has only been watching me play and listening (and sometimes complaining it hurts his ears because it is too loud... :-)). This time he asked me if he could play. Knowing Tobias to be careful with his musical instruments (:-)), I didn't have too much of a problem with that, except that it is still way too big for him to hold. So, we held it together. Tobias strummed, I picked the chords, and Lisa took this picture.


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Halloween...

The Netherlands is not much of a Halloween celebrating country. Yet, we have bilingual and binational children, so, it is only fair they get traditions from both sides of the Atlantic. So, we celebrated this year. Tobias talked about all the candy that he likes and about what candy you need to eat when you want to be Dutch and what candy you need to eat when you want to be America. For example, you cannot eat "Drop" when you want to be American, yet you have to eat "Drop" if you want to be Dutch :-) (Drop is kind of similar to licorice, yet different... you have to try it to know it...).

Well, one of the things you do when you are American is celebrate Halloween; carve a pumpkin, dress up and go trick-or-treating. And that's what Tobias did. Lisa got a pumpkin and they carved it together. It came out quite well I might add, as you can see for yourself. Then, Tobias and I were going to scare Lisa. We were making a costume and had decided we would go around the back and then ring our doorbell and scare mama, his only trick-or-treat address on his route.... (since we didn't want to bother all the Halloween-unaware Dutchies...). You can see his costume in this picture. He is a "spider-ghost", the sheet being ghostly and his hat being a spider. It gave Lisa quite a scare (:-)) and it got Tobias some M&M's :-).

It was a nice Halloween.


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Beautiful....

...


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Swords, Guns, Canons, etc...

Tobias is currently very much into pirates, police, jail, bad guys etc. He also recently discovered cannons. Ever since he has been using his tinkertoys to build cannons and he has been asking a lot of questions about what happens when a cannonball hits you. In short, he is quite interested in all sorts of weaponry...

Well, we were in Monaco and at the Monaco Palace there were some cannons on display. So, I was all excited and said "Tobias, come see the cannons...". He grabbed my hand and we walked toward some cannons, but as we got close Tobias stopped and jerked my hand. I hadn't realized this, but he was scared.... I guess he thought the things still worked... There were lots of them and there were whole piles of cannonballs, so I guess it did look kind of threatening.

He later explained to me that it was not him, but baby-bear who was afraid :-)


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

I-i-i-i-i-t's n-n-n-n-not that c-c-c-cold

Tobias LOVES swimming, our vacation house had an outdoor swimming pool -> We HAD to go in it...

As I said before, we had some nice and some not so nice weather on our vacation. The water in the pool had already cooled down significantly and since the sun is the only heating system the pool has we had to deal with the temperature as it came.... which was, well, just pretty much freezing cold! But, like I said, we HAD to go in....

When Tobias first jumped in he could hardly speak, it was so cold.... he kind of stammered: "I-i-i-i-i-it's n-n-n-n-not that c-c-c-c-c-cold....". That was actually very funny, and I have to admire his stamina because we even stayed in that pool for quite some time...

After the pool we had to take a warm shower though in order to get Tobias warm again...


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle

Tobias Schumacher

My goodness, it has been a while since I posted. One reason for this is that we were on a vacation for a week during the fall break. That was really nice. My parents took us to a little town called Sainte Maxime in southern France, fairly close to Nice. We had some nice and some not so nice weather, but it was a really nice week out. It was in honor of my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Friends of my parents have a house there which is where we stayed. We spent a lot of time in and around the house, but we also took some trips.

On one trip we went to Monaco. There they had a carnival and at the carnival they had bumper race cars. The best thing about them was that Tobias could go in there by himself (rather than with one of us...). He loves it and as you can see here he is quite into the racing thing :-).

The Carnival was probably the best to Tobias, but we had a nice day in Monaco too... although to us it was actually quite a shame the carnival was there because it took away from the view of the marina... Even so, we had a good time there, it is a beautiful place and a beautiful area. In Monaco we had a comfortable 23 degrees and a sunny day, but during the same week we had a day of very severe rainfall causing roads to be flooded and closed down, even the next day. From what I understood it was the heaviest rainfall they had had in a long time!

So, lots of different weather, lots of different sights and lots of food, wine, talk and fun!


For news on Tobias' sister Lorelei visit: Lorelei Michelle