Trick or Treat

Admitted, it is a bit late for posts about Trick or Treat, but I kind of forgot to put this one on earlier… The most trick or treating we have done in the Netherlands is going around back to our front door and getting some candy from mama… :-).

This year it got a little more serious, in Oudewater to be exact… There were some kids who had organized a Trick or Treat tour. There weren’t very many kids (about 10) or very many participating houses (about 10), but it was much nicer than just going around back…. Both Lorelei and Tobias joined and got some candy

No, not pillow cases full, but some candy nonetheless… (oh, and a good experience of course…)

Paleontologist…

Sinterklaas is back in the Netherlands and has already put something in Tobias’ shoe! It was a brick :-). An interesting brick though, because it had dinosaur bones hidden inside. It came with a hammer and chisel and Tobias got to excavate the bones.

As you can see in this picture he had a good time doing that (oh, and a messy time too… that stuff goes everywhere… :-)). The bones have been added to his “collection”, which is an odd mix of all kinds of collectible things, like rocks, marbles, cards, bottle caps etc...

Yellow Slip

Tobias started taking Tae Kwon Do lessons just recently (around the start of the school year). He is really enjoying it and, as far as I can tell, he is making progress rather fast. It’s amazing to see how quickly he improves… To my untrained eye it appears it is a game of balance and control more than anything else. Those are the areas of visible improvement, anyway… :-).

This past Sunday he got to take his first exam, to get the Yellow Slip…. and he passed! He had to do some “figures”, stances, sparring exercises, and remember some Korean words (for the stances and kicks and stuff).

He was so proud and happy! Next one up is the green slip… 

PSV

Tobias has been to games of all the American sports (basketball, baseball, football, and hockey) on our trips to America. Untill two weeks ago he had never been to a major sports event in the Netherlands. Well, we needed to change that, obviously, so I thought it’d be a good idea to take him to a good old Dutch soccer game. I asked him which team he would like to watch. He thought for a minute and said “PSV”. I asked him why and he said: “Well, it would have to be Ajax (Amsterdam), Feyenoord (Rotterdam) or PSV (Eindhoven), and Catherine is Philips so is has to be PSV…” (yes, that’s Catherine, Tobias’ “girlfriend” holding the other end of the scarf :-)).

I had never been to the Philips Stadium (home of PSV) so I thought it was a good idea too. While planning this we talked to Catherine’s dad who is from Eindhoven and told him Tobias’ reasoning. He thought it was such a good idea that he wanted to go too, with Catherine, and that’s how all four of us ended up there (and Catherine’s dad ended up taking us… Thanks!).

It was quite the experience to be in a heated stadium in very good seats, and best of all, probably as a result of Tobias’ and Catherine’s relentless cheering, PSV won over Heerenveen 5 to 1!

Carnival

Wow, time goes by fast. The Carnival has come and gone already. Always a big thing, especially for Tobias. He loves going there. I like his excitement, but I kind of not like going there… But hey, what can you do, right? We went (and spent) quite a bit… It was nice though. Tobias is still traumatized by the Octopus, so we took mostly rather “simple” rides. The scariest thing was the Haunted House…

Both Tobias an Lorelei liked the Trampolines. You get to go on there for like 5 minutes or so. We were there early Wednesday afternoon and it was not as crowded yet, so they were lucky because they both got to go way over 5 minutes!

It is hard to take pictures with a (slow) phone camera when you’re kids are going up and down, but this one turned out OK, I think…

Jardin des Plantes

We went to visit our friends in La Celle de Saint Cloud, near Paris. It was a rainy weekend, so we spent quite some time inside. But, we also went into Paris and visited “Jardin des Plantes”, a big park where they have a botanical garden, a paleontological “room” with lots of skeletons, and a building with stuffed (real) animals. We went to the building with the stuffed animals and it was quite interesting. Tobias just loves seeing animals of all kinds, but he really likes sea creatures, so needless to say he loved this display. I have to say it was quite a unique experience to see all those animals… So, if you’re ever in Paris, visit Jardin des Plantes :-).

Walk in the Forest

It was quite a nice day last Sunday. Sunny, chilly, but nice. So, I decided to take Tobias and Lorelei to the forest. We went to the “Kaapse Bos” near Doorn. We took a 6km walk. We did some pine-cone baseball, some running, and some mushroom spotting, like here in this picture. We found lots of different kinds, sizes and colors (but unfortunately not red ones with white dots…).

It’s nice to be outside with them…!

Carving the Pumpkin

Halloween, not big in the Netherlands, but big enough in the US for us to do some traditional stuff, like carving the pumpkin. Nothing fancy, just a face. Tobias loves participating. He picks the face and tries to help as much as he can, but that pumpkin skin was tough! So, even though he looks quite like the tough guy in this picture, he ended up just pricking the pumpkin here and there, but Lisa and I carved most of it…. I put a picture of the finished product on Facebook.

It turned out that, even though it may not look as big for US measures, we got ourselves quite a sizeable pumpkin this year :-).

Working

Tobias goes to after school care on Thursdays and this year he went up a group. That means that he mingles with bigger children and gets to do “big kids stuff”. One of those things is “working”, on wood really. They have workbenches and tools and wood and they can make stuff. Apparently he likes it because he started asking for wood and started using his toolbox we gave him a while back. At first he was working on the floor, but then I gave him my workmate and that is great. He has really been putting some stuff together… At the after school care they give them real tools, which I think is great. His tools are rather real, except for his saw. So, after concluding that the saw from his toolbox does not work properly, I went out and got him a real one. He is all set!

I have to tell you about one thing he made, tonight… Yesterday we found a dead mouse in the yard. Darwin had killed it. Tobias is so fond of animals that he felt sorry for the mouse. Apparently, this morning, he was thinking about the mouse, probably because he walked right past it (and hence, saw it) on the way to his bike. He talked to Lisa about it and it must have been on his mind, because tonight he quit playing the Wii and said: “Papa, I am going to bury Squeaky.” (The mouse was named Squeaky post mortem…). At first I did not realize what he was talking about, but he actually wanted to bury the mouse. He wanted Lisa to help him, but then I heard him say “Wait mama, first I am going to make him a tomb-stone.”. So, Lisa goes: “How?”. Tobias says: “From those planks in the garage. I’ll make something like this <he points out a rectangle> and we’ll write ‘Squeaky’ on it.”. And that’s exactly what he did. He sawed two pieces of wood, made a cross and wrote Squeaky on it. It is now sitting over Squeaky’s head right by our rose-bush…

Did I ever mention how sweet my boy is? He’s very sweet… :-)!

Camping

I guess we could start calling it a tradition… Tobias and I went out camping again this year. We went to the same place we went last year, except this time we went for two nights. Also we went a little bit earlier in the year which made for nicer weather… I took the Friday afternoon off. I got home around noon or so and we started packing up our stuff. Last year I had to pack all my stuff and Tobias’ stuff on my bike, but this time Tobias had bike bags as well. Also, we had bought our own little air beds, which was nice.

It is so great when Tobias gets so excited about stuff! I had promised to go again, but I hadn’t told him when. I told him about a week before we left, primarily because the weather is so unpredictable and it would be such a disappointment if we would not be able to go because of that. But, from the moment I told him he was bursting with anticipation and enthusiasm! And rightfully so, because we had a great time, again!

Since we were somewhat earlier in the year it was light a lot longer, which enabled us to stay outside longer. As a result we did not play as many games inside the tent, but we did get to see a lot outside. One of the things we saw was a couple of baby-owls learning to fly, which is quite a noisy thing to witness :-). Also, we saw shooting stars. There is not a whole lot I can think of that is better than laying on your back cuddling with your son, looking at the sky and seeing shooting stars… He had never seen one before so the excitement was high and the enthusiasm and thrill indescribable… Let me just say that I treasure those moments and memories.

As you can see in this picture we did not bring much in terms of cooking… We just biked from our campsite to Oudewater to get groceries and got ourselves an instant barbecue :-). We just grilled some meat, had some bread and of course we could not go without roasting some marshmallows. In fact, we made s’mores, despite the fact that we are unable to get graham crackers here… (we repeated this “ritual” the next day).

Basically we had the trip there on Friday, the trip back on Sunday and a full Saturday to spend in the area. Tobias had his first fishing experience in the USA and then Opa bought him a rod in Maasdam, so, he really wanted to go fishing. We went out looking for a rod, but could not find one (strange, really…). Instead we went into two museums: the Ropes Museum and the Witch Museum. That was actually really nice. Tobias made his own jump rope and he went on a “witch hunt”.

We had a nice weekend together and I am pretty sure a tradition was born, because we will definitely do it again next year!

Back Home

Well, that was a lot of posting (both here and on Lorelei’s blog) about our vacation. I’ll finish with this picture which was taken the day we got home. Tobias had been talking about Jip and Darwin (our cats) a lot during the vacation telling us how much he missed them and how happy he would be when he would see them again. During the vacation he had a surrogate: Socks, but that was just not the same. Does he look happy to be re-united with Jip? I think so :-). Yep, we’re back home!

Petting Rays

This is Tobias in the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi, TX. He is petting rays! Tobias is such a cool kid. When you take him to something like this, or a zoo, or a museum, or… well, he gets sooooooo enthusiastic about everything! He wants to see everything, know about everything. I love that. Needless to say that going to places like this with him is a lot of fun.

We had a nice day at the aquarium, and we saw lots of interesting things, but the rays were definitely the highlight! He got to pet them and then even feed them. You could get some small bits of fish and then hold it between your fingers and they would come and eat it right out of your hand! Pretty cool, right? Tobias thought so!

Astros Game!

As you know, Tobias is a baseball player now. So, we had to go to a baseball game this trip. Granddaddy took us to the Houston Astros vs the Pittsburg Pirates. We had great seats (as you can see in this picture) and a great time! I had only been to one game myself, and that was a long time ago (1999 I think…). This was Tobias’  first. Unfortunately the Astros lost 2-3, but it was a great experience! Check Tobias’ hat… a true fan :-).

S’mores

S’mores, the traditional american treat associated by Lisa with girl-scout camping trips, but perfectly do-able for desert after a cook-out in Nonny’s back yard… (a reference, especially for my non-American readers: s'mores. Needless to day that this first s’more was not his last! We had them quite a few times after this and I tried some myself as well. A bit sweet, but very nice. I had one this time and it was not my last one either :-).

Fishing

We took a vacation to Dickinson this year to visit Nonny and Granddaddy. While we were there we went to Rockport for a couple of days. Rockport is a little fishing town. Needless to say we did some fishing. Actually, we did quite a lot of fishing. I never really expected to catch anything because when I was a child and I did my fishing I never caught anything. I now know that that was probably a result of my choice of bait and location. Anyway, my picture of fishing was: boring…

It turned out that if you fish in the Gulf of Mexico and use shrimp as bait it is not boring at all. We caught over 30 fish (piggy perch I was told…) from this pier at our hotel in Rockport! I have to say it was a surprisingly interesting experience and Tobias just loved it. At first I had to put the bait on the hook, which is quite an endeavor if it is your first time doing so, and kind of disgusting too… Within a couple of minutes I heard: “Papa, HELP! I think I got one!”. Sure enough, he did.

Then came the next challenge of taking the fish off the hook. That too is quite a challenge if it is your first time… but it worked. Before we put it back Tobias looked at it and said: “Bye fishy, I hope your lip will get better soon…”. In the course of the next two days all 30+ fish we caught got the same wish before they were thrown back in :-).

After we got back to Dickinson we went down to Galveston to fish there. We caught a couple of fish there too; catfish (tiny ones…).

We had to leave the fishing rod there, but now Tobias wants one here too. I hope his experience here does not turn into my childhood experience of fishing. The first signs are good because he went fishing with my dad after we got back and caught three fish…

B-Diploma!

My goodness, Tobias had a hard time getting his B-Diploma. One excercise in particular was hard: swimming 6 meters under water through a hole...

Well, on the day of the exam we were all nervous about him getting through the hole, but he did! After that there was no question about him being able to do the rest. He is a good swimmer and he enjoys swimming. He is also very able to swim through that hole, but for the longest time he was not convinced of that himself. So, he would look up to see if he was there yet way to early and as soon as he looks up he comes up...

Anyway, he got it right this time and he got his well deserved reward: his B-Diploma!!! The next day we went for our Sunday swimming session, but this time not to practice "the hole", but to have  fun in a pool with lots of fun stuff like water-slides!

Avondvierdaagse

There is an annual event for school children called "Avondvierdaagse". It is a walking event where the children walk for about 5 km for four nights in a row. Tobias' school participates and children from groups 3-8 can join. So, this year was Tobias' first opportunity to walk, and he did.

Of course, we were not sure what would happen since up until now we had only viewed it as an annoying annual event. They walk through our neighborhood just around the time you get home from work and sometimes you have to wait for like half an hour in order to be able to get home.

Well, I guess time changes things, because this year Lisa even walked with him one night, the final night (I was supposed to, but I sprained my anckle pretty badly playing tennis...:-( ). Anyway, Tobias came home very proud and tired every night and we would take his shoes off, have a drink and massage his feet :-). It was quite hot so he had to drink a lot and his feet got kind of sweaty and soft, the perfect ingredient for blisters. Fortunately he did not get any and he had a wonderful time.

Look at his proud face showing off his ("first real") medal!

Breakfast in Bed

 There are those moments that need to be cherised rather than documented. This was one of them, but I could not help myself for it was so sweet! One Sunday morning we were lazily waking up. Tobias came to our room, like he does every Sunday. We cuddled a little and then Tobias asked if we would like something to eat. I said "Sure Tobias, I'll have a cheese sandwich...". Initially I thought he was just joking, but when he went downstairs I was expecting him to come back up with one of his toy sandwiches, like he has done before.

Much to my surprise he came back up with an actual cheese sandwich! He then asked Lisa and Lorelei what they wanted and ended up making everyone a sandwich (one by one). So, we had breakfast in bed prepared by Tobias!

After receiving my sandwich and realizing what he was up to I could not help but go downstairs and take a look (and this picture...).

Skater Boy

 I used to be quite the skateboarder one day. Not that I was a very good skateboarder, I was just skateboarding a lot. I used it for transportation, built ramps, went to skate parks and all that. That was a long time ago, but the skateboard was still in my parents' garage.

When Tobias and Lorelei spent the night there a few weeks ago Tobias found the skateboard (or rather it was found for him :-)) and played with it. When we picked them up Tobias wanted to take it home. He has been wanting to skateboard a lot since and I have to say, the progress is quite stunning. He's still a bit insecure, but he is doing it!

Check the "old skool" style of that thing :-). Still, he looks pretty cool, right?

Little Chef

Tobias had a project at school about "basic ingedients" I guess. They talked about all sorts of basic ingedients for foor, like wheat, rice, cocao, eggs, meat, fish etc. Each grade had their own basic ingredient that they learned about in detail. Tobias' was Eggs. They did lots of fun experiments, like dissolving the shell so you get a translucent egg and you can see the yolk, putting lots of weight on eggs and see when they break, trying how hard it is to break an egg by squeezing it... loads of fun!

They also cooked a dish with eggs and sold it to the parents on the final night of the project. The proceedings went to a good cause. They had a chef come to the school and prepare a dish with each group. Of course they needed some parents to help and I was lucky enough that I was able to help. So, I got to see a room full of little chefs with aprons and togues preparing a spinach omelet :-). Oh yeah, and that very evening I got to buy a piece of it for 2 euros :-). It was great fun.

Of course, when we went to my parents for Easter, Tobias wanted to show Opa and Oma what he had learned. So, he told Oma over the phone what ingedients to get and he made the omelet again. Opa and Oma loved it too!

Baseball Uniform

Yet another baseball post.... This time of proud Tobias in his baseball uniform. It was so cool... I think this picture was taken just after we had gotten the uniform. For the kids you can "lease" a uniform, meaning you pay a small fee and you can use it for one season. If there is a growth spurt during the season you can just exchange it for a new one. If you see how much these uniforms cost and how fast he grows, that's a good deal... Anyway, Tobias was so excited that he wanted to show Lisa right away! The next week, the day of his very first game, before he came down to our bedroom, he had put it on :-)! It does look quite nice, doesn't it?

(For the MLB fans: The Braves logo (cap) is from the Atlanta Braves during their 1967-1989 seasons)

Taekwondo

Tobias has been taking a couple of Taekwondo classes. There is this thing here in Gouda called "brede school" where you can try stuff. He has been trying a couple of things including soccer and music. This time it was Taekwondo and he liked it. It was only three classes of which he missed one (due to me being in London for work... shame on me :-)). But, he did attend the last one, and so did I. They did all sorts of moves and other exercises culminating in a grand finale of breaking a board.

This is Tobias' board breaking... I thought it was great! He was so proud of himself... I think that, after he gets his B-diploma in swimming, we might have him join Taekwondo class for real.

Oh, guess what, Tobias made it to the (local) paper with his Taekwondo endeavors :-):

Gouda Braves BBall Majors

Tobias has started baseball this year. I wrote about that earlier, but that was when they were still playing inside. Now they have moved on to outside and there are actual games involved :-). This team picture was taken on the second (practice) game of the season. The first one was lost to a team of somewhat bigger and more experienced kids... On the second game, the opponent did not show up (kind of rude...), but they made two teams and played each other. Afterwards there was this photo-opportunity (and I took it with my phone... hence the not so full zoomed view of the team, because I would have been in the way of the people with te real camera's :-). Last saturday was the third practice game. The opponent showed up and was, yet again, obviously more experienced, so we lost again. There is one more practice game before the actual season starts...

It is lots of fun to watch the team learn and grow. It goes pretty fast actually. What they do is, they pitch an under-handed ball. If the batter can't hit they switch to a toss-ball (tossed from the side of the batter). If that doesn't work either the have a tee. Well, the first game the tee was needed a couple of times, but on the third game they did not need it anymore. In fact, pretty much half the team didn't even need a toss ball! Also, the plays are being learned pretty quickly. Of course they are not able to throw the ball all the way across the field yet, but the intention is there :-).

I will keep you posted on developments and try to take some better pictures in the near future.

Skating 2012 Pictures

I put all this year’s skating pictures and videos in an online album. Enjoy!

Tobias Gretzky

Skating has been great fun for Tobias this year. He has gotten very confident on his skates. In fact, he has gotten so confident that this one time when we went skating I found him playing hockey! It was Wednesday after school, my daddy day last week. The three of us went to the ice. I put Tobias’ skates on first, because he can go by himself. I then put Lorelei’s skates on and went out on the ice with her, but when I turned around I did not find Tobias where I expected him, on the rink they made skating around. Instead I found him on a square they made playing hockey! And he was quite impressive too! Most other players were running around on the ice on their shoes, but Tobias and another kid from his class were on skates and managed themselves quite well. Tobias even scored a goal!

It was so nice to see, especially because this is not something I would have expected Tobias to do so easily, him being kind of shy and all. I guess the ice-skating must have really boosted his confidence or something.

REAL Ice Skating!

I guess most people skate on artificial ice most of the time… I do not consider that REAL skating :-). REAL skating is when you can go out on canals, lakes and other open bodies of water. We call it “natuurijs” (literally: natural ice) and there is nothing like it! It is cold in The Netherlands right now so, we have natuurijs. It has been three years since we had any natuurijs to speak of… But now we have a lot of it as well. As I wrote before, Tobias can skate on his own now. On the rink it was still slow and shaky, but he has progressed rapidly in the past few days! He is making the right moves, picking up speed, learning how to stop and loving it all the way!

This past weekend we went skating on the Breevaart, which is a waterway close to our house that goes all the way out to Reeuwijk. We went there twice, and then on Saturday we went to Annalief’s birthday party in Voorschoten. They live right by a small body of water and we skated there. Then on Sunday we went out to visit friends in Oudewater and we skated there too on the “Grote Gracht”. Monday I went on the Breevaart for a few hours myself. Yesterday I took Tobias back out to the Breevaart after school. Today Tobias is going skating with school.

The weather prediction says that the cold weather will last until Sunday, so this weekend there will be some skating too! I just LOVE it!

Oh, yeah, another thing: there is “Elfstedenkoorts” (Eleven City Fever) in The Netherlands. That means that the “Rayonhoofden” (Regional Heads) are debating whether “It Giet Oan!”. Now, that probably sounds like a bunch of jibberish to you, but it means that we might have an “Elfstedentocht”, a skate tour of 200km in the north of the Netherlands. That rarely happens because for 200km of waterway to freeze over with a sufficient amount of ice (6”) to hold 16.000 skaters it has to really freeze for quite a while. The last time we had one was on January 4th 1997 and before that in 1986… So, it is rather rare. Right now there is talk of declaring the Elfstedentocht as a national holiday and everything so, it is a big thing here! I would argue that it is even bigger than the Dutch team in a Worldchampionship Soccer Final, but I bet people would disagree. It does come close though, in terms of impact and audience. Can you imagine a whole country glued to the TV foor 7 to 8 hours starting at 4am? Well, that’s what happens when there is an Elfstedentocht… Right now it looks like it might happen Sunday or Monday… I will keep you posted… :-).

Tobias does not quite get the whole Elfstedenkoorts yet…

Eye on the Ball

Tobias has been playing lots of sports, with me, with Opa and at school, but other than swimming lessons he has not been part of any organized form of sports… yet! As I wrote just last month Santa prepared Tobias for baseball. The season starts in March but practice continues throughout the winter, indoors! I did not know that, but found out by contacting the team :-). Anyway, Tobias is welcome to try it our so, that’s what we did last week. This picture was taken during practice. They are practicing “fielding”.

Tobias did quite well. The hardest part, for all kids it seemed, it catching the ball. Throwing seems to be easier, although aiming is quite the challenge. Tobias did quite well. They also practiced hitting from a tee and a toss (not a real picth, just tossing up the ball from the side). Tobias did well both ways and has quite a swing on him with the real bat as well. Santa gave him a wooden bat, but here they used aluminum bats which are lighter and from my estimate a little shorter too. Also the balls are slightly different: lighter and with a cushiony cover. I guess we’ll have to get him one of those balls as well.

The most important thing: Tobias had a great time! Today is his second practice session…

Lighting the Candle

Ever since Tobias and me went camping, he has been wanting (and able) to light candles. Initially with the matches that we bought on our trip, but recently also with this candle lighter we have. He is quite good at is now and lights the candles on the dinner table pretty much every night.

But, what is better than to light your very own birthday candle on your very own birthday cake?! This cake is supposed to be a bowling ball, hence the three holes you see there :-). It was not Lisa’s masterpiece in terms of decoration, but it was very good (and gone in no time :-)).

Strike!

Like I wrote in my previous post Tobias picked his own party themes this year. The kids party theme was bowling. We took six kids out to the alley and had a lot of fun. Most of them were rolling the ball between their legs, except Tobias and Dico. Dico did kind of a very effective (he was the overall winner) two-handed sideways roll. Tobias had his technique down, though. He used the holes in the ball as intended and swung it forward with just his one hand. Not always straight and now very powerful, but it did look quite professional :-) and was quite effective (sometimes…).

7

Unbelievable!!! Tobias is 7 years old! It seems like only yesterday that he got his first (toy) guitar… and started singing “Blowing in the Wind”. Well, now he is seven an I got him his first real guitar! And boy, did I have fun just getting that thing :-). I got him a 1/2 model classic guitar. We have been playing one of my electric guitars from time to time. He kept coming back to that, although I might have needed the littlest of hints to believer he did…, but anyway, he has his own now and is ready to take some lessons! He says he wants to be better than Jimi Hendrix :-). Right now I am teaching him, but I guess I should be looking for a real teacher sometime soon. Currently he is able to play one song on one string: Frère Jacques :-).

Of course that’s not all he got. As usual, he had three parties: school, kids from school and adults. Well, I guess he kind of had four because on his actual birthday we took him out to dinner. Most of what we did in terms of celebrating was his own idea this year. We went to dinner in a Greek restaurant, his choice. We took his friends to the bowling alley, his choice. We had a pizza party for the adults, his choice. I think he had a good time, although he was pretty tired by the end of Saturday (bowling and pizza…).

Having three parties also got him a lot of gifts. It was not like he didn’t get any for Christmas or Sinterklaas… so, he has so many new toys now!

We had a nice time to, but once again, I can hardly believe I have a 7-year-old boy now…

Safari

While in New Braunfels we went to a Safari Park. It was a four mile ride through an area with lots of different animals, including Zebras. Some of the animals stay off the road, but others some quite close (or even partly into) the cars, like this guy. When you go into the park you get a baggy of food to throw out the window. I guess the animals know that, and some of them can’t wait for the people to throw it, they just stick their head in. This guy kept trying to stick his head into the car (and in doing so scaring Tobias :-)). Note Tobias’ finger sticking up. I should probably add a text-balloon to this one for you to fill… Well, I’ll fill it for you: “No no no…” is what Tobias screamed :-). We had a good laugh over this, too!

Baking Cookies

Baking cookies with Aunt Shelli has become a Christmas Tradition of sorts… Even when we are not in the US Tobias has been baking cookies with her. So, we could not miss out on that one this year. Tobias has made all sorts of cookies with Aunt Shelli, but this year it was chocolate chip all the way!

Not only that, but this year Lorelei participated as well. During the mixing she was primarily a spectator, but during the cookie-making (and bowl-licking) she was an enthusiastic participant…

Oh, and the cookies turned out great!

Comal River

While we were in the US we took a trip to New Braunfels to visit family. While we were there we did some exploring as well. We went to a Safari Place, we played in the park, and we visited the Comal River Spring. That was something Tobias had never seen before so, that was an interesting experience. The river basically comes out of a rock, as you can see. Apparently the Comal River is the shortest river in Texas (Texans seem to always be looking for something largest, smallest, tallest, shortest or whatever other extreme you can imaging :-)). We threw some sticks and leaves in it to see how fast they would move. Well, they move pretty fast… Also I had Lorelei feel the water and it is pretty cold :-).

I doubt Lorelei was quite able to grasp the significance of a River spring yet, but Tobias was quite impressed!

Baseball

As I have written after previous visits to Dickinson, TX we try to expose Tobias to some American traditions and culture, including sports, like Baseball. This year Santa brought Tobias a baseball bat, a baseball glove, and some little league baseballs. We started with playing catch. He did quite a descent job at that, although he had to get used to the weight and speed of the ball. He missed sometimes resulting in two bumps on his head… :-). He kept playing though…

Then we tried to hit some balls, but the real bat was a bit to heavy for him. So, we picked up the plastic bat and ball from two years ago. And again I was amazed by Tobias’ hand-eye coordination. Two years ago I had to toss the ball up and slow in order for him to hit it (and hit it quite well I might add). This time around I could take quite a distance from him and throw it at him full swing, and he would slam it to the back of the yard!

We have a baseball team in Gouda. Tobias starts in March :-).