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 :-).