Christmas (final)

Taking posed pictures of one kid can be a challenge. Eyes open, nice smile (not too forced), good pose etc. Well, taking pictures of two children is exponentially more difficult. It took me quite some shots to get this one (and Tobias’ eyes are still kind of odd, or not? Anyway, I like this picture and I just wanted to post one more of my two very happy Christmas children.

Oh yeah, and very spoiled too. Check out the pile of gifts by the tree… Let' met just say tha 90+% of that was for them… yep… SPOILED, but happy and lovely, so I guess they deserved it…?

Sleepover with Catherine

I think I have written about Tobias’ girlfriend Catherine before, right? Anyway, there have been some sleepovers back and forth in the past.

The last one was a sleepover during the Christmas vacation at our house. It was just one night and it was a lot of fun. Warner, her brother and Lorelei’s friend, came over too. Before they came over we met in town for a skate and a sandwich. When they came over we played some games, watched a movie, had dinner and stuff.

Well, while watching the movie I found them on the couch like this :-). Kind of cute, right? (or should I be worried…?).

Maze

Tobias likes mazes. He got some maze books and a maze game from Santa. Well, on one of the last days of our Christmas break we went to a Castle (“De Haar”) near Utrecht and we went into a real maze. As you can see the hedges are tall, yet not so dense, but I can assure you, it still took some effort to get to the center, and to get back out. I can’t even imaging what it will be like when the leaves are dense and green…

Anyway, when we finally did get to the center Tobias was quite proud :-).

The castle was pretty cool by the way. We took a “Fairy tale tour” which was fun for both children and adults. I think we might go again someday…

Birthday Gifts

As you know, Tobias plays baseball. We got Tobias a baseball helmet and a baseball bag for his birthday this year. Despite the fact that it has nothing to do with Skylanders he was quite excited about that too. It looks pretty cool, right?

Lorelei got him Skylanders bedsheets, opa and oma gave him another Wii game, Mario and Sonic at the London Olympics 2012, but, like I said in my other posts, he mostly got lots of Skylanders stuff :-).

Skylanders Cake

I just have to put a picture on the blog of Tobias’ humongous Skylanders Cake! He has been into Skylanders for quite a while now. He bought himself the first version of the game, Skylanders – Spyro’s Adventure, with his own money last year. He also bought a couple of figures and actually played it quite a lot. Just recently a new version came out. Needless to say that was on the top of his wish list this year! Well, Tobias is lucky to have Aunt Shelli, because guess what she got him… Yep, Skylanders Giants, the new version of the game. A lot of his friends got him new Skylanders figures for the new game, so he is set!

With all that Skylanders stuff going on he wanted a Skylanders cake too… Lisa outsourced the cake-making this year and we go this cake. It was yummy, but like I said, huge!

Skate Party

Tobias is 8 now and celebrated this with his friends yesterday… on ice-skates! We went to Silverdome, the rink in Zoetermeer with Lisa, my dad, and me, and… 8 boys, all very excited to go skating. And to be honest, I was kind of excited too…

Rightfully so, because it was great! First we opened presents (including lots of Skylanders figures), had lunch (pancakes), and had cake (a Skylanders cake). After all that we went to the rink for a Party Lesson. I had hired an instructor for an hour and she did a great job. I was a bit surprised at the range of skating skills within the group (the range being much broader than I had expected), but she dealt with it very well. Everybody had fun. And, everybody got really tired. I had planned to skate for about 30 more minutes after the lesson, but al but two boys were of the ice within 10 minutes, so, after 15 minutes we just stopped.

We took all the boys back to their respective homes and got home to get ready for the next party :-).