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!