Letter From Sinterklaas

Sinterklaas is so much fun (and leverage) for parents . Sinterklaas writes everyone a letter in the form of a poem telling everyone how nice (or naughty) they have been and how he expects them to be better next year and such. Ans, if you are really naughty he takes you to Spain in a bag. Only imagine the amount of leverage that provides a parent with . Anyway I (oops, excuse me, Sinterklaas) wrote Tobias a letter too, and guess what, he is a great big brother, but he should eat his food and listen to papa and mama .

Baking

 

I know this does not look much like Sinterklaas, but to me it was a wonderful part of this years Sinterklaas celebration: baking with Tobias. He has not been much of a sous chef lately and we haven’t been watching Ratatouille for a while now, but he still loves baking! Here we are making “Krepernoten”, something that was in between “Pepernoten” and “Kruidnoten”. Tobias was helping with the ingredients, with the kneading of the dough. So much fun! I made pea soup too, and he helped me with that as well. Lovely!

Super Mario Bros. Wii

Tobias made his own Sinterklaas wish list this year. Actually he made three: One written list and two cut and paste lists from toy catalogues. This gift was the first on his first list, the written one. He was thrilled when he found this in his shoe!

“YES! This was on my list! YEAH!!!” .

Note: Notice how well his game matches his pajamas...

Tinker Toys

Tobias is not much of a builder. Sometimes I wish he was somewhat more of a builder, because I have fond memories of playing with my legos building all sorts of stuff. There is one type of construction toy that he loves though, and plays with pretty much every day! Tinker Toys!

He makes all sorts of stuff. Unfortunately (for pacifist-me) he mostly builds weaponry of sorts, but lately there have been houses, bridges, space ships and such. I love watching him play like that!

Let It Snow!

Wow, what a nice weekend we had! It snowed! Enough to have a good decent snowball fight and enough to go sledding, and sledding we did. I was pulling Tobias around the block and he was having soooo much fun! Every so often I would kick back some snow “by accident” and Tobias would just crack up…

Also, Tobias was wearing his new snowboots, which he loved (and needed…). We were out there for over two hours! Not only was it a very nice afternoon, it was also a nice prelude to the Sinterklaas evening that very evening…

Fall Break

Tobias had a fall break two weeks ago. We did not have a week’s trip planned like last year, but we did go out. The first weekend Tobias and Lorelei went to Opa and Oma. The four of them had a good time! Lisa and I took the opportunity to go out with the two of us. We did not go far, but had a good time too. We stayed at a hotel in Amersfoort, a city we had not visited. We did some shopping, some dining (and wining), but most of all, some relaxing.

The second weekend we went to visit our Friends in La Celle Saint Cloud (near Paris). We drove down on Friday, and came back on Sunday. We had a very nice time, and so did Tobias and Lorelei. Valentine and Tristan do not speak Dutch or English and we anticipated kind of a hard time playing together, but it was just fine. Apparently language is not that important yet if you want to play together. And Tobias picked up some French, because here they are watching Toy Story 3, in French!

We all went out together to the Aquarium in Paris (near Trocadero). The weather was horrible, the Aquarium smaller then we expected, but it was nice nonetheless (probably because it was inside and it was pouring down rain… ). After that Lisa and Julie spent some time shopping. The next morning Nadim and I spent some time mountain biking.

We headed back home on Sunday afternoon, after a very nice weekend with very nice friends. I hope we can visit again sometime soon (a lot sooner than this time because it had been a year and a half!).

Halloween

We had quite the Halloween experience this year. It started kind of early with aunt Shelli sending us candy, costumes and Halloween decorations. Some of this stuff has already been used during the weeks leading up to Halloween, but this past weekend was a real Halloween weekend.

On Saturday Lisa and Tobias carved the pumpkin, and what a great job they did! Tobias picked the design, and helped Lisa with the carving and getting all the yucky stuff out . I got to enjoy (and photograph) the result.

Lisa had a Halloween party from work on Saturday night. So, she had to make her costume as well on Saturday. Tobias and I read some scary stories .

On Sunday we had a Halloween kids party at a friend’s house. We were in charge of desert and Lisa and Tobias made pumpkin pie (yum!). Tobias and Lorelei got to wear their costumes and looked great! There were lots of candy, food and games at the party, and lots of carved pumpkins (but we had the biggest one ). At dusk we went outside for a walk and we saw some real bats fly over our heads! Scary!!!

We had a nice Halloween this year!