Brian and Shawntel Ashcroft Family Blog

Swimming on St. Patrick's day

2011-03-18T01:12:00.003Z

I can't believe it has almost been a years since we left the Netherlands and headed on this adventure back home.

It has been so wonderful to be home, to be near family and to participate in family activities.

It has taken me more then a year to get back to blogging but I decided it was time for me to start. So here is my first blog since being back in the states.

Today is St. Patrick's day and we are on Spring Break. My girls have been begging me to let them go swimming. They swear that they are dieing of heat and the must go swimming. (It has been in the 80's all week... Beautiful spring weather). So I decided today to let them in the pool (which is only about 60 degrees). I figured they would be in and out so fast and the whole thing would be over. NOOOOO... They spent a good hour swimming in the pool, having fun. They said the ocean in the Netherlands was way colder. At least the pool will get plenty of use right!

Happy St. Patty's day!

apple picking

2009-10-22T21:45:00.003+01:00

It is Autum time and the Apples are ripe. One of our friends from church had the idea to take the kids up apple picking this week during October Break. It was so much fun. I of course forgot my camera... So I had to ask Alison to take just one picture for me. Her camera is great. Makes my camera look so low quality. Anyways, I am greatful for this one picture of the girls picking apples.

The girls were very speedy at apple picking. I think due to there training at orange picking at Grandpa Jones's farm. Before we had been there 5 minues Kaitlyns bag was so full she couldn't put any more in it. I dicided it was time to get out of the apple orchards before I had more apples then I could dream of dealing with.. I was already at the point of having so many that I was going to have to come up with things to bake and give away to the neighbors.

The apples were delicious. I have made a very good apple crumble so far. The girls have been eating a bunch of apples each day too.

It was a fun great fall actitivity.

The twisted Sisters

2009-10-18T20:17:00.002+01:00

Brian made use of his day at home being sick and hunched over and finished editing our latest movie and I love it! I am so proud to post our newest family show!

Please enjoy our presentation of the "Twisted Sisters"

the Rockers

2009-10-18T17:58:00.002+01:00

In prepration for filming our next video we had to prepare the girls hair and makeup. We had so much fun and I must say they make excellent Rockers. Can't wait until Brian finishes editing the movie so we can post it!

The 3rd of October

2009-10-18T13:29:00.003+01:00

We went to the 3rd of October celebration in Leiden this year. Watch the paraid and put Kaitlyn in charge of taking pictures. she did an excellent job taking pictures. The them of the parade was the American dream because it was some # anversary from when the pilgrams left Leiden to go to America. It is interesting watching another country sum your country up into a paraid. It actually was very comical.

The rest of the day was a lot of fun enjoy all the rollercoasters and fun carnival stuff to do. Lets not forget the oliebollen! You have to love the Dutch for something and ollibollen is one of those things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliebol

Our Star-bound Brooke

2009-10-18T11:18:00.001+01:00

Brooke came down the stairs and declared she was ready!

Avonsverdagens

2009-10-18T10:58:00.002+01:00

It is time for me to do some Blogging again.
Every September our town does a week were every night the town goes out walking together for about 5 kilometers. The girls love going out and walking with there friends and the best part is the Metals that they get at the end!

Mahna Mahna

2009-09-27T22:53:00.003+01:00

We already posted this once, but now the video has been edited to its full emotional power. Enjoy Mahna Mahna!

the great tooth brush caper

2009-09-19T16:42:00.002+01:00

Our latest attraction. This is loosely based on a number of real incidents. (Very loosely...)

2009-09-19T16:11:00.002+01:00

Brian's mom just went home and we had the most enjoyable time with her visiting us. It is always sad to have her leave.

The original plan for her coming was that Brian and I were going to go to Italy to Rome while she was here with the girls. But my toe was infected and their were so many Doctors appointments that we canceled everything. This is the second vacation my toe has messed up.
It was nice being here though and actually getting to visit with her and spend time with her and the girls and it gave me good time to rest.

I went to the doctor on Friday because I was done with my antibiotic and the doctor wanted to check my toe. The first doctor was concerned that my toe was still red and that I still had pain. So she went and got another doctor who looked at it and asked if could bend my toe which I can't. So she felt like we probably needed to do surgery on it again. So she went and got the surgeon who came in and looked at it and said well lets try one more thing. The surgeon said lets put you on Stronger anti-biotic that are for killing off difficult bacteria, for one week and we will see how it looks next Friday. So I said great, as long as I can avoid surgery I am fine.

I went to pick up my anti-biotic, they were the same ones I had had before. I went back to the hospital and pointed out this fact. They said it is the strongest they can give me. They said to go ahead and take them for the week and they will see how it looks next week.

Also had a talk with the kidney Doctor a few weeks ago, he told me I hadn't had an allergic reaction to the antibiotics like the originally thought. They are really confused why my kidneys shut down and are wondering if there is any family history of kidney problems. Anyone have any info... That would be helpful.

Below are the pictures of my toe and it's progression......

This is my toe right after surgery in the hospital in August

This is my Toe at the begining of September just before they put me on Antibiotics....

This picture is my toe today... Antibiotics helped but my toe is still red and infected... I can't wait until it is all better!

The family movie

2009-09-10T21:09:00.003+01:00

We have been making a fun fantasy movie for the family. This is the first section. It has only taken 3 months for Brian to do the editing of the first ten minutes of the film!

The Guardians

herbal stuff

2009-08-31T21:57:00.000+01:00

I'm looking for Herbal information for things I can do to help the health of my kidneys... Kind of tired of just waiting... I feel like there has to be something I can do besides drink 3 liters of water everyday.

Brooke loves Make-up

2009-08-16T10:17:00.002+01:00

Brian has had fun with the children this week. I would have to say he is a great and amazing dad.

Brooke managed to find some lipstick and put it on. She loves make-up so much.

Brian had to laugh at her creation. He said she reminded him of a little joker. I just love how big her eyes are!

Brian's next painting...

2009-08-16T10:13:00.002+01:00

This Painting Brian did for Brianna. She told him what colors to use and how she wanted it done. She was very opinionated about it. I think it is beautiful.

Enjoying summer days

2009-08-16T10:09:00.001+01:00

The girls and their friends enjoyed a nice day outback in the sun on the trampoline with the waterhose and a small swimpool. It is amazing how long they can stay busy with such a simple activity.

Gmail....

2009-08-15T11:38:00.000+01:00

Dear ALL,

I had no idea you could email me through my blog page using my gmail account. I just found so many wonderful messages... I am so sorry I haven't replied.

I'm working on them and now I know to check my Gmail.

XO Shawntel

losing roomrates

2009-08-14T16:47:00.002+01:00

Today I got my 4th room mate. This one is an older lady. I am so glad to have a woman in the room with me.

The old guy Mn. Fork that shared a room with me told me today that he had Triple-bypass surgery and other stuff. He got to go home. -- He was a nice man though, he showed me a picture while he was waiting to be released of his family, when he was a kid. Taken in 1938. There were a bunch of children in the picture so I asked who they all were. He said they were all his brothers and sisters. In shock, I asked.. ALL. Then I asked how many Brothers and sisters he had... He said 23. I asked All 1 mother... and he told me know and he said this is my father and his first wife had this many kids she is there. My mom was the 2nd wife and she had 8 kids.. and so forth. I had never met anyone from a polygamist family over here before but I guess they are around.

Gangster guy came by today. He was moved to another floor earlier this week. He was walking and looking well. He was stabbed with a punctured lung and he gets to go home today. I thought it was really nice of him to come by and say good by though. He looked so happy to be getting out of here.

I think it is me and the old lady till Monday. I'm going to race her to see who gets to leave first!
Until then, it is me and my computer, my books and all the wonderful visits from friends. Thank you for everything you do.

Shawntel

Good look at my toe.... Not for those that faint

2009-08-13T15:20:00.002+01:00

So I had a really good look at my toe this morning. Again wished I had a camera but I guess I will spare everyone. A lot of the swelling had gone down and what look like 3 wholes in my toe isn't. The pretty much scraped out all the infection and that included all the flesh under my toe nail and there are huge canal like gauges around the toe nail bed. I will NEVER have a big toenail again. I'm so sad. Besides it being totally gross I'm wondering how long it is going to take for my body to replace that much flesh. 1/2 my toe has no skin on it.

That was one nasty bacteria.

On the bright side some tubes were pulled out which makes me happy. Now only an IV in my arm. Which I am really looking forward to it going away.

They say maybe on Monday I can go home.... Monday! I don't want to wait till Monday but that is what they say. I know Brian was hoping for sooner. Being a stay at home DAD full time is getting to where I think he needs a break and needs to make his mind dig deep into work but the girls won't let him do that.

He says "I turn my back on Brooke and all of the sudden 3 things are destroyed."

I am so proud of how hard he is working and what a patient father he is. He takes so much time for his children and he is amazing. I just know that brain of his is so board.

He is tackling laundry today. I wish him luck. The girls have been a good help.

Can't wait to be home but I have to.

In the hospital.

2009-08-12T06:27:00.004+01:00

Yep, I've been in the LUMC for almost 5 days now. How did I get here? What happened? How am I doing this post. I will answer that one first.

I made Brian bring me my computer for those times were I was board Dutch TV just isn't entertaining for me. I found out there was a Internet connection. As I slowly have the energy I get on a post a little bit more and write about my fun experience her.

A lot of people ask "Why am I in the hospital".... I say... "I stubbed my toe". Which is the truth. I stubbed my toe on Thursday night on the end of the table. It pulled up my toe nail, it bleed a bit and it immediately swelled and began throbbing. I went to bed with an ice pack rapped around my foot.

On Friday I went to the beach with my friend Erna to meet my friends, Amy, Angie, and Claire. Believe me with my sunburn there was no plan for any type of allowing the sun to see my body, I was just really looking forward to good conversation. Erna and I parked at a different part of the beach then they did and I couldn't find where they were at. My foot hurt so bad after searching I bit I gave up and sat down. I was so glad I didn't walk far away from where we had parked because about 2 hours later I started getting really cold and feeling really sick. I asked Erna if we could go and made the painful short trek back to the car.

By time I got home I lay down on the couch and just shivered. I felt so sick. I decided to try to take a shower to warm up and then I laid down on my bed for a while.

Around 5pm I started thinking about Susan. I promised to pick up Susan from the train station at 6:00 to make it to our ward temple night. Susan doesn't have a car so she rides down to my train station and I take her the rest of the way. I knew if I didn't pick her up know one else could. I didn't want to leave here. I began thinking about how busy this month was and how this really was my only chance to go to the Temple. So I began praying and asked Heavenly Father if I should go, make it so I could go. At 5:30, I got out of bed, got dressed went to the Temple had a nice session. Put my own name on the temple prayer roll (I hope that isn't to selfish of me.) Then I went home. I got lost driving home with my GPS but thank fully it worked its way out of what ever really bad turns I took. I love my GPS.

When I got home, I sat down on the couch and began shivering again. Heavenly Father really does bless you when you need to do his work.

Saturday morning I was throwing up and had a 104 fever. My foot was swollen past my ankle and there was a visible red line going from my toe up my foot. Brian, had to force me out of bed and get me dressed and take me to the weekend doctor. The wait (45 minutes) seemed like an eternity. The doctor saw me when she called me name and said "you are sick". I told her what was going on and she said I either had a blood infection or a bone infection and to go to the hospital.

Off to the hospital we went, the saw me asked 2 questions took my temperature and put me on a bed in a room. Brian left to go feed the girls because they hadn't had lunch yet and he needed to find a sitter for them. The Anger family in our ward had volunteered to take our kids so we could go on a date and we were taking there kids this Friday. Brian went and found there number got the girls cleaned up and feed and then asked if they could take our kids early. They were so sweet and offered to take them over night however visiting hours are only from 2:00-4:00 and 6:00-8:00. They let Brian stay through non-visiting hours to find out what was going on but they sent him home by 8:00 and I was on my own.

The first day they did a lot blood test and x-rays put me on antibiotics and such and finally moved me into my own room. My Room mate was a nice quite old lady. It was a nice room to be in. On Sunday she went home. I had the room all to myself, I didn't have to worry if I will wake up my roommate while I throw up or what ever in the middle of the night. They did more blood work. In fact every day they have done blood work and they haven't told me why until yesterday I'll explain it later. They examined my toe and found that the swelling in my foot had gone down but my toe was one really big blue lollipop looking thing but not so edible. (yuck!) They marked with a pin where the blue was and wanted to see if the antibiotics made it get less the next day. So we waited with lots of pain and flue symptoms I waited until the next day.

Monday morning came and at 8am everyone came to look at my toe (6 different doctors). My toe was now 2 times as blue as before, the infection was winning over the antibiotics. It was decided that they needed to take me into surgery to cut of my toe nail and examine what is making my toe so blue. This was a happy moment for me because maybe the sharp shooting throbbing pain in my toe might come to an end. There was hope.

I was taken into surgery and given a choice do you want local pain killers, do you want to be numbed from the legs down. I looked at the man and said.. "If you are cutting on any part of my body, I will be asleep for it and completely unaware of anything you are doing." Although putting me to sleep wasn't an option it became an option and off to sleep I went. Those were the happiest sleeping hours of my life.

But then I here "Mrs. Ashcroft, Mrs. Ashcroft wake up." I said "No, I don't want to." They said I had to, so I opened my eyes and looked at them hoping it would satisfy them so I could go back to sleep. But NO, that was just enough for me to realize how much pain my toe was it. In fact I started crying.

With painkillers the pain was less I was back in my room and I slept most of the rest of the day. I was in and out enough to realize that in the afternoon the took the bed out of the room. I knew they were going to get some one to bring them up but who? About 4 hours later came a man. Followed by a serious of people. Detectives police asking all sorts of questions. I really wished that my dutch was better. Why did my Dutch have to be so bad. If I'm going to be stuck with a MAN room mate, at least it is an interesting one.

Tuesday morning I woke up and all the doctors wanted to see my toe so it was un-bandaged. O man was it so gross. (Let me just say now that I asked Brian to bring me my camera many times but he forgot. This was one thing I wanted a picture of) My toe was missing more then its toe nail some flesh was gone and they had drilled 3 wholes down to the bone (yes I can see my toe bone). I am so glad I was asleep. I guess there was all sorts of infection in there they had to get out. Good thing is, I don't need pain killers now and although my toe hurts it really is healing well.

After all doctors clear away, my room mate and I get to talk. I asked what happened to him and he seems to have been jumped just before he got home and stabbed in the back and punctured his lung..... "over nothin" he said. He later in the day calls his friend Peter. My best translation of his dutch was "you were my life long friend, why did you do this to me." Peter hung up on him and he declared "f--- You" a few times more then I wanted to here. Police came in later with a photo and he said "yea that is Peter "sack him". I guess he had the wrong friend.

The rest of my stay is doing pretty boring since the surgery each day I'm feeling a lot better. My kidney's reacted to the medicine so they are switching things around trying to find a medicine that will fight the infection and not kill my kidneys.

My roommate got moved to a different floor today it is lonely being in a room all by yourself all day long. He was a chatty one too. Not always to me. He chatted on the phone a lot to his sister, his friends, his lawyers, the detectives. I kept trying to make my Brain work to translate the dutch but really honestly only the f---- you's were coming through loud and clear. Still miss all the noise.

It has taken me all day to right this post so I still get tired here and there but I am so happy Brian brought me my computer and the hospital has a wireless Internet for patient. It has made my life so much more pleasant. It gave me a project to do today. Hopefully I will be out as soon as my kidneys are normal again.

Thank you to everyone who is helping to take care of my children while Brian still has to run to work here and there. You don't know how wonderful you are.

Last If anyone has read this all the way through I need help on one thing. I need a XXL night shirt big and comfortable one to where while here in the hospital. They say I can have my own night shirt which would be great because they want me to get up and star walking but their hospital gone in front is a mini skirt and in back there isn't enough fabric to cover the bum. So women from the Netherlands. Where do I send Brian to get a nice big comfortable nightshirt?

white or red

2009-08-05T21:32:00.002+01:00

I got to go to the Beach today with my little girls and some friends from church. It was a lot of fun and my girls thought it was wonderful. One friend of mine Amy laughed at me for having SPF 60 sunblock. She wanted something with a little less protection. I however need something with the most protection possible because I am truly a white person with no protection to my skin. Apparently my application of SPF 60 wasn't enough and when I could fill my skin itching I made my girls help me put on more but it was too late I had already burned.

One may argue that perhaps my SPF may have expired and gotten to old but my 3 little girls are all sunburn free and o.k. Except Brooke, I forgot to sunblock one little part of her back which has a sunburn on it, which tells me the sunblock work well on the the rest of her back. I am indeed a white person or maybe a red person. But anyway about it I think I need SPF 120 in order to stay out in the sun from 10 am till 2:30 with out harm to my skin.

I am so avoiding going to bed tonight.

Maro Kart

2009-08-04T20:03:00.003+01:00

You know it seems like all my post are about Brooke but that child spends so much time in the corner I feel like I have to post all the little good times otherwise I will forget they ever exsisted. Kaitlyn and Brianna are truely my Angles and Brooke is my little devil but I love her all the same. (She will grow out of it right!)

Brooke watches as Kaitlyn and Brianna race each other on Mario Kart on the Wii. Finally she got the wheal and got the chance to try to race on the game. She was so excited that she was racing the car. It was really a cute moment. It had to be posted.

Paint left out

2009-08-04T19:48:00.003+01:00

So Brian forgot to put the paint away and Brooke found it. When I found Brooke she was covered in it. We cleaned her up but her hands look like they are just going to be blue for a while. (You don't want to know what she did to her cloths or to the desk. Neither are recoverable).

Kaitlyn and Brianna's Painting

2009-08-04T18:01:00.002+01:00

Kaitlyn and Brianna finished their abstract paintings that the did with Brian. They turned out fairly cool. I have never been a fan of abstract but I really like what Brian had the girls do. I am mostly amazed that my girls did these 100% by themselves.

Kaitlyn's Last day of school

2009-08-04T16:36:00.004+01:00

On the Last day of school (Yes it was only 3 weeks ago for us) Kaitlyn had me come in and take pictures of her class. It was a really sad day for Kaitlyn as she is really good friends with her class mates and wont be in class with them next year.

We found out this year that Kaitlyn has severe dyslexia. When she started reading in Kindergarten in Arizona I knew something wasn't right when she couldn't read the word "ax" even

though she knew very well what the

letter "a" and "x" said. I tried talking to teachers about it then but since it is my first child and not knowing what it is like to have a child learn to read I was pretty unsure of myself.

All I knew was I struggled horribly in reading growing up. In fact in college I would stay up all night long trying to read 1 chapter in my accounting book. I didn't know why reading was so hard for me then but after I got married and I learned more about reading disorders I wondered if it was dyslexia. Sometimes I wondered how I ever graduated with my accounting degree.

I knew if any of my children had it I wanted to get what help I could for my child. I have continued to watch both Brianna and Kaitlyn closely. They are very different children when it comes to learning to read. Brianna so easily grabs the concepts and reads so quickly where Kaitlyn struggles at remembering the sounds the letters are suppose to make.

I talked to Kaitlyn's Teacher about it last year but they said they thought Kaitlyn just needed to learn the new language and she would be fine. That is where there was another difference. Brianna was completely fluent in Dutch and Kaitlyn was still struggling to learn.

This year Kaitlyn's teacher came to me and said, "We think there is something wrong and would like to test Kaitlyn for dyslexia" and asked if it was o.k. Can you imagine my answer.... YES test her. The test came back that she has "severe dyslexia" and had lots of suggestions of what was needed for her education. One of them being that she needed to repeat this grade and relearn her reading skills differently since she was so far behind in her reading.

Kaitlyn is incredibly sad not to be going to the next grade with her friend. I am hoping we made the right decision for her to help her improve, gain confidence.

My last struggle is dyslexia makes it very difficult to processes language and her we have my little girl in a foreign country and in school in a different language. Sometimes my heart just breaks thinking about how hard it has to be for her. I love this opportunity to live abroad and to have my children learn a new language. I just didn't expect it to be so hard on my oldest.

MILK MILK MILK

2009-08-04T16:27:00.002+01:00

Brooke is not the best eater in the world but boy does she like to drink her milk. We decided that she needs more nutrition in her life then the many cups of soy milk will bring to her (Brooke has an intolerance to normal milk). So we have in a way taken away her milk. Meaning each time she ask for a cup of milk we say "no, but if you are hungry we can have such in such..." Brooke gets fairly mad at us when we say this but we are having a little bit more luck on having her eat things (not much but a little).

Brooke Obviously not happy with this arrangement has decided to go to other means to get what she wants. I think the picture describes it all!

Brian's Picture

2009-07-29T22:00:00.005+01:00

So Brian has gotten into painting a lot lately and teaching the girls what he knows about painting. Which I am always amazed at since he has never taken an Art class in his life. I would really like to sign him up for a class I'm wondering if we can have a side income. I am willing to hang his painting on my wall.

So I thought I would just share his latest creation, which he is proud of. The original plan was to call it "Carmen" but now Brian calls it "Rock Lobster" (You cannot see the head from about 4 steps away). Anyway about it, It was a Ballerina he had painted for Kaitlyn using her favorite color... Orange. The head and hair are in white so it is hard to see in the photo but looks really cool.

The Efteling

2009-07-29T21:07:00.006+01:00

We have had a very enjoyable summer full of fun family time. Brian got to go to Italy for a work Conference which I was very jealous of. But the girls and I enjoyed the first week of summer together going to the Library and excitedly finding they had added a children's English section to it. I can not tell you how I was jumping for joy at that. No more rummaging through other moving expat stuff trying to find used English books to read to my children for cheap. I can now get a few of them from the Library.

We have had many visits to the park and hanging out with friends going to the pool and the beach. I really do enjoy the unstructured life of the summer.

So on Monday we had a nice sunny day and so we spontaneously decided we were going to take the girls to the Efteling.

http://www.efteling.nl/

We hadn't been yet and I must say, I am such a fan. I really enjoyed it as far as an amusement park for kids go. The girls really enjoyed it. The lines were max 25 min wait on the big roller coasters and everything else was 5-10 minute wait.

The girls all have their own personalities. Kaitlyn is so much like me. AFRAID of everything! Every roller coaster we came to we did our best to talk her into riding it (although I'm not afraid of roller coasters there were a lot off other things when I was younger that I was scared of). Mostly with Kaitlyn unless she was sure she was safe, we would ride the ride and she would wait for us to get off. It was just to scary for her.

Brianna wanted to ride the ride but was a little scared but really wanted to try but wasn't sure... In the end Brianna would ride the ride and then come off deciding it was the best thing ever!

Brooke never questioned. She wanted to ride every ride and it was the best. After her first ride which was called the bobsledded she told me very excitedly on the ride "Momma - I'm Flying". She actually gets really upset when she dresses up and puts on her fairy wings and then gets on the trampoline and is unable to fly. It really makes her so mad. She loved the roller coaster rides because she finally felt like she was flying.

Brooke was very mad on the Python where she was to small to ride it that she didn't get to go on it. Kaitlyn said there was no way she was going to ride and Brianna was in indecision. We decided that after watching it that although Brianna just hit the height requirement it would be best not to have her on there. She was still small. So I went first and then Brian went. Brooke was really mad that I didn't let her go with Brian so I took her out to watch the roller coaster do it's two upside down turns and then it's 3 twist. Brooke watched it go around so fast as we stood under it and proclaimed "WOW! Momma I'm too small now but when I'm big I can go on that."

At the end of the day the girls thanked us for the best day of their lives. I knew it had been a success. Hopefully summer continues to be full of fun.

Here are some pictures.

Ashcroft Art

2009-07-07T16:01:00.004+01:00

Brian and Kaitlyn have been doing some painting on Saturdays. It is an activity they both love to do. This is some of their most recent painting. The top is Kaitlyn's painting. On the top right is her sun and the back ground is her sunset and then the main image she says is a flower. I think it is a pretty cool picture to have been created by an 8 year old.

This is Brian's picture. It is on a 2ft by 3 ft canvas. It is his first time using oil paints. I am always amazed by what he can come up with to paint. I love his paintings. I want to get a frame for it and hang it on the wall. Sometimes I wish I had one once of his artistic talent. But I am lacking in this area so I just admire what my husband can accomplish.

Brooke's Gym class

2009-07-07T15:13:00.005+01:00

Brooke loves her gym class and being able to play and climb and run. Monday was the last day of gym for the year. So I thought I would take some fun pictures!

As I am posting this blog my children run in the house yelling because in the back yard Brooke has managed to climb up the back fence and is standing on the top of the Shed! I tried to get Brianna to get the camera and take a picture while I tried to get Brooke down using my 3 step little latter. Which was not working very well. I ended up having Kaitlyn climb up the fence grab Brooke, bring her to me and then I drug her off the shed screaming because she didn't want off.

Brianna was unsuccessful in finding the camera before I got Brooke down off the shed. However when I came back and looked at these pictures from gym class, I began to wonder if it was a good idea to put her in class that makes her stronger and allows her to climb on things like this. But at the same time at lease she was strong enough to do it and didn't fall that long ways in the process.

This child of mine is so wonderful but gives me gray hair daily!!!!

Surprise!

2009-07-05T19:58:00.003+01:00

Brian's Birthday was truly as surprise for him.

Brooke's birthday was on the 13th of June and I have been trying for 2 weeks to put a birthday party together for her. Then I though why not combine it with Brian's birthday and just do a fun party with everyone. I knew Brian was under so much stress he didn't know what month it was and so I just told him we were doing a birthday party for Brooke on Saturday (the 4th of July). He said o.k. Still not know what day Saturday was.

Saturday came and we prepared everything for the party. I was having real guilt trips as Brian was out cleaning the yard on his birthday. But he didn't know it was his birthday.

As our guest arrived, some of them were Brooke's friends and their families however some of them were Brian co-workers and his friends. He was confused and then we told him, Happy Birthday! It is your Birthday today.

My poor over worked husband.

We had a really enjoyable time at our party talking with friends. I find that, Honestly, being with friends is the most enjoyable place I can be. I think we would invite friends over for parties at our house every weekend, if I could handle the stress of all of it.

After the party we had the girls light some sparklers that we saved from new years. I wanted to do it during the party because we had a lot of sparklers but I forgot all about them! The girls loved it we even tried to teach them, My country 'tis of thee! Kaitlyn remembers the big fireworks from the states and ask why we cant set off our other left over fireworks from New Years. We had to explain what illegal meant.

All and all it was a good day. Hopefully a good surprise birthday for Brian!

Because of my forgetfulness I only managed to take 2 pictures during the party. 1 of Brooke opening her first gift and then I put the camera down somewhere where I couldn't find it and so there was no more pictures for the rest of the party. After the party when things were all cleaned up I found it and was able to take a picture with fireworks.

Kaitlyns A Dipolma

2009-07-03T20:27:00.004+01:00

Kaitlyn has been in swim lessons all year and she has earned her "A Diploma". It is an exciting thing for the Dutch for their kids to get their "A Diploma" because it means your child is finally allowed to swim freely in what ever pool they want to at the public pools with out having to have their parents right their next to them.

We felt like Kaitlyn could swim well enough for that when we entered this country as she has had swim lessons since she was 2 years old.

However because she didn't have an "A diploma" she had to be in what ever pool we were in. So if we were in the little pool with Brooke she couldn't run off with a friend to play in the recreational pool with the water slide. Kind of a bummer.

So we put her in swim lessons so that She could have this magical "A diploma". I expected it to happen kind of quickly because Kaitlyn is such a strong swimmer already and has no problem swimming. However they didn't seem to see it that way. Apparently she has to be able to do more then just swim, float and puller her self out of the pool to get the diploma. She had to be able to learn all the swim strokes and learn to dive (which she has been a little afraid of) and a few other task like swimming threw a tunnel under the water. They also have to learn how to swim with their cloths and shoes on(I guess that is in case the fall into one of the many canals of water everywhere with their cloths on, they have some practice getting out.)

With so much for Kaitlyn to learn it took all year. However, with a big WAHOO! Kaitlyn now has her A diploma and can run off and swim with all of her friends freely while I deal with Brooke in the kiddy pool.

Poor Brianna is still stuck with me in the kiddy pool but she is in swim lessons now and hopefully sometime next year she will be free from my side!

Below is a picture of Kaitlyn kind of scared to do her finally test she has on her t-shirt, shorts and shoes, ready to jump in and show all that she has learned. To the left you see a few boys in full rain clothing. They are swimming for their C diploma. The higher the diploma the more clothing you have to be able to swim with. I was really impressed with these boys in rain jackets and pants. The were swimming well.

new post in order

2009-06-29T22:33:00.001+01:00

I'm behind on posting somethings but I also want the stuff I post to be in order. So I posted it in where it should be and I am putting links here for anyone curious about the new post.

http://shawntelashcroft.blogspot.com/2009/06/easter-2009.html

http://shawntelashcroft.blogspot.com/2009/05/since-kaitlyn-was-going-to-be-turning-8.html

http://shawntelashcroft.blogspot.com/2009/04/pictures-by-lake.html

summer time

2009-06-19T17:41:00.004+01:00

June, July and August are the time for being out of school exploring the world, playing in the water until your waterlogged and your fingers wrinkel. It is a time for eating watermelon and having BBQ with friends.

However today is June 19th and my kids are still in school and will be until July 10th. I find that I have had enough of school. I want summer break. I don't want my alarm clock to go off at 7 in the morning. I want flexiable bed times. I want to go explore the world with my children. I want to go to the beaches and play and just be free of some of the stress.

Seeing as I am having such a hard time with this I have decided to make a countdown counter so that I know how many more days I have to survive before I get my 6 weeks of summer break.

Vacation Countdowns

Family Photo's 2009

2009-06-16T08:14:00.006+01:00

Brookes Birthday

2009-06-08T11:59:00.005+01:00

About a week ago we were talking to Brooke about what she would want to do for her birthday. She told us that she wanted to "get on a plane and go to grandma's house for her birthday." It only make since. When we went to Arizona over the girls spring break from school it happened to be that Kaitlyn and Brianna's birthday's were both during that spring break. So she figures we went to Arizona for their birthdays. Why can't we go for hers??? My poor little Brooke. We had to explaine we couldn't go to Arizona for her Birthday but we would try to do something fun for her here.

The day of her birthday the girls were excellent. Kaitlyn and Brianna made her a birthday hat and the whole day was to take Brooke to do what ever she wanted and to play what ever she wanted. It was the best day for her.

We went to McDonalds for dinner.

Then we came home for some delicious chocolate cake (that brooke decorated with dad) and the opening of presents. She seemed pretty happy. She got to talk to my mom on the phone and she was happy about that.

My Dad

2009-06-07T20:16:00.006+01:00

I love my dad! My dad is a quite man who always is willing to help out when ever asked. He is also a man who doesn't like to sit still. He quietly is always busy about doing something. It is a good thing he has a citrus farm to keep him busy with lots of work and things to do. On the Citrus farm he also has Date trees that he has to keep trimmed up and pollen them each year.

On Friday my dad was up in one of these tall date trees doing this work. He is 71 (to be 72 this Friday) but he is still climbing trees as if he were 12. He really doesn't get this idea of retirement.

Anyways his ladder fell and to make a long story short he ended up falling from the tree. He ended up shattering his ankle and braking both of his leg bones in one leg which ended up breaking through the skin. Luckily for him he had a cell phone. He called my sister Shay and she gathered up a few of my nephews who drove out to orchards and got him off the ground and rushed him to the hospital. They are having to do several surgeries on him and say that his ankle will never be the same.

As my sister got him into the Emergency room they ran into Dr. Price who is in my parents ward and who works in that ER. Dr. Price looked and my father and said "Robert I told you, You have to stop climbing those trees."

I feel so bad for my dad. I want to be able to be there to visit him in the hospital. He has such a long stay and surgeries to go through. He will have a long recovery processes to go through at home and I wish I could be there to help my mom. It is times like this that I hate being so far away from family. I feel like there is so much I want to do and so little I can do.

Edit: my sister Shay has this blog post that explains things with pictures much better than I can since she was the one there for the event.
http://timandshay.blogspot.com/2009/06/june-5th-another-eventful-day.html

Brian Did IT!

2009-06-05T14:51:00.003+01:00

For all of those who don't know Brian REALLY well, may not believe that Brian (Physics nerd, computer programmer, math genius man) is capable of doing the make up job below, but he did. He is incredibly artistically talented and enjoys doing things like this a lot. When my girls become 12 and need to learn how to put on make up I think I'll send them to dad. Brian also did the post below because he didn't want to wait forever for me to catch up on all my other postings as I like to put everything in the order that they have happened. He was so proud of how the girls looked.

I was so proud that he did it I told him to be sure to state that he was the one doing the posting and of course he didn't. So I am going to be sure to let all 3 of my blog readers know that BRIAN DID IT! Isn't he a cool dad... My little girls at least think so!

-Shawntel-

The Fairy Princesses

2009-06-01T08:01:00.008+01:00

Yet another slow Sunday morning, I was trying to avoid planning my lesson, so I decided to play with the girls. We all dove into Mom's makeup bag, found the few functioning makeup things (Brooke has a fascination already with makeup and has destroyed most of it already) and got to work. Here are the results:

A little makeup and we have the fairy princesses. We were laughing that the girls had 10 years
added to their faces. A little scary that these could be their clubbing faces...

Being a closet monster.

They decided that they wanted to have a tea party. They were gossiping here .

Brianna hamming it up as only she can. She has never passed up a chance to pose.

And finally they found their vocation. They do so well as the queen of hearts... "Off with his head!"

And finally Brooke decided to follow my example and made herself beautiful this morning:

Kaitlyn's 8th Party

2009-05-05T20:59:00.002+01:00

Since Kaitlyn was going to be turning 8 while we were in Arizona we thought we would do her birthday party before we left. I needed it to be small so we invited only 6 kids from her class which was really hard to do for Kaitlyn because she is friends with everyone. The kids in her class are kind of friends in groups and Kaitlyn is friends with all of the groups. There was the Fabianna, Max, and Cathalijne group and their was the Jet, Carline, and DaisyRae group. Kaitlyn had her closest friends Terrance, Nina and Inez but then she needed to choose between these groups. Kaitlyn wanted to invite Jet, but seeing as Cathalijne is our neighbor and Fabianna and Max had both come over to play a lot this year I though we had better invite that group. Really if Kaitlyn had it her way should would have just invited everyone which I would have let her do, If I wasn't trying to get ready to go to Arizona.

So we had our small group and we first came to our house and had the kids make pizza. They loved it. Each one made there very own, just the way they liked it.

Then Brian took the kids out on a scavenger hunt around the neighborhood. We had clues hidden and little treasures hidden that they had to find. They had to count out paces and it was a lot of fun. I helped out a bit but I kept running home to change out the pizza's that were baking in the oven. But during the time that I was there I got to experience all of Cathalijne personality. Something I wasn't really aware of before because Kaitlyn plays with her outside in the evenings after school and last year at her birthday party my dutch was so poor that I just didn't understand much of what the kids were saying.

But this year Cathalijne was going on about how she was too cool to do this scavenger hunt. Even though all the other kids were doing it and being part. She demanded that Fabianne not do it and just hang out with her. At one point Max got so mad at her for not being part that he just chewed her out and I could have kissed that boy for doing that! Fabianne is an incredibly shy, submissive girl and she pretty much does what ever to keep the peace so when Cathalijne says she has to do something she will say 1 time she doesn't want to and then Cathalijne will tell her she has to and then Fabianne goes along with it. I feel bad for Fabianne. Max is a very sweet boy, he gets along well with Cathalijne and allowing her to dictate everything he is going to do. But every once in awhile he has enough and this was one of those times and he let Cathalijne have it. It didn't help any though, she only went off and pouted.

At least the rest of the kids were having a lot of fun doing their scavenger hunt. In fact Inze Mom said that she demanded that her mom had to do the same thing at her birthday party.

The scavenger hunt was done and Brian brought all the kids back to the house. The Pizza's still were not ALL done being cooked so we had the kids hide the gifts in the house and Kaitlyn had to go search all through the house to find them. Cathalijne of course could not join in and she would not let Fabianne go either. So they sat at the table while Cathalijne made up a song about how wonderful she was. I got my camera out because I thought I would like a picture of this but she luckily has great camera since and is certain to smile for every picture.

Kaitlyn found all of her gifts and had a great time opening all of her gifts.

Below is Kaitlyn with Terrance, (he moved here this year from Aruba). He is her crush. She told me she is going to marry him. They are so funny, they will have arguments and go to their corners and then after about 5 mins they come back together and talk about it and work them out. It is so funny. Kaitlyn refuses to tell Terrance that she loves him. She just wants him to be her best friend for ever! Almost every day they play after school on the Wii or out back on the Trampoline. They have one great thing in common. They both speak English and Kaitlyn loves that after school she can talk to Terrance in English.

The next picture is Kaitlyn with Nina- Kaitlyn and Nina have been friends all year. There friendship has been a little rocky. At the beginning of the year Nina only wanted to play with Kaitlyn and the were best of friends but then somewhere along the way Nina realized that some day Kaitlyn may move back to the States and that would mean she would move away from her. Nina was mad at Kaitlyn and she stopped playing with Kaitlyn and was really moody and even started talking bad about her to other kids. It was really hard for Kaitlyn she didn't understand what was going on. Luckily Terrance moved in at this time and she was able to make friends with him and then I was able to talk with Nina's mom and get things figured out. Kaitlyn and Nina are still good friends just not as close they play 1 or 2 times a week but not everyday like it used to be.

This is Fabianne, She was to shy to have a direct picture taken with Kaitlyn so this is the best we could do. I really like Fabianne. She comes over ever few weeks to ask if she can jump with Kaitlyn on the Trampoline and they have a nice time jumping or playing out side.

Next is Max who is so sweet. He is so much like Kaitlyn, He loves to just be outside playing. A lot of times when he is next door at Cathalijne's house playing he will talk her into coming over to play with Kaitlyn.

This is Cathelijne. I think I have said enough.

Next is Inez, Who is another one of Kaitlyn's dear friends. Inez and Kaitlyn will Also play each week. Inez loves running and playing. I think she ran herself tired at the birthday party. Even when Nina was being a little crazy, Inez was always a true friend to Kaitlyn. It was Inez mom that help me figure things out because Inez would go home and tell her mom how she didn't like what Nina was saying and then Inez mom would let me know what was happening and then I was able to take care of it all. I really like that little girl.

And of course Brianna, they are the best of sisters- Brianna gave Kaitlyn our family gift to open up. More picture of the fun we had with it and what it was.

Pizza is now finally done and we can all eat dinner. Yea. Except Cathelijne sat at the top of the table and informed everyone she was the Queen and that they couldn't eat unless she ate and that they couldn't do anything unless she said it was o.k. (I decided Next year we are inviting Jet's group of friends to the birthday party).

After they were done eating everyone went out and got on the trampoline. Everyone was anxiously waiting to get on. I had no idea they wanted to go jump so badly. If I knew we could entertain them this way I wouldn't have put so much time into the scavenger hunt.

After we got everyone home, which was a task in itself because Cathelijne didn't want to go home she wanted to go to Fabianne's house. I told her that was fine but she had to ask her father first since he was next door and she threw a major fit about it and how she just wanted to go to Fabianne's house and call him from there. I didn't let her do it and I made her go ask her father. Her dad said no and that it was to late and the she threw another Fit but that was his problem now and not mine! I was off to take the other kids home :-)

So After everyone was home, Brian wanted to open the gift he got for Kaitlyn. Which was of course a microscope. Him and the girls played with it. They collected water samples from the canal and pieces of grass to look at and all sorts of things. They had fun.

Easter 2009

2009-05-04T20:36:00.000+01:00

Each year at Easter there is usually so much fun activities for the girls. The Saturday before is Easter their is usually Ward Easter Egg hunts and Family Easter Egg hunts and Even fun activity's at friends houses. Sunday is full of Family dinners and is usually so busy that their is hardly time to Enjoy the Easter Candy.

But here, it is just us. Even though plenty around us are celebrating Easter we seem to be on our own or don't seem to be aware of where the activities are.

So to make up for it we decided to have extra fun and color a lot of Eggs. This year we did About 60 eggs. The girls had so much fun. We found some really fun die kits. The girls had a blast doing their artwork on their eggs.

It was even funner Easter morning being able to search out the 60 eggs in the back yard and in the house. They were good. They found all 60 of them. It took us a really long time to eat all 60 boiled eggs. We made salads, we had them for breakfast we made deviled eggs. Everything you could think of we did! Luckily boiled eggs will last for a little bit in the fridge.

The Keukenhof

2009-05-04T09:23:00.006+01:00

The saturday before Easter we got to go to the Keukenhof as a family. It was so beautiful. The smell of all the flowers was just heavenly. I can't even discribe it.

Brian was sneezing dispite all of the allergy medicine he had taken. I don't think it was so heavenly for him.

The girls thought it was fun but they were very disappointed that they couldn't pick any flowers. We entertained them by giving them the camera and letting them run around and take pictures of each other and the flowers. We got some really cool pictures.

I put all the pictures together in a long movie and you can see a little bit of what we saw. I am just so glad that we went this year and got to enjoy the beauty of so many flowers and such gorgious gardens and the time together as a family.

Projects

2009-05-03T07:22:00.005+01:00

Brian had so much fun with the girls building the last project that he decided that they didn't need a contest to build stuff so him and the girls built a water rocket. They had so much fun setting it off. Brianna only considered it a sucesses if the water rocket actually sprayed her with water.

Here is a video that shows the wild fun.

Science Projects

2009-05-03T07:00:00.003+01:00

The girls school did a big science/engeneering project contest. The rules where that every kid were suppose to build something and bring it in. Each class would vote on there favorite project and enter that project into the school contest and then a winner would be picked from the younger classes, middle classes and upper classes.

Brianna built a windmill out of tooth picks and feathers. In the back her her windmill she had a little princess that dances each time the windmill turned around (that was Brian helping a little). Brianna had the idea to have a princess and Brian made her dance.

Kaitlyn made a car out of CD's(for the wheels) and styrofoom. We had a small engine and a 9 volt batterie that ran the whole thing. All the boys in Kaitlyns class thought Kaitlyn had the coolest project.

Brianna's Project Won for the younger classes and we were so poud of her and Brian. Brianna got a 10 euro gift certificat to a book store and of course she went and got a book of princes fairy tales. Kaitlyn's came close and she was so disapointed but there was a lot of compitition as they had her grouped with the middle aged kids so she was the youngest of her group.

The girls mostly loved building there projects with dad and having that time together. They have such a good dad.

The cat in the craddle

2009-05-03T06:57:00.001+01:00

So when learning about the kinderdijk we came across this really fun interesting Dutch Folk Tale. I wanted to post it here for anyone interested in a fun short story reading.

http://www.compassrose.org/folklore/dutch/Cat-and-the-Cradle.HTML

Kinderdijk

2009-05-03T06:11:00.002+01:00

We took a trip to one of Hollands famous land marks. The Kinderdijk is a place where there was approximately 20 or so windmills all together that were built several hundren years ago. To find out more you can go to either site below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinderdijk

http://www.kinderdijk.org/

When we first arrive we came accross some geese that reminded me of the geese sisters in the movie Aristocats. They came up to us and began just chatting away and even posed for us to take a picture and when we started to walk away they began to complain. We had a few crackers and we gave them the crackers and they were much happier. Apprarently these geese pose for pictures but expect payment of some kind of food. I was really impressed.

We loved walking down along the path and seeing all the windmills and reading about the History. It was simply beautiful. Clouds rolled in and it got a little cold so the girls look a bit cold but it was still great.

Spring (March)

2009-05-03T05:57:00.002+01:00

Spring time in the Netherlands is so beautiful. Yes! These pictures were take more then a month ago but I am blogging them anyways, because I love this country in the spring!

These are pictures I took as I was walking around and Just happened to have my camera on me. The flowers grow everywhere and I love it. Brian on the other hand has his allergies going crazy. Thank Heavens for medication for him.

Pictures by the lake

2009-04-25T11:37:00.000+01:00

Brian was messing around one day after church in March and decided to try to take some fun pictures of us by the lake. Here they are.

Kaitlyn's Basketball games!

2009-04-16T12:28:00.003+01:00

Kaitlyn is playing basketball and she loves it. Or at least she loves the practices. She doesn't like the games very much because there team always loses sometime like 9-70. It is really discouraging for there team. The other teams are really good and very agressive but for these little girls they are not the agressive type and just do not do well against these other teams.

But they still have fun running around and trying to figure out where the ball is and we have fun laughing while we watch the whole thing.

Sometimes we even chear when the other team scores because well you feel like you want to cheer and the other team really is good :-)

Heart Attacted.

2009-04-16T12:24:00.002+01:00

Some one in the ward Heart-Attacked us! It was great to find the hearts and the cookies. Thanks to who ever did it!

All of our neighbors were curious to know about this strage custome. The Dutch don't seem to do things like this. It was fun to tell them about the fun little things we do.

A day for hiking.

2009-04-16T12:07:00.002+01:00

On a cold Febuary day we were tired of being in the house and so we decided to go out hiking. We went to the Dunes of the Wassenaar beach and found a nice trail and hiked around it. Everything looked so dead it reminded me of being at home and hiking in Arizona except for the occational pool of water here and there :-).

The girls loved hiking around and up and down all over the dunes. I think the only difference between this place and home is well any places this cool at home would have people riding motorcycles and ATC's all over it. Here all we had were quite peaceful hikers.

It was nice to get out.

London Trip

2009-04-15T10:41:00.005+01:00

I have been working on this blog entry for about 2 months now. So on February 15-17 Brian and I went to London by ourselfs and left our kids with his mom who was here visiting. We had a wonderful time!

The first day we went to Kingston Palace and walked through the gardens there that turned out to be about a 3 mile walk. But it was so pretty and so enjoyable. We took so many pictures of the garden and One picture of the palace. It is where Princess Diana lived.

The next day we went to Buckingham palace and I was amazed at how everything was Gold leafed. The statues, the gates, everything. It was very pretty. Then we saw parlement squar that just reminded me of a Mary Poppins for some reason. Next we saw Big Ben which I thought was amazing and then last was Westminster abby. I was very disappointed that we couldn't take pictures inside Westminster. It was very Amazing. Every king and queen of England has a grand tumb inside. There was so much history to learn about. That evening we went to Ripplies Believe-it or not and then went to go see a Shakespear play at the theater. We saw the Taming of the Shrew of course.

The last day we went to the tower of London and went to see London Bridge. It was really neat seeing the Tower of London. It was the Castle of the Kings and Queens back in the 1200's or so but now it is a great museum. However, there were people living in the outside wall of the Castel. I thought that was interesting.

I put all of the Many pictures together into a movie.

We brought home gifts for the girls. For Kaitlyn a Crystal making kit from Ripplies Believe-it or Not. For Brianna a princess figure from the Buckingham palace. and for Brooke a King Henery the VIII bear from the Tower of London. They loved there gifts.

Brooke and the Wii

2009-03-15T19:16:00.003Z

Brooke is so cutely learning to play the Wii. She loves to play the boxing game and she really gets into it! Here are a few fun pictures.

Guys night!

2009-03-05T12:50:00.003Z

Brian had a guys night here at the house and it was a success! At least I heard a lot of laughing and happy guys talking. It almost sounded fun enough to join. But the girls and I were having our own enjoyable time up in the attic. We were watching movies and had special snacks and braiding each others hair. We had a lot of fun. Stayed up to late and then feel asleep together on the bed. I love having that special time with the girls when we just get to play together.

Be Mine!

2009-03-05T12:25:00.004Z

Knowing Valentines day wasn't going to be celebrated at school I decided to help by having the girls make little valentines bags for themselves and we would write each other love notes and put them in the bag. It was a success. Valentines day was so much fun.

Brian's mom was here to visit and it made it extra special for the girls to have Grandma Greer here to be with them on Valentines day. I found this little flowers that sang "you are my sunshine" and read "I love you" I thought they were perfect for the girls for valentines day. They loved reading their love notes.

We had a primary activity day that morning also which was a lot of fun. They got to go play games with there friends which they always love. One of the games was to see who could fit the most marshmallows in there mouths. I was proud of both of my girls stamina in this game. But Kaitlyn's large mouth took the cake. She won with the most marshmallows in her mouth and I think she could have done another. A close second was a little 3 year old Haley in our ward who had an amazing mouth!

Brianna's Dance Performance

2009-03-05T10:18:00.006Z

Brianna had been doing a K3 Dance class and it was time for her class to do a performance. The theme was to have the kids dress up like they were in a Winter Wonderland. So we had fun and Dress Brianna up like the Winter Princess.

Isn't she just the cutest thing ever! I think I'm allowed to think that! I edited the video of all of the dances of that night and tried to put them together in a little short video. It was hard to do because Brianna was always in the back and the dark part of the stage but I tried to put in the fun songs and the parts where you could see her.

You will notice that there is a slide show going on in the back grown on a screen behind where the kids are dancing. It was fun it was pictures of the kid through out the year in the dance class. However it caused a problem once all the kids noticed it. They decided they wanted to watch the slide show too. All of the kids ended up turning around and facing the screen and dancing backwards. So for 1/2 of the performance we got to see there backs. This was kind of beneficial to me since Brianna was always in Back she was now at the front of the stage and I could get great Video's of her dancing (facing away from me of course :-) As a mom I was a little stressed watching my kid dancing backwards so close to the edge of the stage but no one fell off so it was a good night!

You will also notice one song that sounds and looks an awful lot like the "Hookie Pookie"... It is called the "Hookie Tookie".

Kaitlyn got to take this class last year so she was dancing away next to me doing all the dances perfectly. I took a picture just so I could remember. Kaitlyn wanted to go up on stage and dance again so badly. She was so cute.

This is Brianna and her friend Abby from her school class. They were both in this class together. After the dance was over Abby gave this flower to Brianna. It was so sweet of Abby.

New years

2009-02-05T13:57:00.004Z

I love that fireworks are legal in this country. Yes I know there are many places in America where they are legal but in Arizona where I am from, they are very illegal. Brian was so excited to get his fire works this year from the store. He had fun selecting out which type would be fun to set of but safe enough for the girls. We bought a few more then what we were able to set off at midnight. But it was so much fun to do it. The girls loved it and had fun.

Brian's collection. He had to take a picture to make his brothers jealous at home.

We went down to Delft and spent the evening with our friends the DeNucci's. We loved it. It was so much fun playing games and letting the kids play. They really did well together. The kids love the sparklers most of all.

We called it quits once a firework blew up tooooo close to Brian's face. He was o.k. Besides some Ash in his eyes. But you can see the burn mark on his jacket. He told me I had to take a picture. He survived! O my husband!

I think if I could only share one night with my family from the Netherlands I would defiantly chose new years eve night. There is nothing like it. It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

The GREAT FREEZE

2009-01-24T10:24:00.006Z

We had two weeks of really cold weather. WE loved it. All of the water around froze and we were out playing on it all that we could. We new it would soon melt and go away. All the neighbors set up a little party each night out front by the canal and had music and treats to eat and we all hung out and talked with each other while our children skated and played on the ice. It as an enjoyable time. I loved it.

It was so nice because if our neighbors saw that we weren't out there they would come knock on our door and let us know they were getting together outside and it really made me feel included and part of the neighborhood. I always new we lucked out and that we were in a good neighborhood but I am just loving it more and more the longer we live here.

The first day the ice was frozen hard enough to try to walk on it. I let the girls go out and try. I was of course with them also. We walked around and made sure it was good and frozen.

We went walking around and found this little duck pond that the ducks kept from freezing. It is funny because the ducks would stand in a group on the ice and then all jump into the water. We called it the Polar duck club.

Down by the store there is a windmill and we never have been able to get a picture of the girls by it because there is a pond of water around it. Well it was frozen soild so I had the girls walk across it so I could get a picture of them with the windmill.

The first is a picture of one of our neighborhood parties outside. The other is the girls out on Ice skates with their friends having fun.

I am so proud of Kaitlyn and Brianna learning how to ice skate. They have never really been ice skating before. They are doing such a good job.

Brooke and I had fun running around togther. I had a little chair I pushed her around on it. She loved it. She thought this ice thing was so much fun!

Chistmas Day 2008

2009-01-15T13:13:00.012Z

Christmas morning was exciting for the girls. It was so nice for them to wake up and find these wonderful gifts under the tree. Thanks to My parents/Brian's Mom and Joel/ Grandma and Grandpa Moore/ Uncle Steve/My brother Jaymie/ Nancy/ and a good friend KayLynne. We had a really nice Christmas. Our family gave us money so that we could buy gifts for the kids.

The girls each had one items they really wanted from Santa Clause. Kaitlyn wanted a panting easel, Brianna wanted a guitar but the one I found was so inexpensive I was able to get her some princess dress up too. Brooke wanted a baby doll stroller. It was nice being able to get them the gifts that they wanted.

Our friend KayLynne works for the American school here and gave us some good condition used English books that she was able to pick up really cheap from her school. Brooke loves reading time and New books are so loved in our house. They were a beloved gifted and made it looked like a lot of gifts under the tree as I rapped each one individually. We had to read each book as we opened it. It really made opening gifts fun.

Last as a surprise to Brian and the girls with the money my family gave us I purchased a Wii. I sometimes feel guilty for doing so but Brian and the girls were so excited and they have so much fun playing it all the time. It was so fun seeing there excited faces Christmas morning. They have played the Wii so much. Especially Brian. He loves playing it with the girls. On Christmas day he played it so much that he actually hurt his back boxing so he was bent over for a little bit and we had him laying on ice packs.

opening the Wii. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Brian playing boxing. - - - - - - - - -Brian and Brianna playing baseball.

- - - - - -
Kaitlyn and Brianna playing bowling. - - - - -Brian's back hurt and unable to stand up.

As one last fun Christmas story, I don't ever want to forget. Brooke loves putting batteries in her mouth. She loves the feel of them on her gums. I being a good mom do not allow my child to teeth on batteries but dispite everything my 2 year old is still trying to bring her mollers in on batteries. Christmas day has an assortment of batteries to be put into toys and we were keeping them out of reach as much as possible but as a determined 2 year old she was after them. She succeeded and got a battery with out mom and dad noticing. She was excited and in her mouth it went as fast as possible. Brian and I heard a loud OW! We looked to see Brooke spitting out a 9 volt battery. We laughed so hard. I know we should feel bad for our child but all we could do is laugh. She has been much less determined to have batteries in her mouth lately. It has been nice.

Behind on my post due to the weather

2009-01-10T20:48:00.003Z

The weather has been cold but we have been enjoying the winter weather and playing outside in it almost every free minute we have. So I am way behind on my post. I found this article on Yahoo and thought I could post it quickly so you can see all the fun we are enjoying. (Start at picture number 4)

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Dutch-take-skates/ss/events/wl/011009dutchskate#photoViewer=/090110/ids_photos_wl

I will post pictures of Christmas/New Years and all of our fun as soon as we come in out of the cold.

Visiting the Christmas Markets in Germany.

2009-01-01T15:19:00.002Z

We love the freedom of having a car now and we decide to take a short 2 hour trip and drive to Dusseldorf Germany to visit and see the Christmas markets. What was suppose to be a 2 hour drive turned out to be a 5 our drive because we left at 4pm in the afternoon on a Friday and went through a lot of rush hour traffic through ever city we drove which was a lot of cities. So instead really we sat in rush hour traffic for 3 hours and then we drove for 2 hours to Germany and got there at 9:00 at night. We had a short stop also because Brooke threw up along the way. The beginning of our Christmas sickness started that day.

As we got to Germany we discovered that our GPS unit that we purchased on sale only came with maps for the Netherlands and didn't have maps for Germany. So we did our best to follow signs and somehow amazingly we found our hotel. We were so happy to climb into bed and go to sleep that night.

The next morning we woke up and we went to Konnigstraat in down town Dusseldorf to do some shopping. This was also tricky with out the gps. But luckily Germany has very nice street signs and we found our way around.

Our first stop was to find food. We were a bit hungry so we went in the first place we found with suitable breakfast food. It happened to be a Dunkin Donuts. The girls loved their donuts for breakfast.

The shopping was so nice. The malls were beautiful. Being inside was just like being inside a mall at home. Brian and I found the similarities kind of funny especially since here they do not have malls like that here in the Netherlands.

The Christmas markets were beautiful but also packed full of people. They had really neat wood toys and christmas items to buy. We found Giant Chocolates that we bought to give to friends for christmas.

We stopped and played with the girls to. It snowed on us a bit to along the way. We enjoyed some good food at the market and just had fun. Dusseldorf was a beautiful city to visit. I am really glad we went to visit.

School Christmas Party

2008-12-27T19:46:00.003Z

On Thursday December 18th the Girls had a Christmas party at school in the evening time. Each class gathers together and sings Christmas song and tells the story of Jesus being born. The girls love their Christmas party at school. I keep trying to figure out how to get in and record part of it but the parents are sent of to socialize while the class has its party. I guess I'm the only one fascinated with the Dutch culture enough to want to get it on tape. Maybe next year.

Brianna in her classroom

Kaitlyn by her classroom.

Christmas Chocolates!

2008-12-27T19:41:00.003Z

A friend brought by some Christmas chocolates for our family. It was so thoughtful of her. I thought the chocolates were so pretty that I had to take a picture of them before they were eaten. So here is a picture... Know that besides being pretty, they were good chocolates.

Gingerbread Houses!

2008-12-27T19:03:00.005Z

One of my favorite tradition of Christmas is making Gingerbread houses. This Family night we had planned to make our Gingerbread houses.

The Elders from Church called and asked if we could provided dinner for 2 visiting elders. We agreed and bought some extra stuff so they could make a gingerbread house too.

The girls love it every time the missionaries come over for dinner. The bounce to the door when the bell rings and talk non-stop to the missionaries until they leave. This time the bell rang and the same thing happened they ran yelling to the door. We were at the oven cooking and finishing up. Brianna comes into me and says in a very serious tone of voice. "Mom, when are the real missionaries going to get here." She had left the visiting Elders at the door because they were not the "real" missionaries that we have a church every week. Brianna loves Elder Walker the best. We had to go and invite the elders in.

After a short amount of time the girls decided these elders were equally as cool and began talking away. We had such an enjoyable time making our gingerbread houses. These elders shared with us that one of the most interesting things they have eaten over here is pasta with apple sause on it. I had to go ask a few of my friends about it. They said they have never done apple sause on their pasta but they do, do apple sause on there vegitables, it makes them taste better they say. It is something to think about. Maybe someday I will try it?

Starting the process.

Brooke was enjoying eating the candy and Brian did the decorating of hers.

The girls are enjoying the activity.

everyone

Brooke Being cute

I love this picture of her.

This is my real Brooke and her house.

Kaitlyns house is complete.

Brianna's Fisished house

The Elders... Need I say more. 19(ish) year old boys are so weird.

STRESS!

2008-12-26T18:18:00.008Z

I love Christmas and I love all the wonderful fun memories that we get to make with our children and all the fun traditions.

With Christmas comes some stress also. Stress of lots of things to do. When I get stressed I get forgetful. I absolutely hate this part of me. I hate forgetting things because to me it is absolutely embarrassing that I forgot.

Because this month has been full of stress and being sick and lots of stuff not working out the way it was suppose to there were a lot of things I forgot. Here is a small list of important things I can remember that I have forgotten this month.

1)A friend moved and left the country - I wanted to go by and say goodbye and let her know she would be missed. Instead I forgot and didn't remember until a week after she had moved. I was so sad.

2)A friend had her baby and I was suppose to take her dinner. My children got sick the same week and I totally forgot and didn't remember until today. Which is so sad. I have to call and say sorry. I feel so irresponsible.

3)Another friends husband became deathly ill and was in the hospital. I'm so "la-di-da!" all the time that I didn't notice at church or pick up that something was wrong. I finally read her blog page and realized all the stress she had been through, but I read it after he was home from the hospital. I felt so stupid that I don't even know how to bring it up or say I'm sorry.

4)I have had weeks go by where I have forgotten to call my mom all together and left her in worry that I was mad at her.

5)I have forgotten EVERY family members birthday who's birthday was in the month of December. For example at the beginning of this month I called Brian's brother Dono to verify when his wife Jackie's Birthday was. He told me December 11. I then promptly forgot to get a gift ordered and mailed and I forgot to even call on her Birthday, I totally forgot about it until like December 20th. My family is loaded with December birthdays... I have many I forgot stories for this month.

6) I've been sick with something similar to Laryngitis this week. I've been down and miserable on the couch. I've had Brooke throwing up and Brianna sick also. Not a fun week but I did my best to finish up Christmas shopping. I had to turn to online shopping because actually leaving the house to do my christmas shopping was not going to happen. One of my gifts for Brian was going to be putting to gether a picture collage of him and the girls and the fun activities they did this year. I ordered the pictures online and I just needed to pick them up at Kruidvat. I had the picture frame and everything. Did I remember to pick up the photo's from the store? Nope. Did I have that gift to give to Brian? Nope!

7)I forgot to mail out Christmas cards. Nothing to friends or family.

8)I had friends email me and ask for our address so they could mail us Christmas cards and I forgot to reply to the emails.

9)I have a friend from Spain and she goes back to Spain with her family every vacation. They have a Hamster. She always ask if I can care for the hamster while they are away. I am always happy to do it as it makes my children happy and we are not going anywhere anyways. Well as they were getting ready to leave to go to the airport and were coming by to drop Stuart the hamster off at my house. Was I at home? Nope, I forgot she was coming over. Marta couldn't get a hold of me at all and was forced to leave Stuart at her house and a key with the neighbors in hopes that I would return to get the hamster. When I called the Neighbor they were disappointed because their children wanted to care for the hamster for a day or 2. So I agreed to wait until Monday to pick up the Hamster. Monday evening when I was suppose to go get it. I forgot. They called me late that night and wondered if I was going to care for this hamster at all.

10)The Wednesday before school let out it was busy as usual. first I drop Kaitlyn off at gymnastics class and then I take Brianna to K3 dance class and then I have to go back and pick Kaitlyn up from gymnastics class and then get Brianna from Dance class and then we all go together to Kaitlyn's Basketball class. All after school activities seem to be scheduled on Wednesday. So as normal I did the routine. Dropped Kaitlyn off and then Biked with Brianna over to her dance class. She was biking really slow and I kept encouraging her to go fast because we needed to hurry or she would be late for class. Nothing can really speed up Brianna. I was trying to put a little speed into her anyways. We got to dance class a little late and I needed to hurry to the store to get food for dinner before I picked up Kaitlyn from class. I had Brianna park her bike outside and told her to run in to class as fast as she could and I took off. I was hurrying to do my other errands when my coat pocket begins to ring. I forgot I even had my cell phone in there. I answered it and it was someone from the dance school. Talking 100% in dutch of course letting me know there was no dance class and I needed to come back and get Brianna. I had forgotten that the last week they weren't going to have dance class. I had 10 minutes until Kaitlyn was out of gymnastics and I had to go back and get Brianna and the Bike ride back wasn't going to be fast. I went ahead and road my bike to meet Kaitlyn and told her to wait there until I got back and that I was going to be really late. That way she could finish class and change her cloths. I gave her a kiss and left. I road as fast as I could back and got Brianna, who had been in tears thinking that she had road her bike so slow to class that she missed it all together. My poor Brianna. We then road back and met Kaitlyn and headed off to basketball class. We dropped Kaitlyn off at Basketball and I took Brianna and Brooke with me to attempt to do our grocery shopping for dinner that didn't get done before. Somewhere in the store Brooke put down her sippy cup that she had been drinking her milk out of. I forgot she had one till we left and so we rushed back in to look for it. We searched each isle. I wouldn't have been so deligent but I only have 2 left she has lost all the other ones. We couldn't find it anywhere. I gave up and we had to leave and go get Kaitlyn but of course we were late again and my poor girl was waiting for us out in the cold with no jacket because I forgot I had it with me.

11)Some dear friends have dropped by with Christmas gifts and Christmas cards this year. I can't remember if I have sent them thank cards for them. I have some memory of doing some but I can't remember to who. So if you brought something by. Thank you.

12)I told friends I would send them information by email and I forgot to do it.

I know there is a much longer list of things I have forgotten but I have already forgotten that I have forgotten them. I hate that I get so forgetful.

So what is the point of this post. The point it to say I'm sorry to all of you who may have been forgotten in one way or another. I am sorry that my brain short-circuits. Please know you mean the world to me and as soon as I get my brain back and functioning, I hope to be a much better friend to you.

I really do hope you are having a very Happy Holidays! (Now I will post about the more enjoyable things that occur at Christmas).

Brooke and Sacrament meeting

2008-12-14T14:47:00.006Z

I love my Brooke she is so full of personality and full of funny things she does all the time. But she is the most determined child also. This post is a record for her. So that when she is grown up and has kids I can say, You did the same thing!

Each week we struggle through sacrament meeting with her. The poor little girl gets so board so she struggles with sitting still. And a quite voice is not something this little girls has mastered.

Lets just talk about today's experience and you can imagine what every week must be like.

To understand today's experiences completely you have to understand this. We are in a small ward/Branch. We all fit in the chapel no problem. Our chapel has wood floors. No carpet so everything Echo's alot. And well there are not a lot of young kids in our ward. I guess there are more young kids then their are older kids but all the kids seem so well behaved. We just don't have the kid volume in our little branch that we had in our wards back home where there were so many kids making noise that our kid making noise wasn't really noticed. Our kid is certainly noticed.

Today we got to church early for tithing settlement. Which meant that boredom set in a little earlier than usual for my little toddler. Kind of before the opening prayer was even said. So by time the sacrament came around there was no hope at keeping her quite. My goal was to just keep her busy enough the she was distracted for the most part. But it didn't work. First she wanted her stickers put on her hands so I was helping her do that but I didn't do it just right so she shouts out... "NO OTHER ARM!" I tell her "o.k. but we have to shhhhhh. We can't talk so loud." So of course she talks louder for me because obviously I'm not understanding.

I get her stickers on the other arm and we have her quite for a second but then stickers get boring and she crawls up on my lap and looks directly in my faces and begins singing at the top of her voice. "I'M A GUMMY BEARS, O YES I'M A GUMMY BEARS, O I'M A YUMMY TUMMY FUNNY LUCKY GUMMY BEAR." ( for more of this song see link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_hF31z130&feature=related ). Yes friends in the middle of the sacrament my little girl broke into the gummy bear song in the loudest voice possible. Yes, I wanted to laugh really hard. I was trying to help her be quite but the more I tried the louder she got.

I found a new different book of stickers and I sent her down to Brian to see if he might have more luck with entertaining her. She took her book of stickers down to dad but quickly returned with "mom, I can't find my monkey sticker." She was quite distressed by not being able to find her monkey. So I thought I had better help her look through these animal stickers and help her find the monkey. We looked together at the stickers I pointed out the bear and some other animals as we looked for a monkey and then she saw a Lion and she declared "WOW a LION! A LION SAYS RRRRROOOAARRRRRRRRR!". It was by far the longest loudest most excited roar, I had ever heard in my life. Had we not been in sacrament meeting, I would have been fulling entertained by her and even roared with her. But again I had to tell her that hear we had to be quite. Again, she was persistent in telling me exactly what a lion said.

I then had to go up to the front to sing a Christmas song with the relief society. It gave me a small bit of joy to leave her with Brian this time as usually it is Brian going to help with passing the sacrament and leaving me with this experience. Of course the whole time Brooke is yelling for "Mamma! Mamma!". So loudly that I could hear her clearly over the top of our choir performance.

After I came back and sat down she noticed Lucas. Lucas is a friend from nursery. A friend that was sitting in his chair just two rows up so nicely and so quietly. She yells "LUCAS!, LOOK MOMMA, ITS LUCAS!". I'm just wondering who spiked my child with caffeine in her genetics. Everything is on SUPER power.

That was it, I took her out to a class room and we stood in a corner together. I talked to her about quite voices. This isn't the first time. Every Sunday, we visit the corner in a classroom and talk about quite voices at least 1 time. Does it work no. We come back in and the same loud voice is used. But I feel like I have to try something.

Mahna-Mahna

2008-12-13T21:59:00.005Z

I woke up this morning to the smell of smoke. I quickly ran down stairs to find that my Kaitlyn and Brianna had woken up early and decided they wanted to light all of moms candles. Of course one candle tipped over and then started the paper towel on fire and Kaitlyn rushed that to the sink and burnt her finger in the process. There was wax all over the table that Brooke was so nicely trying to wipe up.

Kaitlyn was given a long talk to about how she isn't allowed to touch the lighter that I use to light the kitchen oven with. We talked about how fires start and how we don't play with fire or candles when mom and dad aren't around to help when something happens.

My little girls needed some activities to do today otherwise it was going to be a very long Saturday. Usually I make sure they spend lots of time outside using up that energy but today it was 0 degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit all day long. Not the kind of weather you send your kids out playing in. It was just to cold. So we had to come up with some creative ideas.

Brian decided we needed to make another movie. The theme for the movie is Manha-Manha. For those not familiar with this fun Muppet's clip. You can watch it here on you tube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTXyXuqfBLA

So here is our interpretation of the song. We had fun making our movie. I hope you enjoy watching it.

Crushes

2008-12-12T12:27:00.003Z

Kaitlyn had two of her friends over for lunch today. Nina, Ines and Kaitlyn talked the whole time about kissing. Or at least that was the word I heard a lot.

I talked with Nina's mom and she told me about how she went with the kids on a class field trip this last week and how the girls were talking non stop about the boys they liked and about kissing and everything.

I thought about the fact that I have these girls over at my house almost everyday for lunch or after school to play. But because my Dutch is so immature I don't understand 1/2 of what they are saying. So here they have been talking this whole time about there crushes and stuff and I had no idea.

I feel like I'm missing out. So I though about the future and all the things I would miss out on knowing about because I don't understand Dutch well enough. I decided one of two things are just going to have to happen.

1- I'm going to have to become fluent in Dutch if we stay in this country. Not sure how to accomplish that as I feel rather incapable in the area of learning a foreign language.

or

2 - we need to go live in an English speaking country where our kids friends speak the language I understand! But I hate the idea of moving again so soon.

So it just leaves me to think for a while.

Kaitlyn

2008-12-11T14:56:00.003Z

My Kaitlyn has been immune to boys and crushes for quite some time. I've watched as other kids girls her age developed crushed and even chased the boys on the play ground. But Kaitlyn has been pretty slow in coming into this stage.

As a mom I couldn't be happier. Today as I go to get Kaitlyn from class Stijn walks pass me and tells me "uw dochter heeft 14 keer .... " I couldn't catch the last of what he said but the first part was "your Daughter has 14 times...." So I'm trying to figure out what Kaitlyn had done 14 times that Stijn was trying to tell me about.

I got Kaitlyn and she told me that another girl Kathelijne in class and pushed her over and she hit her head and now she has a head ache. As I asked why, the story wasn't fitting together. So I asked what was Stijn trying to tell me that she had done 14 times. Kaitlyn said "I Don't want to tell you." I told her mom wouldn't be mad and it was okay. Finally she said she had kissed Stijn 14 times. I then asked if that is why Kathelijne pushed her (Kathelijne has liked Stijn since last year). Kaitlyn told me yes, Kathelijne didn't like that she was kissing Stijn so she came and pushed her off. So not only has Kaitlyn hit the crush stage with FULL force but she has already gotten into a girl fight over a boy.

Now I just have to figure out how to help her direct all of these feelings in a healthy productive way. New stages are always fun to enter and figure out.

Setting up our tree.

2008-12-08T15:01:00.003Z

Now that SinterKlaas is over we can put up our Christmas tree and all of our decoration which is really the part I look forward to the most.

Last year I hit some after chirstmas sales and purchase some Christmas decorations for really cheap that were really pretty! I was looking forward to decorating the house with them this year. Especially the tree. I have had an idea of how I wanted to decorate my tree for years but I've never been able to because of 3 little hands that are constantly on my tree. But this year I was going to try. I did it with my butterflies and all red with a touch of gold. I love it. My girls declared, MOM, it is BOARING! (I wouldn't let them put anything silver on my tree and it made them so sad.) Now I just have to go fine something for the top of my tree. Last year we had a silver star and it just doesn't fit into my decorations this year. So I will have to go hunting for something Gold or red or both.

So here is a picture of my tree in all of its glory before the little hands of my house begin to undecorate it one bulb at a time.

SinterKlaas Came!

2008-12-06T19:58:00.004Z

Friday night was fun. SinterKlaas arrived and the girls were so fun. We ate dinner and then I had them sing there songs about Sinterklaas. They have so many different songs that they sing about Sinterklaas. They are suppose to sing them really loud so that Sinterklaas can hear them and come. Here is a link that gives you a nice sample of a lot of the songs.

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=iBy5J2QOkUc

One of the girls favorite songs or maybe it is just the one they know the best says something like this:

Sinterklaas please enter with your helper
Because we’re all sitting in a nice manner

Maybe you have a little bit of time
Before you go to Spain again
Do drop by our place
And leave your horse outside
And we’re singing and we’re jumping and we are so happy
Since there are no naughty children present
And we’re singing and we’re jumping and we are so happy
Since there are no naughty children present

(This is what it looks like in Dutch just so you can see if you are interested otherwise just skip it.)
Sinterklaasje kom maar binnen met je knecht
Want we zitten allemaal even recht

Misschien heeft U nog even tijd
Voordat U weer naar Spanje rijdt

Kom dan ook even bij ons aan
En laat je paardje maar buiten staan.

En we zingen en we springen en we zijn zo blij
Want er zijn geen stoute kind’ren bij

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The singing song part was fun because they are runing around in circles singing as loud as they can and then right in the middle of it, I simply said "did you hear that?"

Brianna of course says "yes" I heard the horse on the roof. Kaitlyn says she heard a big bang. And honestly it was perfectly silent and there was no noise but they had all sorts of noises in their heads.

So they ran up to the actict and found the Sinterklaas sack full of gifts and brought it down. They were so excited. They had even more stories about how they were right about the noise they had heard when they got down stairs. It is funny how much they believe.

Opening the SinterKlaas Sack

Opening Gifts

Brooke playing with her cars. She loves cars!

Brooke playing with her My Little pony stickers with Dad!

Kaityn and Brianna playing with their gifts amongst the mess. It was a fun night.

It's been an long embarrassing day!

2008-12-04T15:02:00.003Z

So how can this cute picture have anything to do with an embarrassing day? Let me just tell the story.

It started off this morning somehow we were late for school. I got up early enough for me to get a shower and get the girls ready and everything but however things happened It was 15 mins until time to go Brooke wasn't ready to go to preschool yet and I still hadn't had my shower. I decided to skip my shower and get Brooke ready. I figured I could get my shower after I dropped everyone off at school. It would be more relaxing then anyways. I threw on some old cloths, I figured it didn't matter because I was putting on my huge coat over the shirt anyways and no one would see what I was wearing underneath. I splashed my face with water and put on some lip gloss and pulled my desperately needed to be washed hair into a ponytail. I figured I would look good if anyone glanced at me and I would make sure I wouldn't stop and talk to anyone so no one would notice! We were quickly off to school but we were late anyways, even with all my appearance/time cutting efforts.

I get Kaitlyn and Brianna to class and last was to drop Brooke off to preschool. As I walked her into her class her teacher said "You did read the flier that you HAVE TO STAY today because SinterKlaas is coming". I said no, I didn't get this flier. Turns out they put this flier in Brooke's backpack and I just didn't look in there and see it. So I suggested to her teacher that maybe I should run home real quickly and get Brooke's Zwarte Pete outfit. They said no need Brooke has made a Zwarte Pete hat that she can wear. I was out of ideas. We had to just stay. I had to take my coat off and of course I had to talk to people with my old dirty shirt on that didn't match my pants. With my unwashed hair and unmake-uped faced which I was pretty sure I had a little bit of yesterday's mascara smeared under my left eye. And of course I hadn't eaten breakfast and I was hungry. For the first 20 mins I just wanted to hide but then I thought there is nothing I can do about it I'm stuck here for 2 hours so lets talk with the moms and enjoy are time.

Brooke was excited that I got to stay there with her. I was glad to spend the time with her. It was fun to see Sinterklaas come. I was so sad not to have my Camera. Brooke was a bit scared of him but she was excited to get her treats and gifts.

She got let out of Preschool early and so we literally ran to the store to get the items I needed to buy for Sinterklaas to arrive at our house tomorrow and to get bread to eat for lunch. I had to get them before I picked up the girls from school at lunch. It was the last chance I had.

As soon as we were done with that we ran home and I jumped in the shower. I couldn't handle doing anything more today looking the way I did. I showered in record speed and got dressed and ran back to school to pick up Brianna from school. I was only about 5 mins late. I felt so bad. But I HAD to shower. Brianna and I ran home and Kaitlyn stayed at school for lunch because I had to take Brianna to the speech therapist.

I made lunch as fast as possible and then put us all on our bikes to go but it started snowing as we were riding to the speech therapist office. Brianna declared it was too cold and she couldn't keep riding her bike. We have been having some problems with our car and can't drive it right now. So we didn't have a choice we had to be on our bikes and we had to go. I kept encouraging her to keep going and telling her she was doing such a good job. Finally we made it to the speech therapist office, all snowed covered and about 10 mins late, being late is so much fun when they tell you "je ben te laat" (you are late), in not the happiest of tones.

After school Kaitlyn's friend invited her over to her house to play. I let her go thinking Brian could pick her up on his way home from work. But turns out Brian has a work party that starts at 5:00 and he wont be coming home. That means I'm going to have to walk all the way over to her house with my girls in the cold snow rain and walk all the way back.

I give up! It is just going to be one of those days.

---------

So in the end I surive the day and I put the girls to bed. As we are brushing our teath I look in the mirror to see that my mascra is smeared down my face. I'm not sure how long it had been that way but apparently I had been out in the snow and rain too much. I think of all of the people I interacted with today and wonder how many of them got to see me with a beautiful smear of mascra down my left check? Today is truely a day to remember!

It snowed again

2008-12-04T14:58:00.003Z

Yes we had another snow day! The girls made the biggest snow ball they could! They worked so hard at rolling it! They did it all by themselves with no help. I was proud of them when they rolled it in the back gate to show it to us. -- Of course I made them come in for a warm shower after the picture and some hot chocolate to warm them up. They looked so cold and wet.

Thanksgiving Day

2008-12-04T13:46:00.003Z

Since the girls had school and Brian had work Thanksgiving Day was simple. I ask the girls what they wanted for dinner and of course they wanted to make their own PIZZA! So that is what we did. We let them each make their own pizza and then made cookies afterwords. It was a very nice evening. We talked about it being Thanksgiving. We mostly talked to our family at home since 4pm our time is 8 am Arizona time. We began calling home around 4pm and between cooking everything we talked to our family. The girls loved it. We had a wonderful night of fun and talking to family. It was a good day.

9 years!

2008-11-27T22:44:00.002Z

On November 19th Brian and I celebrated our 9 year Anniversary! Yea us!!!!! I had tried several options for Baby sitters however due to it being a Wed. night all the girls in the ward had young women. (If anyone has any tips on how to get a babysitter in this country please let me know, I'm not having any luck!)

Brian and I had given up any hope of having a date by our selves. I was talking with Kerri from church asking if she had any suggestions of anyone I could try and another friend from church (Kaylynn) heard us talking and said "I'll do it". I said really, no we can't have you do it. But she was serious and willing to help out and do it. She was wonderful. She came and read with the girls and the girls loved it.

Kaylynn is a school teacher at the American school and she was able to give me ideas of how to help my girls with their reading. She was such a blessing that night in so many ways.

Brian and I enjoyed a night out with dinner and walking around Leiden and just talking and being together. We did window shopping and had so much fun. It was so nice to just be alone with him. It has been so long since that has happened.

Thank you Brian for Marring me 9 years ago!

Let it Snow

2008-11-27T14:54:00.003Z

We got our first Snow of the year! We loved it! It Snowed all day on Sunday. We didn't get as much snow as some other towns around us did. A lot of places got a lot of snow and even got to build snow men. We didn't get that much snow. But we did get enough that the girls were able to make snow balls and through them at me while I was trying to take there pictures.

The girls loved it that it was snowing and sat and watched it through the window. When it finally started sticking to the ground they ran outside and and began with the snowballs. It was a good day. We look forward to the next snow fall.

Zwarte Pete's Visit

2008-11-27T13:39:00.005Z

Zwarte Pete comes to visit ever Saturday night for 3 weeks before the Great arrival of Sinterklaas on December 5. The kids are suppose to leave there shoes out by the door with something in it for Sinterklaas and his horse. Zwarte Pete checks to see if you have been good and takes the items to Sinterklaas and leaves some little treat in your shoe.

Since we are not perfectly Dutch we do this a little different. We bought wooden shoes because the idea of putting treats in the shoes the girls have been wearing all day just really grossed us out. We put the wooden shoes on top of the dryer in the Attic next to the little skylight window. We told the girl the Zwarte Pete comes in threw that window and checks and sees if there room is clean and that is how he knows if they have been good. EVERY Saturday my girls clean there room with out complaint this time of year.

In the shoes they leave pictures for Sinterklaas and a list of what they would like him to bring. I can of course easily take these things from the shoes and put them into my "needs to be scrapbook box" in the attic. (The box is pretty full! It is sad how I don't scrap book, with out my friends and my sister it just isn't any fun doing it alone.)

Brian and I put little candies in there shoes for them to find on Sunday morning. They are extra excited about waking up for church!

On the Evening on December 5th they will also find a bag full of gifts sitting on the dryer up in the attic that Sinterklaas left while we were eating dinner. More like mom put there while they were at school but you know how it all works.

I did my Sinterklaas shopping this week. I'm proud to say that I was able to get some fun gifts for everyone for under 30 euro's. (think of it as dollars). We figure they will be getting gifts at Christmas too. We don't need to over kill on the holidays. Just a few from Sinterklaas will do. I did find some really good deals that I'm more then proud of. Especially on Brian's gift. I'm looking forward to it!

My first time to Cook Thanksgiving Dinner

2008-11-24T13:59:00.005Z

(Brooke sweetly helping me make dinner... It was better then her poking her fingers in it)

We decided this year that we wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner with friends who are closes to us. Those are the friends that live around us and we see each day. We invited over our closes friends to have a Thanksgiving dinner with us. (Marta was moving and wasn't able to come, we missed you Marta.) It turned out great! We couldn't do it on Thanksgiving day since the kids have school and everyone was working so we decided on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I must say that for the first Thanksgiving meal I have ever cooked all by myself it wasn't to much of a disaster. My gravy was a bit more soupy then I wanted and my pecan pie didn't quite turn out. It looked perfect on top but when we cut into it, instead of the nice jelly inside it was all soup. So back into the oven it went. By time the insides were jelly the top pecans were burnt. O well. I will have to try again. However the rest of the meal turned out great and I was proud!

Here are all the men talking and surrounding the food. They are a perfect group. Ulrike's Husband Johanna's is also a Physicist and works at ESTEC (European space Center our equal is NASSA.) Beate's Husband Micha is a Computer Science Engineer guy of some sorts and is programing all the time. (of course him and Brian have things to talk about) Karel who is Erna's ex-husband but still is very much involved in the family and comes to all the events which I think is really cool. He owns 3 auto Mechanic shops and loves racing. Brian's dad had a lot of the same interest so it is easy for Brian to talk there too. They seem to make a good group of friends.

When the kids first arrived we let them all make some feathered hats. We told them they could be the Indians at the dinner and we would be the Pilgrims. It made it a lot of fun for them. Brian told them the story in Dutch of the Pilgrims coming over. I was pretty proud of Brian doing that.

Here is a picture of all our dressed up Indians in their feathered hats. Don't they look wonderful.

Here are few more highlights Gabrialle is the star in the first picture and Ricadia is the star in the second.

Over all it was a wonderful night. I am grateful for my friends and for there love and support.

Visiting Sinterklas

2008-11-23T15:27:00.009Z

We learned last year that when visiting Sinterklas that it was very important for the children to be dress up like Zwarte (black) Pete. This year I picked up some outfits for the girls that were really in-expensive that they could wear to all the little Sinterklas activities. I couldn't find anything for Kaitlyn though. She is too tall. Although all the other kids her age will be wearing out-fits and she is still young enough to be celebrating this activity, she is as tall as kids 2 years older then her.

So to have something for Kaitlyn to wear we did our best to put some sort of outfit together and make it up as we went. I bought some black hair for her but in the end she wouldn't wear it because daddy laughed at it and thought it was funny. Brianna was more then willing to wear the black hair and add it to her outfit.

First are pictures of the day when I brought home the new Zwarte Pete clothing. The girls all wanted to try it on they thought it was cool. Kaitlyn liked her black hair then.

Brooke is much to busy with her activity to let mom take a picture of her.

The day has come for us to go see Sinterklas. The girls have gotten there outfits perfected and I think they look great! It was a really fun program that went on and was a lot more intertaining then waiting in line to sit on Santa's lap. I must say I was impress. -- Brooke however wasn't so much impress. She kept sneaking off. They had punch in the back and she kept going to get a new cup of it. I was able to a few pictures of my sneaking child.

Here are a few pictures of the show. They had about 350 kids in the room that they were doing this show for.

At the end of the show Sinterklas comes. All the kids are so excited when he comes in. I saw him coming in the back door so I ran back and grab some pictures away from "most" of the crowd.

It is hard to show the true fun of what happens in a photo so I took a short film. It is a bit noisy but shows all the fun they were truely having. You can see the Zwarte (black) Pete's up on the stage and running around everywhere. It is just so weird. I still think I like Santa Clauses Elves better. At least it seems less prejustice

Kaitlyn and dad make paper airplanes

2008-11-23T14:59:00.003Z

Brian and Kaitlyn spent some time making paper airplanes. Kaitlyn loved making airplanes with dad. Of course Brian's paper airplanes are not simple normal paper airplanes. He had to look up on the internet how to fold the most complicated coolest paper airplanes he could.

He made the FA Thunderhawk, the SR-71 Black Bird, the Flying Wing and many, many others.

The paper airplanes flew amazingly well. Kaitlyn loved them so much that she took them the next day to show her class at school. The boys were especially impressed.

SinterKlas is coming

2008-11-23T14:15:00.006Z

In preparation for Sinterklas to come Brianna made herself a Hat and beard. She Bravely wore it to school on Monday. All the kinds in her class laughed and thought she was funny. I thought about me back then and how there was NO! way I would have been able to wear something like that and been different then the rest of my class. In fact I felt overwhelmed and embarased by the attention she was getting. However she confidently made a joke about it and laughed with them and was so proud of her hat and beard. I was so proud of her for the confidence that she has and the abilities she has to be herself and just enjoy life. I admire Brianna for this. I hope she will always be able to stand out and be herself and not care if she is different as long as it is something that she wants to do.

Brooke is swimming

2008-11-17T13:09:00.003Z

Brooke has an imagination all of her own. She just puts me to tears sometimes with the things she does because either I'm laughing so hard or I really am crying about what she did.

This week she has been determined to go swimming. So she gets on the floor and she just goes swimming. No matter what is going on, now matter where we are going or what we are doing, she is going to swim there. On the floor on her belly. She is such a character. Of course when we get the camera out to record it she stops. We ask her to do it again and she did for a second. So typical! I also had to do the movie in black and white because the lighting was bad and the movie came out dark. In black and white you could actually see her.

Making Pizza!

2008-11-16T21:15:00.003Z

We love to make things in this family. Especially my 3 little girls. Whether it is pancakes or cookies or pizza. They love it when mom is making something with flour, I think it is because they know it is going to taste good and it wont contain vegetables.

My little girls love to help and be part. I had to over come a huge part of my personality because I like to keep things clean as I go and not make messes and well if my 3 little girls help messes will be made. This is not easy for me because "I don't want to clean up that mess"! But then I have to remember that sometimes it requires making a mess to make a memory!

I have found that as we begin on our memory making experience for some reason the neighborhood kids seem to have this little tracker in there heads and know we are doing it and they of course want to be part and the next thing I know they are all walking through the back door wanting to watch and see what we are doing. This is so cool to them and way fun!

Every instinct in me says "I CANT CONTROL THE MESS!" But then I have to remember my end goals. I have always wanted a house where my children’s friends felt safe to come over and hang out. I want to always know who my children’s friends are and I want to be friends with my children’s friends. This is always the perfect opportunity to have them in to begin working on those goals. So I over came my need to control and we made some fun memories with Kaitlyn and her friends. We let them kneed the pizza dough and roll it out. However their favorite part was the flour facial they gave to each other during the process!

Brianna's 2nd Tooth

2008-11-16T18:22:00.003Z

Brianna has lost her second tooth. This one was a long time coming, since it has been loose for a month now but she has been too scared to actually pull it out. The first time "hurt" to much for her. So finally her tooth got so loose that it was barely hanging their and she couldn't eat food because it was so loose. She came to me with her tooth because it hurt to bad to eat her peanut butter sandwich and tearfully asked for help. I felt the tooth gave it a very small pull and it was out. Brianna broke into tears. I distracted her by suggesting she get a cup of water and she calmed down quickly. Then distracted her more with all the excitement of the tooth fairy coming and what would she do with the whole Euro the tooth fairy would bring?

She happily got a sandwich bag and put her tooth in it and then carried it around with her for a while. I lost track of her and of the tooth and forgot about it all with the business of the day. The next morning as we were making breakfast I realized the tooth fairy didn't come last night and that we had forgotten all about it. (This isn't the first time the tooth fairy has forgotten to come, we often have to send email to see if the tooth fairy is sick and see if she will be by the next night or not.)

I asked Brianna what she did with her tooth and she said she didn't know. I was relieved to hear she hadn't put it under her pillow. So I told her we better find it and that the tooth fairy couldn't find her tooth last night under her pillow and couldn't leave her, her money. We began searching and had no luck. After a short while it became clear that it was not around. I remembered that Brian helped clean up the night before so I thought I had better check the garbage (you know men). We dug down a little bit and sure enough there was that plastic bag with the tooth.
With the tooth successfully recovered Brianna ran up and put it right under her pillow so the tooth fairy could come that night. Luckily we all remembered and the next morning there was a wonderful surprise under Brianna's pillow.

Love your Blog

2008-11-12T16:19:00.000Z

I was tagged by my friend Valerie ages ago however, I am of course just getting around to doing this. I'm supposed to tag seven people, I love all my friends blogs because they help keep me connected to home and I love being updated with all that is going on! I have to choose just 7 this is hard.

1) My sister Shayleen! - I love your Blog, it makes me feel so close to home.
2) My cousin Sheri - I laugh so hard each time I read your blog
3)My sister-in-law Donna - You always has so many fun stories to tell.
4)My friend Michelle - Again each post is so full of humor.
5)My friend Katie - Every post is so real and so full of life and full of Katies personality!
6)My sister-in-law Ashley- I love reading every post! I love who she is and in comes out in every post.
7)It is a tie it really is (yes I know I'm cheating)
My friend Amanda - we have been friends for so long and I love being able to go to her blog and catch up on life.
Our friends the Brooke's - (I think that statement could cover a wide family range) We miss getting to hang out with them and the close friendship we had with them and it is wonderful to beable to go to there blog and feel like we are still a little bit part of your lifes. You guys are great!

Sunday Fun!

2008-11-09T17:34:00.009Z

Today we had a little bit of fun with the girls. Brianna loves to do plays and to pretend and it was cold outside so we decided today we would do the play of sleeping beauty. The girls were so excited and everyone got there parts. Just as we were getting ready to start one of the neighbor girls Christal came and knocked on the door and wanted to play and so we decided she could help Kaitlyn with the fairy work.

Brian wanted to record the play and post it here on the blog for his mom and grandma and family since it is a tradition to do plays and make movies in his family for fun. It was a big part of his growing up fun!

We recorded the movie but we don't have any kind of movie editing tools that allows us to edit it so you just get to watch the raw stuff if you choose to. I think it is pretty funny.

Also what was intended to be an all English play turned into a 1/2 English -- 1/2 Dutch play so that Christal could participate and be part. But I think everyone knows the story well enough they can follow this silly video well enough to know what is going on.

Before you watch there are a few things you need to know....
1) Aurora's name in Dutch is Doornroosje
2) When Christel says "Happy End" at the end. It is something to be proud of she did it all on her own. She is always trying so hard to learn English words when she is over playing with us. She is a smart little girl.
3) Brian had way to much fun calling me "the witch" in making this movie.
4) This is for everyone to watch an enjoy. Not just Brian's family. So if you are up for some real silliness ..... Enjoy!

Halloween!

2008-11-07T13:19:00.003Z

Yes, I have finally done it. I have been behind for 3 months on my blog but today with this post I am caught up!

About a week before Halloween Brian took the girls down to the Albert Heinz (our grocery store) and let them selected out what they felt like were the most perfect pumpkins for there jack-o-lanterns. The pumpkins at the store were so fun because they actually came with instructions and stickers on it, of how to carve the pumpkin, where to carve the pumpkin, and what it should look like when you were done. We found it entertaining. I guess the tradition of carving pumpkins is just starting here or something. We were just so glad to have pumpkins to carve. Kaitlyn says her pumpkin is a Zombie. They were both so proud of their pumpkins.

Halloween night was so much fun. I know a lot of places and people in the Netherlands are not really big into Halloween. But we lucked out. Our whole community participated in trick-or-treating. Not every house But we could go up and down the streets and there were several houses on each streets with pumpkins glowing and signs in the window that said they were participating in trick-or-treating. It was quite stratifying and almost felt like we were at home and in the states just out trick-or-treating because there were so many other kids out trick-or-treating too. It was just fun! We went with my friend Baerbel. Her family moved here from England and her girls also go to the same school as my kids. Kaitlyn and Brianna enjoy playing with Sophie and Alix because they can play in English and in Dutch together. We went over to my friend Beate's neighborhood last because that is where the are the most enthusiastic about trick-or-treating and their were like 50 houses in one little square all participating.

The girls had lots of candy and it was over all a very good evening. Kaitlyn went off and spent the night at her friend Nina's house and her and Nina stayed up all night eating there candy all gone as any good little kid should. Brianna ended up starting to run a fever that night which has managed to spreed its way through the rest of the family. I feel bad for Brianna. It seems like every Holiday that comes, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, she will be sick. Poor girl.

Here are some pictures of the girls in there self chosen dress up outfits. I think they dressed themselves up quit well. We had 2 princesses and their pet giraffe.

Brian's toy!

2008-11-06T12:51:00.003Z

Brian had to take a picture of his big lazer he built for work for a paper he is putting together. When Brian decribed he was building a lazer and then doing experiments on a lazer I though of something that looked like a microscope that sat on a table. When I got to go see it, it is this huge high powered-- huge thing. So if any of the rest of you are wondering what Brian is piddling away on for work. Here is a picture.

SPELLING!

2008-11-03T20:21:00.003Z

So I have worked all of my life on my spelling. I am horrible at it and no matter what I do I can't remember how to spell words. So I love my spell check. However my spell check on my blog editor is not working. I click it and it does nothing. I of all people know I have many spelling errors in everything I write. Even if it is only one sentence. So to all of you who are reading my post from today. I am sorry. I am crippled by my lack of spell check and as soon as I can get figure it out I will spell check all of my post!

The 3rd of October

2008-11-03T16:51:00.005Z

The 3rd of October is a Celebration that is Localized to just our little area of the country. Spain Occupied Leiden and they were finally free from Spain’s rule on the 3rd of October. They celebrate by eating Hutspot which is mashed potatoes/carrots/and onions. All boiled and mashed together. It actually taste really good. Then they usually put sausage on it. They also eat Herring and white bread. I don't go for the Herring fish so much as I've never really been a big fan of fish.

The girls love the festival that happens in Leiden each year. We had lots of fun. We took the Elders with us and it was fun for them, except of course they couldn't ride any rides. They were so good about it too. We also ran into Zhi qi one of their investigators who is from China. Her little girl Rachel and Brooke play a lot together. It is amazing how well they play with Brooke speaking English and Rachel speaking in Chinese. Her mom would translate for me as Rachel would declare she didn't want to be Brooke's friend any more because Brooke wouldn't share her sun glasses or what ever. It was so fun. Zhi qi has gone back to China now for a short while to visit her family before she moves to America. I will miss her as she was a great friend. She taught me how to cook some Great Chinese dishes and we had a lot of fun together taking the girls to the park and having nice play dates.

My Birthday!

2008-11-03T15:22:00.002Z

October 1! My Birthday was a Great Celebration. Brian was very sweet and put a lot of effort into this birthday. He Made dinner and had the girls buy gifts. The girls were so excited to hide gifts around the house and have me hunt for them it was wonderful.

Valerie Reese and Shanelle (friends from church) and I went out for lunch for my birthday. It was so nice to go out and just have a nice birthday lunch.

I received so many wonderful happy birthday phone calls and emails. It made my day so bright.

My sister sent me a present of some beautiful premade "homemade" cards. She is so creative and so talented in all areas. I love the things that she does and I love the cards she has sent me. They are so beautiful. Thx Shay!

The following week Ulrike, Erna, Beate, and Marta (yes, Marta took a night off from the twins) and I all got to go out to eat. It was so fun being together with them. Ulrike took us on a small offical tour of Leiden and told us about a lot of the History. It was so interesting and so much fun.
I am so greatful for friends who make life so enjoyable. I am greatful for my friends at home who write to me and talk to me and post with me on my blog and help keep me sane and help me to feel like home is just a small distance away. I am greatful for my friends here who so kindly share there time with me and are there to laugh and cry with me. Friends are truely prices. To all my friends. Thank you for being my friends.

My favorite flower

2008-11-03T15:01:00.003Z

I have seen a lot of beautiful flowers in my life especially since coming to the Netherlands. I saw this beautiful flower that was growing along a bike path up a person fence that was absolutely amazing. I fell in love with this flower. One day I was riding with my friend down this path and I stopped to show her the flower. She told me her neighbor had a flowering vine just like this one. One day she brought me this flower and gave it to me at school. She asked the neighbor if she could pick it. Now I can share it with you. My next goal is to have this vine that grows these flowers growing up my back fense and bringing beauty to my garden every day.

Brianna first tooth

2008-11-03T14:54:00.003Z

Brianna lost her first tooth the evening after we went to the Anne Frank House. She was so excited to have it out. To have the tooth fairy come visit and to enter this exciting stage of life she has seen her big sister go through.

She now has her second tooth ready to come out but she doesn't want it to. She has decided it isn't exciting anymore and it actually hurt to have it come out. She is babying that little tooth. Making sure she does everything to make sure it does not fall out. Unfortunately, I don't think she has a choice about it!

The Anne Frank House!

2008-11-03T12:47:00.008Z

September 20, 2008

We went with the Norlander family in our ward up to see the Anne Frank House. Which I loved. That was the best experience. The kids were a little more board with it, except Kaitlyn. She loved hearing the story of Anne Frank and wondered why we had never told her this story before. We left out a lot of the details because we didn't need her crying right there in the middle of everything but we told her enough that she understood the seriousness of what had happened. It was sad but wonderful that her story is continued to be told for all those who suffered such horrible act.

The day with the Norlanders was so much fun. There Children are so fun. Brianna and Mary were quick to make friends. The next pictuer is all of us on a bridge. Anne and Brooke are in the stroller now. It is nice that there kids are all around our kids age.

Brianna and Mary taking a ride in the Stroller. They were telling stories and having the best time.

One of the central squares in Amsterdam. The girls were having fun chacing the birds.

The buildings are Beautiful in Amsterdam!

In the square you find alot of beggers but they are dressed up really cool. If you give them money you can take a picture of them. The girls wanted a picture with the angle.

The exit of the Anne Frank house. We couldn't take pictures inside. So we took them just as we were leaving so we could remember we were there.

THE TOWN EVENING WALK

2008-10-28T14:37:00.005Z

Every night for a week, in September our little town does this walk in the evening ever year. All the kids are excited to do it. They do a treasure hunt as you walk a different path around town each night. It ends up being around 3 to 4 miles each night. These kids love it though. It is so fun to run around with all of there friends and walk in this big mass of people around town. At the end all of the kids get these little medallions for walking. My girls were so excited about theirs. They call them their "gold metals". It was an enjoyable time to share together as a family.

Before we go walking each night they did warm up time for the kids which was done by having

them dance around. It was so fun watching the kids concentrating so hard to do the moves the teacher was doing. They were so into it. The instructer is Brianna's K3 dance teacher. She is

a really fun instructer.

You know I managed to get all the girls friends to look at me and the camera but I never actually got the girls to look at the camera. Natural/thoughtful expressions are good too.

Here we are all together on the last night after everything was done. Everyone brings flowers for everyone. The children are really tired. But it was fun and our friendships are strong. I'm so greatful for the friends I have made here. In the Photo are my friends Erna center and Beate Left with there families. Ulrike is usually with us too. Her kids are in the picture but she had to work this last night. She does guided tours and this was one of the nights she had to giving a tourist group a guided tour of Amsterdam. She knows so many interesting fun facts. Marta is our other friend but she couldn't be there because she just had twin baby girls. We missed you Marta.

Here are the girls with there metals. They are so proud of them. It was so exciting to get these awards for them.

Dad Gets Home!

2008-10-22T10:50:00.006+01:00

Brian got home from the confrence and the girls were so excited. They missed Dad so much!

Dad brought them the coolest treats home. He knows his little girls so well.

For Kaitlyn She got Macoroni and Cheese. Kaitlyn has missed this, her favorite meal.

For Brianna she got a box of Ramen Noodles. This was Brianna's favorite meal. She has missed eating it!

Grandma Greer and Grandma Nancy (Ashcroft) were both so thoughtful in sending gifts home for the girls also. Grandma Nancy sent Stuffed Animals for each of the girls and they loved them. Grandma Greer sent Gummy worm sandwiches and pop rocks which the girls loved eating. This was an exciting time for the girls.

Kaitlyn had her friend Nina over and had to share the poprocks with her. They had fun letting them pop in there mouths and wanted me to take lots of pictures of all the popping going on.

Lets go eat some worms!

2008-10-22T10:42:00.004+01:00

We got home from church on Sunday. It was just me and the girls. Brian was in Arizona visiting family after his confrence in California.

I asked Kaitlyn and Brianna to take a few glass jars out to the glass garbage. They return with this. -- They say it is the coolest hugest worm they have ever seen! I say it is worthy of a photo and then it NEEDS to go back out side. Where the worm can be happy of course :-). I was only thinking of the worm.

Neighborhood party!

2008-10-22T10:05:00.001+01:00

The Neighborhood had a party today and it was lots of fun for the kids. Our Neighbors do such a great job planning it out and having such great games for the kids. Kaitlyn and Brooke had fun running around and playing and Brianna had one goal and that was to Drink as much soda and eat as much chips as possible. I thought it was so funny! She was in Chip/Soda Heaven.

I just enjoyed being out and talking with our Neighbors. We have some great Neighbors. Last year it was so scarey going to this party and this year it was fun. I love the changes that have occured over this year and being able to see what I have been able to accomplish and what my children have been able to accomplish. They are amazing!

No more sisters!

2008-10-22T09:22:00.005+01:00

We live very close to where the sister missionaries live that serve in the area and have enjoyed having them over for dinner and even having them drop by for help to fix there bikes or print off some confrence talk off the internet or to watch a new movie they got that they want to see before they played it for an investigator. I have enjoyed on occation going with them to teach someone they are teaching (in English) and join in the missionary efforts.

I loved that I could have them over for dinner even when Brian was working late. I have just really enjoyed the sister missionaries being close by. They were so much fun to get to know.

We have seen many sisters finish up their missions and go back home from our ward. But when Sister Broadbent was headed home and we had her over for dinner on her last week here, her and Sister Miller told us that they were both being transfered out and that the Elders were going to be taking there place. I was so sad. I liked the sisters and I thought at least Sister Miller would be staying. But that was not the case. We were so sad!

Here is a picture of us and our last evening with the sisters before they left.

Sister Broadbents parents came to visit and I was able to have them over for dinner and see Sister Broadbent one more time before she left for home. Her parents were really wonderful and enjoyable to have over. He father reminded me of my friend Amanda (Cochran)Shabana's dad. I felt like I was at home hanging out at Amanda's house talking with her dad... It was kind of weird how similar they were, they talked a like. What was fun was Amanda's dad served his mission in Ireland and so did Brother Broadbent. He had so many stories about Ireland, just like I had heard from Amanda's dad. (Yea, it was weired the similarties, looked alike, talked alike, told the same storeis :-))

Anyways, it was an enjoyable visit. I was greatful for it and glad that they came for dinner.

So now we have the Elders. You know Elders are different then Sisters. We have them over for dinner and are doing are best to get to know them but Elders are different then sisters, really different.

First Day of School

2008-10-22T09:06:00.001+01:00

Yes, I am still over a month behind in my blogging but I'm determined to catch up!

Here are the girls pictures from the first day of school! They were so excited to go to school. A 6 week long summer was enough for them. They wanted to go see all their friends again. So off to school they went so happy to be back!

Kaitlyn's Friend Nina came and ate Lunch with us on the first day of school.

This is a picture of All 3 of them ready to go back to school.

I was trying to take a pictures of the girls infront of school. Although you can see school,

The sun was so bright that my girls look like glowing Angles, which is what they are, right!

Playing outside waiting for the bell to ring.

Brianna with her Teacher Juf Yolanda.

Kaitlyn and Nina walking to class with the rest of the class.

Last weekend before school started!

2008-10-20T16:06:00.002+01:00

So the last weekend before school started we had a new family move into the ward from Virgina who has kids the same age as my kids. We had their kids over to play while they unpacked and got settled. The girls were so happy to have some friends to play with who spoke ENGLISH! It was a wonderful day for them!

Here are some pictures of that play day.