Happy Mother's Day

Colin brought me home the best presents from school. All of the children helped make strawberry jam, which we ate on bread afterschool for a snack. It was very good and I was impressed. He also made me this wonderful calendar. Colin painted pictures for every month but I thought I would share my 2 favorites.

January:

January is filled of quotes by Colin like "Her job is to go to the super market" and " She likes to clean" or " I love my mum because she lets me watch Scooby Doo". My favorite is " My mum Lauren is 14 years old". Yeah!

June:

This is our family, I am not sure why we are all naked or why we look like Tammy Faye Baker, but it is very cute!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Mother's Day! Sending love to Oma, Mom Mom and Grammy as well as Colin and Chloe's Godmothers today!

Busy Weekend

Two of Craig's fraterity brothers came to Belgium last week for a beer tour. His one friend, Matt, is a beer enthusiast and planned this trip to celebrate his 40th birthday. Craig met up with them on Friday afternoon and got on there bus to visit a brewery outside of Antwerp. They spent the night in Gent and the next day went to Westvleteren, one of the trappist breweries. Westvleteren is difficult to get, even here in Belgium. They do not sell through third parties and cases can only be ordered on specific days during certain hours. You also need to give them your license plate so they can match it to the car you are driving when you come it pick it up. I managed to get 4 bottles of it through a friend of mine to give to Matt for his birthday. I traded her a box a Betty Crocker cake mix and a tub of chocolate icing for them. It really felt like a drug deal.

We picked up Craig that afternoon at the brewery so we could go see a friend of mine in a play in Antwerp on Saturday night. We had an awesome dinner at an Indonesion resturant with friends before the play. It was a good night.

Sunday, we went over a friends house whose daughter is in Colin's class at school. They have an huge house with a large yard with grass! I think they have one of the largest yards I have seen in the city. They were barbecuing and it was so good.

It was a long and tiring weekend. We have been so lucky to have had beautiful weather here, but itbecome cold and windy the past 2 days. I just hope it warms up for next weekend.

Back in Antwerp

We made it back to Antwerp safe and sound. Colin was great traveling as usual, but Chloe threw about four screaming fits on the plane. It is hard to explain to a two year old why they need to sit in their seat and be buckled.
When I see Chloe walk right up to our elevator and press the buttons to open the door, it makes me realize that she has now lived half of her life here and is more familiar with the ways of the city than in New Jersey.
We didn't expect it, but the kids are having a difficult time with the jet lag. As I am writing this, it is about 1:30am and we are all awake watching cartoons. Hopefully Colin will fall asleep soon so he can still make it to school tomorrow!

Easter Egg Hunt

Saturday we went to one of our playgroups Easter Egg Hunt. The Hunt was in a local park that we had heard about from several people. They all rave about how great the park was and how it is great to spend the day there. We were having a hard time imagining why you would want to spend the entire day in a park, until we got there. There is a restaurant with outdoor seating that looks out onto 2 playgrounds - 1 for younger children and the other for the older kids. We were lucky enough to get a great seat on the edge of the playground with our friends. The weather was perfect and the kids were ready play, even though Chloe had thrown up on herself on the way there. She didn't smell very nice but she seemed to be feeling OK. We ended up hanging out there for 4 hours!

Sunday we hosted the second installment of the Snack and Drink Party. I have been using our deep fryer to make buffalo wings which you cannot get around here. It was a fun day!

Seana's Visit

This is way overdue, but a few weeks ago, Seana came to visit. It is always so nice to have guests and even better when they stay with us. We did not make any set plans and decided what we would do the following day the night before.

I brought Seana to Brussels to see the Grand Place and Atomium. We took the bikes out in Antwerp to see the Steen castle and try some Jenever. We also explored the city a bit and ate several waffles along the way.

We weren't able to get a sitter over the weekend, so we made the decision to go overnight to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany. It's a little bit of a long drive - 5 1/2 hours without traffic - but it is the perfect German town. It is the third time we have been there since we have been in Europe. The town is filled with Japanese tourists. They loved Chloe (I think because of her blonde hair) and many asked if they could have their picture taken with her. It was funny and weird at the same time, but I knew it was innocent in nature. Saturday was Seana's birthday, so we eat spatzle and drank champagne and pils to celebrate. Earlier that day, Craig had met a man from PA who had been living in Rothenburg for the past 20 years. He spotted us a dinner and proceded to hang out with us. He was a little creepy and we thought it was funny how he seemed to forget English and struggled to find the right word. We nicknamed him The German Small Wonder. We always seem to attract the weirdos. While driving through Frankfurt on the way back to Belgium, the winds picked up and we had many detours because of trees that had fallen across the road. We later found out that is was a crazy storm with heavy winds that blew across Europe.

Seana was lucky enough to be headed to Paris for a week after she left Antwerp. We are so glad that she came to visit.

Chloe's Big Girl Beddie

For a while now, Chloe has been getting in Colin's bed and pretending to sleep so we decided it was time to move her into a big bed. We picked up a big little girl bed at Ikea. It only took a couple of nights before we were able to convince her to sleep in it. The first night she woke up at 4:30am, got out of bed and went into the living room. Luckily, she went back to sleep easily. She looked so cute I had to take a picture!

Fun with Blocks

Colin's version of the Brandenburg Gate -