Day at the Children's Hospital

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Originally uploaded by Karen Kool.

Yesterday our big buy had to go into hospital for surgery...just for the day, if all would go well he would just have to stay for the day... This hospital is for children and I can go on about the great service and facilities for kids which make 'life' so much easier... For instance a TV with computer games and ice cream about 5 minutes after they wake up after surgery! All did go well yesterday and even though it was an exhausting day (for all of us)... I was so proud of our little boy... definitely no hospital traumas here!

No recent photos

 

Nope…. I have no recent photos… I need to pick up that Sony A550 again and go for a fall excursion!! Like I did in 2008 with Petra (who just started this new blog about her ‘new’ life!).. We did some pretty nice Fall Photography last year so to get you in the mood I’ll show some once again:

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When I look at these photos I forget the Fall-blues I felt today… but on the other hand it also brought good things… I took the crockpot out of the closet today and made Hungarian goulash… I have to use the crockpot more often than I do now…it’s soooo easy for a working mom (and dad!).

Today was my day off from work so I had some time to work on a new blog in the morning. I had already posted a first blogpost a little while ago but it needed a little boost… so here it is: Our Florida 2011 Blog! I still need a blog header but my PC had died and that’s the computer where my PaintShop Pro is on… not on the laptop. So I can’t make a blog header right now. Oh well…

The boys came home from school at 12.15 and it was still pouring rain (Andy came home later and told us it had been quite a nice day in Amsterdam…well yuk.. no need to know this… ) so I made the boys pancakes for lunch and after that they watched some School TV (Rekenen met Raaf) on the laptop. Milan just started group 3 (where they start to write and read and he loves to work with numbers!) so he’s really into the serious school stuff now! After that I took Mauro to his Musical Class (at FanWork), 2nd week and he seems to enjoy it! When I had dropped him of Milan and I ran some errands at the Hamsterweken @ AH… they had a lot of 2 for the price of 1 products so we stocked up!

Well… I am going to hunt villas again… I am looking for a good offer (like we had last year for Terra Verde, it will be hard to beat that villa…for location, price and size!!)… we’ll see!

Not a bad blogger....

No, I haven't been a bad blogger.... just this blog has been neglected for a while!! It's time to update! We have had a wonderful summertrip around Europe for almost 3 weeks. For a change there hasn't been a special travelblog about this roadtrip but of course there were lots of photos. You can have a look at the pics here (more pictures will be uploaded soon). We started of on July 10, a day earlier than expected. The week before our trip our Dutch soccer team got to the finals of WC2010 so we had to make sure we would arrive in Italy on time for the match!

So we booked a hotel in France (near Freiburg, Germany). It was in front of a Carrefour and a small shoppingcentre so we had a good start of our holiday. The next day we had another 400 km drive, mainly through Switzerland to the Lago Maggiore in Italy.

We arrived around 2.00 pm and our mobile home was ready. We had a mobile home in the perfect spot, across the small street from the supermarket, gelateria, restaurant and pool @ camping Isolino. We enjoyed our time here mainy relaxing at the lake and the pool but we also visited Stresa and Mergozzo. Two great weeks here, for sure we would like to come back to this area! After 2 weeks we drove over the Simplon Pass (very cold, 6 degrees celsius!) and saw the everlasting snow! The first part was a bit of sentimental journey for me since I hadn't been in Switzerland for over 20 years and we passed the town of Susten where I have been working for Eurocamp (on a campsite) when I was only 21! Very good memories of that time so it was great to get a glimpse of the area and recognize the large satellite dishes on the mountains!

In the evening we arrived at Hotel Cheyenne in Disneyland Paris! We stayed here for 3 nights and enjoyed 3 full days at Disney. We had dinner at Planet Hollywood, Annette's and of course McDonalds :) ... Wednesday we changed hotel to the Vienna Magic Circus Hotel.... Now we know we never want to go back to a real Disney hotel again! We just loved the circus theme, the pool and especially the breakfast!

Thursday we took the train to Paris Centre! We stopped at the Eiffel Tower first and then took the Batobus to Notre Dame and the Louvre. We stumbled upon a fair at Les Tuileries and walked in the direction of the Champs Elysees but our little Milan thought that that was a bit too far for him so we took the metro for 2 stops and got of at the Champs Elysees. We finished our day with a quick meal (guess where...yellow arches again :) ) and headed back for Magic Circus on the train. Friday we had breakfast again, went to Auchan to get some last French favorites from the supermarket (pistache desserts) and lunch (to be eaten on the road)... We had to drive another 4,5 hours but with stops it was almost 6 hrs before we got home!

3 great weeks driving through Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium!

Nederland in het WK!

 

Vandaag Nederland-Denemarken en zelfs de kleuters zijn enthousiast… de laatste kleuterweken van Milan zitten zo toch nog ‘vol’ met speciale momenten:

koninginnedag 2010

koninginnedag 2010
Originally uploaded by Karen Kool.

spulletjes verkopen op de vrijmarkt

Zonnig dagje Drievliet

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Originally uploaded by Karen Kool.

Het was vandaag Kids for Animals Fundag en omdat onze jongens daar lid van zijn mochten ze gratis Drievliet in.... Papa en mama op een 2 voor 1 kaartje van de Etos en we hadden een heel voordelig uitje vandaag! Met een heerlijk zonnetje en 18 graden was het een superleuk dagje!!

New York, Antilles, Orlando

 

I will travel a lot of miles these first months of 2010…. In February we spent a long weekend (well 5 days) in New York because we found tickets for such a good rate… When I had just booked it I was asked to come to the Antilles again for my job to promote our training there so 3 weeks after NYC I crossed the ocean again to Curacao and later that week also to St. Martin where I spent 3 days. It was a great trip… a lot of work but also a lot of fun, my friend Petrina came over from Aruba for the weekend and I had a TourGuide Mike mini meeting with Thadine… my friend from Curacao. We had dinner together and spend the evening talking about Disney and lots of other things! Friday night I joined my co worker for the grand opening of Hotel Scharloo, a great momument that has been turned into a beautiful boutique hotel!

Willemstad, Curacao

Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn, even on Curacao!

University of the Dutch Caribbean (our sister-school)

Cruise ships @ St. Martin

Dinner with Thadine

Home again!!

Sunday morning the plane got back into Schiphol 45 mins early, but the boys were already there waiting for me!

So last week it was back to ‘normal’….school/office etc…. Luckily we have more good stuff to look forward to, the weekend will be Easter weekend so we will go egg-hunting and visit some relatives. Milan is booked with parties these days because all his friends are turning 6 (or 7) in these months. And then there is of course the countdown to Disney! Tomorrow it will be exactly one more month until we leave for Florida, this time with grandparents! I had a bit of a shock when I was on Curacao because I got an e-mail that we could no longer use the villa we had rented (10 months before)…. I sent out some quotes, had some really nice offers from Florida Forum visitors but in the end I got a really great offer from England so we will be staying here :

(you can click the picture for more info on this villa).

I was so thrilled with this offer… that I booked the Wishes Dessert Party (Dessert while watching fireworks at Magic Kingdom) to celebrate!

That’s all for now, have a great day!!

 

Karen

Inspiratie….

Oh no, I don’t have time for this! Haven’t been scrapping in ages and now that I want to finish a birthdaycard for some one else I get inspired and must scrap… when we are leaving for NYC in two days!!

Credits: Six

Milan 6 jaar

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Originally uploaded by Karen Kool.

Bij een verjaardag hoort een traktatie... en bij een Mac-verjaardag dus ook zo'n soort traktatie.... papa had het bedacht en we hebben het met z'n viertjes in elkaar geknutseld...best leuk gelukt toch??

Musical night….

 

Last night one of my friends had a co-workers party and they all could bring a partner, friend or relative and she asked me to come along… This time it was a musical night at the Luxor Theatre in Rotterdam and the musical was All Shook up, love me tender. The musical has Elvis Presley songs in it (translated into Dutch, I always find this difficult, love the originals more)…. The cast was great, performance was great… the storyline was not very interesting… here you can see the preview! All in all we had a fun night out!

Happy New Year!

 

PC200928

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Originally uploaded by Karen Kool.

December 17… Pre-white Christmas

  Today we woke up in this winter wonderland… A week to early for Christmas but the kids were sledding to school this morning! TToday is the day of the most and longest traffic jams in 2009 so I decided (and was able to) work from home, a lot more relaxed. The boys celebrate Christmas at school today. This morning they all go to church, later today they have Christmas dinner at school!

 

 

 

Here you can see how they go to school:

Onze pietjes...

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Originally uploaded by Karen Kool.

Afgelopen zaterdag waren onze Pietjes ook bij de intocht!

Weekend no kids…

 

This weekend we had tickets for the Ilse deLange in concert so the kids stayed over at their grandparents! Of course we first had to see the arrival of St. Nicholas in Cothen… he arrived here yesterday morning. When we woke up it rained… when we drove to the village of the grandparents it was still cloudy but by the time we had our coffee the sky had turned blue and it was a beautiful morning to see St. Nicholas! We walked passed the local mill to the main street, had a chat at the butcher and bakery and by then the time had come, the first signs of St. Nicholas to arrive were here… the musical parade, the zwarte pieten… and then St. Nich!

After the parade we headed for the Community center and saw the show where MegaPiet (as a variation of MegaMindy) showed up to solve all the small problems! Mauro and Milan were small ‘Zwarte Pieten’ themselves, like many other kids.

Volledig album bekijken

We had nice soup for lunch and then headed home…leaving the 2 kids there, they would go to the theatre later with Grandma to see a play about St. Nicholas.

First we headed to The Wall, the new Utrecht shopping area to buy our new Nespresso machine. I sold our Senseo Latte on Marktplaats because I wasn’t really fond on the coffee it made. We were ready to buy it at BCC because they always drop the price if you have proof of the lower price at a different store. But they didn’t have any left in stock so we moved up 3 stores to Saturn and bought our new Fire Engine Red coffee machine!! The improvement of our coffee is soooo good!! There’s even a milk steamer on the side for the Lattes and Cappuccinos’!

The guy who bought my Senseo Latte picked it up later in the afternoon and after a small dinner we headed for the Big Red Box, the nickname of our new theatre Vredenburg. We had tickets for the Ilse deLange concert. It was great but we had noticed that it looked as if she was in a hurry, did the repertoire but not really took the time to enjoy herself… this morning I saw on Twitter that she had another gig in Amsterdam later on… So our gig ended at 10.00 pm and we were home 20 mins later!!

 

Volledig album bekijken

Peter Paddestoel....

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Originally uploaded by Karen Kool.

Moest ik gelijk aan denken.... (uit K3 show)...of is 't toch t huisje van Plop??

Heerlijke Herfst

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Originally uploaded by Karen Kool.

Heerlijk he, zo in het zonnetje... was in de herfstvakantie!

A letter from Bo the bear

Yes we are back from our week in Belgium. To our surprise we had company during this trip… Bo is the class bear (mentioned on this blog before, probably about a year ago). The kids usually take the bear home in turns to take care of him. Since we were going to Belgium the teacher asked us if it would be ok if Bo joined us… of course…the more the merrier. I just wrote this for Bo’s schooldiary (sorry it is in Dutch):

Bo de Beer op vakantie!

Milan kwam afgelopen vrijdag niet alleen naar huis dus er moest nog een extra plekje vrijgemaakt worden in de auto! We gingen namelijk op vakantie naar de Hengelhoef en de auto zat al vol met spulletjes!! Gelukkig was er nog wel een plekje vrij voor Bo en zijn koffertje kon er ook nog wel bij dus we konden snel op weg. In de auto aten we lekker broodjes op zodat we snel op weg konden.

De Hengelhoef ligt in een ander land, in België. Na ongeveer 2 uurtjes in de auto waren we er, de opa en oma van Milan waren er ook al. We hadden twee stacaravans naast elkaar en Milan mocht af en toe ook in de caravan van oma logeren en Bo dus ook. Dit is Bo in de caravan:

Het was erg gezellig op de Hengelhoef en Milan en Bo hebben een hele leuke vakantie daar gehad. Bo ging niet met alles mee en bleef soms ook in de caravan. Dan bleef hij lekker slapen zodat hij ’s avonds nog naar de disco kon.

Milan heeft een heleboel dingen gedaan, hij ging midgetgolfen en daarbij heeft hij van papa gewonnen. Ook ging hij twee keer naar het grote zwembad en daar durft hij van alle glijbanen. Bo bleef lekker bij opa, daar wordt je tenminste niet nat!

Af en toe vonden Bo en Milan het ook leuk om samen een filmpje op DVD te kijken en zo lekker een beetje uit te rusten van alle activiteiten.

Op woensdag ging Milan naar Plopsa Indoor om te spelen. Bo bleef lekker opa gezelschap houden, die ging niet mee.

In Plopsa Indoor heb je allerlei leuke attracties, vooral de MegaMindy verkeerstuin vind Milan leuk maar ook de hoge glijbaan, de springende kikkers, de botsauto’s en de draaimolen. Het allerleukste was de show van Bumba, die wilde Milan zelfs wel twee keer zien.

De camping van de Hengelhoef ligt in een groot bos en daar zijn ook hertjes. Die kun je voeren met de eikeltjes uit het bos, die vinden ze net zo lekker als snoepjes. Voordat we naar de hertjes konden moesten we dus altijd eerst heel veel eikeltjes zoeken in het bos en daarna gingen de hertjes ze zo uit Milans hand eten.

Vrijdag was de vakantie alweer voorbij en gingen we weer terug naar huis.

Onderweg stopten we nog even in Roermond bij een heleboel winkels, een speeltuin en een McDonalds. Daar gingen we nog wat eten en daarna gingen we écht naar huis. Zaterdag thuis regende het de hele dag en zijn we lekker binnen gebleven en hebben we een show van Piet Piraat en het geheim van Lorre gekeken. Ook zaterdagavond kruipt Bo weer lekker gezellig bij Milan in z’n bedje alleen nu natuurlijk niet meer in de caravan. Zondag nog één dagje samen … en dan gaan Bo en Milan maandag weer samen terug naar school zodat de juf jullie de avonturen van Bo voor kan lezen. Bo vond het erg leuk om een keertje op vakantie te gaan en Milan vond het heel gezellig dat Bo er ook bij was!

Liefs van Bo en Milan.

Joseph en Roodkapje

Het was superleuk afgelopen zondag… het culturele rondje Utrecht. Met een kind dat helemaal opgaat in alles wat met theater, toneel, circus (en goochelen) te maken heeft is het ook een inkoppertje natuurlijk. En dat terwijl hij tegelijkertijd ook een soort ‘theatervrees’ heeft want er waren jaren dat hij met een handdoek over z’n hoofd in Gert zijn pretpark naar Plop zat te kijken. Nu hij zeven is lijken deze tijden steeds meer achter ons en gaat hij er meer van genieten.

Dit was ‘mini’ van alles dus dat was mooi, een klein beetje Woezel&Pip, Roodkapje, Hans & Grietje en dan natuurlijk Joseph. Mama en oma waren er in april al geweest dus hij was er wel nieuwsgierig naar. Het leuke was dat het Beatrixtheater (we kregen een rondleiding van meneer de directeur himself) alles in een kinder(kleuren)jas had gegoten dus ook Joseph. Het kinderkoor was er en Joseph #3 (Matthijs) om 2 liedjes te zingen. Lang genoeg om de aandacht vast te houden… mam, ik zou eigenlijk de hele musical wel willen zien. Daar denken we nog even over na…

   Woezel en Pip, wel jammer dat er geen ‘preview’ van hun show was!

Mattijs (Joseph III) en het kinderkoor. 

En als je vijf bent ga je je soms ook vervelen en moet je je even uitleven!

Joseph!!

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Originally uploaded by Karen Kool

Today we visited the Beatrix Theater in town, it was open to the public and we had a look behind the scenes! Also there were parts of musicals and since I have already seen Joseph the musical I loved this!!