St. George and Provo

The extended Jewkes family (very large family) had planned a family reunion in St. George Utah. I was able to find some cheap tickets out to Las Vegas (1.5 hrs from St. George) for the kids and me, and as I needed to make various work connections and discussions in Utah anyway, we went for about 2 weeks. We started out in St. George, where we visited the temple with the kids, and just enjoyed the beauty of the surroundings and the pool as well. The next day we met with LaDonna and 4 of her 6 kids, whom I hadn't seen in way too long. It was really good to see them, and spend time with them. One of my best friends Jackie was so sweet to let us use her house while she and her family were gone, so it was a wonderful opportunity to do that. On friday we met with Alan, Craig and Blake from Woolley engineering, with whom I used to work and still have agreat relationship with. It was so fun to be able to do that and reconnect, especially because Alan's children were nice enough to play with the girls.

Sofia and Lilian are 6 Years Old!!!

The girls sure know how to celebrate a birthday well! They first had a party for the family, with lots of their favorite cousins being in town, partying at Jump-2-it (jumping on lots of 'springkussens'). Then on July 9th, 12 friends from school and gymnastics came over for the funnest water party! We split in 2 teams, and each team could earn prizes by winning events. We had the favorite slip-n-slide, a sponge race, egg-race, cup-race, water-balloons etc. We made a pretty 'lei', and had a delicious and very prettily decorated cookie-cake. As the theme was 'beach', the cake was decorated as a beach, with blue frosting and crushed graham crackers for the sand. Sofia and Lilian went all out and used their playmobil toys to create a true beach, I took a picture, it was so good-looking! Great job girls. Everyone had sucha good time, including Jonkje.

Finally, on the day of their actual Birthday we took them to see Ice Age III in 3D, which was a lot of fun. The girls were sure spoiled and fortunately were grateful for it. Our sweet girls are growing up!

Jonkje's New Accomplishments

In May, Jonkje was working on some accomplishments, like rolling a ball, sitting up completely alone while playing and crawling. With crawling he started to sit on hands and knees and just rock back and forth, trying to scoot somewhere (usually about an inch) forward or backward. So cute. Lief Jonkje.

Water Fun

Who doesn't like water games. We have a little baby blow-up pool in the back yard, and we bought a double slip-and-slide (so now the yard looks like a motor cross field). WE also were able to join Jana and Kailey in their pool one time, which was a lot of fun. All this was necessary as our neighborhood decided to start cleaning the dark green swamp -I mean pool- back into a blue clear water pool 1 day before school came out. Now more than 2 weeks later we still wonder every day if it is really safe to go and swim in it. :) Jasper LOVES to be in the water, and I love to look at his cute naked body crawling around, and sitting in the water, splashing, smacking cups together or slapping the edge of the plastic pool. The girls are so sweet with him to sit behind him so he can't fall over, and come up with fun things for him to play with. And they also get to enjoy the water to the fullest.

We recently had some girls come over, and they played the sponge race, cup race, egg race, hoola-hoop contest, 'koekhappen', slip-n-slide contest, water-balloon contest, and pictionary contest. 3 hrs later, they still had a blast. Hopefully, we'll be able to have a similar water party for the girls in the back yard with family for their upcoming 6th birthday!

Last day of City Pass

The saturday after memorial day weekend was the last day to use the city-pass, and cheapo as I am, I can't just let that be, so we went to Atlanta history museum with my mom, while Josh and my dad played golf. We went to the Olympcs part with info, photos, videos, flame-holder exhibits, and what not which was really neat. They had a part of a 400 m track and field court there, which Sofia and Lilian ofcourse used many times to find out who was the fastest of the 2, mind you..on flip-flops'. I would have ended up with a bloody nose, but they might enter the olumpics someday witha special track-and-field flip-flop race. We all loved that. They had an older farm area with some sheep and chickens, and a beautiful garden with mainly herbs and spices which were used for healing in the olden days. It must not have always worked back then, as there were warning everywhere: 'do not try this at home!' We ended up near an old mansion (probably plantation) which was a way too structurized and guided tour for anyone in our family, so we ended up playing in the beautiful weather in the neat yard. They were going to have a concert, and some men were carrying microphones and cables to set it all up. Sofia LOVES to help, so she asked me if she could go over and help. I said yes, she ran over to one of the guys and just grabbed the stuff from him without saying anything and started carrying it for him. It was really funny to see, and the guy was really nice about it and let her and Lilian help for a while until we had to leave. In the evening we had Josh family over for dinner which is always very lively and fun.

Last Week of School

The last week of school has already passed! At the end-of-school party, the kids presented some fun songs and had some yummy treats. It was a little sad to see they have grown yet another year and are really moving on to becoming big girls going to the 'big school' (grote school). They came home with the most beautiful report cards, Josh and I were very proud of them. It was very special that the teachers put a lot of time in getting memory books together (sort of scrapbooks) and provided us with a DVD with tons of pics of the schoolyear. I love looking back at those, and realize how incredibly much they have learned. One of the songs was 'I don't know, but I've been told' and the teachers had changed the words to: (....you'll have to wait so I can check with the girls, as I already forgot! :) )

Memorial Day Weekend with an Atlanta Citypass!

Memorial day weekend was a fun one this year. We had special watery plans, however the rain was water enough for us. So we decided to explore Atlanta with the kids with a city pass. On friday we went to the Coca Cola museum. It was just really relaxed, and neat to see how it is made, bottled, etc, and how marketing was an amazing tool to get this weird brown drink to be a can't-think-of-a-world-without-cocacola famous drink. We were able to be photographed as a family in a fantastic Coca-Cola designed room, which I really thought was cool, and ofcourse we tasted all the drinks made by Coca-Cola worldwide. There were some really good ones, and as always Josh tried to get all of us to try the really bitter one, don't even know what it was called. We all had a blast and were delighted to take the famously shaped cola bottle home as a souvenir. What a fun night, the girls and even Jasper seemed to like it a lot! The girls especially felt 'grown-up' as we allowed them to taste everything. In short: a blast. On saturday we went to the aquarium. I guess a lot of people decided to save their money for a trip and go museum hooping, wow I've never seen so many people in one place. We still had a wonderful time, this museum is unbelievable as they now have 4 whalesharks that are about 20-25 feet long and still growing. I love the oceanic part where they show the whalesharks, other sharks, and many extravagant other fish through several feet thick glass that you walk under, kind of shaped like a tunnel. Jasper was in awe of all the fish, and the girls just LOVE the whale sharks. My less favorite animal in the aquarium is a giant Japanese crab, which apparently can become as big as a car. I always think: what if you have never even heard of such an animal, you go on vacation to e.g. Japan, and you run into a crab as big as a car. Wouldn't that totally cause a heart attack? It would to me. Glad I know they exist, maybe I would only get a small heart attack when I'd encounter one. Yikes. We were going to go to a play area towards the end, and told the girls that was the next place, when 1 second later we couldn't find Sofia. I assumed she had already gone there a little too quickly, but when going there I didn't see her. So 10 minutes later, with a heart rate of about 200+, we decided to all go over there, when I see my sweet little girl, all stuped over, on the verge of crying, talking to a guard to help her find us. It was so sad, that I just held her and explained to her how terrified we were for not finding her and that we need to stay together. Thank heaven that we were back together. Despite that, it was another wonderful day! The girls had fun for a while to draw whalesharks for pictionary or alike. On sunday we went to church, and had just a fun relaxed afternoon playing games, and talking about the aquarium, etc. It was just so fun to have relaxed family time, and we even got to spend some time in the fresh air once it stopped raining. The girls biked to the playpark, and were able to get their feet wet in the pool. On monday, we went to the Fernbank museum. We had been there before when the girls were little, 2x even, but I couldn't even remember until I walked into the door. Awful to be demented at 36 yrs. It was really neat with the new exhibits from dinosaur fossils and skeletons from China, they had made an exhibit with what the animals might have looked like in those days including some feathered very weird looking dinosaurs. They had dinosaur skulls in all sorts and shapes, some of the skulls seemed larger than the girls. They also had a part to play for little and even littler kids, which the girls enjoyed as well, and so did Jasper. We ended up with an area that dealt with various scientific 'experiments' showing the characteristics of light, color and sound, using mirrors, gases, and electricity to show some of these features. We all enjoyed that a lot, probably especially me :) . We stopped at Ikea for their special meatball dish (Lilian loves 'gehaktbaltjes' :)) and had yet another fun day.