Christmas 2009

Christmas 2009

Christmas 2009

Family Pictures

We had a wonderful Christmas, staying home with our family, just the 5 of us. On Christmas eve, we gathered together, watched the 'church movie' 'Joy to the World' and read the Christmas story in Luke 2, singing many Christmas songs. The girls were really into it, which made it really nice. Jonkje must have felt good too as he was mostly happily quiet. It was just really special in a sweet way. Then on Christmas morning the girls were ofcourse very excited, and they got spoiled! The had each a craft to put mosiac stickies on beautiful drawings of unicorns (Sofia) and a castle (Lilian). IN the same trend they received a toy unicorn and pegasus, which they have played with together ever since! They also each got a scooter ('step' in NL), some clothes and a new tennis racket that was finally the right size!

I am so glad to see that they are really enjoying their gifts, especially when they were excited to go in their new trainings suit on their scooter, with their tennis racket to the tennis courts in our neighborhood to play tennis with mama, yeah! They have had already many hours of fun craft time with the mosaic stickers and made beautiful pictures, which would make nice decorations for their room someday! Jonkje has been super excited about his xylophone and truck that Santa brought him, and he too now has some clothes that fit (met z'n dikke buik! :) ).

We had a wonderful time, with a delicious dinner that we were very lucky to share with the De Moors family. They were so much fun to have around, Vendella (the mom) is really fun and active, and her children Moroni, Dimitrius and Chastity were a lot of fun to have around, open, interesting and interested, and we all had a fun time playing 'catch phrase'. They stayed throughout the evening and the day couldn't have been better, partly because of them coming over! So glad we invited them!

The next day we finally went to get family pictures taken, again at Portrait Innovations in Newnan. Sofia's 1 tooth was kind of hanging out (both front top teeth are now history!), and the pics were a little blurry. However, we are still happy to have been able to get new pictures!

Here are some of our favorites:

Ice-Skating in Atlanta

The afternoon before Christmas Eve, the kids and I drove to Atlanta to meet papa in Centennial park to go skating. We first played in the play park there for a long time, and all the kids seemed to have a really good time going down the slides, swinging and being on the monkey bars. After that, the girls and I skated for more than an hour, while Josh watched our littlest monkey. The girls were having a wonderful time, and I was really proud of them skating all by themselves. They may not be quite ready for the Olympics, but since we only have been skating 1x/year, I thought they were doing really well. I was mainly very happy that they enjoyed it so much, and that they didn't give up, even after falling quite a few times. Way to go, girls! We all had a wonderful time, although Josh was frozen by the time we were done (he didn't have the nice sleeping bag in a stroller that Jasper had). Looking forward to special Christmas time!

Sinterklaas

We have been able to keep the Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas, and celebrated it this year on December 6th. The week leading up to this, the kids set their dutch shoes (klompjes) in front of the fire place and sang several Sinterklaas songs, while during the day we had Sinterklaas songs playing on the CD-player. The girls know several songs, and are so worried about Sinterklaas not hearing them, that they almost crawl in the fire-place to make sure he can hear them. It is so fun to see them be careful about Zwarte Piet not catching them being bad, and noticing that he (Zwarte Piet) even follows them into the stores, as he had found the exact same clothes that they had tried on the previous week. That Zwarte Piet is one smart cookie! We had a wonderful evening, with homemade 'pepernoten' (especially mama liked them and ate most of them) hot chocolate and especially presents. The girls got some new desparately needed clothes and church shoes, as well as some unicorn sticker and coloring books. They were so happy with every single present, they were very grateful! Jonkje didn't really get it, but he was still as happy as could be, and loved ripping the paper off! I (mama) also wrote a poem to the girls and papa in Dutch, which they read themselves and seemed to enjoy. The poem writing is a big tradition in my family, and since I became somewhat mature and stopped focussing on the presents, the poems have been my favorite part of Sinterklaas. Mostly, we write a little story of what has happened to/with that person in the past year, and simply rewrite the sentences such that they rhyme, which every now and then makes the grammar quite interesting! I love it though, and always look forward to my parents sending me those poems every year (now by email).

Jasper's First Birthday!

Jonkje turned 1 year old on November 13th! I can't believe how fast the time has past. We had a fun time with Jonkje, although he got some shots from the doctor. :(

We celebrated with family from both sides, and lots of cake. Jasper didn't really know what to do, and I must admit, the cake with all the orange frosting did look quite scary! He loved the toys he got, and still plays with them on a daily basis. He is so easily entertained and happy with anything. I do believe his favorite present was Jordan and Amanda's 'soccerball'. Happy, sweet little Jonkje, we love him so much. What a little sunshine!