Big Three-Oh in Paris this weekend

So, Afton turned 30 this past weekend, and to celebrate, we took a trip to Paris where we went to a children's museum, drove around the Arc de Triumph, cruised the Champs Elysee, had a fabulous dinner cruise on the Seine river, visited the Eiffel Tower at night, and finished up with a visit to Versailles and Marie Antoinette's hamlet the following morning! It was quite the weekend trip!

As a picture is worth a thousand words, this video speaks volumes (10 min)! Bon Appetite!

PS. Apologies for the low-quality version, but that is the max that the blog would take. Higher quality can be made available (around 350MB)

Spa Day

Hello Everyone! Here is a fun little update for us...as usual I'm significantly behind so at this rate you can expect Christmas in July as far as pages go (2011 AND 2010 Christmas ;) Everyone here is fine. Nancy has started Primary and loves it! She said both opening and closing prayer a couple of weeks ago...the only volunteer, and without any help! Victoria is starting to talk quite a bit, my favorite of her words those is still, "pink sparkly" for when she wants to wear said shoes. Daniel has just finished busy season so is getting to relax a little. We miss you all! Afton et al.

Text: Welcome to the Ooh La La Spa! Inspired by the book Fancy Nancy it's Beauty Day, we transformed our home into a spa! Above, you can see the colorful pillows and cushions, accented by rose petals, and armoire loaded with lotions, polish, etc. We enjoyed yogurt parfaits in fancy cups and herbal tea poured from Mommy's newest European garage sale snag. The home made face masks were less successful than expected...though Victoria did enjoy eating the cucumbers. Who'd have thought that kids who love dirt on their faces would shy away from a homemade face-mask on their skin?

Text: Though face masks had limited appeal, everyone loved the foot bath, manicures, pedicures and make overs! Nancy wanted straight hair like her friend Loulou and Loulou wanted curly hair like Nancy! Though she certainly doesn't need any help being beautiful, here we have the finished product... Voila!
Text: Though face masks had limited appeal, everyone loved the foot bath, manicures and make-overs. Victoria especially loved the pedicure and since Spa Day is always bringing Mommy the nail polish and insisting her toes be painted! What a beauty!

Happy Halloween!

Hello Everyone! I am RIDICULOUSLY behind on pages of the things we've been up to, but was just missing you all so much as the holidays are beginning that I skipped ahead so you could all see what Halloween was like for us and to let you know we've been thinking of y'all. Text is written in the e-mail and you can click on pictures to enlarge. Enjoy, and catch me up on what everyone else is up to! Afton et al.

Happy Halloween...Belgian style! We started Halloween Friday night at the military base. I decided Victoria should be a carrot...I had to exploit the red hair before she could tell me no! Please note Grandma Johnson did her best to disagree, but the ocean between thwarted her efforts. The hardest part was convincing Nancy that she wanted to be a bunny more than a princess, but once she realized she could jump the whole night she was sold and she even insisted on adding rabbit feet the next day. We LOVED being around Americans again, especially how much they get into things. Our Bishop's family signed us in and pulled off an impressive rendition of 101 Dalmations for their trunk. Nancy and I followed up with some traditional Halloween candy bartering...which she understood much better than I thought, I really had to work for that bite-size Snickers!

Saturday night we participated in the first ever community organized Trick-or-Treating fiasco...I mean event. Children came out in droves and though their costumes were kinda scary, I was significantly more terrified when the mob of kids and teens began chanting, "on veut des bon-bons!" (we want candy!). Unfortunately the streets warned of their coming weren't as enthusiastic, each street had only three or four people that stood outside their houses and handed out a highly limited amount of candy. Needless to say the late comers in the back (which or course we were among) did more waving than candy eating. In the end they asked everyone to dump their candy in a big wagon and after the haunted house and story telling they would distribute it evenly. But being very American and not very socialist, and having two kids two young for said activities, we took what we had and ran for it from the hundreds of participants. Once out of the mob we invited our friends to our house for an impromptu Halloween party. While they watched Disney Halloween cartoons I ran to the store and bought candies. When I got back the kids Trick-or-Treated at our bathroom and bedroom doors and Daniel still managed to answer the door creatively. Then we played hide-and-go-seek and read Scratch and Sniff and Fancy Nancy Halloween (thanks Grandma Ellison) in the dark with flashlights, and enjoyed a round of duck duck goose (we turned the lights on for that one). Even Victoria loved it...tapping heads and saying du, du, goo, go! and running while squealing with delight...though she didn't get the whole turn thing.

There wasn't much left for Halloween day as it isn't a holiday here...so I let the girls wear their princess dresses to Visiting Teaching and planned on letting them keep them on at the store, but as you can see they didn't quiet make it that far. So we ended the day with dinner in a pumpkin, an Aunt Tamara recipe, and had some fun dancing with glow sticks and strobe lights in the dark. Would have been a perfect Halloween, if all of you had been here to share it with us! Happy Halloween!

Finally, an update! I have half finished pages for Christmas still and some other little things, but until those are finished enjoy some pictures/stories from beautiful Holland! Sorry it is so very long, but what we just couldn't stop snapping pictures and it was almost impossible to narrow it down to the best ones! And a reminder that I use these in their individual scrapbooks so there may be some repetition. Hope this finds everyone well, we are doing much better here now that the sun has come out and the colds sneaking into submission! Tomorrow we celebrate Victoria's first birthday and our next trip is coming up in June to the Spanish coast. Happy springtime everyone!

Welcome to Holland, land of the flowers! We began the day at 5am in order to make it to Floraholland, the leading flower auction in the world. In terms of floor space, the building itself is the second largest in the world and accommodates 48 million plants and flowers a day! In the auction room buyers can view the flowers as they pass through the room, transported by mechanical grooves in the floor. Above, the screen shows the price and quantity available, both of which go down over time. The buyers push a button to tell the auctioneer (in a little booth down by the flowers) how much they want to buy. The longer they wait, the lower the price...but wait too long and you miss it all together. Each lot of flowers takes only seconds or minutes to sell. Many of the flowers bought in the early morning will be in homes by the end of that very day, while some are shipped out on planes to farther away locations. The sheer size of the operation was absolutely staggering and worth the early hours (even though the children are pictured in pajamas!)

Our little Victoria outshone all the flowers in the garden! A mob of Asian tourists surrounded her and her sister in the above picture, ignoring the flowers and snapping pictures of them! Victoria loved being with her Daddy and riding on Mommy's shoulders...her favorite way to get around! She cruises in the stroller as well (to the right) and was also quiet happy in the petting zoo :)

Nancy bloomed birghter than all the flowers in the garden! A mob of Asian tourists surrounded her and her sister in the above picture, ignoring the flowers and snapping pictures of them instead! Above, Nancy didn't hesitate to run up and pet all the animals at the petting zoo. She was very brave there... as well as on the bridges and by the water and pretty much everywhere else! What a fun little playmate!

Hi everyone! Below are some more pages of the girls...I wanted to get these done before I catch up on the travel/holiday pages (no estimates on when that will be!). Other than that, not a ton going on around here...just the usual! The weather was unusually beautiful this weekend, we went and fed the ducks (and mostly the greedy swans...all the other ducks stayed "neck length" away from them, and that is quite a distance!). Nancy's birthday and party are coming up and a lunch bunch (English speaking ladies get together). Hope all is well with all of you! Hope you enjoy the update!

Nancy is enjoying her new home! To the right, she is blowing bubbles outside our apartment in our "yard" (a tiny little common grass area, but it works for us!). In the center, she is putting in her very first screw! Her little table and chair set came with special IKEA tools and she wanted to screw it together herself, and she did! To the left, dancing with Daddy in the kitchen, she even found a way aroundthe heigth barrier! Up and to the left Nancy is copying Mommy blowing a kiss, leg lift and all!

Nancy is loving Belgian food, especially the baguettes! She has learned to dig her whole hand in and pull out the soft center. She was a milk addict before we left and we thought the lack of fresh milk would cure her...however she took one sip of the irradiated milk and instead of the grimace we were expecting she just asked for more! Below, in round three of Belgium versus the toddler, we'll have to call a tie. They have very little carpet here and our wood floors have caused more than one socked-feet slip up and ensuing tears. However I think Nancy learned to make the best of the situation as the below picture shows. She also was getting into the literature, to the right she is reading "What a Circus!" Though she enjoyed it, we have backed off of checking out books from the library after we tried several times to return this one. The library we got it from is where we used to live, now a good distance away, and we found out only open a few very select hours 3 days a week. In addition, there is no dropbox and they wouldn't accept the book at nearby branches of the same library. The above eye roll demonstrated by Nancy shows how I felt.

Play time! Victoria and Nancy enjoyed an "international tea party" with their Aunt Tina, Aunt Noel and Nate via Skype. They also enjoy reading books together (though Tori prefers to eat them) and playing with Mommy and scarves. Below, Tori is quiet anxious to do everything her big sister does, especially eat!! She saw Mommy and Nancy eating a gauffe one day (belgian waffles) and tried so hard to get it into her own mouth that Mommy gave in and started her on solid foods much earlier than planned (though she was still dissapointed it wasn't the gauffe :) Her favorite "foods?" Tori REALLY loves to eat paper and diapers...if either items are on the floor she will move very quickly to get them and demolish them, as is evidenced by the sticker picture below.

I'm so behind on my pages! Below I have a couple pages of 4x6 pictures I'm going to put directly into the girls' scrapbook and one page of Tori. I have several more in the works but haven't quiet finished them up, and since we have two trips worth of pictures to post since then I figured I'd just get out what I've got. Enjoy and Merry Christmas to all! Miss everyone terribly, we will be thinking of all of you this holiday season!

Victoria is a little mover! She will be content for a few days whenever she learns a new motor skill that increases her mobility, and then she will cry and cry until she masters the next thing. Above, she used to be happy in the bean bag (both circle pictures) and then was very frustrated until she learned to roll...one way. We laid out a set of toys the direction she could roll and when she hit the end she would have to be "reset." The bouncer is now in storage as she has started rolling out of it. Now her favorites are Daddy helping her "walk" with him, jumping up the contraption below, and yes...finally....she CRAWLS!!!

Click on the images to enlarge! Sorry so long in posting, but hope you enjoy the pages!

Afton et al.

Beautiful Dinant! To the left you can see the citadel, built for protection, atop a rocky cliff, Below in the valley (WAY below) is a quaint town that stretches along the river. Near the cathedral there is fair amount of town (below), but there are places along the river where the cliff comes so close to the river edge that the town becomes only a couple of houses deep. In the citadel was a very interesting tour, a highlight of which was a room where a WWI bomb rocked the foundation, it was like walking through a fun house. It made me dizzy and a little ill, very sobering to think of the history of this area and what people lived through.

We enjoyed a ferry ride along the river. We particularly enjoyed the pizza we brought along (the generous, elderly boat driver said it was okay. At least we think so...we weren't really sure if he was speaking French or Dutch ;) But we think little Victoria enjoyed it most of all.The zip line at the playground near the citadel would never have flown in the U.S., but it certainly "flew" here! Even Grandma gave it a whirl...which isn't surprising if you know "Grandma" at all, the one who taught my friends the "proper" way to roll down hills! I can't even describe the contraption I twirled around on!

Our little family, all bundled up though actually the cave was MUCH warmer than outside. Tori did very well strapped to Daniel's chest, though the couple of times she did cry the echo did NOT help.

The whole gang! Above is what the cave behind us looked like...HUGE and sapciuos (cobwebs added for Halloween:) By the way, Grandma was the only one in the tour to know that the above "almost" column never met due to wind.

Belgian bit : When looking for a baking soda, I was directed to the pharmacy (little shops on the street with green crosses hanging out front). Apparently, it is good to take for your stomach! Also, At church when the teenagers are waiting for their parents, they play with the basketballs. But they kick them around like a soccer ball, ignoring the hoops unless they try to "score a goal" by kicking them in.