While we at the zoo yesterday we saw a bit of unexpected wildlife action. We were checking out the lions when a Blue Heron flew in over the lions as they were snoozing (or so we thought) around the enclosure. Maybe the Heron realised he was too close to the lions and started to fly upwards -- too late! One of the lionesses went from lying prostatrate to being airbourne in a second, snatched the Heron in midair before landing to make a run for it with her prize. As soon as she landed the male lion was after her to release the Heron and fight they did, but the lioness was not letting go. After being chased for a minute or two she secured herself a corner where much to some peoples disgust, and that of the other rest of the pride, went about chowing down into the poor bird ... those of us that found it fascinating stayed to watch a little more. It's not often that you get to see something like that in real life right before your eyes!

Hi dear friends and family,

The weather is a little on the cold side today, overcast and drizzly. Hence the reason why I'm blogging this afternoon  and enjoying time listening to my iPod and some cool music . We have had the other type of brilliant weather over the past couple of weeks: sunny, warm which goes along nicely with the longer days we are seeing.

Today we've caught up with some of our friends in Australia. One of our close friends turned 8 years old yesterday and it was terrific to hear Rachel's excited voice and all her news - at times like that we just really miss Australia so much. I got to catch up a little with my friend Janette and tried to keep her for as long as I could from the doing her Sunday night ritual of ironing for the week - yeah sorry about that Janetteso   but what are friends for, and it was great to chat about family and history! 

As some of you know Marcel will be in Australia soon to walk his sister down the aisle(!!) and making the most of this visit back to Australia I've been doing a bit of ordering for our homeschool (which will save us heaps on postage) - my mum has been the recipient of all these packages .... and had the 'honour' of opening them all up! Now that was a totally new experience for me of having someone else being the first to take the new purchases out of their wrappings LOL! All is good and everything seems to be there and mum did a great job of working out what was what

This week has been an unusally full week with having people over for dinner - it's just the way it worked out - we had a family from our old neighbourhood over, also a couple from next door on another night and then Marcel's brother and fiance for some seafood. They were showing me how to cook BBQed salmon steaks - so lekker and a yummy sauce to go with it too. Last Sunday after chuch we went to a local park with family who also have four children so that was great and relaxed. And we had our small group get together on Friday night with a very yummy BBQ.

BBQing is definitely the way to go and something we plan to get into more. In the Netherlands they have these neat, little disposable-BBQs made of alfoil trays, with the necessary coals and grill-plate, ... still they don't seem like the real-deal BBQ to me but, hey, they work!

The girls were at Walibi World yesterday with their scout group, such a difficult, boring way to earn a new scout badge - NOT! They had such a blast and came home not the least bit tired - nice to have that sort of energy, eh?! Michael was at a sleepover on Friday night with one of his friends from scouts: we have had the same boy over here more lately for play-dates and a sleepover. Also, Michael has been getting very bad hayfever lately, yesterday the scout-leaders called us to come take him home as his face looked like he'd gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson(?). It's looking alot better this afternoon with the help of some hayfever drugs and eye drops.

Ps. ... I have a few more photos from May to put up, hopefully soon  .....

**disclaimer: the owner takes no responsibility for loosing the photos of this day :-)**

Definitely a must see! Back in Canberra we have the Floriade each spring which I love to see and explore. I'm guessing that the inspiration for our Floriade came from (de or het?) Keukenhof!! this flower garden display opens over spring each year in Lisse. What I found surprising about it was you really do get a sense of discovering the gardens. We had been there for a good hour maybe more and we hadn't even discovered the best bits yet. Way up the back was the children's playground and little animal farm and the windmill and many more displays of flowers and gardens. On one of the lawns there were all these Fatboys ~ huge cushion-shaped beanbags ~ that one could lay out in the sun on. Not that there was much sun on this day ;-) but we had fun laying out there with all these other people pretending and remembering what the sun felt like!! In the William-Alexander Pavillion was this incredibly overwhelming show of all the different flowers planted in the Keukenhof - it was quite weird to get swamped by all this beauty. Like with the Floriade, to feel the full effects of the flowers blooming it's good to go back again so we are hoping to go at least one more time this season!

After church last Sunday Michael informs me he isn't feeling so well! Yup, another one bites the dust. Jasmine is still very weak from all the vomiting she's been doing but she just needs to regain her strength. Marcel is good to go!

The kids had been invited to another party on Wednesday and Sammy was the only who could make it. These are the friends who let us stay at their home while they were on holiday. The day after they got back from hols they had to move out as the row of houses in their street and the street behind were tagged to be pulled down to build more modern row-houses. I don't completely understand the logic as there didn't seem to be much wrong with them and rather than pull down 3 rows of housing I thought it might be more feasible to simply moderise the rows?? But their old, empty house was put to great use as a venue for the party, and the best part was when they painted the walls to recreate the story of Queen Esther from the Bible. So awesome!

So other than doing the usual shopping and a couple of catchups over coffee we have been hanging at home this week getting into our lessons in our new homeschool room (more on that later!). We are now heading into the easter long weekend ... hope you all have a safe weekend and have a great time with family and friends!

Marcel made it to work everyday this week; just! I must say it's been awhile since I've seen him this sick.

We went ice skating on Thursday with two other homeschooling families ... that was lots of fun. One of the ladies arranged for us all to have a lesson ... so that was 3 adults and 6 children in the class. The kids didn't wonderfully, of course. And the mum's did extremely well too .... except for my major tumble, no bruises to prove it or photoes but plenty of witnesses LOL. So sadly that's the finish of outdoor skating for this season.

Friday found me with one very sick, little girl. Jasmine had come down with the virus too. Still it turned out to be quite a social day with a friend coming by in the morning to use the internet and our children did what children do best: Play! At lunch we picked up another little friend who was coming over for an afternoon play-date. I loved having a house full of children playing and being together. That night those of us in our family that were well enough headed on over to Peggy's place for our church small-group meeting which ended up being a girls night ~ that was good fun!

Today (Saturday) was so full-on I think I rode all over Amsterdam in one day! Marcel wasn't well but still managed to invite Craig for a pancake breakfast and I took the two kids that were not sick to scouts. After getting home it was a quick ride to Amstelveen centrum to jump in the car with Saskia where we headed to a seconds sale where I picked up some great bargains and some books too (both english and dutch!). Then I had to be back at the scout hut to pick up the kids and ride home.

Tonight we had planned a family movie night ... ahhhh ... it was great to chillout as a family watching a movie and eating popcorn. I had done more riding that afternoon to pick Sammy up from a birthday party (all the girls had a great time) and to also pick up the DVD. By this stage I was hoping that Marcel would be 100% soon and I also couldn't wait to hit the sack!

The move into our new home was smooth, tiring but smooth none-the-less. We moved out of our old place on a Sunday ~ the majority of our things were stored in a friend's garage in between the moving out and moving in :-) ~ and stayed at another friends place while they were on holidays for a week. The timing of their holiday was so perfect. We got to stay in a place with lots of toys and room while we finished up the cleaning and getting our old place ready for the coming inspection on a Wednesday. The inspection was fine and over with in 15 minutes so the cleaning 'party' the weekend before was a huge success. Thanks to everyone who helped us! So the Friday after the inspection was when we could move into new place. We had lots of help from Marcel's brother Paul with getting our stuff out of our friends garage. The weekend we moved in also happened to be when we had booked me into a B&B ~ now that's what I call unplanned, perfect timing!! I can't describe the wonderful feeling of coming 'home' refreshed and ready to get our things all sorted and put away where they belong.

.... we have found another house and move in on the 1st March. We love living in this area so tried really hard to find something close by and after much looking we found a house about a five minute bike ride away. The new house is much closer to the tram/metro line and it's out of flight paths too, most definitely a luxury. It has three levels: lounge, dining and kitchen on the first level; on the second there are two double bedrooms and one single (read very tiny) room; and the third level is in the roof with a double room and laundry. So there is more room than our current house! We've already organised our internet so hopefully if we are without internet than it should only be for a week! The street is a quiet one which is great for the kids and for my peace of mind and the neighbours seem very friendly. We will be close to a Dirk van den Broek supermarket and also an Albert Heijn ~ a couple of the places we love to shop at. Dirks is really good value, for a large family, with lots of variety and AH is more expensive but there are items we buy there that our family really enjoys! So we are making the move out of Amsterdam and officially going into Amstelveen, not that we will really notice a difference in that as the dividing border is an invisible one and we cross it on an almost daily basis without giving it much of a thought.

Usually Saturday morning is the time that the children can watch cartoons but we were just not getting to Kabouters and Welpens in time for the 10am start. So cartoon watching has been moved to Sunday morning, which has now become the sleepin, chillout morning for the week; our church meeting is at 4pm which gives us that time for a sleepin.

So our weekend began with the weekly ritual of dropping the 3 older kids off at their meetings and mum heading back home. The weather has been sunny and chilly but on Saturday it was sunny and warm ~ after all the dreary weather of late the change has been delightful. So a last minute decision was made to get along to the wedding of a young couple who had invited our church to share in their wedding happiness. I'm so glad we decided to go! They were getting married in a little church in a villiage on the northern side of Amsterdam, the place is called Durgerdam. Seeing as the weather was great we also decide to ride our bikes and make an afternoon of it! That trip turned out to be a 28 kilometre round trip through Amsterdam, over the IJ river and then a ride through the countryside. Marcel, Michael and Jasmine were on their bikes and then I was had Jackson on my bike, in his seat, and Sammy had the easiest ride of all of us; she was being towed behind me in the Burley (a light-weight carriage for kids). So with our supplies we set off and away we went. Yeah, it was hard work at times but really worth the effort and we got to see some different parts of Amsterdam and going over two bridges we were able to see some good views of the IJ River right up and down along it's banks. The little village of Durgerdam is quaint with all the houses along the one and only street facing out to the water of the IJ-meer. The wedding was a delight too, with lots of singing and music and I enjoyed very much the way they committed their lives to each other. Saturday night was an early night for our kids and a chillout movie time for me and Marcel!!

Our Sunday included a morning tea with friends in Ouder Kirk a/d Amstel (another bike ride BUT much shorter than the previous days ride!), an afternoon rest/sleep and church for 2/3 of our family. Jackson wasn't well enough to go to church, and with Marcel teaching in the Children's class, I was happy to stay home to look after him. Jassy was invited for a sleepover at Cait's so she got to stay up really late and have a girls play-day today ~ an unexpected long weekend bonus!

So that was our weekend!

Beste Alle!

One thing that I did learn from doing the Flylady thing for all those years is to not try and catch up, but rather, just jump in where I'm at. A philosophy that is serving me well especially when it comes to blogging; well personally, I'm finding this is a good way to live at the moment.

Now for the 'little catch up'!

First Christmas (25th December)

The tone of the day was relaxed and fun. We spent the middle of the day with the kid's Aunty Esther and Uncle Craig, giving and receiving gifts, and then of course there was some eating.

In the afternoon we rode over to our friends the Homets for yummy desserts and a couple of games! Caryn had her sister's family visiting from the USA so there were heaps of children and they all played so well together .... great to see! I made my first Pavlova, so I was really happy with that.

Second Christmas (26th December)

On this day we had Ben and Beulah, with their two children, over for a pancake brunch. They brought with them a couch for us that some of their neighbours where throwing away. People throw away some really good quality furniture, but we aren't complaining as we have scored ourselves a nice corner couch! Then in the afternoon we rode the tram into the Dam for some window shopping.

New Years Eve

We had about four families over so that was really great and eventhough we had been warned about the fireworks I'm not sure if anything really prepares you for what it's going to be like! People had been letting fireworks off during the day and leading up to 12 midnight, but, as soon as it hit midnight the skies exploded with light, noise and there was smoke so thick that it reminded me of the Canberra fires when the smoke hung in the air. Exciting and eerie at the same time. We stood out in our street and all around us, up over the top of houses and apartments you could see the fireworks exploding in the adjacent streets. We had this amazing light and sound show that went on for about 30 minutes or longer.

Ice Skating Lessons (2nd, 3rd, 4th January)

The kiddos are in their second day of skating lessons and absolutely loving it. Even after two days I can really see a difference in their confidence and skill levels.

Practice area off to the side of the main skating track

luv from the vdBs xxx

We had a lovely lunch at our place today meeting a family new to the Netherlands! then in the afternoon we walked down to the Amstel River.

Jassy practising her camera skills and Jackson is nearly cut out of the shot! LOL

Only a couple of things to mention this week.

Tuesday (instead of Friday) was our day out. We caught up with another homeschooling family at the Railway Museum in Urecht. The museum was really excellent with lots to do for the children and quite interactive, we could easily have spent longer there but, you know how it can be, we had a train to catch! It's a special thing too to see other homeschoolers!

In our relaxed structure we had lots of Bible reading and discussion, our read alouds (Little House on the Prairie and The Silver Brumby), daily practice in Phonics Pathways (spelling and rule learning), Rosetta Stone Nederland tutorials, Mathletics (personal and live), Downunderlit Copywork, drafting and letter writing, map reading, and a few more incidental things scattered in there too.

Jackson has his own well-stocked 'school' box and this has been great for him, mum and the other kiddos! I'm using ziplock bags to hold the various activities in and each day he and I get to choose a couple of bags to do: counting, sticker work, reading (mainly him memorising the little books in the collection), building, playdooh, and scissor practice .... just to name a few.

from the vdBs and love to you all!

Ps. shopping wagon is going better than I expected ....... I will only need to go shopping twice a week now have a great weekend everyone!

Busy week, this one! Our family celebrated Jacksons birthday on Monday (a day early) thinking we couldn't do it on the actual day ..... as it was events changed last minute and things turned out that we could have but we are learning to move gracefully with the flow! I said all that to say, with all that's been happening it feels like a couple of weeks ago that we celebrated Jacksons birthday!!

Monday saw the first day of a new routine of me getting up at 6am and the kiddos coming out of bed at 7am. I'm in desperate need of time to think and prepare for our new school year starting at the beginning of September. So Monday was spent getting ready for Jackson's special dinner and buying his presents ..... presents were the easy bit as he had seen us shopping for Michael a couple of weeks before and had placed an order for some knight figures. Food was a little bit more trickier as we hunt for wheat-free foods in this land of cheese and yummy 'wheat' breads. Marcel managed to badly twist his ankle at the playground ....... I keep telling him he's too old for that toddler stuff!

Tuesday was a home day with some tabletime and read alouds and our first relaxed dutch lesson. A neighbour has kindly offered to get us started with teaching us the basics of dutch. We went over the vowel sounds and vowel combinations and then onto using verbs. That was pretty cool and aspects of the vowels are really falling into place! That night I rode down to Amstelveen centraal for some time-out and think-time. After a bite to eat and doing a spot of planning I discovered that V&D (pronounced 'Vay and Day') department store was open till 9pm on Tuesday ..... NICE ...... that means on my night off I can get something to eat, a coffee, stationery if I need it, and relax doing a little window shopping too all in the same place!

Wednesday we left the house early to meet up with another mum and her two children in Zaanse Schans ~ a quaint village that still has some working windmills and lots of museums and cool things to check out. We didn't get home until after 6pm that night. We were tuckered out by the end of it but it was lots of fun and so fascinating!

Yes, you guessed it! Outside the Clog Museum and shop!!

More in another entry about that day!

Thursday was a catch up day spent doing some more work and researching trains and public transport! As most of the websites are in dutch it takes a bit of doing to work out the best way of getting to a place. Tomorrow we are off to Rijswijk (near Den Haag) to update our passports.

Friday ~ we did the passport thing and have our stamps now!!! Marcel headed back to Amsterdam for work and the kids and I headed for Den Haag for a look-see (being only 10 minutes by train from Rijswijk)! We had a nice walk through the centraal part of the city, with it's beauty and age, and are ready to go back at some stage in the future for more!

William of Orange ~ in the Den Haag centraal square ~ we are looking forward to learning more about this man whose impact on The Netherland's history was huge.

Then it was home again on the trein! What a great feeling that the public transport system is making so much more sense to me!!

Being this close to the North Pole means that during the summer months it doesn't get dark until 10 at night! In the mornings it's getting light around 5.30. The great thing about this is that people over here darken their bedrooms with these complete blackout blinds. I'm sure you can guess what's coming!  The kiddos have been sleeping in till after 8 most mornings and sometimes later. Love it, love it, love it! Especially as my children have always tended to be early risers (except for Sammy, of course) The late rising will have to change once we are in our own place but for now it certainly feels like holiday-mode

WE'RE BACK! Amsterdam has welcomed us back with a beautiful blue sky. We left a stark Netherlands winter in March and have come back to leaf-covered trees and still a little European summer left to enjoy.

The flight went well, I couldn't have asked for better! All the connections went without a hitch and we enjoyed relative peace the majority of the time spent in those crampt airplane conditions. When we turned up in Amsterdam our luggage had decided there was too much to see in London so had made a detour on us lol. So we are three suitcases down. The upside was that when the cases eventually turn up they will be delivered to us by BA. That has meant that after such a long flight we haven't had to lug 3 suitcases onto trans and trams to come home!

We are together again as a family! Marcel has taken off with the girls this morning on MY new bike to pick up Michael's new wheels. So picture Jasmine being dinked on the bike with Marcel and Samantha being dinked by Craig! (I hope to have photos soon!!)

We are currently staying in the apartment upstairs from Esther and Craig. The owners have kindly said we can stay here while they are on holidays. The apartment has three levels and a patio up on the roof for summer BBQs.

Hi dear everyone,

Well it's catch up time with my blog! I've got a couple of weeks of what's been happening in our family. The weeks are flying by for me with all the ups and downs. We are learning so much about our family and what's important to us, it's nothing short of incredible. As we are back staying with my inlaws it means that my internet time is once again more available and efficient YAY! So keep checking back in the next day or two for back-dated entries. love shelso xx 

We decided to stay an extra 3 nights at the caravan park and make the most of the time there! This week there has been lots to get done with moving back to mum's place on Thursday and getting myself organised to go away for the weekend in Brisbane!

Monday

Bookmark decorating with Cairns Homeschool Group. We brought along lots stickers and paper to decorate to make bookmarks. Some bookmarks where made as presents to give to family and friends!

Thursday

Packing up and moving back to mum's place. Each time we move between my mum's and my inlaw the process is becoming more streamlined.

We were up pretty late with Marcel putting in some calls to the Netherlands letting them know that we are making plans to return!

Friday

Up real early to catch the 6am flight to Brissy. More on the National Home Education Conference and my weekend in Brissy in another entry

Tuesday night

One of the High Schools here hosts an annual Science Festival open to the community and best of all it's FREE! Upon arriving there are people everywhere. Pretty much all the classroom Blocks have something science related on show. On the grass areas in between the Blocks are more activities.

Some of what we saw ......

Under pressure - the children participated in this experiment showing the benefits of pressure. On top of a table were placed 21 inflated balloons. Another table is then placed upside-down on the balloons. The experiment was to see how many people could stand on the table before bursting any of the balloons.

So with adults holding, securing the table children started to pile onto the upside-down table.

In the end, after 25 children squeezed onto the table none of the balloons burst. All the children were asked to carefully hop off and adults were then asked to try burst the balloons. Only after the adults started jumping up and down on the table did the balloons start to pop!

Pest Fish

Pest fish are a real problem in the local waterways. The children got the opportunity to see the difference between the native fish and the pest fish. We picked up an activity book to take home with us.

Wednesday

Going through the Pest Fish activity book the next day there were some very cool activities to do resulting in some good discussion.

That afternoon we headed down the local creek behind the caravan park where there are fish and turtles. Our mission was to identify what sort of fish lived there.

A turtle coming up to nibble on a toe

Friday

A trip to the library ...... and a day of read-louds!

Hi everyone,

Hope you like all my updates ....... as I get all of this up on my blog I'm realising how busy some of these weeks have been! This day was a particularly good one for me.

We dropped Jackson off with Oma as he was spending the day with her. Then we headed on up the Gillies Range which is a hair-raising ride at times but very stunning with the views that you are able to take in. We were off to the Yungaburra Markets (a once a month that display the best of wares and produce from that area of the Tablelands). We ran into the Luptons who were spending their last day on the Tablelands before flying back to Sydney that night.

After the markets we dropped in on Craig's (Esther's fiancee) parents who live at Yungaburra.

Craig's sister was having a Garage Sale and Jas picked up this pretty cool hat ~ a tad too hot for the tropics but will be great for Holland!). The funny thing was that Kim (Marcel's youngest bros girlfriend) happen to drop by to the garage sale so that was a lovely surprise.

In the afternoon we went with Kim to Lake Eacham, an extinct volcanic crater, where we had a walk around to the Turtle viewing platform and then spent the rest of the after wading by the edge of the crater.

Such a peaceful place!