Happy Easter everyone!

Happy Easter everyone.. This year a little more involved.. but like Aran said it is probably the last year without an Easter Bunny.. Next year will be a different story.. The day started early with a cheering session for Aran in his road race and in the pouring rain.. we need this rain badly, but come on, we want to play OUTSIDE!! then we colored eggs and Lilja decorated them with stickers..Lilja really has not gotten any chocolate yet, so I hide the colored eggs in 'plain sight" for Lilja to find.. too cute.. she got so excited.. I can't wait for X-mas this year..I can already see her face.. ;)

Big bird Ninni (rabbit) egg


Lilja loved all the Sesame street stickers..

Because of the rain we ended up doing some art projects, first OFCOURSE we played with playdoh, then we took out the sticker hearts.. Lilja loves to place them everywhere..

Poor jack.. not sure how he got a heart on his butt..

racing weekend

This weekend was Aran's first bike racing Omnium of the year. This means he does a time trial, a road race and a criterium all in one weekend.. Unfortunately the weather did not really cooperate.
Saturday: Criterium. Aran had done the time trial early in the morning and did great. the criterium was hard....There he is in the gray helmet and the D on his chest..
The girlies.. proof we stood in the cold cheering!!

Next day Easter morning.. pouring rain!! and yes the girlies were there again. i do not think Aran thought we were going to be there.. But he!! we have Dutch and Alaskan blood in our veins.. a little cold will not hold us back..

Note Lilja's boots IN the water!! she did not mind the pouring rain at all. I think she wanted to get more wet!

Daddy is done!! that jacket is supposed to be white. i think he was happy it was only 20 miles!

This ..

saturday mornings..

We are so lucky that Lilja is finally letting us sleep a little longer in the morning.. Now she wakes up almost exactly at 7 am every morning.. LOVE IT!!! Aran had to race this morning, but it was too early and too cold for us to join him, so we played with playdoh.. Lilja will ask to play with playdoh pretty much every day. One of my favorite acivities too, so she is lucky too ;)

cheering on Daddy

Aran did his first practice Criterium bike race this weekend. Lilja was the star "cheerer" . She is doing the "eyes" as a joke, I have to turn away so she doesn't see me laughing when the eyes come out during dinner.. she's such a ham!!

elmo and Lilja

We do not really watch Tv, but we do watch Elmo sing with his friends on the computer.. Lilja is really getting the hang of this song.

Our new room

Our new renovation is done!! now I need to prime and paint and we can have some visitors!!
Oh yes,and buy some furniture!!
Here is our new sliding door to the yard.. I feel this has already changed our lives. Lilja has been playing outside all day.. In the water table, in the car, swinging and sliding..just having that open door there, Lilja is free to play and is so much fun to watch..


and here is our room. yes it is small, but a queen bed will fit in it. We are getting a nice futon so we can sit and have coffee in there. Lilja loves this room. She loves to dance in it. Not sure if it is all those windows or the echo.. So who is first to come and visit??

Last of the photos

Aran and my dad went to the Arnem's Airborn Museum. I will post the pictures right now but Aran will describe the experience in the near future.. There are so many pictures that we just can't keep up..

The herring!!

Aran has a love/hate... well let's just say "hate" relationship with the very Dutch herring.. Last time we were in holland, Aran must have chewed the herring about a thousand times.. This time he wanted the conquer the herring with class !!

Two peas in a pod!!

Lilja and "Zitta"just had a great connection. When she wasn't around Lilja would ask for her and she definitely would light up when she came in the room.

Feeding the birds for the 10th time.. Lilja can't get enough of it.. especially walking all the way there.. she was such a trooper and really started walking very good in Holland.

The beach

Aran and I went on a small date to the beach one day.. it was very windy, but we were ready to have some time for ourselves. Oma really does not mind loving up Lilja .. she always said it's more fun without me there.. so she has Lilja all to herself.. We did not mind..



it was so windy you could almost stand sideways and the wind would hold you up!! I love the wind!!
p.s notice we are the ones on the beach.. are we crazy or what??

Ohoe Place

My parents took us to a very cool place on a kind of windy day.. It was a pet store/petting zoo / Indiana Jones adventure place. First you walked through the pet store.. and may i say the prettiest and most elaborate pet store i have ever seen, with rabbits, guinea pigs and birds everywhere.. then you entered the Indiana Jones part.. A sort of pyramid stone walled labarinth of walk ways with here and there some animals behind glass. an owl, some mongooses, foxes and snakes. Lilja was a little too little for some of the things you could do, like finding dinosaur bones in a huge sand boz, or following clues to a treasure.. Truly a very cool place that we will definitely come back to..

here is my dad holding Lilja looking at some lizards.


We had to go up some stairs and even walk on some stepping stone with water all around us.

There were a lot of birds in the pet store. They were so noisy that Lilja suddenly said ; "birds all done!" and she wanted to leave.

Upstairs there was a little restaurant that also is a party place. Lilja and Oma were sitting on at a "Toadstool" table and chairs for little kids.. finding something fun to do.. Mom always has cute ideas..here they were blowing something across the table..

Veere

Some very good friends of my parents and me ofcourse, live in Zeeland. They lived in Washington DC when we did and I remember meeting their 4 newly adopted little boys. I knew they wanted to meet Lilja so we made a trip out of it and wanted to show Aran the Delta Works. Renee and Bert have a beautiful yard with a very boisterous dog, Sjort and two very curious chickens.. Lilja was very interested in feeding the chickens grass and in throwing the ball for Sjort..unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the whole family, but with this said.. Thank you Renee and Bert for the wonderful coffee and cakes.. I am so glad you met Lilja!! After our wonderful time with the family, we realized it was a little late to go to the museum of the Delta Works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works, so we ended up in a little town named Veere..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veere. This really old little fishing town had some great history and some wonderful mussels!!!

OK, another favorite!!

Our little restaurant in the basement of a museum..Note the TWO, count them TWO, BIG pans of mussels.. Her favorite Son-in-law!!

Lilja's first experience with mussels.. Mommy do they always squeeze my nose??

Family day

Every year my family on my father's side comes together for a "Family Day" and each year a different person sets up the itinerary. This year it was Uncle Ron and we went to Bob's party Palace.. First came the coffee and cakes, then some bowling competitions and then a wonderful dinner. We had seen Martin, Ciska, Anna and Raoul already earlier that week so it was fun to see them again.

Lilja was very determined to go bowling, the first obstacle was the shoes...

Then the sizes of the balls.. so she decided to just sit and jump on them.. Anna was so cute.. she had given Lilja the outfit she is wearing in this picture.. Note that Anna is wearing the same skirt , and actually pretty much the same outfit. She had asked me to put it on Lilja on Family Day, "so they could almost be like sisters." Doesn't that tug at your heart strings.. Hard sometimes to be so far away from family!!Lilja hear is copying Anna and ate that whole piece of toast and then some.. Oma always finds fun stuff to do in time of need..

And Zitta follows in her footsteps as she showed Lilja how to drum on a box of licorice..

Great job, Lilja.. Here's a hug from Anna.. again ..

Opa's French toast tastes better

Opa and Lilja have a special bond.. Besides playing on the ground, having her on his shoulders, feeding her this morning became a very endearing game.. Oh, just FYI she had already eaten her oatmeal, a banana and half of my yogurt.. now she was going after the french toast..like we do not feed her ;0