Paasvakantie

It’s paasvakantie or Easter holidays in Belgium at the moment. Olive and Edie have two weeks off school and Richard is into his second week in the United States. We’re missing him lots but are really looking forward to seeing him in Barcelona on Friday – yipee!

Thought I’d share with you a few of the things we’ve been doing to keep ourselves busy.

Olive went mountain biking. Technically this happened before the Easter holiday but I couldn't resist including this picture - so cute with her helmet and camelbak - just like her Dad 🙂

Olive and Edie went to a girls only birthday tea party. Naturally this called for the hair straighteners!

They are posing in front of the tree which will become our paasboom or Easter tree.

Edie with her great friend Chloe, who was hosting the tea party.

Olive got all dressed up for the Easter egg hunt at school. Her friend Harry told his Mum that "Olive looked so beautiful today". When I told her what he said there was a lot of blushing!

The girls blinged up the paasboom...

and did a spot of egg dyeing.

No matter how hard I try, I can never get ours to look like Martha Stewart's!!

Found these nifty egg holders in the supermarket.

Made adding some paint so much easier.

I even attempted making some hot cross buns. I really miss these.

I find any recipe that includes the words "yeast" and "kneading" somewhat terrifying. Fortunately our mixer has a hook attachment that does the kneading for you. Despite this I was still convinced that the dough wouldn't rise.

To my utter surprise it did and the girls proclaimed the buns delicious. I think they were a little on the tough side - a bit over kneaded I suspect - but not bad at all for a first attempt. Thanks Nigella!

We took a ride on this amazing wheel set up outside the central railway station.

Looking pretty happy with the Easter holidays so far.

Near the big wheel there were a few amusement park rides.

How could we resist a Popeye and Olive Oyl carousel?

We also checked out this movie from the makers of Wallace and Gromit. Very funny, great soundtrack and a dodo!

On Friday we have a very early start in order to be at Brussels Airport in time for our flight to Barcelona. Everyone we have spoken to about this city has had nothing but good things to say about it. Edie and Olive have Spanish friends, a brother and sister who come from Barcelona, and their Mum very kindly took me out for coffee and gave me a whole list of places to go. We are very excited.

Hope you all have a great Easter. Safe travels and I’ll be back early next week with the Barcelona update!

Nijntje – Miffy

WARNING – if you are planning on making a visit to the Dick Bruna exhibition in Mechelen and want to be surprised by what you see there, I suggest you stop reading now! The exhibition is wonderful and I highly recommend it, but I’d hate to spoil it 🙂

Sunday was a beautiful spring day. Richard had just arrived back from a trip to the US so we didn’t have any major plans, but wanted to make the most of the good weather. Unfortunately it was one of those days when every suggestion we made to the girls was met with “I don’t want to do that” and each had very set and very different ideas as to how they’d like to spend the day – just a tad frustrating! We finally settled on a trip to Mini Europe in Brussels, only to discover that it was closed until mid-March – insert exasperated sigh here!

The next agreeable option was a trip to Lier to visit the De Kleine Wereld museum – a very sweet looking dolls and dollhouse museum. We packed everything we needed and as we dashed out the door I grabbed my DK Belgium guide assuming the address would be in there – twas not until we’d been on the road for a good 15 minutes that I discovered my assumption was wrong – this day was really not going well 😦

As Lier is a small place we figured that finding the museum wouldn’t be too difficult – again another bad assumption. When we finally found what we thought was the right building, it looked nothing like a doll house museum. I grabbed a passing policeman who told me that the museum had closed down – despite the fact it still has a very live website promoting all the beautiful things you can see there –  insert choice of swear word here!

After a quick pow wow we hit the road again, this time heading for Mechelen. Our destination was the Dick Bruna exhibition at the Cultuur Centrum. Dick Bruna is the creator of Miffy or Nijntje as she is known in Belgium and The Netherlands.

I’m a big fan of Miffy, and despite a few mumblings from Olive about Miffy being “babyish” we were all pretty happy with the decision to go.

Me, on our arrival in Mechelen, desperately hoping that the day would get better!

Once again we were without a specific address but Nijntje gave us lots of clues as to where the exhibition was...

keep going...you're getting warmer...

and warmer...

over here! Nijntje in the Mechelen Grote Markt...

in a bunch of balloons...

she was even doing a spot of gardening!

Made it!

The exhibition was fantastic. Lots to look at and plenty of hands on activities for the children – it was incredibly difficult to drag the girls away.

Nijntje.

Olive and Edie designing outfits for Nijntje.

There was even a circus.

Olive telling the story of De Koning or The King.

Edie playing with the puppet theatre.

Not really that babyish after all!

We grabbed a late lunch at a nearby cafe then headed across the Grote Markt, back to where we’d parked the car. As we walked we noticed lots of people congregating on the square, many of the children dressed in costumes.

Something was definitely about to happen...

We asked someone what everyone was waiting for and were told that it was Mechelen Carnaval day and the parade was about to start. Perfect timing! And with the Miffy ears that they’d made at the exhibition, Olive and Edie even had their own costumes.

Twee kleine Nijntjes.

Not long after three o’clock the drums sounded and a town crier appeared, welcoming everyone at the top of his voice. The parade was a very odd mix of floats, displays and music – nowhere near the standard of what we experienced in Binche last year – but still lots of fun. Sweets were flung into the crowd from every float and Olive and Edie had a great time scurrying here and there to collect the fallen snoepjes.

The town crier hard at work.

There were some very funny sights.

Even a little bit of Carnaval Rio.

Olive and Edie's favourite float.

So the day that had started off pretty dismally turned out rather well. And Nijntje inspired me to dig out something I started making when I was pregnant with Edie…

must finish before leaving Belgium!

There are many more photos of the exhibition and the carnaval if you click on the Flikr link.

Hope everyone is well and a special Happy Birthday to James! xxx

The big F – or forty, fit, feestjes, friends and food

It seems that my life is revolving around the letter F at the moment – and because of this I have been very busy. Being busy is a great thing although my blog has suffered and I do miss having time to write. It doesn’t help that Richard is having a spate of prolific blog writing at the moment -however I can’t see myself sitting writing at 4am which is when he’s usually tapping away!

Turning forty was my first big f. Not content with one party, I threw a second one here in Antwerp. As my birthday fell on a Saturday evening it was a perfect excuse for a bit of a do.

The official 40 portrait. Saturday 4th of February, 2012.

I had a great night surrounded by new friends from all over the world – the complete opposite of my birthday last year. It was a good time to look back and reflect how far I’d come since that gloomy Friday last year when I sat, very glum in front of the telly, scoffing the birthday tart the girls had picked out for me at the local bakery.

I made my own cake this year - Nigella's pomegranate jewel cake - lekker!

The wine flowed, the conversation flowed, Richard made a beautiful speech, I gave a pretty good rebuttal (!) and I managed to kick on till nearly 2am. (Those of you who know me very well will recognise what a feat this is. I am, after all, the woman who suggested an end time of 9:30pm for my hen’s night!)

Doing a bit of speech making.

Birthday parties or feestjes have been an almost weekly occurrence since we got back to Antwerp. This does mean that I am practically on first name terms with the staff at In den Olifant (gorgeous Antwerp toy store), but mostly it demonstrates just how many great friendships that we, as a family, are making.

The Mega Mindy twins with birthday girl Milla.

Mask making at Charles' birthday.

Even Mum and Dad got in on the act.

Making friends with Natacha, Charles' precious baby sister.

The big 4 year old.

In addition to all our new friendships we were lucky last week to have time with an old friend who lives on this side of the world. I’ve known Davina since my early teaching days – nearly 20 years ago eek –  and she’s now based in London with her partner and baby. Davina and Jenson came and spent a few days with us and we had lots of fun taking them to our favourite places. It was really nice also to watch Olive and Edie with a young baby. Olive in particular was so interested and helpful – quite the mother hen.

Having fun at Aquatopia.

We also made sure Jenson's visit was very educational. Here O and E are instructing him in the all important art of iPad usage. J is for Jenson!

Olive in Mummy mode 🙂

So now to fit and food…and really what they are all about is yet another f word – focus. Our life in Belgium affords me a very great gift – time – and this year my goal is to put that time to good use. Two goals I want to achieve are getting fit and working towards improving our family diet. I’m running and getting back into weight training with the aim of doing the 5k race that is part of the Antwerp 10 mile event in April. With a friend I’ve made here, I’m doing an online course focussed on whole food. You might remember my earlier post where I revealed my vegetable deficient past! I’m hoping this course will be a good way to get some more plant based food onto our table – it’ll be just like the picture below!!

I suspect members of my family are engaging in some serious laughter and choking on their respective hot beverages right about now!

And f….inally – the other thing I’ve done is join the PTA – I’ve actually wound up as co-chair in fact. I was struggling with an f association for this – best I can come up with is there are f…ive of us on the committee!

Take care everyone. xxx

La ville de papier.

This time tomorrow morning we will be having breakfast on the train to Paris. It’s going to be a very brief trip but one that we are all very excited about. It’s almost six years since Richard and I were last there. Olive was there too – in utero – which meant that most of my afternoons were spent napping whilst Richard wandered the city of light alone.

The girls have been doing a lot of talking about what they will see there, with the Eiffel Tower being their number one destination. And yesterday we found the perfect craft activity to get them even more excited.

I’d had the website – http://www.madebyjoel.com – recommended to me. The site has been set up by a Dad, who’s also an artist and who’s really into doing arts and crafts with his kids. One of the great activities on his site are the paper cities. I knew he’d been asked to design a paper city for Sydney, but when I checked his site yesterday morning I discovered that he’d just added a paper city for Paris – perfect timing and just the thing for a dreary, wet summer’s day!

After a quick download and printout of the templates, we were ready to start construction.

All the important Paris landmarks - even a little citroen car!

Edie was the first to get her La Tour Eiffel up. Even got the colours on the tricolore in the right order.

Olive, being just that bit older and more focused, put a great deal of effort into her Paris. Not the city of light but the city of colour.

Edie's Paris - mostly made by Mum. Uncle Joe, that's you in the natty pink suit under the arc de triomphe!

Olive insisted on doing just about all the cutting herself. All those Montessori cutting activities have really payed off!

Volia! Paris - la ville de la couleur - as made by Olive.

I can highly recommend madebyjoel.com. He’s got a book coming out in November too which I’ll definitely be checking out.

We’re saying au revoir to Richard in Paris. He’s flying back to New Zealand not long after we hop on our train back to Antwerp. What a different space we’re in as compared to his last trip to NZ in January. Then, I really didn’t want him to go. Now I’m thinking – mmmm  two weeks of evenings to myself. Peace, quiet, uninterrupted viewings of my Brothers and Sisters DVDs  – all that important stuff!

Check back soon for an update on our Paris trip.

Love to you all xxx

Pasen – Easter

Eieren.

Easter has always been something I’ve celebrated – for many reasons.
Firstly, growing up in a Catholic household and attending Catholic school made it hard not to celebrate it. For Catholics, Easter is the most important festival of the religious calendar, bigger even than Christmas. As a child hanging out for the chocolate the build up seemed to last forever. First you had to get through those six long weeks of Lent, whilst giving up something that you really liked, usually sweets, and adding some of your pocket money to the extra Lent appeal at church each week. You’d get dragged along to do the Stations of the Cross which were very serious but for us Gilby children the main focus was getting through them without making each other laugh out loud in a very quiet church.
Finally you’d make it to the big one – Holy Week. The eggs were oh so near but first we had to go to church just about every day for that week. Palm Sunday kicked everything off with a bit of branch waving. Then it was Holy Thursday mass for the reenactment of the last supper and the washing of the feet – again the focus was stifling the giggles. Good Friday at 3pm was the mass marking the crucifixion of Jesus. I used to find this one particularly stressful as it involved everyone filing up to the altar to kiss the feet of Jesus nailed to the cross – obviously not the real JC but a smaller replica. I’ll never forget the pounding heart and sweaty palms as I made my way to the front, certain my kiss was going to be horribly misplaced and end up somewhere deeply inappropriate like his groin! We were so superstitious about Good Friday, always convinced that at exactly 3pm the skies would get dark and cloud over. We’d nod intelligently and murmur “Jesus is dead” to each other. Even now I often find myself looking skyward around 3pm on Good Friday, checking for grey clouds, and I’m sure I’m not the only one in my family who does!
Saturday night was the Easter Vigil. I quite liked this one because it began in total darkness outside the church and then one by one we’d all light a candle and go into church together. There was always something eerie and beautiful about it. And the added bonus of the Easter Vigil meant that because you’d been to church on Saturday night you didn’t have to go on Sunday morning and could simply loaf around eating eggs!
When I became a teacher Easter was still part of my life but in a very secular way as I taught at, what we in NZ refer to, as a state school. Easter provided many opportunities for art and craft, stories, songs, poetry and of course a few eggs for the oh so hardworking and much loved teacher!
Easter became even more special when Olive was born. She arrived nine days early on Holy Thursday evening (you can rest assured I wasn’t thinking about feet washing or last suppers as my eighteen hours of labour reached it’s climax so to speak!) Olive’s birthday often falls on or close to Easter. When she turned three her birthday fell on Easter Saturday and we had an Easter egg hunt in the garden and a cake in the shape of the Easter bunny.
At kleuterschool, Olive and Edie did lots of Eastery things and on the last day of term had a big easter egg hunt and came home with baskets they’d made themselves with chocolate eggs inside.
Because I was feeling like rubbish at Christmas time I decided to make more of an effort for Easter. Here are a few photos of some of the Easter things we’ve been up to.

Easter basket 1.

And number 2.

They do not know about Hot Cross Buns in Belgium!! Had to make our own - Nigella again.

Searching for eggs at the APC hunt.

I put this in just because I like it!

Hunting high and low.

Blowing eggs to make decorations for our Easter tree - we blew ten and not one was broken!

Probably should have dyed them before blowing.

Ready for the fancy decorations.

Ready to hang.

The finished Passboom.

An Easter display at Wijnegem - a shopping mall not far from the city.

Inspiration for next year's Passboom?

So Easter 2011 is promising to be another special one. We are moving into our new apartment in the city on Good Friday – surprisingly not a public holiday here. I’m sure there will be a church close by with an Easter Vigil service on Saturday night so I might yet make a visit to church.
And then on Easter Monday the girls and I fly to Florence to meet my sister and brother in law and my two nephews. My first family in almost six months – as you can imagine I am a tiny bit excited! We will be together in Tuscany for 5 days and then the McKenzies will have a few days with us in Antwerp. A very happy Easter indeed 🙂
Wishing you all a very safe and happy Easter. Take care if you’re driving and eat lots of chocolate – I plan to! xxx

Vijf – Five

Olive is turning five next month. A very important milestone for her and for us as a family. I have to admit to having had feelings of sadness about this birthday however, as being in Belgium has somewhat dulled it’s momentousness (yes that is a word!) Turning five does not hold the same significance here as it does in New Zealand.
Stories are starting to come in from home about Olive’s friends celebrating the big 5 and embarking on that universal rite of passage – the first day of primary school. Friends from her Montessori class, the Plunket groups we were part of, children we met as newborns in our antenatal group and friends we made during our five years in Wadestown, are all blowing out five candles, donning their backpacks and heading through the doors of the New Entrants classroom. Here in Belgium, Olive won’t start primary or lagere school, until September 2012 when she will be nearly 6 and a half.
Olive of course is not having any of these thoughts – she is just super excited about having a birthday! So I’m taking a leaf out of her book, telling myself to get over it and make the day momentous regardless.
Thus a birthday party is being planned and all good birthday parties start with an invitation. I was sent into town with strict instructions about princesses and ballerinas and maybe Hello Kitty as a backup if the princesses and ballerinas weren’t forthcoming – mummy was feeling the pressure! Unfortunately the princesses and ballerinas weren’t forthcoming but I managed to stumble across something that I thought would do the trick.
Here in Antwerp we have the most wonderful toy store which goes by the name In Den Olifant or In The Elephant, and I wasn’t surprised to find just what I needed here…

Do it yourself birthday invitations!

For a girl who in the words of her Juf or teacher could “spend all day drawing, colouring, painting, collaging, creating etc” it was the perfect choice and yesterday she spent a busy afternoon adding her own special touch to what was in the kit.

If only there had been things like this when I was a kid.

Only the girly colours made it to the final cut - sorry orange/oranje and red/rode.

Hard at work. Edie was allowed to decorate one of the discarded ones!

Olive has chosen to invite children we have met through the Expat group I joined and also five children from her class. Because of this I wanted the invitations to be written in Dutch. Luckily In Den Olifant provided an easy solution. They had some very small and simple invitations with all the important info ie. you have been invited to, where and when, RSVP etc written in Dutch. I cut these out, glued them onto the cards from the kit and Volia! we had our Flemish invites.
I really hope that all the children from her class will come. Olive really deserves a great celebration after all the bravery she has shown since starting kleuter school and the fact that she chose five kindjes from her class shows how well she has done at fitting in and making friends. She was so excited as she headed off to school this morning clutching the precious cards.

The finished products - complete with handwritten labels.

Ready to make some deliveries.

All fingers and toes crossed for five Ja’s please!
Take care everyone 🙂

Crocus vakantie

Olive and Edie had this week off school as it was Crocus Vacantie or Spring Vacation. It was nice to not have to rush around in the morning getting ready for school and the girls enjoyed the chance to just relax at home, play with their toys and each other. Their bond as sisters has been strengthened, I think, by this experience. Without the wide circle of friends they had in New Zealand they are relying on each other more as friends and sisters, and it was nice to watch and hear them playing imaginatively together.
That’s not to say we stayed at home all week – Mum would never have survived that!!
Here’s a few pictures of some of the things we got up to.

We met some interesting new people.

Spent an afternoon at the aquarium.

Went to the zoo with our friends Eilish and Dylan.

Did a bit of baking.

Just a wee pinch of salt.

Spot the future tv chef - able to pose and pour at the same time!

Licking the bowl is by far the most important step in the baking process.

Tried our hands at a bit of scrapbooking.

Made a tent for some serious dvd watching.

Went to the park.

Albus Dumbledore lives in our park.

He keeps the witches under control.

Looked at some interesting shop windows.

Discovered a very cool caravan to take on the road next vacantie.

And - surprise, surprise - we even got our faces painted.

We also managed to squeeze in a couple of movies – Rango and Animals United. No wonder Mum was shattered by the end of the week.
She wasn’t the only one….

Please mum, we need to go back to school for a rest!

Hope everyone is well. Sending lots of love from a gradually warming up Belgium!