Laatste dag

Today was the last day of school for the year, and for Olive and Edie their last day at Da Vinci International School.

Olive and Edie on their first day of School last September.

And here they are this morning on the last day. Olive is channeling Madonna circa 1984!

Like we did for the Jufs last year, I got the girls to draw pictures of their teachers which I embroidered over and turned into a bookmark. We added some great kiwi tea towels and special cards made by the girls. Both teachers were very touched.

A bookmark for Mrs Olga…

and one for Miss Sarah.

Special gifts for two very special teachers.

The girls have had such a wonderful year – both thriving under the care and guidance of two excellent teachers. We will miss you Mrs Olga and Miss Sarah, but you will not be forgotten.

Tomorrow sees the first steps in our new American adventure. We’re off to Winchester, VA to have a look around and hopefully find a house and schooling – wish us luck!

Sprookjesbos

About an hour’s drive from Antwerp you will find Efteling, a beautiful theme park based around the fairytales or sprookjes of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault. Opened in 1952, Efteling is one of the oldest theme parks in the world. We’d been told that we couldn’t leave Belgium without making a visit, so on Saturday we spent a wonderful day exploring the world of fairytales.

The sprookjesboom or fairytale tree. He is a wise old oak who tells stories about the other inhabitants of the fairytale forest.

Efteling began it’s life as a fairytale forest where ten fairytales had been brought to life. Over time it has grown into a full sized theme park with a range of rides and attractions, but it is the sprookjesbos which is the most beautiful and unique part of the park.

The witch ascending to the top of the tower via Rapunzel’s hair.

Edie posing in the sprookjesbos.

The rather well-endowed Little Mermaid.

Gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel.

Tom Thumb attempting to steal the giant’s boots. He is known here as Klein Duimpje.

This castle is home to Snow White’s evil stepmother – complete with talking magic mirror!

The flying Fakir on his magic carpet.

As well as exploring the Sprookjesbos, we went on lots of rides. Our favourite was the Droomvlucht or Dreamflight ride, where we flew through a dream world of forests, fairies, castles and trolls.

Singing fairies in the Droomvlucht.

They were singing and swinging.

A dreamlike fairy world – so beautiful.

If you’d like to see many more Efteling pics, click on the link to my Flickr photos. We thoroughly enjoyed our day – we’ve been to a few theme parks now but have never stayed right until closing time as we did at Efteling. We can all highly recommend it.

Us girls at the end of a very long but very enjoyable day 🙂

Tomorrow it is Olive and Edie’s last day of school and then on Wednesday morning we fly to Virginia to have a look round. It’s going to be a big week, full of many emotions. I’m going to try and write a post from Virginia just to let you catch a small glimpse of our new stomping ground.

Take care everyone. Lots of love xxx

Showtime!

The end of the school year is rapidly approaching. I still find it hard to get my head around the school year ending in the middle of the calendar year – I don’t think it will ever feel right to me! Moving to the States is going to give me many more opportunities to get used to it 🙂

Every year the kindergarten children put on a summer show and today was the big performance. Their show was based on this story about a leopard missing his mummy who has gone to look for food. The other animals try to help by giving him cuddles but none of them feel right. It’s only when he is reunited with his mother that he gets the special cuddle he is so desperately seeking.

The school gym had been transformed into a jungle.

Both girls had been very secretive about the performance. If Edie tried to sing any of the songs at home she was swiftly silenced by her older sister. All I knew is that Edie was a bear, Olive was the Mummy leopard and, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to make  any costumes!

Here come the bears…

Mummy leopard and her babies – she’d had a few more since the book was published!

The babies get ready to go and find Mummy.

The snakes were too slimy to give good cuddles.

Look! There’s Mummy over behind the crocodiles. Their cuddles were too snappy.

Olive’s classmates made great monkeys but alas, their cuddles didn’t cut the mustard either.

Reunited at last – and then all the children ran to their mums and cuddled them! Serious need for tissues 🙂

One fierce mother!

It was lovely. When I asked the girls later what their favourite part had been, Edie answered “all of it!” and Olive declared that she had loved being in front of such a big audience.

My favourite bits xxx

I have to admit to feeling sadness whilst I watched. It was the same sadness I felt at the Garden Party over the weekend. The realisation that we are leaving such a lovely school community, such wonderful teachers and friends, has really hit me. It’s good to be sad though. It means that we are leaving behind something of great value. And it’s also what goes hand in hand with change. So I’m okay with some sadness – here’s to the many happy moments awaiting us.

I have an overwhelming sense of homesickness today. Getting ready to leave our home in Antwerp has led to me thinking of New Zealand a great deal. But that’s okay too…

how could you not be a bit homesick for this 🙂

Lots of love to you all from the leopard, the bear and the kiwi xxx

Kunst

Hot on the heels of the very successful REACH week of awareness, the students at Da Vinci took part in a school wide art week. Modern Art was chosen as the overall theme, with each class focussing on the work and style of one particular artist. The children worked on an individual piece of art, and then as a class produced a group piece. Those of us with children in the kindergarten classes, were invited into the classes to help the smallest artists create their masterpieces.

Individual art works created by Kindergarten Two. These were inspired by the artist Gale Kaseguma.

Olive’s class explored the work of Brazilian neo-pop artist Romero Britto. His work combines elements of cubism, graffiti and pop-art, and is full of warmth and optimism. Olive loved dabbling in Britto’s style – the bold colours and simple shapes really captured the children’s interest and it was lots of fun painting with them.

The Britto inspired work of Kindergarten Three. Olive created the “Britto bride” on the left hand side in the bottom row.

For their group piece, Miss Olga got the children to “Britto” a simple set of drawers. Olive was particularly proud of this.

In Kindergarten One, Niki de Saint Phalle was the chosen artist. De Saint Phalle was a French sculptor and painter who became known for her work reflecting on the position of women in society. She created numerous “Nanas” – sculptures of voluptuous women decorated in vivid colours. Edie was particularly taken with the name “Niki de Saint Phalle” and took every opportunity to say it aloud. When it was time for me to help with her painted Nana, in true Edie style, she didn’t let me help at all! I relished the opportunity to watch as she wielded her paint brush and am very proud of the fact that her canvas is one hundred percent her own work.

The Nanas of Kindergarten One. Edie’s is hard left, second row up from the bottom.

Kindergarten One’s group piece. Their own little Nana sculpture.

At the conclusion of art week the PTA were charged with the task of displaying the many wonderful pieces created by the students. We decided to set up an art gallery and fortunately there was an empty room which was crying out for a makeover. We painted every wall and most of the windows white and our two wonderful caretakers helped us to arrange and hang every canvas. It was a great deal of work but the kind of work that you can’t help but enjoy.

Inside the Da Vinci art gallery.

Individual pieces from Grades One, Five and Six.

Roy Lichtenstein inspired self-portraits by the students of Grade Eight.

Work from the upper secondary students.

Grade Three’s group piece is very special for Da Vinci. It’s a cubist inspired rendering of the school exterior.

Grade Five’s group piece is one of my favourites. It’s a quilt made from Warhol inspired self portraits.

The ultimate Da Vinci group work – photos of every child and teacher.

One of our parents took all the photos, whilst another ran them all through PhotoShop.

The result was pretty impressive.

On Saturday Da Vinci held it’s annual garden party. There were food stalls representing many of the different cultures in our school community, a talent quest, performances by the rock band and the dance group and, of course, face painting!

Tiger Olive.

Edie chose the hummingbird.

The highlight of the afternoon was the art auction. Each group piece went under the hammer. Apart from online auctions on Trade Me, this was the first live auction I’d ever actively taken part in and it was very exciting. Parents competing for works created by their precious children led to a bidding frenzy and a significant amount of money was raised for the school. Olive was over the moon when I successfully bid on and won the set of drawers created by Kindergarten Three – only had to go over my budget a teeny bit! Phew 🙂

Click on the link to my Flickr photos if you’d like to see more art week and Garden Party photos.

 

Moeder’s Dag

My Mummy by Edie

It’s Mother’s Day here in Belgium on Sunday. Before he left last Monday, Richard orchestrated an early Mother’s Day for me and today I went to a mother’s day celebration at school.

There was singing and rhymes and a few tears in many Mummy’s eyes!

The kindergarten children getting ready to serenade their mothers.

Edie’s class was up first and she performed her song and rhyme with great gusto!

In true Edie style she manoeuvred herself right to the front of the performers!

Then it was Olive’s class.

More enthusiastic singing. My favourite line : My mum’s ever so clever, she may not have a degree, but she can help with my homework and that’s what matters to me!! After hearing the lines about cleaning and shopping and making tea I figured the song must have been written in the fifties – not so – it’s only ten years old!

All the children had made gifts which were presented to us – it was very sweet.

A jewellery box complete with pendant…

and an everlasting bouquet.

It was a lovely afternoon. I’ve come a long way as a Mum and it was very special to see and hear my girls celebrating me!

Back where it all began. Olive, 21 months old. Edie, about 3 hours old.

And to my own wonderful Mum – thank you for being such a strong, wise and inspiring woman. Even though I’m a big grown up lady of 40, I still need you and I miss you very much.

Happy Mother’s Day to a truly wonderful mother and grandmother. We love you lots xxx

Barcelona

I’m listening to this song as I write this post. Freddy Mercury and his impassioned and rather over the top number seems somehow fitting whilst writing about such a colourful and vibrant city. I heard this song so often during the television coverage of the 1992 summer Olympics and often wondered if I’d ever make it to “Barcelona!!” – imagine if you will Freddy belting out that last word. I certainly never dreamed I’d be visiting at the age of 40 with a husband and 2 children in tow – as the saying goes, life is full of surprises!

The Croad ladies hit the streets of Barcelona.

To say that we liked Barcelona is an understatement. We loved it – Olive declared it to be the best place we have visited and we are already toying with the idea of going back in the summer. Three days really wasn’t enough.

Before all the Barcelona love however, we had a wee bit of Croad love. I know that the girls have been missing Richard but I got a feel of just how much they miss him when I saw their reactions on spotting him at the airport.

Richard took this photo as the girls rushed towards him. Tissues anyone?!

After the dramatic reunion we headed into Barcelona. We were staying just outside of the city centre and once we’d dropped off our things and had a quick freshen up we jumped on the subway and headed into the city. Our first stop was the Arc de Triomf, a structure which was built for the Barcelona exposition in 1888.

So now we can all say we've seen two Arc de Triomfs 🙂

From here we wandered through the streets until we arrived at La Rambla, the tree lined pedestrian mall popular with tourists and locals. We grabbed a quick bite to eat then stopped at a souvenir shop to make the etremely important purchase of flamenco dancer outifts complete with polka dot clip clop shoes!

I think this picture sums up beautifully just how Olive and Edie feel when they don their flamenco outfits. And oh how they can get some noise out of the shoes!

As we excited the souvenir store we noticed that people seemed to be congregating on either side of the street and we quickly grabbed an empty spot. Being in a predominantly Catholic country on Good Friday, I had high hopes of seing something religious and our timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

When these two appeared we knew something interesting must be about to unfold...

...definitely interesting! Olive and Edie were completely unfazed.

Of course those guys were just the supporting act and JC soon took centre stage.

His Mum was there too and was a big hit with the girls - "Oooo look it's Mother Mary"!

Saturday began with the obgliatory search for a good cup of coffee and then we hopped on one of the tourist buses. We were heading for Parc Guell – the garden situated on the hill of El Carmel – and decided to take the tourist bus so we could see a bit more of the city along the way.

Olive really enjoyed the trip on the bus and listened very intently to all the commentary.

Edie mostly just practised posing!

We saw many eye-catching sculptures...

lots of interesting modern architecture...

a giant easter egg...

an old bull fighting ring...

and Gaudi's masterpiece the Sagrada Familia.

Maybe he was responsible for the giant Chupa Chups too!

We spent a good couple of hours in Parc Guell – there was so much to look at and listen to, as musicians were dotted throughout the gardens. The colours seemed so much richer and more vibrant than here in Antwerp or maybe that was just the beautiful weather!

Picnic lunch in Parc Guell.

Some of the gorgeous Barcelona colours.

We headed to the waterfront for dinner – close to what was the Olympic Village. We ate a great meal looking out at the sea and the girls had a blast running around on the sand.

Fish sculpture near Barceloneta beach.

The floral adornments, as you have probably guessed, are part of the flamenco outfits.

The beach at nightfall - beautiful.

We woke on Easter Sunday morning to more blue skies and headed straight back to Barceloneta beach. We’d promised the girls a longer play at the beach and a chance to wear “our togs”!!

No togs for me however - quite happy with a latte and a stunning view.

I know...I'm biased...but they are stunning!

And just a little bit crazy too!

Around lunchtime we walked into the old part of the city and stopped for some tapas. Then more wandering, a quick rest at home and then back to Sagrada Familia for a closer look.

It really is spectacular.

We headed back to La Rambla for dinner and a glass of sangria - yum 🙂

Richard disappeared back to the States very early on Monday morning and the girls and I spent our morning exploring the aquarium. I’d located the whereabouts of a Camper store and was planning on doing some serious credit card damage after all that fish watching. However Easter Monday in Barcelona meant most stores were closed so no new shoes for me – probably just as well! We did manage to find a Desigual store that was open which kept the girls very happy. They love the riot of colour and pattern that hits you when you walk into a Desigual shop and there was much oohing and aahing and a teeny bit of purchasing!

So all in all it was a fantastic trip – just a little on the short side! There are oodles more photos if you click on the Flikr link – my camera tells me I took over 500! Rest assured I did whittle it down befroe uploading!

It’s a big day in our house tomorrow – Olive is turning six. Will try and write something quick tomorrow evening. Until then, crank up the Freddy Mercury – Barcelona!!!

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!

The Atomium and Mini Europe

In 1958 Brussels played host to the World Expo or World’s Fair. Nearly 15,000 workers spent three years developing a site on the Heysel Plateau, seven kilometres northwest of central Brussels. The crown jewel of this expo was the construction of a giant model of a unit cell of an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times. The model was named the Atomium and decades later it remains one of Brussels’ best known landmarks.

The Atomium.

On Saturday we drove to Brussels to visit the Atomium and the nearby attraction, Mini Europe. It was a beautiful spring day – we even had to break out the sunscreen!

We spent around an hour exploring the innards of the giant steel structure. Olive and Edie loved all the stairs and escalators, whilst I enjoyed the retro colours and furniture found inside the giant spheres. Despite its age, the Atomium doesn’t look dated, and must have been quite a spectacle back in the 1950’s.

View from the top sphere.

Climbing one of the staircases. I really liked the blue and orange colour scheme.

I also really liked this seating area - made me think of wine gums!

Many other visitors were attempting to create the "I'm holding the Atomium in my hands" picture. Ours wasn't that successful!

From the Atomium we headed over to Mini Europe – a miniature park which has reproductions of the most attractive monuments in the European Union on show. Roughly 80 cities and 350 buildings are represented. The park is renowned for the quality of its models, some of which cost as much as €350,000.

The Grand Place in Brussels - otherwise known as the €350,000 model!

Mini Europe was one of the first attractions we heard about when we came to Belgium, but we decided to delay our visit until we had actually done some European trips. This decision really paid off. Olive and Edie were extremely engaged with all of the exhibits and it was amazing to see and hear their ever increasing knowledge of Europe. Olive even went so far as to say it was better than Plopsaland – as you are probably aware from my earlier posts about Plopsaland, this is extremely high praise!

Amsterdam.

Sacre Coeur.

Pisa.

The Berlin Wall.

If you click on the link to my Flikr photos, you can see many more images from our visit to the Atomium and Mini Europe. It was a great day out, made even better by such stunning weather – here’s hoping that keeps up!

Richard left today for a four week trip to the United States. It is going to be hard to be apart for such a long time, so we’ve decided to reward ourselves with a rendezvous in Barcelona. Easter conveniently falls in the middle of those four weeks so we are going to spend four days together exploring this wonderful Spanish city. Richard will fly in from the US and the girls and I will fly from Brussels to meet him.

We are all very excited. Edie has already invented a game called “going to Barcelona” which involves going through all the summer clothes, working out different outfits and then packing them into various pink handbags! Both girls are determined to come home from Spain with flamenco dancer outfits which must include red and white polka dot dancing shoes – ole!

Lots of love to you all xxx

Stoofvlees

We spent Sunday afternoon with our old neighbours – Joeri, Isabelle and Nina. They were keen for us to experience some traditional Flemish cuisine, so invited us over for a dinner of stoofvlees – a beef stew which is often referred to as the national dish.

The secret to cooking great stoofvlees is time – Isabelle began marinating the meat on Saturday evening – and when we arrived at their house on Sunday afternoon the stew was slowly cooking on the stove top.

I took a sneaky look - it's clearly not the most attractive of dishes but the smell was enticing.

With at least a couple more hours of cooking required we headed out to the Mikerf Kinderboerderij in Braaschaat. Literally translated, kinderboerderij means children’s farm. In English we’d call it a petting zoo.

The setting was beautiful and the girls had a wonderful time getting up close and personal with a range of farm animals.

Meeting a very friendly mouse.

It was very exciting for Nina.

Olive, Nina and Isabelle brushing one of the goats.

Edie also had a turn.

"Is your name Baaaaarbie?"

Gently does it.

Like every good children’s attraction in Belgium there was a speeltuin or playground with cafe close by. We sat and watched the girls play and then it was time to head home for dinner.

"It's just like Granny and Granda's!"

Back home, Isabelle made the final touches to the stoofvlees whilst Edie and Joeri made a quick trip to the frituur to pick up some friejtes – stoofvlees is always served on top of hot chips! Edie was very happy to report that the woman who runs the frituur remembered her from our trips to get fish and chips when we lived in Marcel Auburtinlaan.

We gathered around the table, loaded up our plates with frietjes and witloof and Isabelle served up the stoofvlees.

Lekker!

It was delicious – so good in fact that I had two helpings. After cooking slowly for such a long time the meat was incredibly tender and the beer gave the sauce the most amazing sweetness. Owing to the amount of time needed to create such a flavoursome dish, stoofvlees is not eaten as often as it would have been in Isabelle’s father’s day. He gave her his stoofvlees recipe and I’m hoping I can get my hands on it too!

I see they have a Flemish beef stew on the menu at Leuven in Featherston Street –  just the thing for those fast approaching winter’s nights in Wellington!

Take care everyone – sending lots of love xxx

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