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

Plopsaland!

It’s been two weeks since my last post. I think that’s my longest absence since starting this blog almost eleven months ago. I do have several good excuses! Since the start of September we’ve been focused on getting back into our day to day routine – a big part of which has involved the girls starting at their new school. I’m happy to report that they both love it and are really thriving. Richard has been travelling – he’s back in New Zealand for the second time in less than a month and he has a few more trips to take in the weeks ahead. We’re also focusing on our trip to NYC in November and then home to NZ in December, so we won’t be doing the little trips away that were becoming a very welcome part of our routine.

So what I thought I’d aim to do over the next couple of months is spend some time exploring many of the great attractions here in Antwerp which I’ve yet to visit, and share them with you.

Tonight I’m starting with…drumroll please…Plopsaland!! Aaah no! Not again! I can hear you groaning! I know I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel somewhat but it’s been so long since I posted I thought Plopsaland was better than nothing at all.

Saturday was a beautiful day here in Antwerp, and as Richard was off to New Zealand on Sunday, we thought we’d treat the girls and surprise them with a trip to the outdoor Plopsaland at De Panne.

Plopsa!

De Panne is a 90 minute drive from Antwerp and we weren’t on the road for long before the girls had guessed our destination and the shrieks and squeals when we arrived were deafening.

Photo shoot with Maya the bij.

Buzz,buzz.

We headed straight for Maya Land which is a new attraction at Plopsa. There was a small queue as we were there ten minutes before the official 10am opening time (nothing happens before 10 in Belgium). Richard and I found it very hard to stifle our laughter as the first two punters in the queue were not, as you would expect, excited children but rather an elderly couple dressed in matching red outfits, grim faced and determined that noone would beat them through the door!

Please God let me not end up at 60 odd going to children's theme parks without any children!!

It must be at least six weeks since we had a face painting pic on the blog so here you go!

With Pete Piraat...skip ahoy...hoy..hoy!

All ready to rollercoaster.

By far the best part of the day was running through the Plopsa fountains - almost felt like summer.

Wet,wet,wet.

Very happy girls.

Check out my Flickr photos for more shots of Plopsaland. And I promise my next post will be something of a much more intelligent and cultured nature!

Lots of love to you all – counting the sleeps until December 9th! xxx

Naar de Zee / To the Sea

"Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!"

We spent the past weekend at the Belgian Coast in the city of Oostende. I was very keen to sea a Belgian beach although I have to be honest that I was not expecting much. We have many amazing, rugged, breathtakingly beautiful “seaside” spots in New Zealand so I was preparing myself to be disappointed. For some reason I was expecting it to be all very British – not that I have spent much time on any English beaches – I don’t think a few hours in Brighton nearly 6 years ago counts!
Olive and Edie were very excited about our beach trip. After school on Friday we had to make a quick dash to Bart Smit – Belgian equivalent of Toyworld – to invest in some buckets and spades. The fact that the buckets were heart shaped and bearing images of the ubiquitous Hello Kitty just made it all the more exciting.
After battling through the city traffic we arrived in Middelkerke, a small town just outside of Oostende, and our digs for the weekend – the Zeegalm. It was a bit like an upmarket holiday camp – lots of cabins and bungalows arranged around a swimming pool and cafeteria – I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a yellow coat pop out and greet me with “Hi De Hi!” – there I am back to my British comparisons again! After a quick dinner we all hit the hay – Edie could not be parted from her bucket and spade…

I've always enjoyed cuddling up to bits of plastic.

Saturday brought blue sky and warm sun – a perfect beach day and we headed into Oostende armed with buckets, spades, towels, bikes and scooters. We parked the car and walked, biked and scooted along the boardwalk.
My initial impressions were not good – hard to be inspired when faced with architecture like this…

There were many buildings like this - huge blots on the landscape.

As we got further down the boardwalk things started to improve and there were several beautiful old buildings which hinted at how picturesque it must have been in days gone by – before the destruction of the first and second world wars.

The zee.

Richard mucking around outside a particularly grand old building.

Imagine all the buildings along the seafront in this style and you can picture how beautiful it would have been.

Olive and Edie were completely uninterested in the architecture – they just wanted to get their togs on and hit the sand!

Squeezed in a little bit of cycling first - look at my baby riding her bike!!!

Bathing beauty number 1.

And number two.

I love how everything at the seaside has to be stripy!

After a very enjoyable morning spent on the beach we headed a bit further down the coast to explore Fort Napoleon. Oostende’s strategic position on the North Sea Coast was advantageous for it’s role as a harbour, but also brought with it lots of trouble. It was frequently ravaged, ransacked and destroyed by conquering armies. Napoleon Bonaparte was concerned about an attack from the English and so commissioned a fort to be built in Oostende. The fort is a pentagonal design with bunkers over two floors. It was occupied by the German army during both world wars forming part of the defence known as the Atlantic Wall. It was a fascinating place to visit – even the girls liked it.

Inside Fort Napoleon.

The bakery - very important to have one of these if you are under siege.

Climbing to the top of the fort.

The view from the top of Fort Napoleon.

With all the sun, sand and interesting local history, Oostende was starting to win me over. When we went into town after our visit to the fort I felt like Oostende was calling to me from every street corner…

Christinastraat 🙂

Mmmmmm - Christina's patisserie!

After dinner we headed back to the beach and did a bit of kite flying. Olive and Edie loved it – especially when the kite nosedived into the sand!

It was a beautiful evening (and yes Alix that is the kite you gave us - bet you never expected it to be flying over a Belgian beach!)

Kite runners.

On Sunday we surprised the girls with a trip to Plopsaland de Panne. You might remember Plopsaland from one of my earliest blog posts. I think there are 5 Plopsalands in total and the one we had visited previously was an indoor Plopsa. Plopsaland de Panne is an outdoor Plopsaland. (I have probably just set a world record for the number of times the word Plop appears in a single paragraph!)
De Panne is not far from Oostende and as the weather was cool and grey we thought Plopsa was a better option than another day at the beach – Olive and Edie needed no encouragement – the squealing was deafening!
Plopsaland takes it’s name from Kabouter Plop – the main character in the television show Plopsa. Kabouter is the Dutch word for gnome or leprechaun. In folklore Kabouters are usually tiny men who live underground or in mushrooms. Our first ride of the day was a boat trip through the kabouter forest – it was very cute – the girls were waving to all the kabouters and calling out “hello, hello” – I’m sure they believed them to be real.

Little Kabouter firemen putting out a fire - so cute!

Kabouter Plop himself outside his mushroom house.

Olive and Edie with one of Plop's friends.

Our good buddy Mega Mindy showed up too!

I won’t bore you all with endless theme park photos – we had a great day – a great weekend in fact. We’re already thinking of heading back to Oostende for a longer stay. Piha it definitely wasn’t but it had a certain charm which worked it’s magic on us – or maybe that was the leprechauns!!
Missing you all and sending lots of love xxx

Happy Birthday Edie!

Our wonderful Edie Cate turned three yesterday. Although to be honest it feels like she has been 3 for ages! She woke up very excited and attacked her pile of presents – very kindly letting big sis help with the unwrapping duties.

Ripping into it.

Yo Gabba Gabba was again requested as the theme of this year’s cake although what with all the new things to deal with it wasn’t quite the work of art last year’s cake was!

Not a smurf vampire - actually Toodee from Yo Gabba Gabba.

Edie’s favourite present was her Mega Mindy suit – you might remember Mega Mindy from my last post. It was worn all day and to bed too.

Mega Edie!

We had a birthday morning tea. Edie’s friend Charles from school came with his Mum and Dad and our new friends Eilish and Dillon. There was dancing, food and a little spot of singstar.

A mega puff!

Charles enjoying the singing sisters.

In the evening we were invited to dinner with two families we have met in Antwerp. When googling something to do with Antwerp and families on the net I discovered a blog written about an American family living in Antwerp. I left a comment on the blog and made contact with the blog’s writer Laurie. It turns out that she already knew Tracie and Hugh, another couple we had met at the Christmas Party I wrote about in an earlier post. So we all met up at Laurie’s house, Richard cooked a yummy dinner and 6 children had a great time. There were even more presents for Mega Edie. It was a lovely evening – we were so warmly welcomed. I was worried that Edie’s birthday would be tough because it was our first family birthday away from NZ. It turned out to be a lovely day and Edie was very happy.

Our beautiful three year old 🙂

Going Dutch

Mega Mindy!

Because we have made the decision to immerse the girls in the Flemish language by their attendance at a local preschool, we think it’s important to make the most of all the fun things we can do that involve hearing spoken Dutch and as a result being around the locals. On Monday we went to see Mega Mindy in her first ever movie! Mega Mindy is a very popular children’s tv programme here in Belgium. It’s all about Mieke – a girl who lives with her grandparents, works as a police officer but also has a secret identity as superhero Mega Mindy. Mieke is also caught in a bit of a love triangle – she fancies Toby who works with her at the police station, but Toby fancies Mega Mindy unaware that she is in fact Mieke – sigh!
Despite Edie falling asleep for about an hour, the girls really enjoyed the movie. Olive sat glued to the screen for the entire 90 minutes and the story was simple enough for me to follow despite understanding very few words. The fact that they came home and spent an hour with aprons tied round their necks dashing round the house pretending to be Mega Mindy suggests it went down pretty well.
Today we went to the Samson and Gert show. This is another popular children’s show about Gert and his sidekick Samson the dog.

Gert in the suit. Samson just visible in the box.

The show has been running here for 20 years so the concert today was a big anniversary show. And once again, despite the language barrier it was lots of fun.

As a former teacher and a parent I really liked the fact that all the dancers and backup singers were children (Sarah you would have loved the dance moves – all very Evelyn Charles!) and they changed costumes with every song which O and E really appreciated – “look mum sparkly tights”, “that skirt looks very spinny” etc.

Samson in his plane.

Children dressed as various characters from Belgian kid's TV - check out Mega Mindy in the pink.

The girls were super excited when 3 of the characters in the show had a dancing competition and one of them appeared on stage dressed as “Michael Mum! Michael!!” It seems we are unable to escape Michael Jackson, even in Belgium!

Not sure what this dance move is called - oo er I've hurt my goolies perhaps?

All in all a great day out – topped off with some very energetic scooting in the park late this afternoon.
Take care and love to you all xxx