Market Fresh Waffles

The best liege waffles in Belgium can be found at Stockel market on Tues, Fri and Sat or Evere market on Wed from the same vendor.  They are amazing and best eaten immediately.  Aside from waffles, it is fun to try random new food.  This is most easily done by finding a stall with long lines and watching to see what other people buy.  I've had some delicious hummus, tzatziki and thai food.  I wish I liked olives so I could enjoy sampling the vast variety available.

Kherington cracks me up.  She loves taking pictures and walked around the market doing so.  Mainly focusing on the flower shops.  Another reason she makes me laugh is her sense of style.  It has recently gotten cold here so capris are not longer an option.  Her solution is to wear capri pants with  her socks pulled up high enough cover any bare skin.

Consolation 'Christmas Market'

I spent awhile looking to see if any Christmas Markets would open up before we moved, but sadly there were none within a decent driving distance.  Lucky for me, Metro started their Christmas decoration sale early and they were selling these nutcrackers again.  I love these.  Now we have 6 of them, plus we let Kherington and Kevin each choose a smaller one.  The kids enjoyed wandering around the Christmas and toy area and kept requesting that their pictures be taken with different items.

That evening, when the kiddos got ready for bed, Kherington and Ryan both came out in her Purdue gear. Kevin loves Purdue (Ryan has successfully brainwashed him) but doesn't have any pjs so he just kept chanting 'Go Purdue.'

School: Field Trip Time

For our last school day, I took Kevin and Benj to techonoplis.  Since they are both under 3 they are still free (Benj turns 3 on Sat).  It was empty when we arrived so the boys got to explore the whole place.  They drove the airplane, played at the water tables, wheeled around on the wheelchair course, drove a car (I did the gas) and watched a bowling ball trap all before heading to the little kids area.  In the little kids area they made pizza, played in the ambulance, used the crane to build, printed money from the bank, went grocery shopping and built an igloo. This place is really a kids dream.

Delft, The Netherlands

Some friends of ours said they found delicious huge stroopwafels at a market in Delft so we decided to head up and give them a try.  I wish we had done this a long time ago.  Delft is such a cute town full of picturesque canals, stores, pedestrian areas and of course bicycles.  The stroopwafels were good, however both Ryan and I think we like them better cooled so the inside is more chewy.  Kherington was set on having the pink one which was actually a liege waffle dipped in a strawberry coating.  We wandered the town exploring which would have been awesome if our Mr. Meltdown hadn't started up one of his tantrums.  Ryan ended up taking him back to the car (kicking and screaming the whole way) while Kherington and I picked up some strawberries and bananas from the market to snack during the drive home and some extra stroopwafels to pack back to the US.

This town is definitely worth a trip and to make things even better, it is only 20km from The Hague LDS Temple.

Trunk or Treat - 2013

We took the kids trunk or treating at the garrison with the Hatch family.  Kherington decided she wanted to be a cooker and Kevin stuck to Bob the Builder.  The Hatch's were Mario (Seth), Luigi (Isaac), Waluigi (Eric) and Bowser (Benj).  The bowser costume was pretty amazing and Jenny made it.  How awesome is that?

When we got home from the Trunk or Treat, Kevin had a huge meltdown.  Like major, major meltdown.  He ended screaming his head off for a good hour.  I can't remember what actually set it off this time.  It was sad that he missed out on going through the candy.  No worries, Kherington enjoyed it enough for both of them.

Moving Time

In preparation for our move, Ryan and I went through and organized/de-junked almost everything we own.  We missed about three boxes that were down in our storage room.  It took a lot of time and effort.  We also sold a good chunk of stuff that we plan on re-buying in the States (like our kitchen table).  I forgot to take before pictures of our place, but luckily the rental company came by to take some to post on their website (so weird to see our stuff on the site).  Our place is listed at 85 square meters (approx 915 square feet), 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1 toilet room, 1 main room and a garden (since we were on the ground floor.

The movers came and boxed up all our stuff.  Actually I have a lot of ikea square cabinet things and they just saran wrapped the whole unit organization boxes and all (except for the 5x5 one).  Our place was so empty when they left.  We borrowed some bedding from friends and camped out on the floor for a couple nights.  We wanted to stay at our place so we could put the kids down for bed and still be able to do some cleaning.  During one of the days the sister missionaries came and helped us clean for a couple hours. One of the Sisters (Anderson) is from Seattle and her sisters was college roommates with my sister.  Small world.  The picture is from when we had them over for dinner.  Anyways, the Sisters were a huge help.

It is normal to get a big fine when you move out of your apartment here.  The expectation of normal wear and tear is not really taken into account and you are expect to bring the apartment up to 'like new' standards.  With 2 little kids we knew we would be seeing a big fine.  We deep cleaned the apartment which included cleaning places I am positive were not cleaned before we moved in.  In the end we got charged 680 euros (floor, paint, broken fridge drawers and cleaning fee).  I expected all of that.  The cleaning fee kind of annoys me, but I still think if we hadn't cleaned as well as we did the inspector would have looked more closely and found more things to fine us on.  Realistically I was expecting to pay three times that.