Car Fire

Around 2:00am I woke up to a beeping noise. Ryan got up and checked the alarm clock in the front room that Kherington likes to play with, but it wasn't going off so he jumped back in bed. I couldn't go back to sleep because I could still hear the beeping, so I got out of bed and was trying to figure out what to do. All of the sudden the curtains covering the window light up. They are dark curtains and were GLOWING orange. I was still a little groggy so I momentarily thought it was the lights outside flickering, but that didn't make sense.

I pulled open the curtains to check. Directly outside our window (15 feet max) was a car lit on fire. We didn't know what to do. I grabbed Kevin and Kherington (who were both sleeping in our room b/c we never moved them back between our stream of visitors) and Ryan ran outside to see where our car was parked. Then he went next door to the neighbors to see what to do. Just our luck, they were out of town.

By the time he got back outside the neighbors on the other side of the building had called the fire department. Ryan stayed and waited for the police while I took the kids and camped out in the backyard.

Here is how it looked right after the fire was put out and then the next day:

The police said the car was most likely set on fire because it had European Union or Nato plates...apparently they have had a couple incidents like this recently.

Halloween Celebrations 2011

Halloween Themed Play Group:
I hosted a Halloween themed art group which turned out pretty good. We made some owl cupcakes, mini peanut butter brownie cups and candy corn trail mix to snack on. Then for lunch each kid got to create their own pumpkin shaped pizza (I just rolled out the dough and cut them like a pumpkin then cooked them a little in the morning so they were ready to go during playgroup).

Once again, Kevin had a little buddy to play with. Truth be told he slept for a good portion of play group, but I was able to snap this pretty cute picture :).

Art Group Pumpkin Painting:
Nothing too fancy. Just painting the pumpkin with black and white paint.

Trick or Treating:
Halloween isn't very big here...this year was actually bigger than last year though. With that said, Trick or Treating isn't normal. So we were very excited when some friends invited us to go Trick or Treating at the Garrison (US Military place in Brussels). We ended up arriving at the same time as some other friends which worked out perfectly. Their kids were so sweet and held Kherington's hand as they went from one car to the next. When they had finished, Kherington plopped down in the middle of the road and starting eating (after stripping the main part of her cow costume off). Kevin on the other hand was only away for the first 5 minutes or so then slept through the rest of it.

Pumpkin Carving:
Better late than never right? We ended up carving pumpkins the day after Halloween. It is All Saint's Day in Belgium so Ryan didn't have to work. I had forgotten to get candle so we made do with a big birthday candle. We ended up lighting it in the bathroom so we could make it dark and show Kherington how cool it looked.

Kid Sitting (what a blast!)

We watched some friends kids for a long weekend while they celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in Paris. We had so much fun! They have 4 amazing kids. The youngest played with Kherington almost the entire time which was really nice because then I didn't worry about what she was getting into. Kherington did watch Aladdin at least 10 times during our 3 days there (apparently that dvd should find its way into her stocking).

In the evening we got to play games with the older kids. Games are probably one of the things I missed the most about being here. It is hard to play them when you have kids around. Either you have to find a baby sitter and go somewhere else to play or you have them constantly interrupting (I guess you need friends that want to play too). In this case, the youngest was playing with Kherington and Kevin was cruising on the ground (ahhh...open space was nice too). We played Pit, Ticket to Ride - Germany and Five Crowns.

Kevin also loved all the attention. One of the nights we were just all chilling with him in the middle crawling around and cooing. Sweet boy :).

Monday was the first day of the kids fall break, so we decided to do a quick downtown trip and visit the chocolate outlet.

So so so much fun...we seriously wish we could do this all time :).