Keys

This afternoon I decided to bring up a bunch of boxes to pack away my electronic kitchen stuff.  I had a stack of boxes 5 high with a flat of cans on the top.  I just dumped my keys in to that box when I got on the elevator, but the floor of the elevator was wet (they had just mopped) so I didn't want to put the boxes down.  Well, I tilted at just the wrong angle when pressing the button and the top box of cans and keys fell off.  Just my luck, my keys (house key, car key, mail key, storage room key) hit the gap just right and fell down the elevator shaft.  Ugh.  I was so frustrated with myself.  We've lived her nearly 4 year and I've never had a problem locking myself out of anywhere.  At least I had left the kids upstairs and Kherington was nice enough to let me into my apartment.

I called the elevator people and they told me it would cost 110 euros for them to come right then or 55 euros if I waited until the next day.  I opted for the next day.  Then I posted something about it on facebook and said something about not being able to get them.  That got me thinking that, hey, I'm pretty handy person.  So I googled it and read some ideas.  I had some super strong magnets that leftover from an unfinished RS activity years ago (just happened I had found them this last weekend so I knew exactly where they were).  I put those in a sun glass bag and tied it up in two spots so I wouldn't lose it.  It took me just two tries.  I just went to the bottom floor, put my huge flashlight pointing down so I could see it, used a yardstick to push the magnet past the metal siding it kept sticking to and on the second try I had my keys.  Took about 3 minutes once I was in the elevator.  I'm pretty awesome.  I had originally though I might as well have dropped 50 euros down the shaft, but as it turns out that's not true.  Magnets couldn't have picked that up :).

School - 'G' and 'H'

For 'G' we glued pictures of a giraffe, ghost and grass as well as colored a gingerbread man picture.  After a good play break, the boys helped me mix up some chocolate peanut butter chip cookies then mowed the grass.  Such cute boys. 

'H' was at Jenny's house.  They put stickers of hot dogs and horses on their 'H'.  When I went to pick Kevin up, Jenny and I ended up talking for nearly 3 hours.  I love that I can do that with her.  I can count on one hand how many friends I have like that.  It's going to be pretty sad move.  While we were talking, the kids ran around playing.  Kevin called from upstairs and when I went up he had pooed his pants and tried to take care of it himself.  Neither of my kids have ever made that kind of mess with their poo.  Yuck.  Oh and Kevin ended up with a bunch of mysterious red scratch marks all over his face.  But when we ask both him and Benj what happened they both would say "I don't know" or "nothing."  Yeah, sure.  My guess is they were doing something they were supposed to be or Kevin just had some hang nails because he kept putting his hands over his face.

Church Halloween Party 2013

This year our ward had a Halloween party for the first time.  It was mid-week and from 7:30-8:30 at night and ended up with an awesome turnout.  Because of issues with the building, some of the lights weren't working including those in the gym so the layout was a bit funky, but it worked.  This year Kherington was Rapunzel (again) and Kevin was a builder.  Ryan dressed up as a chef which worked out perfectly because he ended up manning the cookie decorating table.  There was cookie decorating, marshmallow race, face painting, cupcake walk, balloon room, bingo, donut hang and more.  For the donut hang, both Kevin and Kherington totally cheated by holding the string directly above the donut...and they both were too full before eating the whole thing :).  The party ended with trick-or-treat with the kids going room to room.  I think all the kids had fun time.

Cousins Visit

Kirstie and Candace were our last visitors here. Everyone always told us lots of people end up coming the last year, but for us our big year was year 2. We love visitors. Having them is the perfect excuse to go do some site seeing. It worked out especially well since there we were able to visit places we haven't been in awhile.

The day they arrived we did some planning then tried to go to the top of the Cinquantenaire. Sadly, it is closed on Monday's so it didn't work out, but Kevin did get to ride the cannons. We took the long way (straight through the city) to the chocolate outlet to taste some chocolate. Then we went to Gaasbeek castle to walk around the grounds. It was a beautiful day and there were quite a few people enjoying strolling around the forest. However for us, Kevin had one of his meltdowns. Kherington went too far ahead of him and he got mad. Then was mad that I was sitting on the bench instead of picking him up. Well, I let him scream it out for a good 30 minutes. What surprised me the most is people would stop and watch him, then act concerned that he is alone when I am obviously just chilling on the bench and can see him and talk to him. Once he finally cooled down, it was like nothing happened. We wandered around the backside of the castle. The kids climbed the hill and had a blast rolling down. It was pretty funny.

We picked Kirstie and Candace up at the trains station after they had spend a week and half exploring Europe on their own and headed from there over to Aachen to have more of a down day. Of course we stopped for kebabs. It's a good thing we had decided to take it to go because about 30 middle school kids came in right after us. I have never seen the place so packed, but then again it is so delicious so it's not super surprising.

Next we wandered around downtown Aachen. We started at the huge steep slide.  I wiped it down the best I could with my hand, but they both ended up with wet bums.  Good thing I had a change of pants for both of them (which is why Kherington is so styling in her sweats under the dress). They hadn't get changed out the ice cream shops for cookie shops (they do it each winter) so I got the kids some ice cream. I normally try to push Kevin's ice cream down into the cone, but when I tried this time, the entire cone crumbled. He wasn't too sad because I got him a new one and he got pink just like his sister instead of the chocolate I had talked him into. Last up was a quick stop at the 3 corners.  Kherington really likes taking pictures now so there are all types of fun ones floating around on my camera.  On of my favorite is the one of Kevin at the 3 corners.  He's a little Belg boy (in an Italy jacket)...standing complete in Belgium instead of the Netherlands or Germany.  In the evening we went down to the Grand Place and walked around.  Kherington was super excited to take a picture of a black taxi.  Not sure why but she really likes black taxi's.

The next day we had a relaxing morning, stopped at Stockel market for waffles, then headed up to Brugge. We did our normal walking tour and explored some of the shops. Since it was raining we didn't spend a ton of time. Rain really does put a damper on site seeing.

Our last day trip was up to Amsterdam. We left early thinking we could get a little sleep in the car. However Kherington was singing along to music on her iTouch and man is she tone deaf and it is even more noticeable when she's wearing her headphones so we can't hear the music. Pretty funny...especially since I wasn't sitting right next to it :).

Kirstie, Candace and I waited in the Anne Frank house line (tickets were sold out online) so we could tour the house. I was amazed at how large their living space actually was. It was really sad to think that just outside their curtain draw windows was a beautiful canal. Definitely a cool experience.

We met up with Ryan who had been keeping the kids entertained for a couple hours and walked over to our canal boat ride. On the way we found a candy shop and the kids talked Ryan into getting them pop rock type candies.  Both of them love listen to them pop.  The canal boat ride was fun, but not as cool as I was hoping. I really think hearing everything in 3 languages detracted from the ride. It was fun to see all the crew boats out practicing especially since there was such a large variety of ages.  That would be fun to try.  After our ride, we wandered the streets (I love Amsterdam) until we found the big huge wooden shoe. In the process we saw the flower market and tasted a lot of different cheese. My two favorites were natural baby gouda and garlic gouda. Fun to taste, but in reality I just miss my Colby Jack. Haha. Pretty sure people there wouldn't even consider it cheese. Oh yes, and Kevin had another big meltdown at the flower market. It definitely sucks the fun out of poking around different shops when you can hear your own kids screaming at the top of his lung over ginormous crowds of people.

We took the tram back to the park and ride (parking here is way cheaper than downtown and up to 5 people per car can get a free tram pass to/from the city center) where we grabbed some turkish kebabs at a place right above the garage.  They must be pretty authentic because the place was packed with Turkish people.  Yummy.

We had a blast with Kirstie and Candace.  The kids loved being about to hold their hands as we wandered around and Kherington made sure they played rock paper scissor to decide who sad between the car seats in the car.  Here they are in our parking garage (kid are ready for church).