Gent (round 2)

I've only been to Gent once since we moved here 2.5 years ago and Ryan's never been to one Saturday we decided to go explore.  I'll be honest.  In my first trip I thought it was cool, but didn't understand why people thought it was better than Bruge.  From this trip, i learned that when I went, we basically took just exactly the wrong turn to tour the city and missed a lot. 

It should have only been a 45 minute drive, but the ring had standstill traffic at 8:30 in the morning!  We re-routed ourselves through downtown and in the process drove by the ginormous basilica that I still have yet to explore.  It look awesome.  I definitely need to make it out there sometime.

Anyways, we made it to Gent, got parked and started off on our walking tour.  Neither Ryan nor I are big museum people but we love walking tours.  It's amazing how many different things we find that we would have otherwise walked right by.

In one of the squares, we decided to let Kevin out of the wrap.  He'd been down for all of 2 seconds when he fell into the fountain.  It wasn't a pool or anything, it just had water running down the side.  His whole pant legs was soaked, but he didn't seem to care.

We found a graffiti street and learned that in Gent graffiti is legal only on that street (it's a pedestrian walkway).  As we took a couple pictures, Ryan backed into the wall and ended up with paint on his jacket (I was finally able to get it out with a fels naptha bar I got from Walmart when I was in the states).

In another square there was a group of girl scout out selling cones of candy.  Since we normally see the boy scouts out selling alcohol, I figured supporting the candy sale was a good idea :).  We bought 1 for Kherington which made her day! 

We walked by a couple coming out of a building where I assume they just got married and then passed this cool bus like car.  The tour ended at the castle, where we snapped some shots, but we are still a little weary of castles since getting kicked out of the Neuschwanstein, plus we'll hopefully be touring some on our coming trips.

Little Man Kevin turns 1!!!

Time has seriously flown by! I cannot believe this little munchkin is the big 1 years old! He is quite the character. Some things about him:

• Could (and does) eat his weight in banana's
• Not the best sleeper - FINALLY got the boot and is in his crib and sharing a room with Kherington.
• LOVES the dishwasher
• Think he need to go outside whenever any door of the house is opened (and whines if that doesn't happen)
• Loves his bath time
• Follows Kherington around everywhere
• Likes to flip through books on his own
• Has 6 teeth (4 top, 2 bottom)
• Walking since 9.5 months
• Climbs on EVERYTHING
• Words: mama, dada
• Reaches out and opens and closes his hand when he wants something
• Gets out a bowl/plate and brings it to me when he's hungry
• Gives kisses (blows them to people when we ichat/skype)
• Does great in his carseat
• Loves his binky (we try to only give it to him at night time and he normally spits it out once he's asleep)
• Loves utensils...hand him a plastic spoon and that can keep him happy for a long time
  

And here he is:

On his birthday Ryan put up the tent and filled it with plastic balls. We met up with some friends at an Easter Egg hunt at Bruparck during the day then celebrated in the evening. He opened his singing card from grandma and loved bopping to the beat. We put his presents in a big bag and had him pull them out (Kherinton couldn't resist helping). He got cones and a soccer ball, play fruit and a cooking pan, but thought the plastic bag they came in was pretty cool too.

For dinner we had spaghetti. You can't tell from the pictures, but he hated it. He tried it, the started unloading it from his plate (I on the other hand thought it was one of the best batches of spaghetti sauce I had ever made and I didn't even follow any recipe). For his cake we had a layered chocolate sheet cake. He loves chocolate - just like his sister - so I thought he'd love it. I was wrong. After we got him a fork, he gave it a try and spit it out (I probably could have eaten the whole pan). So the taste of a 1 year old is very different than my own. Better luck next year :).

School Projects

On our walk home from school and I always ask her what she did that day and I STILL get the same answer each day: "I play inside, I play outside, I sing song, I play with toys."  Now I KNOW she does more than that.  I know they have dance time and on Mondays they have gym, but I don't find out about arts/crafts time until I see different pieces sent home.  So here they are (now they're in the trash...you can't keep everything).

*I especially like that they label them by pasting a little picture of the kid on the project :).

Playgroup Birthday Party

Last year, one of the mom's at playgroup had an awesome idea to have a group birthday party for the kids. We each bring 1 present and 1 dish. How nice is that? This year it was at our place because we were hoping the kids would be able to run around in the backyard and jump on the trampoline, BUT just our luck it was cold weather so indoors it was.

I had a little table with crayons, markers and stickers and we played with the parachute and balloons which a couple of the kids loved. Then we had birthday crowns and the normal everyday toys. So pretty low key (minus the getting the house cleaned and decorated). For presents we put all the presents in the parachute and the kids each got to grab one out it and unwrap. It was kinda funny because a couple of the kids only wanted the one that they brought. After presents we had lunch. We ended up with meatballs, spinach tortellini, chicken and zucchini taquitos, schnitzel, breadsticks and tomatoes. Yummy! It was pretty hard not to keep picking at everything.

To end we sang happy birthday in English and French and had cake. I made two caterpillar cupcake cakes and stuck a bunch of candles in each so the kids could all blow them out. Kherington was a little too excited and kept blowing while we were singing. When it came time to eat the cake, since she had helped me decorate the caterpillar face she was determined that she would get one. She at all the candy off it then asked me to get rid of the "snow/clouds" (aka white frosting).

So...party went well, I got all cleaned up while the kids took a little late afternoon nap (yes...kids as in plural...awesome!). We had the sister missionaries over for dinner (I definitely recommend this paprika chicken stroganoff recipe). Kids went went to bed a little later than normal.

Then, about midnight hit. Kherington started screaming so Ryan went in her room. She does NOT like it when Ryan tries to get her at night. She wants her mom. So I went, had just picked her up and was walking down the hall when she threw up all over me...the upside of this is that we were in the hallway with wood floors instead of on a bed. I rinsed her down in the bath, got cleaned up, she went potty, then threw up on me again. So we repeated. Then I got her to start throwing up in the bowl instead...she would ask me to hold her hair back which was kinda cute. So for the rest of the night we cuddled on the couch and did the throw-up/potty run every 30 minutes or so. Ugh. Not exactly the night sleep I was hoping for but ya know that's how it goes. She finally fell into a deep sleep when I got up to workout at 7 (an hour later than normal, but I decided I'd do the run the next day instead). When she woke up 2.5 hours later, it was as if nothing had happened at night. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it was just like a 12 hour bug.