Guus Bosman

We had a nice block party last night. It's always stressful getting things ready, with preparing the kids, ourselves and food to bring, but the party itself was great and we had a really nice time.

The boys are now big guys, compared to some of the other kids. Baby Olivia is kind of walking now. Leo liked playing with Kurt, who is only 3 but his Dutch grandparent's genes make him quite tall.

Ilana chatted with two other teenagers in the neighborhood, and Nora walked hand-in-hand with Cara's kids across the street.

Ginny showed us the renovations in her house upstairs; very nice.

Five minutes after we put Leo in bed, he was deep asleep, and he didn't wake up until 7.20 am this morning.

I received beautiful gifts this morning. Leo wrote me a letter, Adrian drew a picture ("als je bent chagrijnig en als je doet gek", haha) and Nora created a board game and a pendant for me.

Leo's letter: "Liev papaa ik viH [bulgaarse N] jou hil lief hieer jij krijgt un kdooe [kado]"

This morning Leo was reading the board book the boys have loved for years, and started spelling our English words. Some accurate, others more guessing. But probably time to finally hide the English books...

Since a few weeks the boys no longer yell for us when they want to get out of bed -- they get our themselves. They even go downstairs without us. An improvement, haha.

We started calling Adrian "Boef Lastig", a name he is proud of. He's a macho dude. We have several socks from Nora that the boys now use. I like to give him pink socks to wear at night, haha.

We were talking about "jokken" today in the car from the gym. The boys understand it well. Adrian have as example: "als je zegt dat je je handen gewast hebt..." and Leo: "als je zegt dat je geslapen hebt maar je hebt niet geslapen"

I was putting Leo in bed. They had been playing "boat" in Leo's bed earlier, so the plush animals were all over the place. Leo complained that "he only had four plush animals", not five. So I asked Adrian: "can Leo please have Rikkie?" and look and behold: Adrian graciously agreed that Leo could have Rikkie.

Then it was time to put Adrian in bed. All went well, until the moment that he asked for... Rikkie, when there were some tears. I managed to calm him down.

The next evening Leo was in bed already when it was Adrian's turn. Adrian couldn't find his bear, beer. That was a problem and we all scrambled to look for it, throughout the house. Leo was in bed already but had a funny smile when I asked the first time. So after more searching I came back and asked him strongly, and he laughed and pointed to the drawer. And sure, there is was. There were three plush animals in the drawer. I took the bear to bring to Adrian and on a whip gave Leo Rikkie.

Adrian was happy with his bear -- but then he asked about Rikkie...

We did another round to Home Depot this afternoon, the last one in a while, probably.

Got plants for the front yard and indoors, plus ten bags of mulch for in the back.

When we got home Jaap And Adrian were waiting for us, with big smiles.

Now it's time to feed the chicks.

Today is Marten Luther King Day. It was very cold today, with a strong wind, so went to a shopping mall.

We had lunch at Panera and afterwards did grocery shopping for the week at Wegmans.

There was some snow yesterday evening and the schools start with a delay. The boys start at 9.45 am, Nora's bus is at 10.36 am.

Adrian and Leo went to gymnastics today, the first time since the winter break. They were looking forward to it and had a great time.

When we arrived, I got Adrian ready first and asked him if he wanted to walk to the room by himself -- no, he'd rather wait for Leo. The two of them walked hand-in-hand to the teacher, so cute. They sat down on the bench and one of the first assignments was to run to the other side with the whole group. All that time they kept holding hands.

While they were doing their thing I went for a run, which was awesome. I figured out a better route than last time and ran on the Custis trail, which is so much nicer than in the neighborhood there. Lots of other runners on the trail, including at least three groups. I was faster than most of them, a good feeling.

We went to Heidelberg and bought three large breads and some turkey; the boys got a cookie. Adrian was already a little tired and cried when he "only" got one cookie and not something to try from the tasting table. We were discussing that outside, when an elderly couple passed by and asked what was going on. I explained it, "he wanted two cookies but we had agreed, only one" and they laughed. The man replied: "sometimes life if is just a one-cookie situation", haha.

For lunch I made a groentesoep -- I had sliced and frozen some vegetables earlier in the week, so this was easy to make. In the U.S. it's pretty rare for pret-cut "soup vegetables" to be sold in the grocery store, I've found. Over lunch with talked with the kids about several things. "Waarom zijn er piraten?" and "Papa wie heeft het geld uitgevonden". Good times.

It's Saturday morning, and there's a big pile of Lego and Duplo and toys in front of you...

This weekend there is no gymnastics so we slept in and are taking it easy today.

Yesterday I went back to work, a quiet day at the office due to the holidays. I've added photo's to the articles I wrote over the past 10 days, it's nice to work on that.