Guus Bosman

Nora and I had a great time cooking together. It is great hanging out with her. For the first time, her help was actually saving me time.

She, very carefully, put together the speculaas mixture. Measuring, scooping, mixing... everything diligently and carefully done. Later she measured and cut the butter.

We made speculaas cookies, a speculaas cake, and several dishes for today's big meal.

The Zane family arrived around 8.00 pm --- just as we were putting the kids in bath. All of a sudden Julian appeared in the hallway.

While I was preparing dinner yesterday, Nora was sitting at the living room table. She was tired after her gymnastics, and sucking her thumb and being quiet. Then I noticed she was actually reading a book.

This is the first time she read a book all by herself, without reading it aloud to someone else. A huge milestone, and I'm very proud.

We're about halfway the Dutch course Veilig Leren Lezen and she's making good progress. Clearly she's now at a point where she can read things truly by herself. Awesome.

The book was Pim en de vis, in the botjes series, and she finished it later in the evening.

We went to bed late after going for a walk along Key Boulevard, watching the Halloween decorations. The boys, thankfully, slept in so I brought Leo downstairs at 7.30 am. We read a book and then Adrian woke up, so we read another book together. That's a dangerous thing to do, because the clock starts ticking between waking up and breakfast. If the gap is too large, the boys get really cranky and will starting fighting with each other.

We were right on time this morning and we started breakfast without any incidents. Nora took the opportunity to sleep in, she wasn't downstairs until 8.45 am -- good for her.

Last night, when we were done watching the decorations, we drove back home and we passed the Silver Diner. Adrian said: "Dag hamburger! Dag broodje! Dag kaas! Dag saus!". After that the boys had a funny discussion about whether the "saus" in question was ketchup or not. "Ketchup scherp. Adrian nee ketchup. Meneer geeft saus". Leo: "die meneer heet ober." "Nee ober!" "Wel!" "Wel ober."

We went to Nora's Halloween party this morning. The boys were a little bit ambivalent about going to school for some reason ("nee juf!") but there were toys and sand and they were happy.

They ate a pretty healthy lunch too, with lots of fruit and a ham sandwich. Nora had a doughnut and few bites of brownie. Nora had a lot of fun with her friends and she was happy with her princess outfit.