Guus Bosman

"Squeak! Squeak!" We were trying to figure out where the strange noise in the car was coming from. It was 9.00 pm and we were on highway 101 on our way to Menlo Park. At first I thought it was the gas pedal but then we realized it came from the back seat. My colleague Chetan and I were in California for business meetings.

At the airport in San Francisco we rented a minivan -- it was that or waiting another 20 minutes -- so I drove one of those huge cars for the first time. But the noise was bothering us -- was it a bird? Some sort of small animal?

I have very fond memories of celebrating Sinterklaas with Ettie and my parents. Sinterklaas is a winter holiday celebration around the Saint Nicholas figure that is very popular in the Netherlands. When we lived in Opperdoes we would go see Saint Nicholas at the community center, where we'd get pepernoten and clementines.

I haven't celebrated it in years but now Nora is old enough to participate old memories started to creep back up and so this weekend we are going to the St. Nicholas celebration at the Dutch Embassy.

The tradition holds that in the weeks before December 5th kids can put their shoe in front of the chimney in the evenings. Nora put her shoe in front of our fireplace last Saturday and we sang two songs. I explained her the ritual and she sort of understood it. The next morning (after a rather rough night) we went downstairs... and there were presents!

Nora smiled when she saw them -- but she was also shy and didn't want to get near the fireplace without us. After breakfast we sat on the carpet and Nora opened her gift: a beautiful coloring book about Sinterklaas. She was quite impressed with the whole thing.

Thank you very much Ankie and Joost for making her first "schoen zetten" a big success!

Yesterday we had our big Thanksgiving meal, something that we all greatly enjoyed. Thanksgiving has all the nice parts of Christmas but it feels less stressful. We had great time with the Zanes; they are on their way home now. After they left we went for a walk.

We made our favorite dishes: turkey with sauerkraut, a pitka bread, mashed potatoes, apple sauce... we also made some Brussels sprout which came out nicely. After dinner we had some chocolate truffles that Irena brought from New York and we watched a documentary, "The Queen of Versailles". We used our new Roku appliance to watch it on Netflix.

Nora came down with a cold yesterday. She only wanted to sleep on our shoulders and would cry as soon as we put her down. Once she was asleep we moved her to her crib. The first night of a cold is always the hardest for her. She is taking a nap now and so far, so good.

The Zane family arrived yesterday. On the days before Thanksgiving traffic is always bad, so they left late in the evening and avoided virtually all traffic. They arrived at 1.00 am. It was great waking up to a house full of people and we had banichka for breakfast.

I made kruidnoten and speculaas cookies, the latter in the shape of Nijntje, a Dutch cartoon character. Nora loved them.

In the late afternoon the Zanes left to visit Jonathan's parents. We are going to have our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow -- it's a day off also.