Guus Bosman

We had a day off today and spent it with the kids. In the morning we went to Scramble, an indoor playground in Alexandria. The kids loved it.

Leo and Adrian turned 3 today. What a milestone! They had a really nice day.

We went to the Clarendon Mardi Grass parade tonight and that was a lot of fun.

Sasha and Adrian walked and Adrian got to peek in a real police car. I had tricked out the bicycle with lights and we joined the WABA group for the parade.

The kids were very happy with the beads that got.

Nora is slowly recovering from the flu. It started Tuesday evening with a sore throat; the next day she skipped her gymnastics and since then she's been in bed all day.

Today she started perking up again. When we were talking with Opa & Oma she joked that Adrian was a unicorn (eenhoorn) when they asked about the fabric sticking out of his bicycle helmet.

I took the boys to Whole Foods twice in a row, which was a lot of fun. Nora was jealous and asked when it was her turn. I explained that being sick is supposed to be boring. Today's trip to the store was through the rain; the boys loved the cover and said our bike is now the Batmobile (they learned about Batman recently).

I'm in Atlanta today. It was an early morning -- up at 4.15 am, Uber at 5.00 am and then breakfast at the airport. When the stock markets open at 9.30 am we have a conference call, which I took from the rental car on my way to the office.

In the plane I saw someone reading a physical newspaper, something that's getting rare.

I'm already looking forward going home tomorrow.

"Сокче, сокче, рестурант!", we heard this morning ("juice, juice, restaurant").

We didn't pay much attention at first but then we realized that they had opened the bottle of cold medicine (Motrin, which is ibuprofen) and they were happily drinking from it. They probably drank 20 to 40 ml...

We called the Poison Control phone line and they weren't too worried. Told us that they should eat something to prevent an upset stomach but there's not much risk otherwise.

Well, that's a bit of a transition... on Wednesday morning we were still in the pool in Puerto Morelos -- today we're in a deep freeze.

Nora's school started an hour later today, which was good because she is still getting used to getting up early.

The bakery near our house, LeoNora, is moving to Falls Church which is unfortunate. But not a surprise, since they moved their ovens away a few months ago.

The boys are no longer using their "baby chairs" for breakfast and we now have a routine where the kids sit next to each other.

Today they had muesli (though Leo preferred rondjes) and we read the Christmas story by Dick Bruna.

We both had a day off today and we started preparing for Christmas. Compared to two years ago we're taking it much slower -- it's easy to be overly ambitious this season but there's really no benefit in it.

We had a nice and relaxed day. In the morning I bought grape leaves with the guys. Normally I'm always in a rush when shopping and it was so nice to have time with them. They wanted their own karretje? No problem. They wanted to see the car toys? No problem.

Yesterday we were at Lubber Run, today we walked at Bluemont Park.

I actually lost the pictures we took during pakjesavond this year, which doesn't happen often. Oh well, it's the memories that count and it was a lovely evening (picture here is from the Embassy event a week earlier).

It was the first year that the boys really realized that "Sinterklaas would arrive" and when there was knocking on the front door everybody was quite excited. Adrian was disappointed that Piet and Sinterklaas weren't going to make an actual appearance but the big bag with gifts compensated for that nicely.

Nora received several books. But let her tell the story herself:

"De meeste dingen van mijn kado-en waren boeken. Een van de boeken was een, uh, voorleesboek en een andere was Bas en andere was a sticker boek en we hebben allemaal, behalve de jongens, een chocolade letter gekregen. De jongens en pappa hadden Lego gekregen. De jongens kregen allebei een Boer Boris. Een van die Boer Borrissen was Boer Boris en het gebroken been, de andere was, Boer Boris gaat naar Oma".

We celebrated pakjesavond a little later than usual, since December 5th is on a Tuesday. But that worked out well since we started Sinterklaas late also -- we waited with schoen zetten until after Thanksgiving.