The Year of the Snake

Ryan has kicked off his busy season at work, and as usual we are scrounging for ways to stay busy around here so we don't go CRAZY without a husband/dad.  Though I have been nervous that this year's busy season would do me in being in a new country, in the middle of a cold winter, and without easy access to transportation, I have to admit it hasn't been all that bad (knock on wood).  My bike gears froze completely a few weeks ago - a classic example of my dutch problems…problems I never knew existed before I became a Nederlander.  Anyway, this dutch problem rendered me bike-less and therefore transportation-less.  It turned out to be a blessing, though, because Ry and I finally coordinated schedules so that the kids and I could use the car more often.  We've been doing lots of picking up and dropping off at the office, and Ryan has taken the tram, metro, and train a bit more than usual, but the plus side is: he's been working from home a lot more so we actually get to SEE him.  Big plus.

SO, in our efforts to keep busy like dear old dad, here's what we have been up to lately -
China Light Rotterdam came to town.  I wasn't too sure what this was, only that they transformed Het Park with some sort of light display and that it costed big bucks.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  We loaded up the kids, pryed Ry away from the laptop, persuaded the Shurtliff's to get out of the house (which didn't take too much persuading since their busy-season-dad had been away traveling in the states for a while) and we braved the freezing temperatures to see what the year of the snake had to offer.  Here are the highlights...

Here's a bad picture of the Euromast - a landmark in Rotterdam.

This was Elsie's favorite scene

This was my favorite.  These elephants are made up of several blue and white porcelain eggs and teacups.  You can't tell from the picture, but it was pretty neat in person.

Our rating of China Light Rotterdam?  Well, here you have a classic case of something looking more fun in pictures than it actually was.  For the price, it was a little underwhelming.  But if nothing else is going on next year at this time would we go again?  Probably.  Desperate times folks, desperate measures.

Meanwhile, the kids have been doing some FUN things at school.  Every six weeks or so, Kaydree has something at school called "choosing hour" where the kids get to choose an activity or new skill they would like to learn.  They have had all sorts of options from sushi making to origami.  For this cycle, the options were drama, art, and debate.  Sometimes Kaydree surprises me…she chose debate.  I asked her what made her choose that (because I could really see her getting in to the other two, but NOT debate) but she answered that she wanted to learn something new and different.  Good answer!  Here is the assembly where she demonstrated her debate skills.  The team convinced us that they were monkeys…pretty funny...

K argued that she had fine fur on her arms, just like monkeys have fur…so she must be a monkey!

 Carver's preschool just finished up their theme "Pirates."  The teacher built a pirate ship for the kids to play in, they made treasure boxes, counted coins, and did lots of other projects.  He really enjoyed this unit.  Now they have moved on to "Doctors."  When I dropped him off at school today, his teacher had a bathrobe on over her clothes and had red spots drawn all over her face.  She had setup different stations for the kids to learn about medical stuff…it was really neat.  They took a little field trip today to a nearby hospital.  Each child brought a stuffed animal from home, and they checked out the "patient", did pretend x-rays, and made a mini-cast for their animal.

Today Kaydree took a special field trip to meet Dutch astronaut Andre Kiepers, who just returned from space after living there for 6 months.  They had a live streaming Q&A that parents could watch from home…it was awesome.  Her school was one of 2 in the country chosen to participate, so she has really been looking forward to today.

My props to the Dutch school system for educating my kids and giving them unique opportunities, and for keeping us all BUSY until we get through the season.  AND here's to the Year of the Snake, so far it's been a good one!