Holidays

We are in the Netherlands for the holidays. It is nice to be home for Christmas.

Counting sleeps

The count down to the Christmas holidays have started. The last weeks are always hectic, but fun too.

We celebrated Sinterklaas with the Dutch Club. Simon and I were Zwarte Piet and we had great fun.

Simon in the middle, Inge on the right and I am on the left

Our arrival

It was sooooooo warm, my make up was melting

Last week

Last week was quite stressful. The boys had exam week, Adriaan spent 4 days in KL and my mother was admitted to hospital with pancreatitis. All this was spiced up with some puberty driven tantrums from our youngest, so you can imagine how much fun it was....

From somewhere on the web

At the moment the atmosphere has cleared quite considerably; my mother is still in hospital, but is feeling a lot better, the exam week is over, Adriaan is back home, it is weekend and to top it all off the boys have no homework!

All the right ingredients to have some fun, so on Friday night I went to the Gala Night that the SCA from the Canadian International School had organised. I went with a group of Dutch friends, all without husbands (because they can't be motivated to go to a party at the end of a stressful week at the office/KL).
The theme was 'Bling, Bling', so we all sparkled in our gala outfits. To complete the look, Inge and Irene bought glittery hats for us all.

We had lots of fun, won some raffle prices and danced the night away.

Jeanine, Irene, Inge, Fokkelien, Nicole and Corine

Weekend

Mum and Dad have gone back to NL and the house feels so empty. We had a wonderful time together and now I am left with 1300+ photographs and the task of selecting the ones that need to go into an album.

Mum and Dad's departure has also marked the count down till the Christmas holidays: 4 more weeks to go!

This weekend won't be a relaxed two days as usual. The boys have exams the coming week and Adriaan is leaving for KL tonight.

I guess it is time to get a cup of coffee and keep working on that photo book. Have a lovely weekend!

Found this on Facebook and I think it is a good advice ;-)

Visitors (still)

My brother left right after our trip to Kerala, but mum and dad stayed for Simon's birthday. My baby boy turned 13.

Hip Hip Hooray!

He invited his whole class (10 kids) to come to his pool party on Sunday. Two cancelled, one boy showed up and all the others claimed they had been ill when they saw Simon in school on Monday....
Even though it wasn't really a party, they still had fun (and lots of crisps, candy and pizza to share).

Lounging by the pool

Yesterday mum and I had another mani-/pedicure and I went to the dentist to get my tooth fixed. I feared I would need a crown, but luckily it was still fixable. Let's hope it will last...

Today we went to Chickpet market, an area with lots of fabric shops. It is a part of Bangalore that feels like the real India. It is busy with people, cows, auto rickshaws, and cars. It is noisy and dusty, but above all very colourful.

Kerala: Kumarakom

After our day on the houseboat we went to Kumarakom, on the other side of the lake. On the way I was keeping my fingers crossed the resort would be as nice as it looked in the photographs on their website. It was!

We had 'Meandering Pool Villas'. The villas all had direct access to the pool by steps from the patio. The pool was like the backwaters, like a long meandering river, more than 200 meters long!

One of our villas

The pool (actually only a small part of it)

All the buildings were made with authentic, over 200 year old, beams and wood carvings from an estate. There were intricate carvings and lovely details everywhere.

Some of the details

The staff was very friendly, the food was great and the atmosphere was perfect to relax.

Best holiday photo ever of my brother Jos
(guess who took it ;-) )

Kerala: on a houseboat

The state of Kerala is known for all it's waterways or backwaters. The state is very green and the humidity is high (while we were day we had days with 35C and 88% humidity).
A very popular way to travel on the backwaters is by houseboat. Most people stay on the boat over night, but we opted for a daytrip, and what a grand day it was!

This was our boat for the day

The boat has a lounge area at the front, with comfortable chairs and cushions, two bedrooms with en suite bathrooms and a kitchen. There were 3 staff on board, a captain, a second captain and a cook. The only thing we had to do is sit back and relax.

We were not the only ones, it seems there are over 1000 houseboats on the Kerala backwaters.

Not everybody had a big boat

There was a lot to see along the 'way', most of the village life goes on in and around the water.