Nice weather

Dear friends,

It´s been a while since we wrote on our blog so here we go!!!

The last couple of monthes have been quiet busy. Busy at work (which is a good thing) and busy at home. Our search for a good high school for Sanne have been really succesfull. Starting next August she is going to the "Gomarus College", a Christian High School in Groningen, about 12 km from our house. Just as Thijs and me, she will ride this every day on her bicycle!!! Although it is a very big step for her, she´s really looking forward.

Everybody (except Sam, who isn´t playing volleyball) had their last volleybal matches and training and the kids ended the season last weekend, with a trip to Ameland. This is one of the little islands north of the Netherlands. With the kids gone, we had a whole weekend for ourselves!! With temperatures above 20 degrees Celsius, we decided to book a Hotel for the three of us (yes, we also took Lara with us....) at the beach in Ijmuiden, about a two hour drive from our house.

We had a great time walking,

digging holes,

walking,

sleeping (under supervision of angels.....)

digging holes,

and eating and drinking.

We were blessed with awesome weather and really enjoyed ourselves. Monday afternoon, we drove to Holwerd where we had to pick up the kids. They had a great weekend too and were exhausted. Two out of three were sleeping in the car on the way back home. After Pizza with Oma (grandma) they all went to bed and slept untill 11.30 next day!!!!!

The kids only have four weeks left at school and then summer holiday!! We haven´t planned a trip yet, but one thing we are really looking forward to is the visit of Fonda (a former collegue

of Samantha). She is staying with us the last two weeks of July and we´re gonna show her the Netherlands. After that we might go for a short trip to Germany, we´ll see.

This is all the news from this side of the ocean for now. Maybe Sanne is going to write something about her new pet.........

A big hug and God bless you all. Stay in touch!!

Henk

update from Sam

Hello everybody,

It is time for me to write something. But most of all..... to send you some pictures.

Let me start with the birthdays we celebrated.

Sanne turned 12 years, Thursday the 5th of March (she is almost as tall as I am).

She is doing fine at school, has a lot of friends and likes to play volleyball. Next year she is going to junior high. My 'little' girl is not a little girl anymore........

Of course Henks mom (and my parents) came for some birthday cake (and because of the fact that my parents live in the middle part of Holland, they stayed for a couple of nights).

We went to a pancake restaurant on Friday and the next day........party time again!

Daan turned 9 the 7th of March. We invited a lot of friends and family. I think that’s one of the differences between Canada and Holland. Celebrating birthdays!

He invited 7 friends over for a birthday-party.

Sanne and Thijs organized the whole party (yeah!!!! Note; I really dislike organizing kids parties).

Daan on a racing track.....

We ended that day with...pancakes!

It is spring!!! OK, we still have a lot of rain over here but sometimes.......SUN.

That means that we all jump in our (little) car and go for a walk.

Last weekend we took Lara (she is such a sweet, beautiful, stubborn dog) for a long, long walk.

The weather was beautiful and we (Lara included) had a lot of fun.

I must say, I really enjoy being back in Holland. I like my job, love to spend time with friends and family, ..... This is home for me!
That doesn’t say that I’m not curious about you all. Sometimes I wish that Canada was just a couple of hours away from Holland. That we just could get together for a weekend, do some talking, some laughing, just spend some time together and then go back to our own place.

But..... it isn’t. And I’m not a writer (in English), or caller......

For now; a big kiss from me, to all of you.

Gods Bless! SAM

Finally some news

Dear Friends,

Finally some news from us. I know, we should be ashamed but we were so busy (yeah, yeah, excuses, excuses.....).

I hope that everbody had a great X-Mas, I know we had. Thanks for all the cards and messages you sent us.

Last week we went skiing in Austria. The kids did so well at school, we thought they deserved this trip so we booked a nice house in the mountains. Beside the five of us, my mother and my sister also went along. Of course we didn't fit into our small Corsa, so we rented a Van.

Saturday morning around 7.30 we left and after a 12 hour trip we arrived in Austria. It was beautiful, about half a meter snow in the village and way over a meter on the mountain!! On Tuesday it started snowing again and that added another half a meter to the big layer of snow.

You can imagine the kids (and we also of course) had a great time. To give you a small impression of our trip I will add some pictures and short videos.

It is amazing how fast a week can go if you have so much fun. But unfortunately everthing has to end, so this Saturday we drove back and arrived home safely around 9 o'clock in the evening.

We are so blessed by our God who protects us and helps us by everything we do. We see that in our work, as well as during trips like this and often don't even think of it!!

We hope and pray that our Father blesses all of you the same way as he did us.

Well this must be it for now. Big hug and hope to hear from you soon,

Henk

PS I hope that next time I can get Sam or one of the kids to write something. Keep your fingers crossed..........

Lara

Hi everybody,

She's here!!!!!
Yesterday morning we picked up our new puppy Lara. She is just over 7 weeks old now and adorable.


Although she still needs a lot of sleep, she loves to play with the kids, their socks, sweaters, t-shirts and of course with her own toys. Today we went for a walk and found out that cars, other dogs barking and moving trees are still a little bit scarry, but..... she's a real dare-devil so we don't expect any problems in the future.


In order to feel a little bit secure, she sleeps the first couple of nights in Sanne's room. This means for Sanne, that she needs to get out of bed in the middle of the night and let Lara pee. But everybody who knows Sanne, knows that she's great in taking care of things.....

This week all the kids (and Samantha) have the week off from school/work, so Lara will get plenty of attention. Hopefully by the end of the week she also knows how to be alone for a couple of hours. We'll see.

This is it for now. Enjoy the photo's and let us know what you think of our new family-member!!

Big hug,

Henk

The last couple of weeks

Hello everybody,

A couple of weeks ago we went with my grandma to an amusement park. We went in a rollercoaster that went really fast. There were little boats as well, you could drive it your self. I also liked the slides. They were really high and went really fast.

A few weeks later I went to a friend. We had a sleepover and we went on a boat. It was pretty much fun. We went to bed at 11:00 and woke up at 8:00. The next day I was really tired. My aunt and uncle came that day.

Two weeks ago we went to look at the puppy again. The mother Dixi has 9 puppy’s, 5 black ones and 4 light brown ones. The one we picked is a light brown girl and her name is Lara.
She is growing really fast, but she is still the smallest of them all. She was 5 weeks and 3 days old at the time of the photo. We are going to pick her up at the 18th of October (this Saturday!!!!!!)


Two weeks ago a friend of my mother came to visit us. She slept in my new bed and I slept in the spare bed that can be rolled under my bed if not in use!! She left on Sunday.
Last weekend we are going to Talitha and Richard (my aunt and uncle) because it is Yara’s birthday. Mom and dad go to Teuske, to help with her new house. And after that only one more week and then…………….autumn break. On Saturday we are going to pick up Lara and after that one whole week no school!!!!!



Love,

Sanne

How are we doing???

Dear friends,

We are almost two monthes back in the Netherlands and are kind of settled now. In order to keep you all informed about us we decided to make a weblog so you can all see how we are doing!!

First we want to apologize for not answering our e-mails the way we always did, but the last couple of monthes were pretty busy. Slowly we are getting back to our normal routines and that gives us the time to keep you all informed. I will start with telling you the story of the first weeks after we landed in Amsterdam on the 12th of August.

After we arrived at Schiphol airport at about 8 in the morning, we first went to Starbucks to get a bit of caffeine before driving two hours to Harkstede (the town we rented a house). Because we didn't have all our belongings, we spent the first couple of weeks at my mothers place. She was, of course, very happy to see us and spoiled us rotten. After getting the key from the real estate agent, we were able to take a look at our rental. It was nice and spaceous, but the interior was very 70's with green carpets, green washrooms, green wallpaper in the kids bedroom and even a green kitchen!! Not exactly the colours we would pick, but it was all clean and working and with some paint you can fix a lot.........

Next day we went to City Hall to get registered and to get our Dutch drivers license back. The last was a little bit harder then we thought and we are still struggling with the Dutch authorities to get this fixed.

We also had to find a school for Sanne and Daan, because by the time we knew where we were going to live, all the schools were closed!! The Chistian school in Harkstede however was very happy to except them both because they could really need more students. The school has about 60 students, divided over preschool and grade 1 to 8. Although the school already started that week, Sanne and Daan didn't need to start until the next week.

Because our container with our belongings would arrive on Friday, we spent most of the Thursday painting the livingroom, so we could put everything in the right place. Friday morning (8.00) the movers arrived and within 4 hours, our new place was one big chaos. Although the cabinets were all placed in the right spots, there were boxes everwhere!!!!! It took us about a week to go through all the boxes and turn our house into a place we could live in. In the meantime, Samantha started working and Thijs, Sanne and Daan went to school. I spent most of my days unpacking boxes, putting furniture together and painting the livingroom. By the end of the second week we were able to move from my mothers place (which is about a 3 minute drive from ours) to our new HOME. Living in our new place, I had to arrange TV, Internet, Electricity, Gas, Phone, Insurance, etc. It was almost a full time job to get it all done but fortunately I didn't start working until the 1st of September.

It is now about a month since we moved into our house and it is really starting to feel like home, thanks to all the work we did and of course, thanks to IKEA!! The kids are all doing very well at school, Samantha loves her job, and I am getting used to the idea of being back again. I must say that almost everybody at work really tries to make me feel comfortable and they succeeded.... However I still miss Calgary, Alberta and you guys, but it is a different kind of missing which Samantha had.

By the way, we also bought ourselves a car. It is a small car (Opel Corsa) that fits almost twice in the Cherokee but only uses 5 litre/100 km!!!! The whole family fits in it and also fits our new............ dog!!!!!! Yes, we are getting a dog. She is a mixture of the Labrador Retreiver, Golden Retreiver and the Flatcoat Retreiver, but only 5 weeks old yet. More news about her in the next postings probably.

Well, this is it for now. One of us will write more about us in the next weeks. If you want to respond to this blog, the best thing to do is just send us an e-mail so not everbody can see what you write....

God's Blessing and a big hug from us all !!!!!!!

Henk