Mom's Terrible Ideas...

May has been a fun month so far, many Belgian holidays and we have found some moment that we weren't on the sports fields so we could check out a few fun places.

First we rolled out of bed early on a Saturday to go to the "I Love Science" Festival that was held at the Expo Center right by the Atomium.  (The secret to living in Belgium is to get up early and get wherever you are going and you will have the place to yourself. We parked right next to the Atomium because we were so early-no tourists yet!)

We walked past the old Palace de Exhibition which was built for the 1930's Worlds Fair..gorgeous statues on the top and all around the building.

Katie loved this building project, all run by the architecture students at the University.

This guy used his Kitchen Aid to make ice cream with liquid nitrogen.  It was super fun to watch and the girls loved the ice cream.

Charlie tried Hover Shoes...like a hover board but split...they were all impressed he could do them after a quick intro.

Greg tries skateboard Virtual Reality.

We were glad he didn't decide to dress like this guy to play the game!

Another outing was to the Blue Forest..land of the Smurfs...the guy who created the Smurfs was from this town...Seeing the blue flowers blooming under the giant trees helps you understand the idea behind the Smurfs...a little bit...

 The blue flowers only bloom for a few weeks, once the tree canopy above gets its leaves then the blue flowers no longer get the sunlight.  This year we saw them on the very tail end of the bloom.

 Louna and I found this guy on our walk in the forest right by the kids school.

 Every year the EU has an Open Day where they let everyone come see all of their buildings and learn about the European Union. Which is something I don't feel like I know that much about, even living here!  Greg and the girls had sports but I made Charlie come along with me and he cried and complained the entire time.  All about Mom's dumb ideas and why he can't stay home on a Saturday.

But we got to see this guy-Captain Europe!  Can you believe they ripped off Captain America??

 We also got to go inside the very cool building which is the home to the Council of the EU.  It is also called the Egg.  Outside is a glass walled building that holds this thing that really looks like an egg.

 Before we went in the egg part, they had a fair with tables for all of the countries in the EU.  They had a mini passport where you could get stamps for visiting the booths and learn more about the countries and institutions.  There was even an online quiz which I failed it miserably, it was full of hard questions all about the EU and its leaders, etc.  There was a section for feedback and I typed, "Quiz was very hard for dumb Americans like me!"

Charlie got tons of free stuff and most importantly after getting enough stamps he got a special prize.  The prize what what he begged for the entire time we were in Italy- A SELFIE STICK! He doesn't even own a phone so we don't understand why he needed a selfie stick...but now he is the proud owner of one!

He quickly hooked up my phone and took this shot of us..

Outside the buildings they had a cool Bread Fair that had breads from all the countries in the EU.  Charlie got a Hungarian Chimney cake that we all learned to love in Budapest.  I got to try some tree cake that I had seen at a bazaar here. They also had the cooker for it...check this out!  Once it is done it stands up like a Christmas tree-I was glad to try it.

Hopefully Charlie now knows that all of Mom's ideas aren't terrible and occasionally there may be the object of your desire waiting at the end of one!