The flurry of fun before the chaos!

I have been so behind in my updates!  We were honored to go say farewell to our friends the Baratas as Dave finished up his tour as the Commanding Officer at Activities Europe.  We drove to the Netherlands and got to attend his Change of Command ceremony.  We are so happy that we got to share our time with them the past few years!

A very appropriate table decoration.

Dave gave a great speech and the girls (Caroline & Annie) stole the show when they sang the National Anthem to kick off the ceremony!

Awesome Barata Family!

We managed to get a quick trip in to Luxembourg, Greg had gone down for the 4th of July activities and got to see Buzz Aldrin.  Charlie and I tagged along.  (Katie was off in Paris with her friend making the most of her European summer! Thanks to Bob and Lorrie for hosting them!)

Buzz!

Luxembourg is a banking capital and as a result Charlie was happy to find many fancy cars to look at...here are a few...

We loved exploring the cool old walls of the city.

 We also liked getting to stay in a fancy hotel.

Charlie's favorite thing about the hotel was that it had a bum washer/dryer and toilet seat heater.  He kept going in to play with it all! Here are the options for those of you that might be curious about the contraption!  I do have some photos of Charlie that I'm saving to bribe him with one day!

Charlie mastered all the settings before we left!

 Our next excitement was the start of the Tour de France, this year it started in Brussels, which is only the second time in the race history that it has started in Brussels.  The last time was during the Worlds Fair almost 60 years ago.  It came through our neighborhood on the first day and also the second day which was team time trials.

Day one they had a crazy high speed parade about an hour before the racers whizzed by.  The high speed parade was very scary for a parent because the floats & cars were throwing out prizes, candy, etc. which is very exciting for a nine year old boy, however they were doing this at about 30 MPH with no barricades or anything to stop a kid from running out.  They were going so fast I thought for sure the racers were right behind them, but we had plenty of time before the blur, so they could have slowed down to spare all the parents the worry!

Here are a few parade vehicles...

Lottery is popular no matter where you live!

The second day was the team time trials, so it was better for spectators, every few minutes a different team would ride by...we watched a few then decided we would head for home.  We learned we really don't appreciate bicycle racing!

Katie rocking her new Hawaiian shirt from her Paris shopping trip!

We also had a few visitors stop by before we packed up the house...first a cousins weekend, we had Peggy on her way back from China and Greg's other cousin Rosemary and her kids coming home from a foreign exchange year abroad in Germany.

Katie was happy to be their Belgian tour guide!  We liked hearing about all the cool things they had been up to the past year.  They also played some good card games...

Our final visitors were our buddies from South Africa, the McGuire family.  They brought along their newest member, Hank, and Charlie was smitten with his new little buddy.  It was fun to see him being a caring big boy.

We did get to a brewery tour at the Antwerp City Brewery called DeKonnick, I had this one on my list for awhile.  What was great about it was it was fun for kids and they also had some funny signs and great tasting of course!

Hank, Charlie & Ella

Charlie looks forward to Hank visiting us again when he can, "really talk".

One final picture of Kelly during plebe summer we have been scanning the photos that they post...We have gotten to talk to her twice now and she sounds good, she says its hard but she is surviving!  She loves all the letters and treats that everyone has sent to her-thanks!

Our former purple princess now wearing cammo pants & combat boots!!

Now the joys of an international move!