A Road Trip and Recycling

Kelly and I took a road trip to see our friends in Germany, lucky for us they live near the Ritter Sport Chocolate factory.  So we got to visit the museum, here are pictures of old candy molds from the early days of production.

 Chocolate bunnies...

 Smaller bunnies.

Next stop after this photo was the chocolate factory shop- smiles all around!  We bought lots of chocolate bars to bring home.  We had a good visit and enjoyed some nice fall weather.

While we were away Greg, Katie & Charlie were home playing soccer and visiting with the Barata family-still no photo with all the Baratas-I will fix that the next time we catch up with them. they visited the Musee Herge (cartoonist who wrote Adventures of Tin Tin)..the kids didn't love the museum so we'll cross that off our list to check out...here they are...

I returned home and spent the next day working on a new version of the chore chart...when the cat is away the mice will play and forget to clean up...so now the mice have a full listing of what they are supposed to do around the house.

Charlie is back on recycling duty (he also rocked that this summer in NH)..which leads to lots of entertainment for all of us...

 First just a plain box that was on its way out...

Then he steps up his game and builds his own robot...you will see the finished version in a few weeks for Halloween!

A Visitor from Home-Yippee!

Our friend Eric from the US had to come this way for work, so we were thrilled he came to spend the weekend with us.

Prior to his arrival, Charlie and I had been riding on the tram when a lady got on with a Giant Teddy Bear (sorry no photo).  I began calling it the big pink teddy bear and I dared him to go past and touch it.  He did touch it but didn't know the story of the big pink teddy bear...which is Eric's specialty from years of camping trip ghost stories with our kids and his kids.  Charlie wanted me to tell him the story, but I made him wait for the master...so here is Charlie hearing the Big Pink Teddy Bear...

 Look at the smile!

There is nothing like a good story!

Eric was a trooper and came to school to see Katie's soccer game then in the evening we headed out for an excellently researched pub crawl led by Greg.  We sampled some great Belgian beers in some very unique pubs- each one different than the one before!  I didn't bring my camera along, so no photos to share, but we have a good list for our future visitors that might like to recreate it!  

Greg and Eric also went to see Waterloo, it is less than half an hour from our house.  The museum was redone for 200th Anniversary in 2015 and they reported that it was well done. 

We look forward to when all the Bodenhoffers come for a visit and we hope more of our friends will have work trips this direction! 

The Hague

Greg has been to the Hague many times and he was our tour guide for a quick trip, we plan to go back and spend more time.

We first found a skate park for Charlie where he made some new scooter friends, one kid could speak English well so he would translate for the other one...he would still be there if we had not made him leave!

 We got a kick out of these double decker bike storage racks in the parking garages here-bikes were everywhere!

 The beach was pretty at sunset, we didn't ride the ferris wheel at the end of the pier yet...

Charlie's sand art..it says "I like the ocean".  Now we all know why Greg likes the Hague so much, we look forward to a future visit!

Delft, Netherlands- First of hopefully many visits!

The kids had a day off from school so we headed North to the Netherlands.  Our goal was a cool visit somewhere but one without tons of walking for hop-along Kelly.

We went to the pottery factory in Delft.  It had a cool movie to start the tour, and a museum of old pottery and then you go in the actual factory.  You see people painting and all the pieces waiting to be worked on.

Here is one of the master painters at work...Greg looks like he is talking on his phone, but he's actually listening to the audio tour.

I loved the tulip vases, they sell them in the store at the end...for a mere 15,000 Euro I could have bought one..

One popular kids character is Miffy (see photo below).  We really got a kick out of seeing Miffy's ready to be made in the factory.

Miffy's being made.

Everyone liked trying on the giant wooden shoes painted in the same style as the pottery...

We did see windmills on the drive too..in case you were wondering!

At some points the windmills were on both sides of the road.

The town of Delft was really quaint.  It had little canals everywhere, a university, bikes, a town square and a market.  I loved trying some of the foods, here was a pastry/bread stand.

They also had lots of fish for sale...here was a herring on a roll...we tried a piece of the fried fish and it was amazing!

We bought Charlie a bag of Speculoos cookies- it looks like Cookie Crisp cereal.  Specloos is everywhere here and its delicious.  Here's what Wikipedia says about it.

SpeculaasSpeculaas or speculoos is a type of spiced shortcrust biscuit, traditionally baked for consumption on or just before St Nicholas' day in the Netherlands, Belgium, and around Christmas in Germany

Main ingredients: Flour, sugar, butter, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg

Charlie rating= A+++++++

We even buy the spread, pictured below in our local supermarket!

If you order a coffee in a restaurant it usually comes with one of the little cookies on the side.

We left Delft mid afternoon and headed on to the Hague which was another half an hour up the road.  I will post on that shortly, Kelly and Katie took a million pictures there (gotta keep up your Instagram feeds if you are a teenager) so I'll use those!

A new Burger King and Car Free Day in Brussels

As we have been driving to school we pass a shopping area where they have been building a new Burger King.  Charlie always asks to stop and we tell him it isn't open yet.

One day when I passed by they were doing a grand opening...we went on our way home from school.

Excellent entertainment...they went with a Cowboy/Wild West theme...because nothing says America like a mechanical bull,

Fake covered wagon (with what looks like Native American jug/ baskets sitting on it??? I have to give Katie all the credit for pointing that out! 

Dancing cowboys and cowgirls (who probably were exotic dancers by night) We realized that we never took a picture, we were simply too busy enjoying the spectacle.

We are happy to have a Burger King close for a taste of home when we need it!

Brussels also did a cool thing where for one Sunday they declare it a car free day.  Everyone is supposed to ride a bike, scooter, or public transportation which is free for the whole day.  We headed out with Charlie's bike and scooter, met up with another family and headed to the area of town where they had a bike circus.

Our first spectacle when we came off the metro was people tightrope/slackline walking between tall buildings-crazy!

Our next adventure was a slow bike race for Charlie- the goal of a slow bike race is to be the last one to cross the finish line.  Happy to report that Charlie won his race and got a few prizes...here he is pulling to the back of the competition.

The kid on the left was already out as he had put his foot down, once you touch the ground you are out.

 We saw some professional bike riders do a trick show, Charlie and his friend LOVED it.

 Charlie got to try some ramps, note the fancy chocolate shop in the background!  Leonidas is a big one around Brussels.

Katie gets into the action and rides Charlie's bike for a bit.  On the same street there were two kids playing chess in the middle of the street-just because they could for one day!

 One sporting goods store had a demo area where you could try out equipment, Charlie tried a skateboard.

 Charlie and his neighborhood buddies!

We live near a beautiful fountain that is in the center of a VERY busy rotary, so generally the fountain is something you look at but never go close to.  However for car free day we were able to go out in the middle of the rotary and check out the fountain.  Here is my neighbor and I and the kids.  She is another Illinois girl who has been living in Brussels for many years...so she became my tour guide for the day!

We look forward to another car free day of exploring next year and know Kelly will enjoy it then because she won't be stuck on crutches!

8 is Great!

Just like that Charlie turned 8!  We celebrated his actual birthday a day two days early and spent Saturday doing what he wanted.  This meant two trips to the skatepark to ride his new trick scooter and having pizza and ice cream.  (more photos of the trick scooter to come)

His real birthday was on a Monday, he wanted to bring in rice krispie treats for his class (my personal shopping victory was finding American marshmallows in the supermarket-this was a major score-I have only found them on an endcap in one random store).

Last Saturday we invited his entire class for his party and a few neighborhood kids.  We chose a theme near and dear to Charlie's heart...a dog party.  With no dog of our own we borrowed one to be our guest of honor.  Here is Charlie and Olivia

Dogbone cake, chocolate with chocolate icing...everyone helped, Katie and her friend baked, Kelly and I frosted, and Charlie did the M&M's and Oreos.

 Everyone adopted their own dog before they went home...

Here are all the dogs waiting to be adopted.

 The pinata...

I had counted on Kelly to be the photographer...but she hurt herself coming home from soccer practice...she spent the party in her room with a hurt foot... the next day we learned she broke a bone in her foot.  It's been a real bummer, she was so excited for her first soccer game on the school team and instead she spent it on crutches.  So I am back to being a taxi and counting down the days until Kelly can get back to walking and playing sports again!