Our week in Belgium

So Heinz tells me on Sunday that he is going to Belgium for the week. Hmmm....I thought I would just look up the city where he was going, and sure enough....tourist stuff to do! Not to mention that our friends in the Netherlands had just moved into their new house and were less than an hour away from Heinz's destination. That is the advantage in having a husband who travels....sometimes it's to a cool place, and sometimes we get to tag along.

One of the reasons I wanted to go was to see the biggest lake in Flanders. The hotel where we stayed rented bikes, and so I took Collin's bike along, rented one for myself with a seat for Savannah, and we were off to the lake.



See that little white building across the lake? That is where we started.






Absolutely beautiful, unspoiled scenery all the way around. There were a few fishermen, and some other bikers, but we had the path mostly to ourselves.





Finally, we made it back to our starting point. It must have been at least 10km around the lake, if not more. We did it in about 2 hours. At one point the path was just a mowed grass trail over many potholes. It was very difficult for me to navigate as I kept feeling my backend go out from under me. It was a miracle Savannah wasn't thrown off a few times, but she was holding on tight. Poor Collin had to fend for himself behind me, and as we got back to the cafe and had some ice cream I saw some dirt on his knee. "Oh, did you fall off your bike?" I asked. Very seriously, he looked back at me and said, "Many times." I am so proud of him for making all the way around the lake, and even back to the hotel was another 5km!


And I find this hard to believe, but my children still had energy after this long and arduous bike ride to play on the playground at the hotel. It was a really nice one too.






The next day we went to visit Jen and Milan's new house and of course their lovely family. Rowan was off early from school, so the kids got to play together. And naturally we played pass the baby. Collin was especially proud to be able to hold little Arjan. Isn't he precious?


And that was our trip. We headed back home on Thursday. Now I am finally caught up through all our adventures until this week. Stay tuned for more!

Our playmobil adventures...

Tanja and Romello took their vacation to Germany, and we were so happy to be able to meet up with them and bring Romello back home with us for a few days to visit. We all got together at Playmobil Park, and we had so much fun.


Savannah loves to play in the water, and it's a good thing since throughout the park are many water activities.


And Collin dug several dams and waterways.


Real life size playmobil people!




Mama enjoys the water fun too.






And of course Daddy got in on the fun by taking the boys on a raft.


On board the pirate ship....

Tripsdrill fun with friends.....

During our school holidays we got together with friends and went to an amusement park called Tripsdrill. The rides are great because most kids can ride without an adult. Here are a few pictures.

Our trip to the US (part two)

Viva Las Vegas! Our trip to Las Vegas was filled with fun. Here are a few pictures from our adventures at Circus Circus which has a huge indoor amusement park.











As most of you know, we went to Las Vegas to visit friends. Here I am with Gerry after our beer and apple tasting contest. We bought beers and apples from all over the world and tasted the difference. Newcastle won the beer contest (no good German beers available to compete, unfortunately), and Pink Lady won the apple contest.


The nature surrounding Las Vegas is really interesting. I guess most people don't know about it since so many are there for gambling. We first went to Red Rock Canyon. This area is pretty, with lots of cool catus plants and wild desert flowers. The mountains here are beautiful, and we loved the scenery.


In an old rock quarry...




On the way back to Las Vegas, we had lunch, and guess what we saw outside the restaurant?.....



We also had a chance to go to Hoover Dam. This was really interesting for the kids, and even though Heinz and I had been there before, we were still in awe of such a stupendous man-made structure.




Behind us in this picture you can see the new highway they are building to avoid all the traffic that goes over the dam. It looks kind of high up and way scary!





Lake Mead


The Lake is so blue when you come up on it that it looks like a mirage. As massive as it is, the water level is slowly but surely going down. The white line you see in the above picture is where the water once was.


So after a week in Las Vegas, we bid our good friends farewell, and flew on to New York where we managed to fill two days with tons of tourist adventures. Here are some pictures of how we spent our time.

Museum of Natural History



The musuem was really interesting, and we spent hours wandering around looking at wildlife and learning all about our world.





Look at these cool duckbill dolls.....kind of weird, but interesting.



And these really neat masks from Tibet



We managed to get a hot dog from a vendor in Central Park West, and had a lovely walk around. Unfortunately, it was very misty and sprinkling, so our pictures from Central Park didn't turn out very well.

The next day we went to the Statue of Liberty. Here are some lovely views of Manhattan from the Circle Line Ferry


Leaving Manhattan....










The Brooklyn Bridge


Ellis Island, where all immigrants had to register upon entering the US. Nowadays is it just a tourist destination.


Ellis Island


And finally, we arrive at the Statue of Liberty.



It was so cold and windy that day. I am so glad we had some warm clothes with us. We ended up having to buy a couple of sweaters for Heinz as he was a bit unprepared for the cold New York spring.

Brooklyn Bridge on the way back to our hotel....


And boy were we exhausted after a whirlwind trip of New York, a week in Las Vegas and 3.5 weeks in Nashville. All of us could have slept standing up, but only one of us did......