Christmas

We've been making it hard for people to keep up with our progress, having travelled to four countries in Europe in our first 5 or so days! In the main, though,we've been in Belgium and Netherlands, and we came back to Netherlands last night to stay with P and S, after a big family get together at M's place. Joost, Robert and Annaliese and families were all also there, so we had a Christmas dinner stretched through two rooms... after soccer/hockey out on the road, kids running up and down the stairs and an amazing spread of entrees, appel mus, delicious main meal and tira misu (coffee and honey), caramel/chocolate icecream, followed by coffee/tea and neuhaus chocolates (from Belgium)!

Our plans for the next few days: Not too much apart from seeing some more of the Netherlands - we're now close to Amsterdam, the Hague and Leiden, so we'll see where we get to, then back to Belgium on Friday. From Friday begins a great trip around Europe for us, from Belgium to France, then Italy and England, before our final return to Netherlands.

Before all this, there are some plans to celebrate L's birthday here in Holland, and K has some ideas for catching up with more relatives. Ge is currently reading Donald Duck in Dutch, and L is looking at a present of a whole lot of stamps from P.

Just going back one day, we also enjoyed Christmas Day itself, in Ghent, celebrating by cooking ourselves a great breakfast and dinner. We also took a trip to Brussels, where we parked right next to the ice-skating rink (openair) next to a Christmas market there. The kids and I skated, and it was good fun, apart from someone setting off a firecracker at one stage and giving us and others a bit of a fright! L has been using her French, especially in Brussels, where it seemed to be the major language.