Weekend Plans

Plans have changed for the weekend. I will be staying home with the kinderen. (See how well you know Dutch. You knew what I meant.) Jon has to be at the World Cup venue in Netherlands the day prior to the race. So Jon (elite renner), Cyndi (soigneur), Dad (mechanic) and the bicycles will travel to the Saturday race then on to Netherlands where they will spend the night prior to the World Cup then back late Sunday.

Leah is great with the baby so I know we will be fine. We just have to plan a picnic and route to the good speelplein (playground) on Sunday. Maybe we will take some bread crumbs for the ducks at the lake nearby. Axel likes ducks and knows how to say duck and quack, quack.

Saturday the town is full of tourists, but we can take a route less traveled to the Saturday market where we might shop at the "maatje meer gaan hier" (larger sizes here) shop at the edge of the square. The food stalls are also at the edge and we might get a BBQ Kippen (chicken) and some kaas (cheese) for mac and cheese. Then we will go to the 'T Zant cookie shop for morning tea on the other side of the square. After lunch and baby nap we will find a route on back straats (streets) (hard to push the buggy on crowded streets) to the good frites (french fries) shop, Pickles, and wait in the crowd for an afternoon snack. Belgians are really big on snacks. As we eat and play our way through the weekend it will go quickly and then Moeder, Vader, and Opa will be home.

Dad reminds me that Belgians do not measure the time between one meal and the next but rather the distance, such as "it is 80 meters to lunch." So I think I must be getting a bit Belgian. Leah is getting to be a lot Belgian with her large vocabulary of common school words and phrases. Way beyond me, but Cyndi is trying to have Leah teach her the words in the evening. We'll see how that goes. Leah gets lots of repetition in different circumstances throughout the day, where Cyndi only gets a bit in the evening. Even the baby now says "Dag, Dag" for Bye Bye.

Despite the fact that I have the Dell set for local time (now 930AM 08/11/07). It persists in posting the time as if it were USA Pacific (~1130PM 11/07/07 when I first posted).