Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Leave a comment day!

Who are you and what are you doing reading this blog? We have been a little disappointed with the lack of commenting our readers our doing. And then it dawned on us, maybe there are no readers... So, if you're out there, please drop us a line. This is the day we see how popular we are. It's just like high school!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

President Obama

This evening we watched as Barack Obama got sworn into the presidency. Evie sang along with Aretha Franklin. But even cuter, when Obama stood there with his right hand up, she went and gave him high five. Of course, the camera was there to capture the beautiful moment. (Liz grabbed the camera after she did the same thing with Joe Biden)

This is a song made from a speech Obama made last year in New Hampshire. It's been around for a while, so many of you have probably seen it, but for those who haven't... it's beautiful.

Monday, January 19, 2009

On the Ice!

It's warmed up a bit by now, but Holland has been having some of the coldest weather in years. For about two weeks the temperature stayed below freezing, causing all the canals to turn to ice. Holland is known for its ice skaters. Much of the Dutch love of ice skating comes from the history of frozen canals. The last few years, however, hardly anything has frozen over. This year was the first in many that a major skating tournament was held on natural ice.

All this nice, cold weather and ice also means that all the kids (big and small) go out to enjoy it. Last weekend Evie went "skating" twice. Okay, she doens't have skates, but she doesn't know the difference. Here are some pictures and a short video from Sunday. She accompanied Papa, Oma, Opa, Martijn, and Danielle in Zoetermeer.

Getting laced up.

Ice! Yay!

Papa pulls the sleigh.


Oma pulls the sleigh.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Placemat

One of Evie's Christmas present was a new placement with numbers and animals. Along with the placemat came four washable markers. Last week we tried it out.

Evie did really well tracing the numbers in the appropriate colors. We were very impressed!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Finally Florida, part 4 - Misc.

A few miscellaneous pictures from our time in Florida.
Running Evie

An alligator in the wild! Spotted on the golf course outside our hotel room.

Palm tree

Gator heads in a souvenir shop.

The building of our hotel room. The alligator was right on the bank of the water.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Finally Florida, part 3 - Pool

Here are a selection of pool pictures taken throughout our week in Florida. The resort we were staying at had many, many pools to choose from. We only went to the one that was right outside our building and the one by the main building.
Evie had her swimming ring.

The highlight for Evie was the waterfall.

Swimming buddies.

Aunty Christyl brought some noodles to play with.

Aunty Christyl and Uncle Thijs

We all had a blast in the pool!

Finally Florida, part 2 - Shamu

These pictures were taken on Thursday, December 18. We spent the whole day at Sea World, one of Orlando's many theme park attractions.
A manatee, also known as sea cow.

Before lunch we went to the Shamu show. Shamu is an Orca whale, and the star of Sea World.
(And here, making her Schutte Blog debut, is Aunty Christyl!)

The show was about as dorky American as you can get, and was titled "Believe."

Evie was enthralled.

Some of the stunts they do are so cool!

After lunch, Uncle Thijs and Aunty Christyl went on a super cool roller coaster! Tom managed to get a great shot of the two. Click to see the image bigger.

Near the end of the day we went to the dolphin show.

The show was actually more amazing than the whale show, but the only good pictures we got were of us watching!

Finally Florida, part 1 - Beach

These are pictures from Wednesday, December 17. We left Orlando in the morning and headed to the beach. Which beach? I'm afraid we have forgotten the name. After lunch we headed back to Orlando and had dinner with Christyl's family, but not before going on a boat ride over the lake on a search for alligators. No luck, though.
Evie

The water is colder than it looks!

Tanned brother, white brother.

Yay! The sunny beach!

America's next top pregger model.

Evie loves laughing at Uncle Thijs' jokes and games.

And there are never enough kisses to be given.

Aunty Chistyl's Mom drives the boat on the lake by their house.

Evie got to steer, too! She even got to work the throttle!!!

Sunset on a Floridian lake.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Recovering from jet lag

We are back in Holland!! We managed to get back on the morning of the 2nd, and have been spending our time just adjusting. Tom and Evie seem to be pretty much back on schedule, but Liz is still having trouble getting to sleep on time at night. Hopefully it won't take too much longer.

Today Evie went to nursery school for the first time. She will now go every Monday morning. It is the nursery school classroom from her elementary school, so it is a good opportunity to make friends. We have decided to try Montessori school for her first.

Evie also had her 2.5 year check-up today. She is as healthy as can be and measured 97 cm and 14.3. According to an American website that puts her between in the 95th percentile for height, and 78th percentile for weight. Evie also had to perform tasks for the nurse, including building a tower, sorting blocks, naming objects in a book, pointing out objects in a book, and kicking a ball with her right foot as well as with her left foot. She performed beautifully. We also got some other good news. When Evie was few months old they detected a slight heart murmur, but it could not be heard today, which means it has resolved itself. Yay!

This week we will be posting pictures from Florida and Maine. They are already on the computer, we just gotta get our act together!!

Saturday, January 3, 2009

How cool is that!!

Guess who was on our plane? Ice-T, baby! For those of you who aren't familiar, you'll most likely recognize him from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. We played it cool and didn't take any pictures or ask for any autographs, but we wanted to! He, of course sat up in first while we were in coach, but we were right next to each other in the immigration hall. (He even smiled at Liz when Evie was fussing). And we watched as he got his luggage and went through customs. So cool!

Friday, January 2, 2009

Happy New Year!!!

So, we got back today, and this is what we find in front of our house. It comes as no surprise, as there have been fires for the past two years, but this looks like it was even bigger than ever. Our windows were covered in soot. And the most crazy thing? It was still smoking at noon on January 2nd. That's just not right. And notice the three burned bikes in the right of the pictures. Just the way to start the new year, don't you think?