Day 146 - 152

Day 152 Sunday, May 31

The girls gave us this bouquet. Beautiful! So we thought too, until we saw they had picked some of our very young white lavender. DH wasn't too thrilled about that!

Day 151 Saturday, May 30

Grilled succini and chicken

Day 150 Friday, May 29

We had a visitor

Day 149 Thursday, May 28

Not the best shot, that's true but I love it anyway. These are white lavender plants we have in our garden.

Day 148 Wednesday, May 27

Still enjoying the little flowers I got for Mother's Day.

Day 147 Tuesday, May 26

My supply of sezchuan pepper - used it once so far!

Day 146 Monday, May 25

Just playing together...

DAY 144 - 145

DAY 145 Sunday, May 24

Gorgeous weather today! The girls were having fun in the pool... although it took like forever for L. to jump in, the water was still very cold... A. was helping her to get used to the water. Isn't' that sweet? Love to see my girls having fun together.


Day 144 Saturday, May 23

Where did Fu's head go? This dog is so much fun! Here he's acting crazy because the girls were in the pool laughing and having fun... and he wanted to play along but ... I think he's afraid of the water so instead of coming closer he was actually moving backwards and shaking his head. So, did you find it?

DAY 143 - girls & bikes

DH is going to put this wonderful oldtimer for sale so we took some pics before it's gone. Anyone interested? Gorgeous, right!

DAY 141 - 142 Poppy

Day 142 Thursday, May 21

The girls were so captivated by this flower. This beautiful poppy was standing all alone on the side of the road and was dancing proudly in the wind.

Day 141 Wednesday, May 20

That's all what's left from my Mother's day bouquet, hope to keep these a few more days.

Day 138 - 140

Day 140 Tuesday, May 19

This is the cover from a new cook book I bought today. I can't resist a book about Asian food: I need to look in it and if it's not too expensive, it always ends up in my shopping bag.

Oh, I forgot to answer a question from Bentonflocke in my last entry, sorry: We lived near Köln. We left Germany about 20 years ago but still love to go back.

Day 139 Monday, May 18

I'm saving for a macro lens but in the meantime...

Day 138 Sunday, May 17

DH playing with the girls, tickling L.

L.: "Daddy, come back pleeeeease..." I wanna tickle you!!!!!

Day 135 - 137

Day 137 Saturday, May 16

Today was another day of Ballet! This is a pic of the program. The dancers had to be at the theater at 6:00 pm - show started at 8:30 pm and finished at 11:40 pm for the second night in a row. The kids were exhausted but loved every minute of it! We (some of the moms) weren't too thrilled about the late hour and are definitely looking to find a different ballet school for next year... where there will be some consideration for the young age of most of the dancers and performance will start much, much, muuuch earlier in the day. And where we are alloyed to take pics!!! I'm soo frustrated about that too! We will get a DVD but I'm not sure L. will be visible on it: she was dancing behind a much much bigger girl, so much for coreography, right.
Our girls also only did one dance, L. wasn't allowed to dance the final because she missed one practice (it was during holidays - and we weren't in town): that's what makes me the most angry. She never missed a lesson until Easter break when we went on vacation for a week. And because of that, she had to wait and look at her friends performing their last little dance before the end of the show. Another girl brought her and a few other little girls in the same situation on stage minutes before the end. She didn't mind about this but I DO! Sorry I had to vent a little I guess. Should do that at CDS, not here but oh, well it's over and she loved it! That's the important thing!

Day 136 Friday, May 15

Today was an important day for L.: her first BALLET performance.
She did great! We only saw her for about 5 minutes in a 2,5 hours show but she was amazing! Even if it's my mommy's heart speaking. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pics during the show or backstage. So this is a pic taken at midnight after the show when we went for French Fries - silly idea of DH - but our little ballerina was so hungry...


Day 135 Thursday, May 14

L. is cleaning the tree-house, well that's what she started to do ...

DAY 134 - Haribo

Kids and grown-ups love it so, the happy world of Haribo

... and my kids aren't any different. These are L.'s (and DH's) favorite: Haribo gummi candy "Happy-Cola"! We call them "cola flesjes" and we know the slogan in German so well : Haribo macht Kinder froh, und Erwachsene ebenso. We used to live in Germany when we were kids, in the land of Haribo! Wow, 3 different languages in 1 post! Cool, right!

DAY 133 - Closer look

A much much closer look at my Mother's day bouquet! Love this photo, even if it's not that sharp.

DAY 131 + 132 Mother's Day

DAY 132 Monday, May 11

And this is the bouquet flowers A. gave me yesterday( She went to the store with her daddy!)
little note: I love you!


DAY 131 Sunday, May 10 HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY
I couldn't post just one pic today. I got the most wonderful gifts today

from L.

from A. She also had a poem but she wrote it all by herself and knew it by heart. She's going to write it down for me... later, she said.

L. made this strawberry marmelade with her teacher, it's delicious!

and ... the most precious gift ... my girls laughing and having fun!

DAY 127 - 130

DAY 130 Saturday, May 9

Beautiful creature but unfortunately the girls and I have such a fear of these... This one and a lot of his family found a home in our garden, sigh!

DAY 129 Friday, May 8

L.'s hair were getting way too long and the ends were very very thin so today, we went to the hairsalon for some extra care and a new haircut.

No big changes - just 15 cm shorter! She still has long, long hair but it looks much healthier now and the most important thing : SHE 's happy about it!

DAY 128 Thuesday, May 7

My mom always buys little gifts for my girls. I always say she doesn't have to, but she can't stop. She just loves it. The other day she had 2 beautifuls butterflies: a blue and a pink one. We put them in the garden for some extra color: nice, right!

Day 127 Wednesday, May 6

Please, let me take another pic, pleeeease! I needed some specific pics for a LO I had to make (a scene I wanted to create) and after some resistance A. gave me a little smile. I so love her!

DAY 126 - Our panda's

I had a hard time finding something to take a pic of today. I was looking in the girls room and saw these 2 guys smiling at me. We hung(hanged?) these cute self-made panda's on our front door when we came home from China... so everyone could see that our girls were finally home. I still find them the cutest.

Marleen, yes those grenade apples from yesterday are pomegrants. I had to google, I had no clue how to call them in English... we call them "granaatappelen" in Dutch.

DAY 124 + 125

Day 125 - Monday, May 4

Healthy and DELICIOUS!!! These are grenade apples and the very favorite fruit of both my girls.

Day 124 - Sunday, May 3

They never have enough furry friends, right? Tiger & Panda are the latest addition to my girls collection of stuffed animals. They are so soft and cute, we couldn't just leave them at the store.

DAY 123 - little trooper

L. loved the games at scouts camp today... until they had to put their face in water and then in some flour. She made me laugh! She was so funny when she tried to explain it to me. She really couldn't see the fun in it. This was really NOT her thing. She tried to clean her face with a Kleenex but didn't get all of it. But she's a good sport and allowed me to take a pic. I had to beg for a smile though!

DAY 122 - Summer

We had a wonderful "Summer" day today! We took advantage of the nice warm weather and went biking. Now that I have a second photographer in the family, I'm not always the one taking the pics: A. took this pic of her sister while we stopped for a few minutes and a sip of water.