Parent Observation Day at Codarts

I have been wanting to post some pictures of Hannah for a while and I finally had Chris put them on my computer. This is Hannah's ballet class. I really ought to figure out how to use my camera to take action pictures because these are pretty pathetic.
Isn't she beautiful?

Check her out!

This is a fabulous picture of all the parents that Hannah was so kind to take. Looks like we are having a blast.
Hannah and her friends. They are extremely camera shy, can you tell.
This is Hannah's folk dancing class. Like I said, I really need to get the camera thing down. She is the blurry one on the left that is the second row from the front.
They put a lot of emphasis on the character dance in Europe. I don't know why. Hannah is not that fond of it. This is the class that they made the parents get up and dance with their kids. I have to say it was a lot of fun.

A look at the last few months...

I feel like we missed a lot in the last few months because we were so worried about the whole moving thing, so I wanted to show a little bit or what has been going on in our lives lately. I am going to backwords here, I can't get things to move where I want them to be without a fight and I don't have that kind of time...This first picture is our first and pretty much only snow of the year. The kids are trying to have a snowball fight. It was a very short battle. They ended up leaving our postage stamp sized backyard and dragging in snow from the parking lot to throw.
This is the snowman that they built. They were pretty pleased with themselves and Chris and I were surprised that it was as big as it was.
I think that we have already posted this picture, but it is one of my favorites. You can see that Isaac refused to wear his zwarte pieten hat. It is usually something that only little kids want to wear. The last day of school before Dec 5, all the little kids come to school with the whole outfit on. It is very festive and lots of fun. They always have Sinterklaas and his 'black pete's' visit the school and it is one big party. The zwarte pieten are quite the trouble makers and leave the classrooms in utter chaos. Most kids here probably think it is great fun, but my kids were quite annoyed that they had to clean up black hand prints off of everything and put the classroom back together. They thought it was 'dumb' to give an exact quote.
Here the kids are at the market square where Sinterklaas ends up. You cannot see this in the picture but Chris insisted that Isaac wear the hat even though there were some older kids behind him that thought it was really funny that Isaac was putting up a stink about the whole thing. I am sure that Isaac was completely mortified, but Chris' main goal in life is to embarrass our kids as much as possible.
These are Alex's teachers. The young one is actually a student teacher. The one in the front looks a little crazy, but she is a great teacher. She is 'very' enthousiastic about everything and it makes it fun for kids. She actually heard about our Halloween decorations in our front yard (not really much, a couple of head stones, some cobwebs and a skeleton in the window, but for here that is a big deal) and decided to bring Alex's whole class to our house so the kids could experience some American culture. I happened to be baking sugar cookies for our Halloween party that we were having later that night so all the kids got to try a cookie. They aren't big cookie makers here, so they thought that was great fun. Down below is a picture of some of the kids waiting their turn to ice their cookies.

This one is of the kids putting their shoes out for Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas fills their shoes with candy and small presents. Everyone always gets a chocolate letter too. I (I mean Sinterklaas) waited too long to get the candy and almost couldn't find the right letters. What a faux paux!
We put up a spiderweb forrest for the kids' birthday party and for our Halloween party and hid pumkins in it for the kids to find. They all thought it was a lot of fun. This one is actually of Hannah and her friend DeeDee. They were having a race to get through it first but it ended up being a great wrestling match. Very comical. I looks easy, but it really is an adventure.
We had DeeDee over for the birthday party because we were in serious need of a translator. You have no idea how crazy it is with 1o little girls that speak no English and try to keep telling you things that you really should know, but for the life of you, can't figure out.

This is our little Abby unwrapping presents. And down below is one of Isaac doing the same thing.

Something other then political nonsense...

I am supposed to be doing homework, so I thought that my best plan of attack was to post something on our blog first.
I went out to explore our new neighborhood the other day and brought our camera just in case I saw something fun. There is an area just north of where we live that is a really big recreation area. There are all sorts of really nice trails for hikers, bikers and I even saw some cross country skiers (there is not a lot of snow here ever, so they put wheels on the bottom of their skis and go crazy). Mostly people out walking their dogs.

This one is a huge climbing wall. The picture does not give it justice because it really is enormous. I took this one from on top of the hill, so I was looking down on it. I am not a good judge of height or anything, so I could not even guess how tall it is. There are also a whole bunch of teepees and a place where you can rent kayaks, canoes and who knows what else. There is also several acres of obstacle course stuff.


This some sort of sculpture of, I am guessing, an upside down mountain. It is very random being the only thing on top of the hill full of sheep, but it does make the scenery interesting. You can also climb up into it, but there was water in it.

There is also a ski slope. Also a lot bigger then it looks in the picture but not real big just the same.


Here is the mountain biking trail with lots of sheep. The sheep are actually inside a portable fence. You can see the sculpture in the background.

Here is just another view of the 'valley'.