High tea & School Festivities

Hi everyone,

Noah's school celebrated it's own birthday a while ago, so there were lots of extra activities. The theme of all the festivities was ' Circus' so there were (circus) animals. Well okay, it was just a pony, but we didn't really like the idea of a tiger anyway.



There was also a lot of acrobatics.Here Noah is learning how to go up the stairs, but down the slide is still very scary. He can go up the stairs, if he wants to, but going down the stairs is still very difficult.

Hiding under a parachute is always a lot of fun.

And then there is the oversized trapeze

Also some handstands on the floor.

And lots of balloons, nothing says party more then lots of balloons!

Except for cake..... He seems to like the whipped cream. Not strictly for eating, but still........

And on the last day of the week of festivities, all the childeren went to a special circus, by the cliniclowns. It is a fantastic event that we can really recommend to every one (all children and adults as well!). Find more information here: Boemtata.

They have the same handstands and stair climbing acts as Noah demonstrated earlier. he loved to see everything, the most spectacualr things were too fast to capture on camera and too engaging to remember the camera.

Aftyer the show there was a lot of opportunity to meet the stars, but the experience was so overwhelming that a nap was needed.

He did not even need the specially created fluffly sky room.

One last picture from this week. Noah is starting to walk better and better, and he can now walk with just a tea towel for support. The problem is that he doesn't really like to, and is getting smarter and more assertive. So now when he sees the tea towel he sits on the floor and refuses to get up. The school has manged to trick him with a variety of other objects, so hopefully that will be enough until he gets confident that he can walk this way.

Last in this update, some pictures of the High Tea course that we hosted. We tested all the recipes and my teaching skills on some friends first. Recipes and bookings are still available :-). Here our charming assistant Maarten is showing the freshly made scotch eggs.  

And here is Tom trying to show how hungry he is. Luckily, because there was a lot!

A close up with meat pies, sandwiches, bubbly, more sandwiches, black forest gateau, scones en some pims in the background.

And here I am for real, explaining the finer details of pastry making to my mum and aunt Annet. All went smooth, but we were too busy to make a lot of pictures, so you'll just have to believe us that the table looked even better then the first time (practice makes perffect after all)

Everything turned out reallly well, and it was a lot of fun to do for everyone.

Enjoy and hope to see you on saturday at Noah's (and mine) Birthday Party!

Thijs

Wales visit

Hi everyone,

We have had a short holiday, visiting Louise's father in Wales. We didn't really go out and do anything touristy, but with a castle on the back of the house it is not difficult to shoot some pretty pictures:

It was stunning weather, so we all went for a walk around the castle.

Noah is walking much better now, so he walked by himself. 

Of course the trick is not to step on any ducks, swans, geese, seagulls or other assorted waterfowl.

The other local tourist trap is the park across the road. It is full of excellent play stuff for kids. As our model shows right here!

We even made some movies. Noah really liked the swings, and even seemed to get the hang of keeping moving by himself. 





Last but not least I wanted to post this, just so any of you coming to the birthday party don't get confused when Louise opens the door. A whole new look!  Just in time for her Babybeurs in Rotterdam where she represented her company "HandenVol" and "Babygebaren".

Enjoy and hope to see you soon,

Thijs

Invitation / Uitnodiging

Hi everyone,

A quick invitation for Noah's birthday party (Also my birthday, but let's just keep the focus on the important people here).
The party will be on July 14, and you are all very welcome from 15.00.
We will provide you with food and drinks, so please let us know if you will be joining us, so we can plan the amounts of food to make. 

Hope to see you at the party!

Thijs

Fabulous Esther

I know we've taken our sweet time posting pictures of our fabulous Noah. Luckily fabulous Esther came to the rescue last Sunday and took the most wonderful pictures of our family.  When I saw the montage I had tears in my eyes.  The photos really capture .... well everything that I love about our family.  I hope you enjoy seeing it too.



Check out more of Esthers work HERE

Enjoy!

Louise

(Some what) more recent pictures - Updated!

Hi everyone,

A whole new bunch of pictures. And a bit about how we have been doing as well. So let's get the boring stuff out of the way. I'll start with myself and work up to more interesting bits.

I have been quite busy at work, trying to impress my bosses enough to get a promotion. This seems to be working, but the headoffice is at the same time trying to cut costs and effectively pay everyone less. Not sure if I will come out with more or less pay at the end of this, but it is not very motivating to get a promotion only to counter the effect of budget cuts. Oh well, I'll see what happens.
In the mean time I am preparing for the future, so I can do some off the books work in the weekends ;-). Here the first steps, I will be available for any bricklaying needs from the 1st of march ;-).

Louise has been ill quite a lot, a very persistent cold that does not want to go away. Not enough to be truly sick, but enough to feel quite bad nonetheless. On the more positive side, she has registered her Baby Signing Business and will give a presentation at Noah's kindergarten at the end of March. Let's hope she can generate some business as well.

Noah has been ill on and off for December, Januari and the beginning of Februari. We finally managed to convince the hospital that he needed a bigger canule, so he got that and has been better since. Even though he did get a cold (it is winter after all) he didn't get so ill and could continue going to school.
He is again improving and showing some signs that he may start to use sign language. A lot of ifs in that last sentence, but it looks really promising, although you have to look quite hard.
Aside from the signing, he is walking better, improving his fine motor skills, and eating better. All in very smal steps, but with all his contnued illness it is amazing that he is improving and not just standing still or even going backwards.  We're very proud of our big guy!

So on to a load of pictures:

First 

More Sinterklaas and Xmas

Hi All,

A quick picture update as promised last month. These are still really old ones, but we uploaded them to the blog already, so I thought I might as well post them. Anyway there we go:

As Sinterklaas is bigger than Christmas (for kids at least) some more pictures from our favourite Saint. Noah made sure he arrived in the Netherlands and now he got to greet the Sint at his school:
Noah was festively dressed as a Zwarte Piet:

edit - pictures removed at schools request


Noah went up to give his personal greeting to Sinter Klaas.


edit - pictures removed at schools request

And getting a present in class:


And more presents from The Man himself:

There is also the usual walking around:


We went for a weekend away around the same time, visiting some christmas markets in Germany. Just the one picture, but the whole town looked very festive:


Didn't buy much there, but we found this strangely attractive bird sculpture. Notice our swinging Xmas dog next to it!


And the tree in full glory.


Last but not least:



Enjoy,

Thijs

Why is it taking so long....?

It's been such a long time since we've posted but it couldn't be helped.  The end of the year is always a trying time as we have to re-submit for Noah's care budget.  Plus winter months are difficult when Noah is so susceptible to respiratory infections.
This year was complicated by Thijs having surgery that had complications (he's finally feeling better now).   Noah going to school where the intricate rules we came across caused problems with Noah's budget and took 2.5 months to resolve!!! (Thank you Thuis Beademing, in particular Trudy for helping us with that).  With the current economic crisis, Thijs work is also making cost savings that impact the family.  All in all we've been pretty down in the dumps.

All clouds have a silver lining is a popular saying.  The sun is shining and life goes on.  Even though Noah has been very ill, with cold after cold after virus after ... well, you get the picture!! Even through all that, he is developing really well.  He's playing more, he's making much more eye contact and he's still a happy kid who makes us proud.  Previously he's been at a standstill when ill but now he continues to surprise us. That's a great and wonderful difference.

Thijs and I have been to visit friends and family.  Celebrating Yarah's 1st birthday (wow! how the year has flown by!), and Bart's 40th was great.  I don't get to see a large group of people very often so I was quite nervous, which was really silly because it was fantastic catching up with our old gang.

Talking of "old gangs", I love Facebook.  Especially the photos of friends you've lost touch with, which is certainly the case with my RAF buddies.  Everyone scatters to the 4 winds and moving around it's hard to keep in touch, so Facebook is great.  A nice guy I knew was retiring after 38 years in the RAF.  He posted some pictures from his dinning out dinner, (a retirement party for you civilians! ;) ), and it struck me how all my old bosses are now ......well, old!  My work mates and friends are ... well, errrm, advanced in age.  When did this happen??!!!  I'm now a middle aged person and my friends are also middle aged, some of them have teenage kids!!!   Is this a mid-life crisis I'm having??!!

So I haven't posted any pictures because I'm in the middle of a mid-life crisis.  I'm waiting to book an ab-sailing / diving / para-gliding adventure whenever Groupon has a 'can't resist' offer.   If I survive, I'll do my best to get some lovely pictures of the family Drosten adventures posted soon!

Still smiling,

The Drostens.