Niels Wins School Talent Show

Each year Niels school has a talent show for the eldest class, based on the X Factor but called the 'R Factor' (because the school name starts with R). Niels really spent a lot of time practising and knew exactly what he wanted to do...and he won! We were so proud of him! It was a real family effort; I mixed the music for him, Dad drove the car, and little brother cheered from the sidelines. Enjoy!

Open Wide!

So that's how it's done...this is Carl enjoying a traditional Dutch treat, a herring. Actually it's a raw herring. As I undersand it, the fish monger basically deheads, guts and scales the fish, and removes the bones. It's then eaten either like this, bite by bite, or if you're feeing slightly less daring, on fresh white bread sprinkled with finely chopped onions. Mmmmm, that would have to be a major Listerine moment!

Carl loves them and he and his Dad often share one for lunch in the weekend. He had me take this photo to email to Holger who was offshore in Brazil at the time, to make him jealous. Go figure!

Oh Christmas Tree...

At last, school has finished for the year. The frantic level of activity which bubbles along from mid-November in the build up to Sinterklas, followed by the ensuing hype for Christmas, leaves both kids and parents feeling a bit strung out by the end of the term, so it was bit of a relief on all sides that we had the final, festive goodbye last Thursday night. The school organized a Christmas dinner, with each class festooned with trees, decorations, and candles. Remember this is the darkest time of the year for us, with the sun disappearing by 4:30 in the afternoon, so with the lights turned off and candles lit in every room it made for a magical atmosphere. Each parent supplied some food and the kids quite frankly stuffed themselves on little bits of this and that.
Carl surprised all of us this year by volunteering to sing in the choir. In the central hall area of the school a small enclosure was created with live sheep, Mary & Joseph and a baby providing a touch of realism (the sheep had the best costumes). Behind that a cute choir of 8 girls...plus Carl...sang carols to entertain everyone as the food was laid out and people arrived.
Afterwards the parents can back to enjoy mulled wine and more carols outside before we all headed home, to a well deserved two week break. Holger is away for Christmas so it's just the 3 of us again; last year we spent a month in New Zealand/Singapore so avoided the dark days of Christmas altogether. However we'll make our own fun and have plenty of friends and family to spend time with.

Best wishes to all for a wonderful Christmas!

Judo Junkies

A couple of months ago our boys discovered the delights of martial arts. They both now attend the local judo school and delight in showing of their new found talents. I've never had anything to do with this type of sport and I have to admit I am impressed with the quality of the coaching and the respect every student is expected to show towards his fellow students.

And after the tough poses there is always time for a cuddle!

Camping!

This year we had a new yet marvellous phenomenon in our house; both boys went on camp at the same time. The annual Scouts camps are always held during the first week of the summer holidays and this was the first year that Carl would be old enough to join in. If you're trying to spot Carl in the photo above, he's the one in the middle who appears to be blowing his nose onto the head of the scout in front of him. Lovely.

Niels moved up to the Land Scouts this year so headed into the forest in Germany for a week of 'real' camping; nothing provided except a tap for fresh water. Seriously, I think the highlight for all of the kids was digging 'Hudo',  a 2 metre deep poo pipe. I mean toilet. There's something about going a la natural that just appeals to boys.

Carl was off to the 'Welps' camp where he spent a week...ah what the heck, who cares really - he was away and having fun with a bunch of other kids, that's all that matters!

Off To Camp...

With the weather warming up, the camping season has started for Scouts. Niels is away this week with the Land Scouts, last seen heading east this morning with 4 other boys clutching a GPS. Hopefully they'll find the rendevouz in time to be collected tomorrow!

Carl had a camp with his group recently - thankfully a father & son camp - with a military theme. Here's No. 2 and Proud Dad, ready to report for duty.

Petrolheads

I was going through the memory card in my camera when I came across some photos of Niels birthday, waaaaaay back in May, and realized I'd never posted these. Turning 10 was a big thing for him and he wanted to do somehting a bit more adventurous than in previous years, so we booked a carting track nearby and took along a few friends. We weren't sure how it would go, but they had a blast.

Fortunatley none of them had done it before so they were all at the same level. Driving there in the car the boys were so excited we were wishing we had earmuffs of our own. Details of just how fast and daring they were going to be and the types of stunts they were going to do became more elaborate with each passing minute. So it was pretty funny to see them each doing their first couple of laps, not daring to go faster than walking speed and looking for all the world like a bunch of grannies on the track!

However they soon got the hang of it and were zipping about. They stopped for a break to scoff down some lunch before heading back out to the track again.

By the time we left they were all total converts to carting and unanimously declared it to be the best birthday party they'd ever had!

Scouting About

There have been a few changes with our wee scouts recently. Both boys have moved up to the next group: Carl to the Welps (ages 7-9), and Niels to the Land Scouts (10-14). This involved of course a change of uniform, the chaotic ceremonial changeover involving the entire combined Scout group, then the official 'proper' ceremony for each of the chapters where the boys have to say the Scout  code and promise to obey the Scout law in front of their leaders and own personal group. All very important stuff. Oh, and don't forget the bit where Mum gets to sew 10 badges by hand onto the new shirts. Have I ever blogged about my sewing skills before? Well, there's a reason for that: I don't have any. Suffice to say there may not have been sweat or tears involved but blood was definitely shed. The top photo shows Niels, pre-ceremony, demonstrating his new salute (3 fingers for Landscouts!) and if ever you needed proof he is growing up, this is surely it.

Niels managed to learn his new Scout code by heart, then promptly forgot most of it in the heat of the moment. The leaders are all quite young and is was amusing for the parents and grandparents gathered around to watch them going red-faced and looking flustered trying to remember the code in front of an audience as well. Above he is shaking hands with the leader of the gruop - Scouts always shake with the left hand as it's closest to the heart (bet you didn't know that!).

Carl was quite nervous about his ceremony, and forgetting that there were 7 kids moving up to the Welps, I saw him looking stricken when 3 boys were called forward to go through the ceremony and he thought he'd been forgotten. We quickly whispered in his ear that he would be one of the next, and his lip stopped trembling and he waited, at full attention with his back ram-rod straight, in tense anticipation until his name was called. After it was all over he allowed him self a little smile, befitting a boy who is "not small any more but medium sized" to quote him.

I've included this last photo of Carl getting his new shirt before the ceremoney as it shows the one essential item apparently no Scout can do without. Never mind the shirt, the tie, the friendship knot or the badges; a grubby pair of blue jeans is apparently an absolute must, and our little Scouts are able to turn a perfectly clean pair of jeans, laundered especially for the ceremony, into something looking like this in the 30 seconds it takes to walk from the car to the club house.  Amazing.

Normandy 3

 ...where was I...oh yes, locking up the kids. Well of course they weren't really locked up, these see-through boxes are part of a very cool attraction at Alligator Bay, a reptile park with tunnels for the kids which wind  through several of the snake exhibits. Look out points allow the kids to pop up in the midst of an enclosure full of pythons, or anacondas, etc, which was quite exciting and just scarey enough to have them screaming and squealing in only partly-faked terror. When do we we become to old to scream just for the fun of it anyway? I'm sure the power of a good yell is vastly under-rated and to be honest there are often moments in my day - usually when a deadline is rapidly approaching - when a blood curdling scream would actualy be the most appropriate response.

Apart from snakes Alligator Bay had hundreds of retiles, from lizards to turtles to (obviously) alligators. And while they are all quietly impressive, I hadn't realized how much they poop! And stink! I mean these giant tortoises are all very nice and all but the kids were like "oh my God look how big that poo is!" It really made me wonder why people would want to keep reptiles as pets. Quite apart from the bite-your-leg-off factor of course.

Well enough reptiles, we were about to leave the hamlet of Ver behind and head northwest to our second holiday house...a 15th century chapel which was recently lovingly converted into the most amazing house, in the hamlet of Cerney, which is in the middle of nowhere, about an hour's drive from Rouen. More about that shortly!



A Surprising Level of Self-Awarenesss

Carl and I were in the car the other day with our very good friends who are in their sixties. There was a short lull in the conversation and Carl leaned forward and asked "You don't have your own kids, do you?"
"No, we never did" was the answer.
"Well why not?" asked Carl.
"We wanted to but we went to the doctor when we were younger and he told us we couldn't"
There was a long pause while Carl thought about this, and we could almost hear the cogs turning in his head. Finally he leaned forward again and said in a low voice:
"I bet you're glad now".

Definitely a classic Carl moment!

Running in circles

You know the problem with taking a holiday is that enormous amount of work you have to finish beforehand to clear a couple of weeks free. Hence you've heard nothing from me in a while. That and the fact that life has been so very very busy with the end of the school year, camps, work, etc.....
Last week Niels had his annual Scouting camp, a week-long adventure with a group of 20+ other kids. With a theme of Lord of the Rings, the kids were woken at 11pm on the second night by a grey-bearded Gandalf, who beseeched them to destroy the cursed rings in the lava lakes of Mordor. The Scout leaders who are in charge of his group really out-did themselves this time, with an imaginative, non-stop series of adventures that culmiinated in the kids tossing their rings into a fiery inferno after trekking by moonlight through the forest near Lunteren. Goodness knows what the locals thought, hopefully they are used to Scouts getting up to all sorts of nocturnal adventures.
I collected him - and an enormous pile of washing - after seven sunny fun filled days and brought him home to his first shower in days and a welcome nights sleep. It brings back fond memories of my childhood when I would spend a week in the summer holidays at Kiwi Ranch, a horse riding camp near Rotorua. I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist any more but I have fond memories of riding horses up and down the hills overlooking Lake Kawau, trekking the paths through the pine forest and riding through creeks. By the end of the camp all the kids would be gaining confidence in their riding and we would race to the paddock in the morning to grab the fiestiest horses because they were the most fun. It was a Christian camp and we endured a couple of hours of 'education' in the evenings. I would have endured a month of such brain washing if it meant I could have stayed to ride the horses during the day! I even convinced my Mum to try and buy one of the horses - a pretty mare called Tosca - but her owner couldn't bear to part with her.

The only steed Niels got to ride on his camp was his trusty bike, but he had just as much fun regardless.

Udderly Charming...Not

I was putting Carl to bed the other night and as usual, on request, was lying down with him in the warm glow of his night light talking about the days' events. In order of importance according to Carl, the topics we covered were the kid who got in trouble for pooping on the floor of the gym changing room that morning (not him!), what we're doing in the summer holidays, who he played with today, etc. I was wearing a v-neck shirt which had pulled down a bit as I lay there so a bit of cleavage was showing and he looked down, pointed his finger and laughed ""Ha-ha, I can see your tits!"
Of course I didn't find this amusing so put him straight about how that (a) wasn't funny and (b) that we don't use that word. He reconsidered for a moment while I waited expectently for an apology and then said "All right...I can see your udder!"

I'm still not amused.

Back To Nature

Buzz Lightyear enjoys a late breakfast

Now that Carl's foot is well on the way to mending - although he still insists he wants to keep the crutches until school starts again (no chance) - I thought I'd share more of our camping adventures with you all. For years I have resisted hubby's attempts to go camping with the kids. It all just seemed too stressful when they were small. We did try it in Sweden when Niels was 2 years old. We borrowed a large tent and headed off, stopping halfway at what turned out to be a crowded campground by a lake. Rain the previous two days combined with the sheer number of people had made the ground muddy and slippery, and as we struggled to figure out exactly where each of the 284 support poles in the damned tent were supposed to go it was inevitable that our lively 2 year old would get bored and wander off.
At that time Niels favourite activity was to try and climb into cars and pretend to drive them. Any car. Not just ours. A passing stranger, fellow camper or lurking child-snatcher would be his best friend if he could only sit in the front seat. After hauling him a couple of times out of cars nearby that belonged to other families he seemed to get the idea.

It was time for a new distraction. While we were still tied up in sheets of canvas (all the wrong shape! How can you make a tent out of 27 pieces of randomly cut canvas!?) Niels spotted the lake through the trees and that was it. His new favourite activity was called 'Run-to-the-lake-then-stop-when-the-water-reaches-my-chin-and-sit-down!'

Can't you see I'm busy?!

He literally would run into the water and plop himself down on the sandy bottom, the only sign of where he had disappeared being a stream of small bubbles gurgling out the sides of his nappy. To a stressed-out Mum who has just spent 8 hours or more in a car and is facing the prospect of sleeping in the mud with a kid determined to either disappear or drown, it was all too much. The rest is a bit of a blur but I vividly remember desperately just wanting to go home; Niels was crying, I was crying, hubby was still optimistically trying to get the damned tent up and I felt like the world was ending. Looking back I can laugh and wonder why I got so wound up about it, but back then it seemed like this was a cruel self-inflicted torture, certainly not a holiday.

The rest of the holiday went ok - especially once we gave up on the tent and stayed in a cabin - but my enthusiasm for camping with kids had evaporated.
Scroll forward 8 years and it didn't seem like such a big deal. The boys are older, more self sufficient, toilet trained, passed the age when they get tummy upsets and holiday illnesses. Surely nothing could go wrong...
The first night we were finally in our tent, me in the middle with a boy on either side like a mother hen with her chicks under her wings. It was dark and I was hoping I wouldn't notice how hard the ground and how thin my mattress was, when Niels said "Mum, my tummy feels funny........I feel sick!"

Frantically  fumbling with the zips I just managed to get the tent open and Niels outside before HEEEEEEAAAAAVVVVEEE! He puked everything he'd eaten during the day in a big steaming pile. Lovely.

Our (second) campsite

Needless to say the next morning we re-located to a new site. After taking ten minutes of agonizing stretching before I was able to heave my aching bones into an upright position, I staggered off to the office to organize a new site for the next night. By the time I had returned to prepare breakfast I was almost able to stand upright, and once the kids were off playing I headed home to fetch the thicker cushion we use for our garden bench to sleep on.

Lazy days...

Night 2. My new mattress is softer but only about 1.2 metres long. I'm 1.65 so obviously there's quite a bit of overhang. Utilising spare clothes wadded into piles I managed to create a narrow mattress just long enough to sleep on, assuming I don't need to move until morning. Rolling over is out of the question. We're all a bit tired tonight so the boys fell asleep quickly, leaving me to try not to think about rolling over or how stony the ground is. For hours. Eventually I must have fallen asleep because Carl woke me up at 3:45. "Mum my bed's wet...did you spill something?"  Unbelievable, he hasn't peed the bed for years but here we are. And we're not talking about a littel boy pee, we're talking a 10 litre "look what a man I am" flood which had half the tent awash. All the bedding had to be dragged out, the floor mopped, new pjs found and even another pillow made. Eventually, faced with the reality of 2 beds for 3 people, Carl crawled into my sleeping bag and promptly fell asleep, leaving me trying not to think about how numb my arm under his head was. And how I now couldn't lie flat. Until dawn.

That morning my mission home was to fetch new bedding for Carl and do two huge loads of washing.
Night 3. Nobody puked. Nobody peed. But we still hit the trifecta because Carl had injured his foot jumping into the lake and woke up crying at 2am with it swollen and sore. Eventually after lots of cuddles he settled down and slept again, once more leaving me to watch the tent slowly lighten as dawn approached.
So yes, our camping trip was a success, but I can't say it was easy. The kids had a blast and I enjoyed sharing it with them, but our next trip will also be within a short distance of home, I can promise you that. And I'm taking my bed.

Roughin' It

De Vrolijk campground, Laren Gld.

With hubby away, the kids having a two week holiday and gorgeous weather arriving just in time, I decided to take the boys on an adventure and take them camping for the first time in their lives. I've been camping a few times in the past; our first holiday as a couple was camping in Denmark, while one of our most adventurous was camping in the Rocky Mountains in Canada, listening to the crackle of large animals prowling the woods at night while I cowered under a thin sheet of canvas, hoping the steel bear-bins in which we had to store our food were far enough away to ensure the bears would stay 'over there' somewhere. We counted 23 bears -both grizzlies and black bears - on that holiday but fortunately never had to share a tent with any of  them.

This time I chose the campground 'De Vrolijk' which is about 15 minutes away in Laren. I figured it paid to be close to home in case it all ended in tears and we needed to bail out. Plus the camp has a large lake with a beach where the kids can swim and play, a major attraction.

Long story short, our camping adventure was a huge success, with the exception of Carl's accident on the final evening. At about 5 pm, just as we were getting ready to think about cooking some dinner (tinned meatballs, mosquitoes and sand with rice) over our single spirit burner stove, he did one jump too many into the lake and landed awkwardly on his right foot. His toes dug into the mud, his weight landed on the back of his heel, and he ended up with a very sore foot. The next morning it was swollen up impressively and he couldn't put any weight on it at all. Hmmmmmmm. Cue forward a couple of hours to us sitting in the ER at Zutphen hospital. My back was aching from piggy-backing him everywhere and he was looking sideways at the wheelchair a nurse was trying to coax him into.

The triage nurse who first saw him suspected a broken ankle (OMG!), but x-rays eventually showed no broken bones, but plenty of swelling and deep bruising. At this point Carl cheered up considerably when he realized that he would be getting an impressive pressure bandage, and this was nothing to the sheer joy the next morning when I picked up some crutches for him so he could be mobile.

So far his biggest concern is that the bandage and crutches remain a permanent fixture until he's been at school for at least one day, and he wants me to email photos of him, fully handicapped, to his teachers as an advanced warning. Niels is jealous of Carl's special status and between moments of muttering darkly looks like he wants to chuck himself under the next car to get crutches of his own. I wonder what age we are when getting injured is no longer fun and exciting? About the age we stop having a parent to fuss over us 24/7 I suspect.

MISSING! One Slightly Worn Monkey...

WANTED: ONE MUCH LOVED MONKEY, SLIGHTLY WORN

Something truly terrible has happened...the fear of every parent with young children. Carl's Monkey has Gone Missing. MISSING I tell you! This is the same Monkey who has comforted him every night for the past four years, been dragged on and off countless planes to New Zealand, Singapore, Scotland, England, Denmark and more countries besides. He's survived hundreds of hours of car trips doubling as a pillow, tens of thousands of kilometers stuffed in hand luggage, and countless washes in the machine, Scout sleep-overs, days being dragged in and out of the sandpit, piles of lego, bicycle bags...and yet he's never gone missing before. To be honest he's rarely more than a meter from Carl's reach outside of school hours, and has been smuggled into school on more than one occasion. 

The photo above is just one of countless which I have found on my iPhone over the years, taken in secret by Carl when I'm not looking in homage to his best buddy. And here he is Christmas 2009, joining in the fun, as always within reach of Carl:

Monkey comes from Build A Bear, that chain of shops where kids get to pick out their cuddly toy of choice, stuff it, put in a heart, help sew them up then convince their parents to spend a small fortune on cute outfits. 

This is Monkey dressed in the Star Wars Stormtrooper outfit I brought back from Houston last year:

Since then Carl's looking a bit better (more teeth) and Monkey is looking a bit more tattered (less fur) but they are still inseparable. Which is why No 2 sobbed himself to sleep tonight while his parents turned the house upside down looking for a small brown primate whose 'birth certificate' lists him as Triceratops Transformer, but we all know simply as...Monkey.

Growing Up

Niels practising, 26/3/2011

Sometimes kids just seem to grow overnight, and that's certainly been the case with both No. 1 and No. 2 lately. Every time I turn around, Carl seems to have grown into the next size of jeans, and tomorrow I'll have to weed out all the too-small t-shirts from Niels cupboard. Where have my little boys gone?
So here's a couple of photos to keep the family updated in case you don't recognise us next time we arrive at the Airport and think I've traded in my little snuggle-muffins for a couple of strapping Dutch boys. As Carl would say in his best posh British accent, "bloody hell lads, what's going on here then?"

Ben 10 to the rescue!

...And It's Still Winter...

For the third year in a row, hubby took the boys to Sweden to visit their Aunty and cousins in the spring break. I say spring, but as you can see by the photos, winter still has a strong grip on Scandinavia. However there were no complaints about the cold (mainly because I wasn't there!), and they all had a great time. It was also the boy's first ever time on skis, and they spent some time burning off energy cross-country skiing.

Niels was determined not to be photographed, so this photo above is the only one of him on skis. Carl, a natural exhibitionist, was only too happy to pose of course. He also celebrated his seventh birthday with his cousins; it's hard to believe he's growing up so fast. Last night he came downstairs half an hour after I'd put hi mto bed to announce he had discovered a wiggly tooth. He returned to bed...then raced downstairs ten minutes later with the tooth in his hand and a bloody hole in his top gum! Apparently he just couldn't wait for nature to take it's course and pulled it out himself. Eeeeuuuuuww!

Yes It Was THAT Flu

It turns out that our town has been hit by the Mexican flu, so I suppose that's what made Carl so sick. In the end he was off school for a week, but he's still tired and a bit paler than normal. Niels recovered quickly and is now completely in denial that he was ever sick. At least he doesn't suffer from man-flu (yet!).

Spring is finally arriving and I'm crossing every apendage hoping that we don't get a late snow storm or freeze. The flowers have started to come out, the birds are chirping like mad, and the bunnies are digging up the lawn. Again.



Rocco dozing in the sun



Rocco is doing brilliantly, and I've just taken a quick pic of him in the garden, dozing in the sun (above). He can hold this pose for anything up to about quarter of an hour before suddenly coming to life and hopping off to continue his rounds in the garden. I guess it's the bunny equivalent of nodding off in front of the t.v., without the drool. And in case you are wondering why Punky Muffin never seems to be in the photo with him, it's because every time I walk outside, this happens:

Punky Muffin: "pet me or feed me, just don't ignore me!"

Och Aye, It's Glasgow!



My tartan

 So we made it to Glasgow, woo-hoo! By Saturday morning Niels was looking a bit rough; his temp had gone up to 39.1 so I gave him a dose of paracetemol and he seemed to cheer up. He is so rarely sick it was bit of a novelty for all of us, and we kept our fingers crossed that it wasn't going to develop into anything too bad. First priority was the slap-up buffet breakfast downstairs. Niels first ecstatic words were "Cool, they've got haggis for breakfast!" and he tucked into a plateful of that. (I know, I know, but he's a half Dutch-half New Zealand kid who lived a large part of his life in Singapore and loves haggis, what can I say). I enjoyed some black pudding while Carl tucked into a bowl of baked beans...I wasn't volunteering to sit next to him for the rest of the day!
We spent the morning with friends, whose daughter kindly offered to babysit the boys while we went to the party that night (thanks Karen!). After indulging in a lovely roast chicken lunch we resisted the urge to just roll our now considerably round bellies back into our beds for a wee nap and instead headed off to the excellent Science Centre, one of Glasgow's highlights. After half an hour in the very cool interactive and hands-on Science Mall we watched an amazing film in the Imax theatre there about the Hubble space telescope. Emerging feeling very small and insignificant in the grand scale of things indeed, Niels was clearly started to wilt so we walked back to the hotel - which is next to the Science Centre - to chill for a few hours.
Surprisingly both kids were keen for dinner, Carl indulging his passion for good old English fish and chips with a bowl of baked beans on the side (guess whose bed he's was going to be sleeping in tonight?).
In the evening I slipped into my new tartan skirt and it was off to the party. It was an enjoyable evening and we returned to the room by about 11pm and said goodbye to Karen. Both boys were asleep in one big bed so we were getting ready to hit the sack...when in wobbled Carl, shivery and feverish, tearful and jittery. I took his temperature and it was FORTY TWO DEGREES!!!!
Cue controlled panic mode as we simultaneously stripped him off, dosed him up on Paracetemol and draped wet towels over his upper body to try and quickly cool him down before he started having a seizure. Clearly he'd caught what Niels had but in a more aggresive form. Crisis averted, but we would be keeping a close eye on both of them for a few days.
The next morning the boys were both feeling pretty rotten but making the most of it. After a very small breakfast - let's face it none of us needed more food anyway! - they crawled back into bed and stayed there until we caught our bumpy flight home.
Funnily enough they both keep saying what a fun weekend it was and how much they love Scotland, which just goes to show that if we could all look on the bright side of life as much as kids do, we'd all be happier people.

Bumpity Bumpity Bump...

Ok as hubby rang especially from the North Sea last night to remind me, I can't keep complaining about the winter because we DID make it to Scotland last Friday afterall, despite the high winds. After our flights were cancelled we were luckily able to get seats on the evening flight departing at 8:35 for Glasgow and discovered it is possible to get sea sick on a plane. Yes, sea sick.

Meanwhile, Niels had come home for lunch on Friday and seemed off colour. He was quite tired so rather than send him back to school we bundled him into bed for a rest since it was going to be a late night. By the time we went to the airport he had a bit of a high temperature so I packed Paracetemol and my digital thermometer just in case.

As we boarded the plane the first thing we noticed was that it was MOVING. Not rolling down the runway, but sloshing from side to side as the wind gusts outside made it heave and pitch like a ship anchored in a stormy bay. We staggered down the aisle like 150 drunken sailors and it's the first time I've boarded a plane and heard every passenger clicking their seat belts on before the engines have even started. Ominous. The kids were excited to be off to another country, favourite monkey and bear clutched in their hands and no sign of sleepiness despite the late hour.

Taking off was...interesting. Remember that stormy bay? Apparently there were a few ski jumps installed just for fun and we bounced over every one before the wheels left the ground. Trying to keep a jolly I tone I said to the kids "this is fun, isn't it...aaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaahh!" as the wings dipped first left, then right, then the plane did that bizarre maneuvere where the nose twitches left, the tail flicks right, and you just know deep inside that planes are not supposed to fly diagonally! As we climbed steeply - presumably to avoid any more ski jumps - the sloshing sensation continued and Carl slowly turned pale, then slightly greenish. Out came the sick bag and I was left cursing the fact that Mum's always get to sit between the kids; why is it never Dad's that get puked on? Was that hidden in the small print of the marriage vows?

Amazingly once we gained altitude the flight smoothed out, the puke crisis was averted and the landings - there were about four before the wheels finally settled on the ground for good - were not too frightening. As my Dad says, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. It was off to the Crown Plaza where the kids were too hyper to sleep before 1 am, and hubby and I resorted to splitting up and taking one boy each into our beds and shutting the connencting room doors to settle them down. Hardly a romantic start to the weekend.