Sunday, May 2, 2010

Jeroen riding his bike

As promised a little movie of Jeroen riding his bike for the first time!

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Time flies.... supersonic!

Right, time for some more pictures. Looking back I see that I've been terribly slack with posting. Like everywhere else time does seem to fly over here! Jeroen is doing well at school. We're learning how to do some math stuff, he's starting to spell words and he still loves his Duplo and his airplanes. His teacher is very pleased with him and so are we... most of the time ;-) He also learned how to ride a bike. I removed his trainer wheels and fully expected for it to go alright till he fell over and major disaster from then. But he got on the bike and drove of! I had to chase him across the park! I made a little movie which I shall try to post shortly!

Jasper is getting big as well. He is finally starting to get toilet trained. Dirty diapers really bother him now and he is starting to call us whenever he needs to go to the toilet. Hurray, that will make a noticeable change in the diaper bin... Jasper loves cuddles and is usually all over us, runny nose and all!

Eva is no longer a baby. She's gotten really big and heavy and will have more hair than her dad in just a few weeks I reckon. She has a great personality and an even greater sense of humor! She's laughing an awful lot and finds everything Jeroen & jasper do highly interesting.

We recently bought a walking wagon so now we can take the whole lot walking, and hiking without them (or us for that matter!) getting overly tired. Best thing we got in a long time! It's built like a rock and with the fat tires even walking across the dunes is a piece of cake! Eva is tied to it in her car seat and the boys jump in and out as the please.

On the family side of things all is pretty good. Marieke had surgery on Tuesday to help close the wound of the first surgery. All went as planned and hopefully she'll recover in just a week or so and will no longer need daily wound dressings and bandaging! My dad bought a new puppy. Janna is getting a bit older so now Holle is there to spur her on!

Esther and I are celebrating our fifth anniversary tomorrow and we're taking the kids to a holiday park in the forest. Lots of stuff for them to do, not too far away so hopefully we can all enjoy a nice relaxing long weekend. Looking forward to it!! A lot has happened in those five years though.... 3 kids, 2 years abroad, migrating twice and moving house once more. We both had several jobs. At least till the end of this year we have some stability with the house we live in now and the job I have. After that... we'll see.

Right, that's it for now. I'll try to edit some movie clips and post those a bit later on.

Cheers,

Maarten, Esther, Jeroen, jasper & Eva (still love writing all those names! A great little family indeed!)














Sunday, February 14, 2010

Another movie of Eva

This time of her showing her smile and "talking". If this is a taste of things to come then with 3 kids chatting away deafness might come as a relief.. ;-)


Thursday, January 21, 2010

Eva in videoclip!

Some time ago Acda & de Munnik, a dutch singing duo, asked for photo's for their new single called Eva. They wanted to choose some Eva's to feature in their new videoclip. In the end they got so many replies they made a clip of ALL the photo's...... including our Eva!!

You can watch the clip below or, for a bigger version, by clicking on the link below the video. Eva is right at the front in the first 3 seconds of the clip, and in one of the photo mosaics a bit later on (at 2:29 to be precise)! Pretty neat indeed!

Right, here's the video.....

UPDATE: The video here is no longer working, but the youtube link stil is.

And the link.....

Eva in Eva


Cheers,

Maarten

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Another photo update...

Time for another photo update. A big one this time, because I've been a bit slack. Starting from just before Christmas and all the way up to now.

2009 has come and gone and has been a very strange year indeed. Trying to find our own spot in Holland, trying to fit in in Holland, Marieke getting Cancer, moving house yet again, finding a new job and the birth of Eva.

At last things have settled down a bit now, but we have yet to decide our next move. The plan when coming back to Holland was to buy/set-up our own practice. The plan is still there but the question is where? Here? In NZ? UK? I still miss NZ every day, but the foresight of packing everything up and shipping it across the globe yet again is a bit frighting. I think we need to regain a bit more energy before we've got the courage to make a decision.

Fortunately the kids are doing great. Little Eva is not so little any more and it won't last long for her to have more hair then her dad! She's the queen of smiles and a really lovely baby girl! She lets us sleep through the night as well which is a HUUUUUUGE plus! Especially after the months of nightly adventures with Jasper!

Jasper and Jeroen should have come with a mute button included. From the moment they wake up they start chatting with one another and don't stop until they go to sleep again. And the scary thing is: it actually makes sense too! Jeroen asked me about my day at work the other day and I told him about a cat with a blocked bladder. I explained what is was and that the little cat could no longer wee. He thinks about it for a second and then asks;"so how did you solve it then?" Cool!

Right, that's it for now. Y'all have a great 2010!

Maarten, Esther, Jeroen, jasper & Eva