the start of Dylan's 2nd-birthday celebrations!

On Wednesday I charged the camera battery and then managed to put it back in the wrong way... this means no pictures from his party at school on Thursday morning. Thursday evevning, oma and opa came for dinner.

happy birthday papa!

Dylan loves birthdays, who doesn't!? The fact that it was papa's and not his didn't make opening presents, playing with 'blabloons' or eating cakes any less fun. In fact the sight of 'cakies' makes him jump up and down with glee.and what about a cake for papa?oh ja...and a nice crumby birthday kiss!

a day at the Zoo

Early januari, we went to the Rotterdam Zoo (Blijdorp) and Dylan loved it. He was running all over the place checking out the fish, sharks, polar bears... we forgot to take lots of photos, but here are some.

Here's us checking out the baby giraf, only a day old and already tall!

the girafs had to stay indoors, it was too cold for the newborn!

afterwards we went to the elephants, they just started walking outside as we got to their warm house.

Look papa, there they are!

and here we are outside
he was very impressed by the hippos... a mama and a baby! i hope he realised they weren't real?

say cheese!

Smile Dylan,

no really, I said smile...

...ok, I meant smile nicely for the camera so mama can remind everyone just how gorgeous you are,

thats it!

puddles

It's warmed up slightly which sadly means gray skies and rain. Not all bad, the puddles are a good enough reason to get out the wellies!

Winter in Rotterdam

It's winter in the Netherlands. Temperatures are well below zero at night and have been for a couple of weeks now. This means all lakes, rivers and canals are frozen and the whole of Holland is going crazy with ice skating. Dylan and I went to the Kralingse Bos to walk on the ice and play in the snow on the big lake. The last time the lake was completely frozen is about 12 years ago... so this is very special! Ofcourse we had to make snow ballsand we were looking at the skaters going pastthis last photo is from the 2 windmills next to the lake, can't get more dutch then this!

I thought I'd add a photo from a couple of months ago (16/08/08) just to show the difference!

Christmas with a difference

No photos of Christmas trees or hats or lights or presents, just a smiling Dylan and lots of snow, snow and more snow.

And of course Christmas dinner, carols and a little relaxing in the jacuzzi.

snowballs

Dylan's favourite part of the entire holiday was throwing snowballs!He also enjoyed football with oma,Playing with his hero, EJ,and his big pals Nana and Manon.

my little red sled

So Dylan wasn't too impresssed with all the snow when we arrived. And he really wasn't happy when he had to wear his skipants, scarf, hat and gloves! He was't even interested in his sled...and papa ended up carrying him.But that was day 1. On day 2 everything looked different though and Dylan couldn't wait to get in his sled. In fact he got braver by the day and was certainly inspired by Opa.

on the road again

All went well on the driveto Les Menuires, especially once we put the dvd player on for the second half of the trip. Dylan was extremely surprised and pleased to see his friends Dora and Boots in the car! He also loved the fact that we got to see Sander, Wendy, Manon and baby Rosalie everytime we stopped.

The way home was less fun, both Dylan and I were sick and very pleased to be back home in our own beds!