Two Cool Dudes

Can YOU tell who is who??

Mother's Day

I wanted to make a lovely mushy-gushy Mother's Day post about how much my boys mean to me, but on Mother's Day I decided to leave the pc alone and just enjoy the beautiful boys I wanted to write about. So for all of you wonderful mothers out there, I hope you all had a fabulous day!


After the two of us were sick with the stomach bug last week, Rob went back to work on Monday. He is flying nights this week which puts him home between 1 and 2 in the morning. Not the most ideal schedule, but the kids and I make it work.


Luckily the weather warmed up again today and I was able to take them to the pool this afternoon. Lucas went "swimming" for the first time today. I think I could have even left him in there until he shriveled up into a little raisin, but i prefer to have my monkey chunky instead!


Speaking of my little chunky monkey, he turned 5 months yesterday! He now eats 4 bottles a day, 1 jar of fruit in the morning, and 1 jar of veggies in the evening. He loves his fruit and all veggies that aren't green. We are working on the green veggies, but usually half way through the jar he starts spitting them out on me. And let me tell you, green is just not my colour!


Our other monkey is taking swimming lessons from mommy now. Everyday that we go to the pool I work with him for 10-15 minutes without his wings on. He can kick, use his big "dinosaur arms," and blow bubbles very well. Now we are just working on making those three things come together! Hopefully I will have him swimming without wings by next summer!

This kid isn't afraid of anything!

He would stay in the water the whole day if I let him!

Practicing his bubbles

Splish Splash!!

Sunbathing in the shade

All of that hard work deserved some chill time!

Our 5 month old!

Max and Lina

Max enjoying the good life :)

Candy Land

I love sharing my favorite childhood game with Max, but I wish that I could win too sometimes!! 

Splish Splash!

This little water rat loves the water just as much as his brother!

Koninginnedag 2010!

Normally we celebrate Koninginnedag (The Queen's Birthday) in Amsterdam on my Aunt and Uncle's boat. For 1 day the city turns orange, everyone is allowed to have their own yard sale (Rommelmarkt) on the street, and everywhere you look there is a party going on. We love the great vibe of the city, but this year instead of being in Amsterdam we were over the Atlantic for Koninginnedag. If you know anything about Dutchies, they hate missing out on a party so we got to celebrate it with the Dutch community here in Texas last Sunday.


The party was held at a local park recreation center on Belton Lake. The pavillion was decked out in orange,   "fout" or just plain wrong Dutch music was blaring from the speakers, and hot dogs and hamburgers were flying off of the barbie. 


Some of the children were less than nice to Max, but it didn't take long for them to realize not to pick on a boy that is twice their size, and half their age! Max had his sweet revenge with the water hose!

My little cowboy

After Max showed him who was boss, the other boy quickly learned how to share!

Max and Job (Rob's colleague) are good pals

 Having a "man to man" talk with Job

Several of Rob's colleagues & their children enjoying the party

On the way home I stopped to take a picture of a real Texas longhorn :)

I suppose our next Koninginnedag party will be in Alabama!

Leaving on a jet plane....

Upon our arrival at the airport on Friday morning, we were shocked to see a never ending line of people and suitcases wrapped around Schiphol. Friday was not only Queensday, it was also the start of "meivakantie" or spring break in Holland. I can't blame everyone for wanting to escape the cold and dreary weather that day, but the pit in my stomach began to grow thinking of the possibility that we would miss our flight again.

Luckily Rob had checked us in the night before and after waiting 30 minutes to get into the airport, we only had to wait in a line to drop our bags off. All of that being said and done, we thankfully made it to the gate 1 hour before take-off. 

Our flight was just over 10 hours, and even though we are used to making such long flights it was our first trip with two little munchkins in tow. Lucas was our main concern for the trip (the last thing we wanted was to be those people with that screaming baby!) But our kids never cease to surprise us...

Lucas and Max were very well behaved during the flight; though just as we were served our second in-flight meal, Max had something else in mind besides eating. Within seconds he turned a few shades of purple, then extremely white before spewing exorcist-like chunks ALL over the area we were sitting in. The response time of the stewardesses was incredible. Before we knew it we had warm cloths, buckets and paper towels to take care of damage control. They even washed his clothes for us!

Thankfully we had enough room at our seats to make a bed for our poor little dude and he got to sleep for the remainder of the flight. The rest of our trip to Killeen was uneventful. Except during our tram ride at the Dallas airport when Max had to throw-up in a folded piece of paper that I had in my hand! 

By the time we got to Killeen our little boy was back to his usual self and ready to go swimming. After dinner and grocery shopping we took our energetic Max to the pool where he excitedly jumped into the less-than-warm water! (Keep in mind he had been up for almost 22 consecutive hours at this point!) After a bit of swimming our two boys were thankfully out for the night! 

Camping out in the airplane

The freezing cold water didn't stop our little water rat from jumping in!

But the hot tub was a little nicer.... ;-)

Not Me! Monday!

My husband and I are traveling pros. We are awesome at running through the airport piled down with backpacks, car seats, and children to catch our connecting flights. Managing to pack our entire house into 4 suitcases is, ahem, a breeze. All of our documents are always by the hand, and of course we always double check our itineraries before we leave the house!


So last Thursday when we arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam at 10.42AM, it was definitely NOT the two professional travelers that stood there dumbfounded when they could not find their flight on the departure screen. This may or may not have been because our flight had just taken off 2 minutes prior to our arrival. 


The travel agency had failed to inform us that our original flight had been cancelled, and that our new flight was leaving 4 hours earlier than planned! Just a minor detail...!


And there we stood with our 2 baggage carts packed to the max, a stroller, 2 car seats, and 2 children. After 5 hours of trying to get onto a couple of different flights to America that day, we gave up and were given a hotel room at The Hilton attached to the airport. Everyone was pooped and was happy to have a place to lay down!

They were exhausted even before our real trip began!

Rub a Dub Dub, Max and Lucas in the tub!

To Be Continued....!