Monday, 18 July 2016

Cal`s summer recap - week two

My second week of summer was at a tennis camp called Vie Tamine.



Sammy`s program was tennis pony.In his program he played tennis and rode ponys.
 Me and emmy`s program was tennis multi.We played tennis and
played games like tag. I knew my friend Andri was coming but one thing I did not know was that Andri invited our friend Jimmy. I know that I had fun and I want to do a lot more.


In Flander's Fields

Today we took a road trip with friends to visit some of the important WW1 sites in Flanders. We started with Tyne Cot cemetery. The kids explored the German pill boxes and hunted for Victoria cross recipients. They all enjoyed the little museum more than we expected. 


After that we visited the trenches museum. It was a great little museum with recreated dugouts and trenches. We explored the life of soldiers in the trenches.


We took a quick stop at the memorial to the victims of the first mustard gas attacks. Emily discovered a new interest - guest books. She hunted and signed one at every site we visited.


Then it was on to Essex Farm cemetery. The site where the poem In Flanders' Fields was written. The kids gathered wildflowers to lay on the graves. (The poppies were mostly finished blooming)


After dinner we attended the last post at Menen Gate (where are inscribed the names of 50 thousand soldiers who were never found after the war). 


It was a long day but we all enjoyed it and got to visit some very important places. 






Sunday, 10 July 2016

Castles and cookies

Today's excursion was to the canal town of Ghent. It's only about 30 min from Brussels but traffic made sure it took much longer. But once we got there we explored the city, visited the castle and took a canal boat tour. 

Calvin liked the official graffiti alley. It's legal to paint here and it's very colourful. 


The castle tour was interesting. A very well restored castle.


After the castle it was snack time - cookies!



And then Sammy wanted to do the very multilingual boat tour. 




Saturday, 9 July 2016

Cal's summer recap - week one


my first week of summer was very fun.

on Monday we  did gardening because Sam Emmy and I  couldn't agree on where we were going so mom chose gardening.

On Tuesday we had a picnic in the park and I had a "belge et but" for the Euro cup.



on Wednesday we went to Planckdael zoo you could go into the lemur cage here is a image of them licking the wall for salt.



on Thursday we went to the medieval festival called Ommegang I was disappointed that we didn't see archery. I saw jousting and sword fighting and the lances was made out of foam wood.



on Friday we went to the beach the play_ structures went into the water. we went with our friend Hudson.

Saturday, 2 July 2016

BBQ time

Here it's all about charcoal grills. So it was a learning curve but a rare sunny day and some lamb were enough reason to try. 






It's sales season again

Another way grocery stores are different here. Buy groceries...get a freebie bag of groceries.


Friday, 1 July 2016

Sports day

The end of the year brings sports day. A time for the kids to compete for points for their school houses and have lots of fun! 
Calvin was very excited for his sports day. And no wonder why! All day track and field events.