Halloween

I was fully prepared to not celebrate Halloween this year. I had asked an acquaintance who lived in Europe a couple of years ago if Europeans celebrated Halloween, and she said "minimally." I asked if I would need Halloween costumes and she said "no." So, along with most everything else I own, the Halloween costumes and decorations went into storage when we moved here. About 2 weeks ago I found out that there would be a Halloween party at church, but I figured I could scrape together a couple of costumes from stuff that we had in the house (pirates was my original idea) and so I wasn't too worried about it. Then came the note from Brayden's class. They were having a Halloween party and the kids were supposed to dress up. The hardest part was that I was given 1 days' notice. Now, in the states, in the suburbs, with a car, 1 day would be plenty. But here, in a place that hardly has any Halloween stuff anyway? In the city? With no car? I had no idea where to even begin. To make a very long story short, it took Charlotte and I 6 hours and many metro rides to find a costume for the boys. I tried sticking to the pirate theme, but couldn't even really find the components I was thinking of. In the end, H&M became hero of the day by stocking Spiderman costumes, muscles and all. I felt, for once in my life, that I could officially enter myself into the Mother of the Year contest for finding costumes in 1 day (assuming the year started and ended that day....) I don't know what it is about muscle-suits that are so hilarious on little boys, but I love them.

The boys and I made ghost and bat sugar cookies for Brayden's party (yay for being able to bring homemade stuff to school!) and in all it turned out great. The boys wore their costumes again for the church Halloween party and Charlotte was running a fever that night so she never even dressed up. Hopefully she'll never ask for a Halloween picture of herself from 2008. :>

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading others posts about Halloween and seeing all of the fun, creative costumes, and appreciate that even though our store-bought-costume-wearing-candy-eating-halloweening-days came and went quickly, I still get to vicariously enjoy the Halloween season.

Posted Later: I forgot to mention something VERY funny about Halloween here...Belgian Halloween is all about scary stuff. I noticed that a lot of kids aren't dressing up as Thomas the Train or anything fluffy, they are all vampires with blood, or scary masks, etc. Brayden's teacher (mind you he is in the equivalent of Kindergarten) dressed up as the ghost from the Scream movies. Not only that, but she jumped out at each child as they walked into the classroom yelling "BOO!" Admittedly, I myself was a bit taken aback, but I also love the fact that you would NEVER see that in the States. It's little things like that that keep our lives interesting around here. :>

Castle of Bouillon

We have organized our travel destinations here to 3 categories: Extended trips, long-weekend trips, and day trips. We have made a list of most of the main places we want to see and labeled them accordingly. The list of day trips we want to do is definitely getting accomplished much faster than the other two categories...although there are plans in the works to remedy that situation. Friday nights Ryan and I usually spend a bit of time reviewing our day-trip list and deciding what we want to do on Saturday. Last Saturday we decided to venture to south Belgium, the Walloon region, on a castle search. We had done a little research, and by little, I mean little. We had a couple of cities on a piece of paper that we thought had castles. The first city we went to was empty of any castle, or people for that matter. It was a relative ghost town and little spooky to be honest. So, we continued driving toward the next city on our list on and as we rounded a corner, heading down a mountain I saw this out the window:

I was amazed!!! So, with castle found, we headed towards the castle to spend the rest of our day. It was so much fun, especially because everyone enjoyed the castle. No whining or crying or cajoling, just fun. We let Brayden and Landon take turns guiding us through the castle and exploring different staircases and small doors.  The first recorded mention of this castle was in 988, although there has been a castle on the site much longer. This cross held some relics from way back when. Just as we were getting ready to leave, we noticed people congregating in the courtyard. We hung around and were able to see a bird show with some really cool birds. The boys thought this was awesome. The one thing I gleaned from the french presentation (courtesy of Ryan): Falcons are the fastest moving creatures on earth!

 

 

Familiar Foods

THANK YOU for all of your support and good ideas about Landon and the windows! His windows are temporarily duct taped until I can get to Ikea and buy some window locks. :> In other updates, I had my blog page up on the computer and Brayden walked by and saw my doctored photo from the previous post. Immediately he said, "Hey! No fair! Why does Landon get to be a pirate and I have to be a fairy?!" hahaha

So, we have had a bit of bad luck this past week and both of the boys have been very sick. Brayden broke out into the worst case of hives I have ever seen (in what we think to be an overstimulation of his immune system) and was covered in welts from head to toe all week as Landon ran one of his famous fevers. The upside to it all was that I found a doctor and learned about the Belgian healthcare system and had the opportunity to appreciate Landon a little bit more. I tell you, nothing makes me love Landon more than seeing 105+ on the thermometer. As of today all is well and things are quickly returning to normal.

A friend of mine from church offered to let me tag along with her on a trip today to the British store a bit out of town. To say it was wonderful would be an understatement. Although it is British and the focus was on British items, it also had many American items that I have been living without the last 3 months. It's amazing how quickly (and willingly) I was able to throw down obscene amounts of money for Cheerios and other such "novelty" goods. I tried to remember all members of the family on my outing and scored the following items for their enjoyment:

The only thing I still have not found here is vanilla extract (they use sucre vanille - sugar flavored with vanilla, and in my opinion it is a wholly inadequate substitute). So, if anyone is wondering what the Whites would like for Christmas, vanilla extract is a good place to start.

AAGGGGHHHHHHH

Instead of the pictures from my wonderful weekend in Paris (which got postponed...) I am posting today to alleviate some stress. If you know my children, you probably don't have to think hard about which child causes me stress:

I am so at my wit's end with him I don't hardly know what to do anymore. Although he is a constant source of hilarity and spunk, he is also a constant source of stress and angst as he basically refuses to do anything I ask him to do and seems completely unaffected by any consequence that I administer. As I dream up new consequences to get through to him, Landon dreams up new schemes. His latest? Climbing out windows.

The windows in our house open with the swing of a lever and don't have screens on them. Great for airing your house out, bad for children like Landon. The 3rd day we were in the house (right after we met our next door neighbors and I had hoped and prayed to make the neighbors think we were normal....) instead of getting his pjs on as asked, he went into Charlotte's room at the back of the house and climbed out the window onto the roof. My new neighbor discovered him and almost had a heart attack trying to alert me of my son's whereabouts. The second incident was last week when, after having been sent to his room for painting he and Charlotte with my red sparkly nail polish, Landon proceeded to try and climb out his window at the front of the house. I think he would have succeeded had it not been for another kind neighbor across the street running over and saying, "I don't want to be a nosy neighbor but your son is climbing out the window." FABULOUS. Mother of the Year Award here I come. So, that brings us to today when, after thinking the kids were all tucked in for a nap, I see Bit, Landon's bear, fall from the sky into the front yard. I'm thinking Bit was a test run for Landon to see where he would land because by the time I got upstairs Landon had catapulted himself halfway out the front window.

So, there you have it, the constant source of most of my stress and the reason why every house in the neighborhood has dubbed us "The Crazy Americans." Anyone have any really good "natural" consequences for climbing out of windows??