January 14-20, 2008

Monday Tony and I went to the Maison de Communalle, (I think I spelled that right), today with Ellie and Riley. It is like city records I guess. We had to go to register with the commune. The woman we worked with was…shall I say, a peach. She answered her cell phone several times during our meeting and very rarely even looked at us. Not like we weren’t on edge enough, Riley was running his little bike across her desk, yes kind of annoying, but she actually yelled at him. That set all of us off, and things went down hill from there. Riley then cried for the next 20 minutes or so, which I’m sure ticked the peachy lady off even more. More stress, more pressure, more crying. Not fun. Better yet, we get to go back one more time. This crazy, cell phone answering, woman acted as if she had never been around children before. Pretty typical reaction though. We seem to get the strangest looks when we are out. One could assume from the reactions we get, there are no children in Belgium. Tuesday I just found out today, that the school has this really cool thing called the Friendship bench. It is a bench on the playground for the kids who don’t have anyone to play with. If you go to this bench, the kids on the playground are supposed to notice, and come and invite you to play. I guess it works, because Maren sat on it one day and some kids invited her to play. Cool concept. So, have I complained to you about the steps in our house yet? Well, first off, the steps are marble and kind of curvy. Next off, the railings are wrought iron. Check out the picture. The spaces in the railing are so far apart, that Ellie’s entire body can fit though going forward, not sideways. Pretty freaky. Luckily there are doors everywhere to keep Ellie away from the steps. I guess this is pretty normal construction in Belgian houses. I’m surprised kids made it to adulthood here. Oh, wait…that’s right, there are no children in Belgium.

Wednesday

Riley, Ellie and I went to meet Tony for lunch today in Nivelles (city Tony works in). We went to McDonald’s competition, Quick. As we were sitting outside waiting for Tony to get there, people were going in and out. Normal stuff. Riley turns to me and says, “Mom, why do all the people here speak Spanish?” It was as if it was just then that he realized that people weren’t speaking English. Apparently, Spanish is the only other language spoken anywhere. Little kids are funny. We also got our new fridge today. Listen…can you hear the angels singing? I can. We didn’t have the fridge delivered. Why? Well, because that costs money. So guess who had to help get the fridge up the cold, wet, slippery hill? Yep, that would be me. Can you envision what is coming? It was really quite comical. Me trying to get my footing to push the fridge up the hill. Yeah, right. That wasn’t messy at all. Smell the sarcasm. As I tried to push, the ground decided to get really slippery and all of a sudden I could see the stars. I’m still not sure how I got to my back. Anyway, it was interesting. You can laugh. Trust me I did. Tony wasn’t so amused.

Thursday

Good news. Today Maren tried out for the schools swim team. Our hopes were not so high after the original discussion with the swim coach. It sounded as if he had already decided Maren wouldn’t make the team, even before he saw her swim. Hooray for Maren, though. She made it. She will swim in her first European swim meet next weekend. YEAH MAREN!!! Friday

Riley, Ellie and I went back to the Maison Communale. I made sure to tell Riley that he needed to make sure not to make the scary lady mad. Thankfully, everything went off without a hitch and we got our little paper thingys that tell us that we live in Waterloo, Belgium. Good thing they told. Quote of the day. Parker: “Mommy? When I grow up, I want to be just like daddy. Except not the butt head part.” I swear, I did not put that in his head.

Saturday

Today we took an hour and 30 min. trip to Luxembourg. It was very pretty, and had lots of shopping. When it comes right down to it we drove an hour and a half to eat lunch at Quick. We did get to see some statues and some pretty building but all of that was lost on the kids. They were happy to eat and play on a play ground for a little while. On the way home, we only almost crashed once.

Sunday

We went to church today. Mom and Cathy, you will find this amusing. I was just standing around after church and a woman grabbed my arm and called to another woman. She said, “Don’t be embarrassed.” Then she called to the other woman, whose name escapes me, “So and so. She has our thumbs.” If you have never seen my thumbs, they are lovingly referred to as “club thumbs”. They are short and stubby and have a very small nail. That opened up some conversation and long story short, quick bonding. Who knew thumbs could bring people together.