Stay at home Friday

The kids stayed at home today cause Brad felt like keeping them at home. When I left for work this morning Riley was lying in bed with Brad and Rourke was trying to convince me that he wanted to go to church, rather than school and that he wanted to wear his pj's. Riley just wanted to stay in bed. I guess they convinced their dad.

They did a bit of tidying at The Bok and Rourke helped Patrizia set up the chairs for the patio at The Coolock. Meanwhile Riley went for a hair cut. I'm quite surprised by this cause she's been trying to grow her hair for ages. But I looks gorgeous and she is thrilled.

She's going to the stables with her friend Yoko tomorrow and came and asked me if her hair will still be short tomorrow cause she wants her friends to see it that way. "How do we make it stop growing, mommy?"

O and Brad gave himself a hair cut and a shave so he is looking very handsome indeed!

Now only the Tiger and I need to do something with ourselves.

I clean forgot that it's fathers day on Sunday and never got Brad something. I'm feeling terrible about it. If you have any last min ideas please let me know.

3 Home cooked Dinners in 1 week...

Our e-mail connection is up and running, yeah!! We've been struggling for quite some time to get it sorted out and so at last we had a technician come round and fix the problem. So you know what this means - no more interuptions.

The last couple of evenings the Tiger has been taking ages to fall asleep and calling me to tell me that he can't sleep cause he doesn't like his room. No further explanations just that. Or he'll tell me that he can't sleep fast, which is his excuse when I tell him to lie down and go to sleep quickly. Tonight it didn't go too badly, after their story and some water they fell asleep in no time. It would be great if I could find out what makes it all go well some nights as appose to others

Riley on the other hand was her "emotional" self. Asked me to put O'Malley on the bed with her only to start crying about 10 min later cause I didn't hear her calling to ask me to take the cat off her bed. She honestly drives me crazy by thinking that she needs to cry of every little thing that doesn't go her way.

She was very happy tonight to be my "sous" chef. She eagerly stirred the bolognese, dished up and served everyone. Now if only I could get her to eat the food as well. Rourke on the other hand complained about the food the whole time only to end up eating it all.

And to think I have cooked 3 dinners this week already, the only night I missed was Wednesday night and that was cause I went out for dinner with Tracy. Who knows I might just turn into a better mom after all. At least, I would say this is a step in the right direction. Brad says this must mean that we are a regular family now...I don't think we'll ever be a regular family.

Weekend News...

Riley got me really worried on Saturday morning, she took a good look at me and told me: "mommy you are really getting old, look at your face here and here..." pointing to my forehead and cheeks. I mean that must be one of the worst things a child can tell you! Or am I wrong? At least Tiger was quick to tell me that it wasn't true, "you're just brown mommy not old" Bless his little heart. I am working very hard at forgiving Riley for her comments though (ha ha).

We had a great visit with some friends whom we haven't seen for nearly 6 years. They lived in Brussels when we lived here the first time but moved back to the UK shortly after Riley's birth. It was a real treat catching up with each others news and finding out that after all this time we still had loads to talk about. They seem to enjoy being back in Brussels so much they even said that they would love to move back.

Speaking about friends, I must admit that our friends back in South Africa is the one thing we really miss. Don't get me wrong we love our friends here and our lives would be very dull without them but some friends just can not be replaced.

Friends in SA pop over to visit you at your house unannounced, they'll come over for a bbq or just a visit and the kids will just run amok in the back ground while you are sitting back having a good old "kuier" visit. Here, you see friends for dinner or at the pub or make arrangements to meet somewhere. To have them visit your house, or visit them at theirs, takes planning and invitations. Then again, at least you don't have to worry about people dropping in when the house is looking like a bomb site...(which may be a good thing in my case)

So to our friends back in SA, we miss you guy's and wish you were closer, and remember just cause we so far away doesn't mean you can't pop over for a visit at any time.... you'll just have to put up with a untidy house.

O and some celebrity news...the Baa-Baa's were in The Bok on Thursday night. (The Baa-Baa's is the international rugby team called The Barbarians aka the Baa-Baa's). Yes, ladies and gentlemen my husband's humble establishment played host to some international rugby players. I must admit that he came home a little disappointed "they really are not as big as you would think" "some if them are even smaller than me". Shame, poor man but at least he had a good time entertaining them.

Time to get back to picking up after everyone, never know who might pop in un-announced...

Happy News and Bureaucracy

I was so excited to hear from my friend Charmaine today that their baby girl was being born on the 30th, which means that next weeks after years of dreaming of becoming parents their dream will at last come true. The fact that they have found this baby girl to adopt is a true miracle and no one deserves being parents more than the 2 of them.

Yeah Char you are going to be a mommy next week!

You really need to have lived in Belgium or be living in Belgium to truly appreciate how bureaucratic this country is. It's incredible!

Brad's brother Cliff would like and come and stay with us, while studying here in Belgium. In order to get his study visa we need a number of documents from our local commune. The commune is Belgium's version of the local municipal office for each and every neighbourhood. For any documents you then have to go to your local office in person to pick it up. Brad went to go and pick up our "family set-up" document today only to be told that he will not be able to get it. Because he is in the process of registering as "an independent" self-employed he is considered to be unemployed and thus not in any poss ion to get the document on his name. This means that I'm going to have to take a day's leave to go to the commune to pick-up this document on my name. And no, no one is allowed to pick-up documents on your behalf, not even your husband.

I had to go and sign some documents at the bank today and even that was quite an effort. Like in most other countries the banks here are open between 9 and 4 and they are also closed for an hour during lunch. The one good thing that has resulted from this is the fact that I've activated my on-line banking so at least I'll be able to do all my banking from the comfort of my couch from now on.

The next thing to achieve would be getting my kids to eat their dinner without tears and tantrums. Why or why must dinner times be such a torture session? I mean, lasange is really not the worst thing ever to eat, is it? Normaly Rourke has no problem eating and will eat just about anything. On the controry Riley ate it all with the least amount of fuss. Some days you feel like you just can't live with them but you also can't live without them can you. All that's left is to love them even when they drive you insane.

And I do, they really are great!

Wacky Wednessday

My kids firmly believe that I'm a mean and horrible mom, but I've just had enough. At bed time tonight I discoved half the bedroom floor sopping wet and sticky with a couple of books lying in the sticky mess.

I love books and really want my kids to learn to love them as well and part of loving books means taking care of them, so when I saw that I just got really annoyed and decreed that no liquid was allowed in the room from now on. So this is where the mean and horrible mom comes in. Up until tonight they have gone to bed with a sippy bottle filled with juice, or water or milo (a chocolate malt drink) but no more. I can't even blame them cause it might have been the cat who knocked over the bottle of water and a bottle of juice to create the mess and as you can well imagine both kids swore high and low that they did not create the mess. So the only way to avoid it from happening again and for mean mommy to make an appearance we shall have to stick to the new rule.

I've had a really bad head-ache all day long and spending most of the afternoon working on my presentation for the meeting tomorrow morning hasn't helped much. I normally have no problem speaking in public but I received so may comments after last weeks meeting that I'm starting to feel rather pressured to perform. Two of the navigators (people navigating us through the project) told me that I'm totally over performing and the one even took my notes away from me before I left the office tonight. At least my head is feeling better now.

The one side effect of working on the project is that my eating habits have taken a terrible turn for the worse. I've been eating so much junk it's disgusting and it's starting to show in my clothes which I hate. Only problem it's a bit like a bad circle cause you get to a point where you or at least I think what's the point of trying and then I hate myself again for giving in so quickly when I know I'm going to regret it later. What I wouldn't give for a magic potion to keep my weight where I would like it to be with the least amount of effort from my side.

I Love Tuesdays

I LOVE coming home on a Tuesday, I mean seriously it's just this really great feeling, knowing that it's the one day of the week that I'll walk through the door into an extremely clean and tidy house. Tuesday is when the cleaning lady comes and makes my week.

I would love to have my house look like this every day but I don't live alone, so it only looks like this for about the 1st 2 hours after we all get home. After that, water is spilled on the bathroom floor by two "swimmers" splashing in the bath while Thomas O'Malley the Alley Cat walks through it leaving his paw prints all over the side of the bath and all around the basin. He just loves sleeping in the basin.

Then there are the school bags, discarded shoes and jackets, pictures drawn during the day and toys. Mail on the dinning table, property magazines keys, sunglasses wallets and handbags.

I love my life, my kids and Brad but I would so love to have a more "museum" look to my house. So for those couple of minutes I'm in museum heaven!

Riley had some really exciting news to tell me when I saw her this afternoon. She was bursting to tell me that she had spoken to Carson and Caroline is was going to go to South Africa with her and Tiger on holiday. Carson is his best friend Caroline's dad. And even before I was able to say anything about this she also informed me that it will be no problem for Caroline to go with cause she understands both English and French and can act as translator between Nanna and Caroline. Then so proceeds to show off her translating skills by repeating a couple of sentences in both languages.

I think I'm going to leave the explanations as to why Caroline can't go on holiday with her to Brad. I know it's a bit chicken of me but let's face it I can't always be the "bad cop"

At long last, I'm blogging again

It's just after 9 in the evening, I have a kitchen full of dirty dinner dishes to do, washing to sort, a bathroom to tidy, and that's just the most urgent of the things which need doing around the house but I've decided if I don't get blogging now I'm never going to get back into doing it.

I never have time but I really want to get back to doing it cause I really enjoy it. So, I guess the washing-up and cleaning-up will have to wait a little longer. Not to mention the fact that I'm totally brain-dead by the time I get home at night. The new project that I'm working on at the moment is taking it's toll...One of the directors at my work said to me the other day that now that I've finally started using my brain at work I'm I really interested in going back to my old job once the project ends. Now, I never thought I would say this but I've become quite ambicious and have no desire to go back to my "brainless" job. You'll have to watch this spot to find out where my working brain takes me.

With the arrival of the warmer weather (apart from the last 4 days) we've done up our patio with a nice big table and chairs for entertaining (bbq's) and some potted daizy's. Which brings me to the tail about our christmans tree. We threw the afore mentioned tree out after christmas waiting for it to die, only it never did. so we bought a nice big pot and re-planted it. What we didn't expect though was that we would plant it, water it and kill it, all in 2 weeks. We are still watering it hoping for a re-vival but I must say I'm not feeling to hopeful at this stage.

There is a total train strike on in the entire Belgium starting from 10pm tonight for 24 hours. This means that I have to meet my boss at 7:15 tomorrow morning for a lift to work (as you can well imagine the kids are not going to be too happy about being woken up, fed and dress before that time, so I'm considering letting them sleep later and getting Brad to get them ready for school). The one day of the week I have to work at the remote site is the day of the strike. Now, I'm just wondering about the trip back cause my boss is even more of a workaholic than what I am and I really don't want to stay at work as long as he does. I guess I'm going to have to beg a lift back into town off someone else. This is one of those times when I miss having my own car.

Now I really have to get myself into that kitchen and start cleaning, and do excuse any spelling errors but for some strange reason my spell check is not working?