First Cousins

Aren't they lovely: Bram (50) and Joseph (0,5) - the most charming, beautiful brada's ever seen...
You can see they share a granddad!

Build with Beer

Wednesday evening Bram’s brother arrived to do some professional jobs in the house and help with the beer (due to bad coordination Maud & Bram both bought a lot). Friday our sister in common law and their daughter joined us. A brilliant concept: Henk-i, Harriet and Jolin did a lot of work and kept us working, and we had a fun weekend.
Saturday Jolin decided to hop over to tio Haroen to play with her nieces and baby Joseph. She deserved it, after cleaning auntie Maud’s Barbie-stuff and hanging out with all this boring grownups Friday-evening. We had Bram’s & Henk-i’s friend from way back when Victor and his wife Lena over for dinner – party for the grownups, but for a 7 year old...
Jolin’s Saturday-program was a lucky shot for us, because auntie Marisabel decided picking up the girl should be a group effort, and a family dinner opportunity. Her delicious meal gave us strength for our working Sun(Design)day...
Now it’s Sunday-evening and we’re tired and very happy with all the work that’s done!

Tio, Tia, Family

Karen, Ma Marisabel, Daniella, Marisabel, Haroen, Joseph

Changing Jobs

Thursday Maud had her last day at the office. We skipped the big party we had in mind, because her new boss wanted her on duty immediately after office hours. In fact office hours at Sun Design, were she is working now, are round the clock. And being PA for one of the two directors, Bram D., is killing.
Maud can’t wait till October 5th, when Bram starts working for the other Sun Design-director. This woman surely will give him a hard time also!!!

Billemaatjes

Tlo and Tau, busy with their favourite activity. They’re a bit offended because we’re not in between them and the fat boys, but they’ll manage.

About Chicks and Pits

Us (surrogate) parents had a very, very hard weekend. In between changing nappies, feeding and loitering in the sandpit or swimming pool you have to down your morning coffee and afternoon beers & wine during the babies' naps. And the toddler only sleeps in the afternoon...
But Jack (1 year and a bit) had the hardest time of all. He discovered All there’s to know About Girls.
Picture this. You’ve got a few days off left. It’s a blazing hot summer, so you decide to escape Amsterdam and venture into the woods. You arrive in time to join the dinner party, and hey, look, at that other table, there’s this single chick. Great body, nicely tanned, angelic face, natural blond curls. You smile at her, she smiles back. It’s almost bedtime, so you ask here out for the next day. You plan the perfect day: breakfast, sandpit, lunch, pool, dinner – the works.
The sandpit is a big hit, so you try to kiss her, and she accepts. The pool is an even bigger hit, even though you did not manage to grab some booze (horribly greedy adults). She flirts with you all the way through dinner, and you have this great, feet-on-the-table, after dinner conversation about life. Cool, things are working out! You ask her to meet you in the now familiar sandpit the next morning and she agrees with this angelic smile.
Early the next morning, all excited about YOUR girl, you race into the sand. She’s there, angelic smile and all. And all is what she grabs. Your tools. Your cars. Even your auntie. And than she runs off with this tanned dude...

Hairdo

Why is Maud scratching her head all the time? It’s not lice; it’s the new hairdo.
After years of Bram begging to get the hair braided and Maud refusing to do so there was this offer you can’t refuse. Joyce came over from Ghana for a holiday, and as she is the best hairdresser...
Imagine she worked in Botswana at the Afrodizzia hair saloon, which Bram and Maud know quite well.

Morning after

After our umptieth farewell-party (yeah, we got a head-start, and there’ll be many more) we planned a weekend full of activities. Bit of gym, loads of renovating, bit of shopping... Now we’re having coffee & aspirins for breakfast, trying to build up strength for the day. Luckily someone did most of the dishes & general cleaning up after the guests left – must have been us, still feeling like sweet 16. By the way, our youngest culinary discovery is chilled baklava accompanied by chilled rose.

P(L)EACE

Everyday, all over the world, people wake up and look around.

View from my bedroom window: Rima | Bram & Maud

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Akwaba

This poor blog got totally neglected because Maud has this urge to exchange huge emails with her friend Kristien every day. Meanwhile there has been a lot to blog about, as you can see in the pictures below.
Happy pictures – not like the ones Rima (a Lebanese colleague of Bram) mailed from Beirut. Living next to the airport she has a good view of what the Israelis are doing.
While Rima is bombed we went to the yearly Ghana-day in Den Haag. Ghana-day is good company, music, food, and beer. Joyce made redred so we had an excellent picnic. Having a beer with it is a bit complicated. First you have to find the beer-woman in between the women with the big coolers selling drinks. Together with your hard-earned beers you get plastic bags to wrap around it, because there’s this official walking around telling everyone ‘no alcohol’. Luckily he can’t see the difference between the original spa-bottles and the ones refilled with apetashe...

Arali Indiya

July 10th our beautiful niece Arali Indiya Hira Sing was born to Vladimir and Arti.

Vi-king&queen

Peter & Anette from Denmark surviving in the lowlands: doing dishes, sunscreen and trafficjams

7/7: Ivan 77

Bram’s dad Ivan throws his birthday-party in the ‘wild-gnome-woods’

Liv

July is a fertile month – last year our nephew Jack was born, this year brought us two beautiful girls. Here’s the first beauty: Liv from Taco and Lenny.

The making of:

Hatman & Little Jack – a slapstick for Cees

Party-animals

Sunday Maud had a little get-together that was planned 26 years ago. Okay, the original plan was we would meet 10 years after finishing high-school, but there was a slight delay. Thinking we are responsible grownups now we decided on lunchish, starting 1.00 pm. The last people left past 1.00 am. The only problem being that you may feel like 18 again, but when the alarm wakes you at 6.00 am your body tells you your real age.
It’s funny to see people change and don’t change – even if you didn’t see them for 26 years, there’s so much which makes it like yesterday (hence our successful attempt to digest the same amount of chips, wine, peanuts and beer as we used to do in France while celebrating finishing high-school).
After a very blue Monday at work we recovered quickly because we celebrated Rachel’s birthday. Rachel’s mom Jacinta flew in from Scotland, and again we had a wondrous evening, which made Maud forget she planned to go to bed before midnight. (For our irregular readers: Rachel stars in Portanol.)

Too busy for words

October 24th we go back to southern Africa, to stay until the first day of May. To do what? That’s mainly ??? for us also. Part of the time Bram will be teaching graphic design at Pretoria University. In between we want to spend a lot of time in Botswana, doing ‘whatever you want, we’ll design it’ to earn some duku.
This plan keeps us very busy now already. We both have to quit our jobs to do this, which means we have to start networking because we want freelance-work in Holland when we return. We must let the Leiden-house, which means a lot of unfinished renovation-projects have to be finished quickly. We need more work than Bram’s Pretoria-job to survive, which asks for preparation also. Last but not least we like to enjoy our Dutch friends & family as long as we are here. See the sleeping beauties, our first cousins Karen (r) & Daniela (l), and Joseph.

Giant

Coming home Saturday we encountered two very angry cats. Tlo & Tau were so Not Amused that they decided to Ignore us (and to Refuse to Eat, which is a miracle) for Two Whole Hours.
Bram’s been to Brussels with his brothers & sissie. The first night the boys managed to loose their little sister because they were loitering in the station while she jumped into the train. With the tickets, Bram told Maud when he phoned her immediately. Luckily they managed to follow her trail and have a great time together.
Meanwhile Maud managed to become incapable of wearing shoes for the time being. The first foot went when she got stuck between the kitchen counter and Reus’ ass, while he was fighting with Kyro. Reus (Giant) is Maud’s mom’s Big Dog, and Kyro is the dog-who-thinks-he’s-a-human (and loves his white whine; he used to live with a whino). The second one went when Maud helped her mom to build a Fong Kong greenhouse. Because it was raining, and raining, and raining, we decided to make the zillion small parts into bigger parts in the carport. While carrying the front wall over the hill to the building place, Maud slipped, and the ladies saved the greenhouse, but the ankle went. By now the beautiful greenhouse stands, and Maud looks like a fool, walking around on slippers in this very cold, very rainy spring.

Stormy 60

The beautiful summery weather has changed into a stormy spring. Which is good, because we finally had two days to start finishing the house, and staying inside doesn’t hurt now. Maud succeeded in creating a stormy look all around the house. She decided more cleaning out is needed before we can start building, so there’re boxes and piles of stuff around everywhere. Poor mothers, they’re grannies now, so they definitely need books, toys, et cetera. Poor Bram is cycling back and forth to the ‘give-away shop’, where you can bring things you don’t need anymore, and people can shop for free, with the surplus.
Sunday we celebrated the 60th birthday of Maud’s uncle Aernout with a stormy sailing tour on the IJsselmeer in his 104-year old botter (wooden fishing boat).

Unicorn

Yet another weekend with a lot of socializing, a bit of gardening and no revamping the house at all... By the way, does anyone know how to get rid of the bright red bugs that eat lilies? (Preferable without using poison. I already tried catching & killing them, and the eggs and larvae, last year, but there are too many.)
It’s still a summery summer, so we did the boat-thing with our Thursday-, Saturday-and Sunday-guests. Floating around town, the boat loaded with friends, drinks, and nibbles, Holland is nice again. As long as we’re on our own island... Which includes loitering in our garden with friends this Friday-evening.
By now everyone is wondering why this post is titled ‘Unicorn’. Because of a weird item in one of Maud’s language-newsletters. Unicorn used to be the name of the Dutch peace-mission in Afghanistan. It’s a name that has good connotations with the Afghanis, they say. Now they changed it because it makes English speaking soldiers (Americans, I suppose) think of a gay movement in the us of a. When we first read it, we thought it was a joke, but it seems to have really happened. Words fail to express what we think of this.