Our First House Guest and VBS

The last four weeks since we returned from our trip to North Carolina have flown by with a flury of activity!  We were blessed to be invited to several cook-outs at friends houses and plenty of play dates for the children at parks and the zoo.  The kindness of our new friends in Belgium has helped ease some of the homesicknesses we felt having to leave NC for the second time in 5 months! 

Two weeks ago we were especially busy with Vacation Bible School at the church we are attending in Brussels and the arrival of our first house guest!  On Tuesday, August 24th, our friend, and music minister, from our church in Durham arrived to spend six days with us. To say the least, it was an action packed week, but we enjoyed it!

The theme at VBS was "High Seas Expedition".  The volunteers who organized it did an excellent job.  The decorations were fabulous and all of the leaders were well prepared and extremely energetic.  I helped out with the games this year.  Here are a few pictures of highlights from the week.

This is the large group gathering at the beginning of the day.  I think there were at least 125 children who participated.

Here Drew is enjoying the decor with Mom.  He was not thrilled to be in the nursery all week!

This photo shows the children at recreation time, where I assisted.  The weather was nice the first three days, but Thursday and Friday were rainy and cold so we were inside.  The children still had a blast.

Each age group took a turn preparing the daily snack.  On the last day, the 5 year olds helped.  I opted to skip snack that day...note the little blondie in the background of this picture licking his fingers as he is icing the rice cake.  Only moments before, I had swiped a knife from another child who was licking the knife clean between each snack he made!  Ugh!

Posing with Jenna, sporting my official sailor gear for the week.  The lovely red and white colar identified the workers.

Finally, Drew did manage to have a little fun each day as he devoured his snack!

Adding to the fun of VBS, was Eric's arrival on Tuesday afternoon.  We apologized to him ahead of time for his position as the guinea pig for our visitors to Brussels, but hopefully we were able to show him a bit about Belgium! 

On his second night, we took him to the Grand Place for a view of the historic part of Brussels...

and a hot waffle from a street vendor!

Thursday we found a babysitter and the three adults went to our first real restaurant other than IKEA and McDonalds since arriving in Belgium!  A friend recommended La Pomme Canelle (The Cinnamon Apple) and it was a fabulous choice.  We hope to return again soon.

The big plans for the weekend included Eric and Jason taking the high speed train to Paris on Saturday for Eric's first trip to the City of Lights.  They headed out before 6 am to catch the train and didn't return until well after mid-night.  To say the least, they were tired.  They made the most of the day and covered many of the highlights of Paris - Notre Dame, Le Louvre, Le Tour Eiffel...,

and ending the day with a boat toar on the Siene punctuated with the lighting of the Eiffel Tower just as the boat docked.  They raced back to the train station with hardly 5 minutes to spare before their train departed. 

We finished up Eric's time with a quick trip to Bruges.  Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with us, so we only spent a couple of hours before the winds picked up, rain was blowing in sheets and the temp dropped about 15 degrees! 

Now that we have our first guest under our belts, we can look forward to the following months as several people have already reserved time on our calendar to visit Brussels!