Netherlands 2

We visited oom Ab and tante Ina. They recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary and were so pleased to see us! They are keeping quite well for their age -oom Ab is on medication to control a spinal/muscle condition which affects him badly at times .

They are determined to stay in their own house and are managing well with some help. We enjoyed our visit. This is Leiden on a market day. Bikes everywhere and no helmets except for racing bikes.

There is a canal system in Leiden that has a less commercial round tour than say in Amsterbam. We joined Fons and Christine on one of these -took lots of photos of course.

Leiden is the birthplace of Rembrant -according to our guide this windmill and bridge feature in some of his paintings. It's very pretty anyway

In Netherlands 1

Holland has a cyclingculture, so everything is geared for the cyclist. Here we are in Drenthe a sparsely populated province of the Netherlands with forrests, heathercountry and farmland.

On the way we found remnants of gravesites which were built there more than 3000 BC.
And of course the occasional windmill.

Chris is taking some measurements.
This is the little house we fell in love with. We passed it many times, it is right in the middle of grainfelds. It would be nice to spend some more time here.

And the new herring had to be tried. The verdict ? 10 out of 10 !!! For those uninitiated, the herring is caught on the NorthSea preferrably the night before, kept in salt and eaten raw with fresh onions. What a delight !!!

Christmas gathering in Silvan

One of the favourite activities of the grandchildren: the annual demolition of anything that looks like edible gingerbread, here it is still in one piece, not for long though.Family-games in the backyard of Oma and Opa.

TheBoxing Day Cricket match, a great Australian tradition. Here trains the future national team. Watch out Ricky Ponting...your days as captain are numbered

And here they are, we are so very proud of them ::: our perfect grandchildren..... always smiling...
who happened to be actually all quite normal.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful of them all ???

The chocolate factory

Chris thinks he is in heaven at the chocolate-factory on Phillip Island where the chocolate is made the Belgium way, which means disgustingly nice. Too much to choose from, watch that figure....

So we had to try this too, in hot chocolate form while being entertained by miss Megan.
You reckon she likes the stuff ?

Here is another chocoholic in the making ......

Why did they ever discover it ?

Family Summer Holidays at Phillip Island

Gary and Annemarie bought a new ocean kayak which had to be tried out, of course.

While the others stayed on shore to find crabs and all sorts of other seacreatures hiding under the rocks.
The 2 youngest Aiden and Megan with the 2 oldest of the grandchildren Rachel and Michelle having a rest at the Nobbies on Phillip Island. Fortunately the cousins get on with eachother very well.

The only 2 male cousins Ben and Aiden were inseparable while exploring anything that moved in the rockpools along the beach

6 o'clock dinnertime. Fish, chips and potatocakes are always favourite with any member of the family. Here we all sit on the beach at Cowes enjoying an easy meal.

A visit to Echuca on the "mighty" Murray River.

We just arrived at our home for 3 days when we were welcomed by one of the locals. He sat right beside us, appr.30 cm. away from us. We heard him and his family laughing quite often nearby during our stay.The Murray-River is famous for its paddle-steamers. It is actually here where the T.V.series :"All the rivers run", was filmed. We made a trip with this paddlesteamer down the river.

We had a lovely cabin along the river, where we watched part of that series.

Chris made sure that our steamer "EmmyLou" stayed on course. It was a very peaceful trip, no seasickness, just right for pensioners.

It looked just like the Blue Danube, here we are turning the ship through the "rough and wild rapids" and fortunately we arrived safely home.

All in all a succesful outing.

Melbourne evening and Andre Rieu

Thanks to Corinna who presented us with tickets to Andre Rieu , we took the train in to the city for a special evening.The (fairly new) Federation Square is a great place to eat and we had a bit of a look around the city. Melbourne has changed a lot over the years,with the river being a focal point these days .

One of the many bridges across the Yarra is this pedestrian-bridge.

It was a real balmy evening in Melbourne and many people on their way to the Rod Laver Arena at Melbourne's tennis centre where the Andre Rieu Concert was held

Willy on her way back from refusing to pay $25 for a programme. "Not in 25 years" Willy said, that's my girl .....!!!!

Keep smiling sis, it suits ye.