Sinterklaas Fever

Tomorrow is "Sinterklaas" in the Netherlands, which is kind of the Dutch version of Santa Claus. Sintaklaas comes on the evening of December 5 and brings children presents and candies. Actually, Sintaklaas first arrived in Holland about three weeks ago, and kids who leave their shoes out get treats in their shoes every night until December 5 (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, Marieke). Elliott is a bit too young to understand all this, so we don't have to do much this year. Furthermore, the current festivities have been lost on him because he's still recovering from a rough week and a half: he had a respiratory infection, which required that he and Megan remain home-bound for the whole week. But he's much better, and is starting to show shades of his former adventerous, happy self.

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, we've tried to make our home feel Christmasy. We've hung up lights and an advent calendar, and we bought an evergreen wreath from the market which gives the living room and kitchen a nice pine smell. Christmas music is constantly playing on our computer. All we need to do now is get a Christmas tree and presents!

If Sintaklaas wasn't enough, our week gets even better on Friday, when Gwen and Ryan arrive to visit! They'll be staying with us for the weekend. We don't have any set plans yet, but we'll probably take it easy while they get over their jet lag. We're still holding out hope that we'll have the green-light to move into our new apartment by then, but we may have to make due with what we have for another couple of weeks, unfortunately.

One last thing: Megan became one step closer to complete integration into Dutch society with her purchase of a pair of boots this weekend. Pics to come later...