Quilt Festival (Nov 2nd)

Despite all the madness & chaos going on I could not give up my last chance to go to the quilt festival, so somehow I managed to find a few hours and go, all by myself, enjoying the artwork and browsing for fabrics whilst daydreaming about how my love for fabrics & textiles is going to be completely satisfied in India! The Dutch had done well this name and plenty of quilting prizes will be taken back to Holland.

As usual the winning quilts, and most others on display where astonishing. The winning one has a true patriotic American theme "America Let It Shine" and 4,886 Swarovski crystals embedded in the quilt representing the words of the constitution + the star spangled banner + the pledge of allegiance. My picture really does not do it justice as it really does shine and sparkle and has an infinite amount of detailing. 

The #2 price went to a Dutch lady! She made this whole quilt by hand and it took her 4 or 5 years! Mrs Ted Storm of 's Gravezande. Again the piece is gorgeous and the detail amazing. You have these 'quilt minders' or whatever they are told who with gloves on show the 60,000 visitors to the festival the details. I loved the Delft blue detailing on the back too but really don't understand how anyone in the Netherlands these days can find enough time and sit still long enough to do this! Middle of nowhere Wyoming maybe (the winner) but in the Netherlands the national past-time appears to be being too busy.

And the 3rd main price for a machine maid quilt also was won by a Dutch lady. She made this quilt with hand dyed fabrics after one of her own pictures. She was actually there at the time I came to look at it so I talked to her for a bit. A very friendly lady from Friesland (Janneke de Vries-Bodzinga). Even without almost 3 kids and a full time job I am not sure I would ever have the patience or the dedication to even make something 1/100th time as elaborate as these quilts.

Another one I personally really liked is this one here which was made of fabric & lace - I would love to put that up on my wall at home!

The exhibition part of the festival has a mix of traditional and modern quilting. The below is made entirely out of jeans.

And another Dutch winner, this time with a Monet inspired piece. I bet this is no what most of you have in mind when you think about quilting!

No pictures of the endless aisles (20 long ones) of quilting stalls, sewing machine booths & demonstrations, some tell sell stands, fabric stores & tool makers. It was fab to have a few hours of this in all the madness and a nice reminder why at a personal level I also think I will be quite happy in India! Some day I do want't to come back to this festival though.

Wurst Fest Friends

On November 3rd we went to Wurstfest. Some of you may remember we went last year with friends with kids and it was a huge success. Wurstfest is some wurst themed variation to October fest in New Braunfells in the Texas Hill Country (with many german sounding towns). I did not quite fit in my bayerisch maid costume anymore with my pregnant belly but my Dutch Apron also did the trick. Fully kitted out we went in for the Fest.

The Wurst (Sausage) options consist of Wurst on bread, Wurst on a stick (with a bun to soak up the leakage), Wurst on a platter with Sauerkraut & Potato Salad or a randon selection of pieces of Wurst on a stick. Rick out of all of us was last year who ate the mist sausage. This year Kaat gave him a run for his money.....

The festival area is purpose built fro Wurstfest and in the middle of town next to the river which has its attraction on boys of all ages.

The kids entertained themselves by throwing stuff in the water.

Running up & down the hill

Playing with Papa 

 Dancing & listening to the music

Hanging out with Mama

Empty beer jugs

People watching & good conversations

Playing in the shade & peace and quiet under the beer tables with the carnival tokens

Cleaning up mama 

 Eating and eating and eating and eating

Being cute and trying on everyone's accesoiries

and finally hanging out in your own zone with the Lion King whilst everyone around is getting happier & louder.

Considering everything we have going on and the fact that I was by far the most sober person there I just gave in and managed to look reasonably relaxed right?

 It was a happy Wurstfest!



Eigen willetje

Kaatje definitely has a mind of her own. This morning after two of her classmates showed up with fancy hair do's Kaat instructed her teacher she wanted some too. Then as usual when she came home she bossed the kitchen staff around (that would be us) to poor her some milk, followed by a 'Sandwich Porst' (imagine this being said accompanied by a lot of nodding and a clear urgency / limited respone time). Porst means Worst = sausage. Once you prep one as requested she eats off all the sausage and gives you back the bread. Subsequently she subjected the sausage pouch to further inspection make sure she got as much as she deserved.....pfffff....her Majesty!

Disney On Ice

Last Saturday - to keep up appearances with the kids that all is normal - we took them to see Disney on Ice. With Kaat's obsession of Mickey Mouse we figured we where in for a winner and indeed Kaat's enthusiasm when Mickey came on was huge and made her pregnant mommy (I guess that would be me), come up with a tear or two.

The show was pretty good actually and apart from the Disney traditionals there where scenes off many recent and older Disney stories including Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan & Captain Hook, The Lion King (Rick's ALL time favorite so he sung along substantial parts and was literally jumping with joy - especially when his 'friends' the Hyena's came on), Alladin, Snow White, Ariel (Little Mermaid) and a grand prins & princess dance/skate finale.

The more spectacular scenes with more people on the ice also had more light & smoke and did not make for the best pictures by me. Especially for Opa Kees, as instructed by Rick, we did get the scene of Captain Hook being eaten by the Crocodile.

  The sparkly & shiny (preppy) costumes for Kaatje made up for having Mickey on stage only occasionally. She shead some major tears when the show was over and he left the stage - chanting 'Mickey - Micke-he-hey!" through her tears.

We wrapped up the day later with some high end, last Texas, steaks for Eelco and me and the new Bond movie so a good score from an entertainment perspective.

Kaatje says NO-NO-NO!

or 'CHEEEESE' - depending on the morning mood

Running around

Sorry all y'all - we are a little busy running around Texas, getting organized and doing our farewells as you can see...

Combined with some IT issues a little slow in keeping the blog up to date in the next few weeks I suspect.

Halloween

Yesterday was our last Halloween in Houston. Rick actually had two days as the kids his age had a trick-or treat event through the school corridors on Tuesday already. As Rick's best friend Roddy was going to be dressed as Buzz Lightyear (from Toy Story), Rick wanted to be Buzz' best friend Woody for the day (I had happened to have bought that costume as a suitcase friendly Sinterklaas present but alas....). We put him in his own boots, which are much cooler then the fake ones, but he was not onboard with that. He HAD to wear the full pretend costume.

I had decided that with Kaat at < 2 yrs old it was still my right as a mom to decide what she would look like. So I picked this cute Garden Gnome outfit for her. She was all ok with it as long as she could wear het Pyjama's underneath (we are going through a phase where Kaat does NOT want to get out of her pyama's in the morning). For kids her age half the costume footwear is only indoor so not suitable for school. Her preppy boots worked just as well.

I had decided that Rick probably did have a clear opinion on what he wanted to be for Halloween so I held of buying him anything. When I asked him though and proposed some options (incl. Woody) he said: "a Horse!". When I said 'but you where a horse last year' he looked at me vaguely and responded: "Yes, I am always a horse for Halloween." So true - this whole change every year and consumerism is overdone. So a horse it was and on the real Halloween day Rick was back in last year's suit (which fortunately still just fitted). No doubt at all about being anything else.

We had a fun morning watching them. 

and interesting company for breakfast

We however where not very organized for what happened after school and got home late and too tired. Fortunately there was some Halloween parade event a few blocks from our house with some of Rick's friends and so no need to make much of a plan. The pictures are all way too dark so not much to show for. We can tell you though that Rick still knew the drill - and had deteriorated from just being thankfull to being picky on what candy he wanted from each bowl - still with a lot of cute smiles & thank you-s en hopefull enquiries if the home owners please could confirm that their decoration was 'just for pretend only' so it was all still manageable.

Kaat had not much interest in trick or treating and grabbed a few candy things all chocolaty and squashable. They all needed to be opend and where discarded after 1 lick until she finaly scored a HUGE lollipop (both Kaat & Rick's favorites) and then she was done and just dragged and dictated Dad around from one decorated garden to another.

On the way back Rick complained about a funny tummy and declared he had eaten too much candy which made us laugh hard. He then angrily said that that was NOT funny...sorry Rick! Not too much later he actually called us upstairs as he had thrown up in bed. He was not dsistressed at all and as a real scientist decsribed the process in finite detail (I drank my milk and then it came all out again, and I could not stop it and it went really fast and....) to then move on to excusing himself profusely for making a mess as "he was really sorry but did not have a bucket....". We felt adequately quilty and wondered yet again how we deserved such a child!

Safe to say that most of the candy (apart from pretzels and lollipops) have miraculously disappeared -:)