Apart from everyone being sick, it has been totally AWESOME having mum and Noel here :) It was sooooooooo good to see mum again, it had been 3 1/2 years. And I sure did pick them coming through the gates at the airport, they really looked the Aussie part with Noels bush hat and everything....lol. They have been really enjoying it too, and are blown away with some of the things they have seen. And Noel has to try everything, food wise, and doesnt want things they can get back home. He has been trying all kinds of traditional foods and sorts of things :)
The first 2 weeks, before they got really sick, we were out every day, even if it was just around the local area or out to dinner at the Greek restaurant or something. They dont like staying home because they want to make the most of their time and see as much as they can while they can. But it is all very tiring for all of us. We also did a few bigger trips too. We went to the little German village of Monschau and a scenic drive through the top of the Ardennes one day.
Another day I took them down to Valkenburg in Holland and three land point. 
We also spent the day in Zeeland one day, and went to the Delta Works there. This website tells exactly what the Delta Works is, but basically it was the engineering that took place to prevent another flood like the one of 1953. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works 
Another day we went to a war museum in Overloon and Noel just loved that day out :) 
We have been shopping in Eindhoven, toured the local area, and Noel even tried the raw herring, oh my, what a face.........lol. I dont think it went down too well......lol. Unfortunately we didnt have the camera on us at that moment......lol.Monday 25 is ANZAC day. We (all 4 of us) are heading off early that morning to Flanders Fields (the western front of the first world war) to stay. The ANZAC day ceremonies begin in Ypres at about 11.30 that day and we will attend. Then we will stay there till the Friday, looking around all the war sites and memorials of Flanders Fields, Dunkirk, and the Somme. Also, hopefully visit the town of Brugge while there. From there, we will go down to Normandy in France for a further 3 nights. There is just so many more museums, memorials, and sites to see than we possibly can hope to, so we will probably mostly concentrate on the Australian ones. Hans and I will return on Monday 2 May but mum and Noel will catch the train into Paris for the night, and then come back to Antwerp by the fast train and spend a couple days with a friend of theirs in Zeeland. Their last week and a half will be here. We are also making another trip with them to the Ardennes. From there we will take them into Luxembourg, hopefully visit some amazing caves, a few castles such as the one in Boullion, and a few war museums of the Ardennes, especially in Bastogne. We also have to fit a few day trips in that time, to Amsterdam, Brussels, Arnhem, Kinderdijk and Keukenhof. I doubt we will see it all but fingers crossed for us.
Very beautiful area and Trier is so full of history. 
It has so many old Roman remains right in the city centre and the house where Karl Marx was born and much more. 
Most tourist places here close down for the winter but we did get into Trier and a couple of the other villages 
and also a wolf park at an old castle. 
And did a lot of driving and scenic routes. We went down and back through Luxembourg and stopped at another couple of old castles. 
We also stopped at Vianden in Luxembourg on the way back and I wish I had of known we were going to because I have always wanted to see Victor Hugo’s house there (the author of Les Miserables). Oh well, we will get back there one day. 
Last week I went to the xmas markets in Valkenberg again. They are totally unreal and I go every year. Last year and the year before I went twice each time. Everywhere here they have xmas markets with beautiful embroidered items with xmas themes. Clear glass ornaments handpainted with all kinds of xmas scenes or snowy villages. ETC, ETC. In Germany, the Gluwein flows pretty well too but not so much here and I usually stick to lots of hot chocolates at this time of year. But the xmas markets in Valkenberg are a little different in that they are held in the old underground mining caves. One of them, the bigger of the markets, is under the old castle ruins and the other is just down the street. They cost about 3 euro each to get into. You walk through the caves with all the stalls dotting the way. They even have a sit down café area halfway through. The caves are usually open for tours the rest of the year and there is pretty amazing artwork and carvings on the sides of the caves. The town of Valkenberg itself is very historical and gets a lot of tourists and it just goes beserk at xmas. I just love it! The town is in the extreme southern tip of Holland. Only about 10km or something from 3 land point, where the borders of Germany, Holland and Belgium meet.
I managed to get him (he actually came straight to me) and while we were going to find a good home for him through the vets, he worked his way into our hearts before we had a chance. Hans caved in first. He was just sooooooo tiny. Not old enough to be away from his mother but we don’t think he was wild as he was completely used to people and being held. And the immediate neighbours knew nothing about him. So we guess he was abandoned there. Some people!!!!! His name is Dennis, after Dennis the Menace, and never a more fitting name! We also got 5 chickens for eggs. 
They were supposed to be 5 hens but we brought them home when they were only about 6 weeks old and 2 of them grew into roosters. So now we have 2 roosters fighting over the hens all the time and it is not good. One of them has to go but I absolutely refuse to have it on my dinner table. I AM NOT GOING TO EAT A PET! So we will have to find somebody who wants a rooster.
Also in May, I got to have a girls weekend away and man was it fantastic!!! Hans had scheduled one of his guys motorcycle weekends that he goes on with a couple of mates once or twice a year and this year they headed over to Sauerland in Germany with all its beautiful national parks. So a couple of girlfriends and I decided we would also take off for the weekend Tera, Amanda and myself had all been dying to see Friesland. 
One of the 2 norther most Provinces (States) of Holland. However, no matter what we did, our guys were definitely NOT interested in Friesland and would tell us there were only cows there Hans took off with his mates on the Friday morning and then us girls left on the Saturday morning. We went to the afsluitdijk which is this 30km land bridge (dijk). 
It used to be all sea but they built the dijk which made one side of it a giant lake. There is a place to stop along it and see the info on building, a coffee shop, and a souvenir shop. Then we went to this castle in a little town. Not a real castle as you would think, more like a old mansion, it did have a tower though. Friesland is really pretty and they speak a different language although it is part of Holland. They speak Fresian and yep, it does have a lot of Fresian cows there. The language sounds really weird, Amanda said it sounded like German a little. It is the very north west province (state) of Holland where all those islands up north are too. Then it was on to the zeehond creche (seal creche/hospital/nursery). 
That was really nice. It was just over the border of Friesland in the province of Groningen. Groningen is the north east province. We also went to have a look at the Wadden Sea which is a sea but at low tide it dries up and you can walk to the islands and everything. The seals all lie there at low tide too. Unfortunately the tide was in while we were there. 
We also stopped at a candle making factory and windmill and had dinner in a pancake place. On our way back to Jolynn's for the night, we stopped at the town where Amanda's grandma was born, she was born in Friesland but now lives in Canada and Amanda grew up in Brisbane.
We had a great time at Jolynn's and sat up till 3am chatting. Then on Sunday we went to Bataviastad which is about a half hour from Jolynn's. That is an outlet mall. We didnt go to see the Batavia tall ship there as we were told it is REALLY expensive. Oh well, maybe another time. The Batavia is a tall ship replica of the original which sunk off the Western Australia coast in the 1600’s. We had lunch there, dropped Jolynn at home and started to home ourselves about 2.30 in the afternoon. I dropped the girls off in the centre of Eindhoven and we had coffee and drinks at a cafe there before we all split up and headed different directions. It was a really great weekend. I did a hell of a lot of driving though, about 1000km in the 2 days which definitely helped ease some of the nerves I still had about driving here.
Well that is pretty well all the news now! But I will tell you a bit about the dreadful heat wave we have been having here. It has been one of the hottest summers over here and really hot!!! England recorded its hottest ever temperature on record on Sunday at 38degrees. And in our little town of Kleine Brogel there is an international air force base so they have recordings for Belgium there, and a few days ago it was the hottest day for Kleine Brogel since they started recording in 1952. It was 37.7 degrees and a real stinker! And over here nothing is air conditioned. Everywhere has heating but nowhere, not even cafes, shops, shopping malls, businesses or anything, have air conditioning. I did discover the supermarket I went to today actually had it and boy was it a relief! But generally there isnt any. And people mostly stay home when the heat is like this so the shops were almost deserted on Saturday when I went out. It has been an awful summer this year, especially when I think back to my first summer here and I was sitting inside with a jumper on and the central heating on in the middle of summer. Well I am defnitely acclimatised now and I do not like this heat one bit! Railways are disrupted because of buckling lines, droughts are severe in Italy and elsewhere, fires are raging in several countries, glaciers are melting extremely fast in Switzerland, and water supplies from rivers are dangerously low. There is also a big lack of power in many parts of Europe because the power stations run by rivers cant operate because the rivers are too low or the power stations are affected by the heat. That is the case with some nuclear power stations that have had to close down because the heat is making them too hot and dangerous. It sure is pretty bad! And for the tour de France cyclists, the melting tarmac on the roads caused some horrible accidents. We have 2 standing fans and they are going pretty well around the clock.
The snow this year has been rather late coming. We didn’t really have much before new years but in the second half of January, we sure did get some . One Thursday morning we had very heavy snow, huge flakes and it was fantastic. But it evaporated really quick. The next Saturday it snowed all afternoon and evening for about 10 hours non stop. However, it was raining and mostly gone by the time I got up Sunday morning. We also had very big and heavy snow another day, but it was melting on touching the ground and not staying. Sure was nice to see though. The skiing and wintersport activities in Belgium have swung into full swing. The first weekend of all the snow, there wasnt a hotel room or anything available in the Ardennes in Belgium (south of us). And they were predicting traffic jams so bad that many people might not even make it to their destination. All because of people heading to the snow. Alison did get to see some snow for the first time in her life while she was here, but it wasn’t real much. But the main reason we havent had much snow is because when we get the northerly winds and real cold snaps, it is usually clear skies. We are having one of them again at the moment. Tonight is supposed to be -8 and tomorrow will be a maximum of 0. We had some days there when it was a maximum of -6 or -7. Yep, that is darn cold!!! But I love it also.
Also visited 3 land point
and Monschau in Germany 
as well as some nice drives in the Belgian countryside. We met up with Tera in Helmond one day and she took us shopping and around the castle and cube houses which was great. We also did several other shopping trips around where we live. We went to Efteling one day also but that didn’t go real well as that day was so overcrowded and pouring rain. It was still fun to see. We went to Den Bosch and visited the beautiful cathedral there and the nativity scene, which was incredible. We went to Eindhoven a few times, the movies, and out to dinner a few times. While Rachel was here, they both went ice-skating in Eindhoven and overnight to Amsterdam. We had a lovely Christmas together and New Years Eve was quite an eye opener for Ali ;) While we didn’t get to do a real lot, it was great to spend so much time with her and show her how we live here. How different it is to back home. And Ali did get to see her first snow even if it wasn’t a lot. It was extremely hard for me to say goodbye.
After dinner it was time to take a tour through the city. We saw all the main sites by night and beautifully lit up but nothing could hold a candle to the Champs Elysees. That was one of those sites that will be with me as long as I live. With the Arc de Triomphe framing one end, its beautiful tree lined footpaths with all the trees covered in fairy lights, the corner with all the magnificent xmas trees and changing colour. It was very special. Unfortunately we only got to drive down it and not walk down it but we did stop at the corner with all the xmas trees for photos. Including some photos looking up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. It was so beautiful but something you have to see for yourself. It is also full of fabulous expensive stores including the largest perfume store in Paris. .jpg)
Apart from the Champs Elysees, we also got to see many of the other sites on our evening tour. There was the major store, Les Galeries Lafayette lit up like nothing I have ever seen, 
the opera houses, the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, 
Bastille, and much more including the site that Marie Antoinette was beheaded. The tour was great and included several photo stops.
The Seine River cruise was also good but VERY cold. However, it was wonderful seeing many other sites that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. We also drove past the Moulin Rouge, but it was something we were not prepared to visit with the asking price for just the show (not including dinner) being about 100 euro each (AU$200). Some of the sites that were pointed out to us were unbelievable. There was one coffee shop we passed that I don’t think I will be going into unless I win the lottery. They charge 40 euro (about $80 in Australia) for a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. Oh to be so rich! There is just way too much to see in Paris and unfortunately we didn’t have time to even scratch the surface while we were there but we will return in the not too distant future, of that I am 100% certain. We gave the evening tour a miss in preference of an early night before our big day at Disneyland the next day.
We had a wonderful time. 
We watched the parade in the afternoon and instead of catching the bus back to the hotel, we stayed on for the Christmas light parade and the incredible fireworks over the castle. 
It meant catching the train home ourselves but that didn’t take much figuring out and was well worth the effort. For those that havent been, I definitely recommend you plan a visit soon.
