Visiting Ayla at NIS

This morning the parents in Ayla's class were invited to come and have a look at the work the kids had been doing in class for their ' This is Me' unit.

The kids had made a paper at home about themselves and presented the paper to the other children and parents in class. It was really nice to be there and to see what's going on in Ayla's classroom.

A Teddy Bear Picnic @ JIS

Last week Noah's Kindergarten class at JIS had a Teddy Bear Picnic. All the kids brought their favorite teddies to school and they all had lunch together on the grass area at the school playground.
Needles to say that Noah and Nana had a great time together with the other kids and teddies.

Ayla Ballerina !

A couple of weeks ago Ayla joined a ballet class.
Our little one is a true girlie girl, so of course she loved the classes and the tutu outfit.
The first few nights after her first class she even slept in her ballet costume.

Noah starts Football !

Two weeks ago Noah played his first ever competetive football match. He has joined the Jakarta U-7 league and gets to play for........THE NETHERLANDS. Can you believe it?
They are in a league with 10 other teams and last week they started their season with a tough match against Germany. The Orange started really well, but after a 2-2 HT score they collapsed in the 2nd half resulting in a devastating 6-2 loss.
Each team is supposed to have a good mixture of second year players ( 6 year olds) and beginners. However it looks like team the Netherlands has beginners only...But we had fun and the coaches ( Lance and I) have LOTS of work to do.

Willem was here !

Two weeks ago my buddy Willem came by for a short 4 day visit. He has been here many times and loves coming out here to visit his favorite spots. It os always nice to have him around. He is easy and the kids love playing with him.
He is actually moving to our part of the world, since he accepted a new job in Hong Kong. I guess we will be seeing more of him in the years to come!

JIS Olympics at Sietsma Residence

During the Beijing Olympics in Jakarta an event of much more significance was happening. THE JIS Olympics! Every day teachers could sign up for a fun event and try to win one of the JIS Olympic medals.

One of the events was held at our place..... the Olympic Foosball tournament. Don't ask me why they call it Foosball....to me it's just Table Football.....and definitely nothing German sounding like Foooooooooosball!

Anyway it was a great tournament and in the end the deadly Swiss/US combination of Dunja and Butch took the gold after a very tight final against team Canada/ US (Scott and Jim)

Serious Update......

It's time for s serious Blog Update. Things have been crazy here since we started working again after the summer holiday.
So ,I wont do any posts about our summer trips to Spain and Wales. I will make a Kodak album with photos about those 2 trips soon.

Here on the Blog, I will focus on things that have happened in Jakarta since we came back on August 1st.

So here we go!!

Ayla was the first to start school. We decided last year to keep Ayla at the Dutch school for another year. She loves it there and we felt that her Dutch wasn't good enough yet.

Here are some pictures of her first day....she was sooo excited and soooo ready.

Family Weekend

Every year when we are in Holland my dad organizes a family weekend with the whole family.
This year it was a special weekend since we also celebrated my parent's 50 years wedding anniversary. All together there is 19 of us, including 5 little kids who, of course love these weekends more than anything.