Play Grounds

One of the disadvantages of living in Jakarta is the fact that, because of the heat, and the lack of nice parks the kids don't get to play outdoors very much

The good news is that there are many indoor play grounds and obviously our kids go there often. They love going there and sometimes they have birthday parties there too.

Here are some pictures of Ayla and Noah 'in action' in one of those indoor playgrounds

Refreshing

Living in the tropics can be a hot and sweatty affair

Fortunately we are have a swimming pool and we definitely make the most of it.

The kids are in it almost every day and during the weekends sometimes 3 or 4 times in one day.

It is also a great way for the kids to get comfortable in the water and to learn to swim.

We know that we are very spoiled, but honestly we couldn't do without it anymore!

Easter 2007

During the Easter Holiday we celebrated Ayla's birthday on Good Friday, but her actual birthday was on Easter Day.

On Saturday we went over to our friends Rob and Tracy for their annual Easter Egg Hunt Party. It was a nice party with lots of excited kids looking for eggs. According to Noah, the Easter Bunny had not done such a good job, because the eggs were way too easy to find.

On Sunday we went to the Gran Melia Hotel, the place where Sue and I first met in August 1997, for Easter brunch with Butch and Lorly and their girl Mariska.

They had a special section for kids where they had organized all kinds of activities. Great idea, so the parents had some time to eat their lunch in peace...

We'll be back next year!

It's Ayla's Birthday !

It's official, our little one is not a baby anymore. Yes, it is very sad indeed! They grow too fast!
Don't they?

On Easter Day Ayla turned 2. It's hard to believe that it has been 2 years since she was born in Singapore.

We had her birthday party on Good Friday with 8 of her friends, a bunch of older sibblings and their parents. All and all we had about 40 !! people at our house.

Let's pray that it's not going to be like that every birthday until she turns 18....

The house looked very festive with lots of balloons and other nice decorations. I can leave that up to Sue!

There was an arts and crafts table for kids who wanted to draw or to paint their easter eggs. And of course there were the usual toys to keep the kids occupied.

All the kids did great and it really wasn't a problem having that many people in and around the house.

The highlight of the party was of course the birthday cake. Big brother Noah did a great job lighting the candles and bringing it over to his sister, who had no problem blowing out the candles.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AYLA!

PE Conference in London

Yes, believe it or not, but I was actually professionally busy as well during my London trip. The Cobham International School hosted the ECIS PE conference. The conference was held on Saturday, Sunday and Monday and was pretty good. Every day there were tons of workshops that you could go to and most of them were pretty valuable.

We were lucky that the weather was very nice and none of the ourdoor activities had to be cancelled. In fact, I didnt have any rain during my 5 days in London. That must have been the only time of the year that that happened.


One of the highlights of the conference was a trip to the Chelsea FC training grounds and a football clinic with Jose Mourinho. Pretty cool, huh?

The training facilities are absolutely amazing , must be one of the best in the world. They have 34 !! full size football fields of which 6 are exclusively for Jose and the first team.

It was also nice to catch up two old friends Simon and Edwin, with whom I went to school together and with whom I worked at the International School in Amsterdam. ( They are the 2 ugly guys in the pictures with me....)

Live EPL in London

About a week and half ago I attended a PE conference in London. Yes, life is not always easy being a teacher at JIS........

Of course I could not pass up on the opportunity to watch a live premier league match. Unfortunately Arsenal and Chelsea both played away from home, so we went to Upton Park to watch West Ham against Middlesbrough. This turned out to be a pretty good pick cause the home team won 2-0 and the sell out crowd went wild for Tevez and co.

I made me realize that nothing beats watching a match in the stadium. Watching it in front of the TV is fun, but definitely not the same thing.

Another great thing about this trip was the fact that 2 of my brothers and my niece came over from Holland to watch the game with me. After the game we hit the pub and we had a nice dinner together. Great way to catch up!

You gotta love Professional Develoment!

Spring Break

We didn't plan to go away this year for Spring Break, because I had a conference in London to attend for which I was supposed to leave for on Thursday. We were just going to hang out at home and do some day trips here in Jakarta.

However the closer Spring Break came the more we felt like we did need to go away...so we decided last minute to go to Bali after all.


We flew out of Jakarta on Saturday and returned on Wednesday. We were actually very happy that we went, because we had a great time. The weather was fantastic and the kids absolutely loved it.

They spend most of their time in the water of the hotel pool, at the beach and at Water Bom. This is an awesome park with all kinds of special attractions, such as super slides, fountains and a lazy river, great to float in with the little ones.
We met up there with several friends from JIS and their kids.
For dinner we went to Jimbaran Beach twice.


There are tons of restaurants here on the beach where the kids can just play next to your table in the sand. There is live music and they serve the best sea food.

We were happy that we changed our minds! We all loved it!