As of today we have been together for eight years. In eight years we build a beautiful family and handled our share of up and downs. In the end we are still together and have a good hope for the future. The party will have to wait because Ana is following a training in London.
Once again I ran a 10K and this time with a pretty good result. I finished in just over 50 minutes. Up until two months ago I was following the perfect training schedule. I was running three times a week between 6 or 7K. A very good preparation for a 10K. Then my family came home from spending the summer at the beach, and my running activities decreased from 3 times a week to 0 times a week.
Still my foundation must be good, because even without running for two months I still ran the 10K in a very good time, 50 minutes and 10 seconds. I ran together with the father of one of Alex’friends, so that maybe added some motivation.
We should have known, because if something looks to good to be true, usually it is, and there is a catch. Today we went to a local event where they were selling some cows and organizing some games for the kids. There was also a picnic area, and we were in luck. There was still one table available. Well, we thought we were in luck, until we got closer. Alex was the first because he set of running once we had spotted the table.
To my surprise he came back running even faster. Wasps! Wasps! he was screaming, and he was right. Alex had found a wasps nest, and they had stung him three times in the legs. Au!
Luckily there was an ambulance nearby, and Alex got some cold ice cubes applied to his legs, and the pain quickly subsided. Add a gift to make things better and the rest of the day was spend without incident.
Lose Yourself to Dance
Daft Punk
I know you don’t get a chance to take a break this often
I know your life is speeding and it isn’t stopping
You take my shirt and just go ahead and wipe up all the
Sweat, sweat, sweat
Lose yourself to dance
Alex has his seventh birthday today and that calls for a big party. At times we have some difficulty with him, but if we look at the big picture we can only conclude that he did very very well the last year. At his school we turned out to be a very good student, even getting selected to be the personal aid for his teacher. At his music classes he turned out just a bit better than the other kids, so that as a reward he was selected to sit in the spotlights all the way up front at the closing concert. At taekwondo Alex got promoted two times within the year. First to white-yellow and a short while later to yellow.
Alex has worked hard and made tremendous improvements this last year. We have a boy that in situations of authority (like with teacher) is a very disciplined boy. In all he has deserved a birthday with a nice stack of presents.
Every day there are ten thousand people that hear something for the first time that seems to be old news for almost everybody else. For me this happened today, and I was one of the 10.000 hearing this spot-on quote for the first time. A simple and elegant truth: “Happy wife = happy life!”.
Alan is a source for inspiration for all of us. Every day he inspires us to be the best we can possibly be and to work for a better future.
Even without being physically present his image has inspired an artist, who made this beautiful painting.
The painting was inspired by this image:
We have received an official email from Alex and Alans school. In this email the school states they will finally act against the debtors, parents that fail to pay up the tuition of their children. This sounds like a very good step to ensure the financial future of the school, but things are not so simple. Even though we pay everything we need to pay I can still understand that in some situations it might be logical not not pay up without putting up a fight. The context of this email is in this case very important.
It seems that the school is targeting the students to force the parents to pay up. I really doubt that this is the correct manner to act in this case and frankly I suspect this email will not result in the end of the debtors.
I’m back in the Netherlands, and this time I’m in Tilburg. Ana and Alex came to visit me for a couple of days and that proved to be the perfect moment for lots and lots of activities. One of the things we did was to go to the Efteling. A fantastic park of which I have very fond memories. I remember going there when I was still a little boy. At the time there was a new attraction called ‘Droomvlucht’, which was inaugurated in 1993, meaning that my last visit was 25 years ago which means there must be quite a lot of new attractions.
Our visit to the Efteling was really great. Alex loved the rides, Symbolica, Droomvlucht, Fata morgana, the Pirana, the boat trip around the lake, the ‘Joris en de draak’-rollercoaster, the ravenstein show, the weird villa volta, holle bolle gijs, the fairy tale forest, longneck, the closing watershow and much much more. In the rollercoaster ride he was sitting next to me shaking and surprised by the massive speed, but he liked it. The pirana was great when in the beginning Ana got wet, but later even better when both Alex and I got thoroughly soaked.
To top it off one plan was not enough for this weekend. We also went on safari at Beekse Bergen, had a nice visit by Bert, Sally and family, Visited the animals at the olie meulen and went canoe-ing. All in all a great visit.
Alex has only recently started and he already got the yellow band. To get yellow he needed to learn a few taek wondo routines and execute them without any mistake during his exams. The exact movements are a mistery to me, so we could not help Alex, and still it all went perfect. *super proud*