New year's eve

For New Year's eve we went to Chantal's. The kids were really excited - it was the first year they'd all been allowed to stay up together. We first played piggy in the middle in the hallway with the soft football we'd bought Jesse for Xmas. I'm not sure Sara really understood the game (which is pretty funny with 4!) but we had fun :) We also played Operation and Christie made us a lovely book of drawings of fireworks :)
Chantal and Marcel had been very kind and had got some more port and goats cheese for me, and some wheat free cake too! I also sneaked in an oliebol which is a Dutch new year doughnut (literally an oily ball!). Here's a random website about oliebollen not to be confused with www.oliebollen.com which I think is very funny :)
Oh yes, photos. I got some lovely photos of the kids. Here's Jesse - I think just after the football game.



And Sarah, who I think took a shine to me and was all shy :) That's shy as in a shy whirlwind - she nearly winded me when she ran at me for a hug!



At midnight I left Christine and Chantal inside with Leon and went out on the front porch with Marcel and the kids. New year's eve is completely different in Holland to England. There were quite a few families out in their front yards, and everyone was letting off fireworks. Marcel had bought some rockets and next door had some fountains. Over the road someone had some bombs I think. There weren't as many fireworks in the street as in Utrecht, where we were a few years ago, but in all directions you could see rockets going up. The air was thick with smoke:



It's difficult to capture fireworks and you've all seen them before, but I can't resist posting a couple of pictures:





Sarah would by turns come and have a look, then run back inside. Here she's hiding, but moments later she'd be trying to get a better view!



After the rockets, Marcel had some hand-held fireworks for the kids - some bangers (strings you pulled apart with a bang), confetti cones and a kind of fountain-on-a-stick. Christie loved it!



Then we had sparklers. Jesse liked these more than the fireworks:



And Sarah plucked up courage to hold one for a moment too:



We stayed a while after the kids went to bed, to let all the fireworks die down - it had rained just after midnight, so there was a resurgence of fireworks for a while - but eventually I drove us home after a lovely evening :)