Saturday, June 27, 2009

6th grade graduation at DE REGENBOOG (the rainbow) school

After what has been a very difficult school year, with a lot of catching up for Axelle, yesterday it all ended well.

YES, OUR "little" (actually not that little considering that she is outgrowing me!) GIRL DID IT…. She obtained her certificate to go to the next school, a certificate without any restrictions which means that she can choose whatever school she wants…

We celebrated, with an official ceremony, the graduation of our 6th graders (this is kind of the same as the graduation of the 5th graders we had last year in Coeur d’Alene in Marina del Rey!).

In September she started the new school year with 2 years of catching up for Dutch (since she had not had grammar for 2 years), 1 year of French (grammar and vocabulary), and also math since the level of math seems to be a bit higher over here too. Poor thing… it was a lot to ask to a 10 year old who still likes to play a lot and have fun.

With the help of Hannelore, her private math teacher, we saw a real difference in her results. Actually also with Dutch… practice seems to help a lot.

But, who knows me, also knows that I’m the worrying kind and that I only believe the achievement when I actually see it… so no need to tell that I was stressed out this entire school year.

Needless to say that when the ceremony was over I had a good glass (and more than one) of white wine to celebrate this hard work!

Here are already some pictures…


Today we’re having a bbq for my dad’s 75th birthday. I was up like an early bird this morning, since the little birdies were making a lot of noise in the garden and kept me from sleeping. But I guess that was OK, in this way I started early preparing for the party.

To all the kids around the world: I’m sure you deserved your holidays! ENJOY!!!

Picture 1: Part of the 6th graders.
Picture 2: Lore (Axelle's best girlfriend and Axelle)
Picture 3: Axelle getting her certificate we so much hoped for!






Monday, June 08, 2009

Musical at Axelle's school - some pictures

And a few pictures from the school musical. I also wrote about this in my post today.
Axelle should have performed 3 times, but she only did the Saturday afternoon performance (see my post). She was singing through the entire show.
I taped almost all the songs, but it is such a pain in the.... uploading those movies that I do not feel like doing it today. Just getting these pictures on line took me already quite some time!
The show was about a bee queen and all the insects you can imagine... spiders, grass hoppers, caterpillars... and so on.... It was beautiful!
All the kids performed well and enjoyed being on stage (as you can see in the pictures)....
















Procession Pictures

On June 1 we had a procession in Elewijt... as mentioned in my post today Axelle was participating... Here are some pictures:























Events from the last weeks

Hi it’s been some time that I wrote on this blog …, nothing special happened, but now I’ve got some new stuff to write about. Nothing major… but anyway, here I go:

We’ve had some really nice weather here in Belgium and so my garden needed some taking care off. We did some hard work in it and now it looks very nice. Unfortunately the ground is sandy and so after a period of not much rain, my yard is immediately yellowish. I did not feel like sprinkling it and now I’m looking at a “not so green lawn”… They announce rain for the rest of the week, so by the weekend it will be looking more greenish I guess.

During that period of nice weather we also had a very big thunder storm that knocked over the big BBQ… actually it was moved from my patio into the lawn and tripped over. Lucky for me it still works… I’ve learned my lesson and now my BBQ is sitting inside until I need to use it. Also during that storm Axelle’s trampoline was moved a few meters… because the wind was so terribly hard! Axelle woke up and came to sleep in my bed, as did a lot of kids (that’s what we heard the next day at school). If I’m really honest, I have to say that she was not the only one being scared… I was too! We came out of the storm rather lucky. The next day we saw on the news that houses were destroyed by lightning or by trees that fell on the houses because of the wind. So no real harm was done for us!

Another nightly adventure was a burglar attempt … that happened last Wednesday. At 2.59 am the alarm system went off. My heart started pounding like mad! You have to know that this is the second time they visit our house around 3 am when I’m sleeping in there! I can assure you that you’re immediately fully awake and that adrenaline is rushing through your body. So we went downstairs to see “nothing”… Everything was still closed and so I was thinking it might have been false alert. I put the alarm back on and went again to bed, to be woken up 50 minutes later again by the alarm. At that time I was getting rather impatient and was giving my alarm system all kinds of names… (you can imagine which ones I guess). I was convinced that again this was a false alert and that my alarm system needed to be checked the next day. (although it had been checked only a few months ago). Next day the technician came and checked the “history” in the display of the alarm system. He confirmed that this had not been false alerts but two attempts to open my garage door. At that point I was “Glad the alarm bell rang”!!!! They could have taken my car out of the garage… or worse, come into the house to get other things…
So the technician checked all my detectors and did a reset of the entire system and told me nothing was wrong with it. I called the police to declare the attempt of burglary… The day before a car had been stolen in the other street where my neighbor Rosette lives and apparently thieves had been visiting other houses as well. So I guess I’m lucky I have my alarm system! At least, now I am….

Thursday night around midnight Axelle called me to tell me she was not feeling well. After an intermezzo of being sick, she finally got back into bed and so did I. I was hardly 10 minutes in my bed, when I heard a loud pounding on the door downstairs. My heart started racing again… this could not be happening! Immediately I was thinking about burglars, but it appeared to be a rather big cat that was trying to get inside to have a chit chat with Niky our cat (haha).

Do I need to say that on Friday night I was listening to every single sound I heard?
Nothing happened anymore and by Sunday night I was sleeping well again. And why not Saturday night?

Friday evening the musical started at school, but Axelle could not participate since she had been ill during the night and was still sick on Friday. We went to see the doctor and she needed to take some medication. On Saturday she participated in the afternoon session of the musical, but was very tired after that one and decided not to go for the final session in the evening. Good thing she didn’t because around 9pm she started to be in so much pain that I decided to call the doctor. The doctor told me to go to the emergency room with her, because she might be starting an appendicitis. Lucky the doctor in the hospital could quickly outrule that one… and he could also help her to get rid of the pain she was going through. Finally around midnight we were back home and she fell asleep almost immediately. I was still very awake by all events of the previous nights…

As you can read, I’ve not been bored lately! Life has been rather exciting!

What else happened… On June 1, we had the yearly procession marching through the streets of Elewijt. I will post some pictures of this event… Axelle was participating, as is custom for the kids that did their communion that year. She was not very excited about having to carry a flag around the whole time… but… what has to be done, has to be done!

And that’s it for now folks! It will be again quiet for some time now, since Axelle is preparing for her finals… You’ll read me again soon…

PICTURES WILL FOLLOW SOON