First days at school - First days at work - Administration problems

Yes, this is a title with 3 parts.
Let's start first with Axelle and her first days at school.
Today, September 3, when all your kids in Marina del Rey go to school for the first day, she is already at school for day 3! Axelle was very excited about going back to her old school (De Regenboog) here in Belgium. When we went to enroll her, the principal told us she would be back with her old class. This was indeed very good news to all of us. Axelle would be in class again with all the kids she left in 2006. First day, September 1, went very smoothly. She came home by herself on her bike and was very enthusiastic about her teacher and the new school year. Day 2, yesterday, she came home with homework, but seemed to manage it. She already had French too and her friend told her mom that she did well (Axelle did not tell me anything at all!). Of course we know that she will need some time to adjust to the Belgian school system, so we are not pushing it too hard.
September 1 and Kristine
September 1 was also a big step for me, since I started work again. Yes, yes... gone are all the nice days of taking care of my little family without having to worry about a lot of things. September 1 I started later because I drove Axelle to school with Alain and not a lot of people were there in time anyway. After some coffee and a lot of talking with friends and colleagues I had not seen for quite some time (some 2 years!), the day was soon over. Yesterday we had a first meeting with our team to decide what tasks would be handed over to me and what exactly would be my work for the time to come. Today I have a free day, because I never work on Wednesday. I feel that this week will not be a week of doing a lot of work at the job but more of trying to find my way again and trying to locate colleagues.
Administration problems
That was this morning at the town hall and I post this message for all our Belgian friends who are still in LA. They might have to take action!? What happened a few weeks ago? We went to the town hall with the letter from the Belgian Consulate in LA stating we had been living for 2 years in Marina del Rey. They took notes that we would live again in Elewijt. Later the local police came by the house to confirm that we live here and the next day I could go to the townhall to fill out paperwork to get a new Belgian identity card. Late last week, we received a letter stating that our identity cards had arrived and that we should go and pick them up and that we should bring our "old identity cards". And this is where the problem starts! When we arrived at the consulate in LA, we were asked to return our identity cards to the consulate and we did NOT receive another identity card to replace that one. So here we were this morning explaining that in LA they took our cards but gave us nothing in return (normally you receive a blue identity card when you are a Belgian citizen in a foreign country). At the town hall they told us that this was standard procedure and that we should return these blue identity cards now. We said that this was not possible because we never ever received a blue card. The waiting started and they were looking up stuff in their computer to try and find out what to do. Could they give us our new identity cards without receiving the "for us non existing" blue ones? Finally all ended well and they believed us and we received our precious little cards. I just want to warn our Belgian friends to contact the Belgian consulate in LA because it is not fun to have such problems when you arrive back in Belgium. It is of course possible that administration personnel here did not know of some procedures maybe valid in the States? I don't know... Anyway, our advice: Play it safe and ask before you decide to move back!
But so now we are Belgian citizens again and we sincerely hope this is the end of the administration we had to go through. Hereafter a picture from my office in Brussels and a picture from our garden (taken this weekend when the sun was still out, today it is a grey day!).

Hereunder, my desk... on the 7th floor (top floor). Still need to put some pictures up, but did not take the time to do that yet.
Hereunder, the garden and house....