May is the month of holidays so it is also a huge travel month for families. A lot of families I knew were packing up and taking long expensive crazy vacations to all parts of Europe but we decided to go a different route. We rented a house in the south of Belgium with another family who we are good friends with.
The house was so cute but…the weather was terrible. Cold, rainy, windy, muggy, and yes, cold. When we planned on renting this house near the end of May we had no idea we’d need to make fires each night and keep the radiators on.
We had a total of 6 kids and 5 adults in the house so it felt like we were buying out the grocery store just for a long weekend. I was quite surprised at how little food was left when we left!
But we made the most of it and braved the cold weather. We stopped at a few fun locations in the Meuse Valley. This one was the Castle Veves (aka Sleeping Beauty’s Castle). We brought clothes for the kids to dress up in but they also will supply kids with princess and knight gowns for free. A few of our other friends joined us at the castle and it was fun to watch all the kids try to kill each other with wooden swords.
All the kids, plus Jason standing in for one boy who didn’t want his picture taken 🙂
These 3 girls couldn’t understand why the other 8 boys were so crazy.
We made our way to Dinant to tour the citadel…
Moving around as much as we do, I have read up on transitions, assimilations and stages of change. I remember one chapter that talked about when you start running into people, you are in the final stage of settling in. It has been happening a lot to us lately. Seems like no matter where we go (grocery store, market, different town) we will run into friends. While in Dinant, we ran into our friends the Christie’s and their son Jack who is in Zane and Lily’s class. Small country = Small world.
We spent what small time we had when the sun was out…in the sun.
and making babies behave badly.
It was a nice way to spend a cold, rainy, Whit Monday holiday weekend and I felt even better about it when I heard the tales at school the next week of stressful, expensive far away vacations being ruined by this insane European weather.
Great pictures and post…. And Lily, no girl will ever understand why boys are so crazy.