First bike race

Yesterday Thijs competed in his first ever bike race. It was the Gran Fondo in Hockely, TX, about 45 minutes north of Katy. It was a recommended ride to prepare for the BP MS 150 which he will be riding in two weeks time.

There was a choice of three distances, 47, 69 or 94 miles. Thijs and Edward opted for the 69 miles.

This was a view of the start at around 7.30 in the morning. There were around 1800 riders in the race.

The ride proved to be a good test for the MS150. Hills and head wind made for a tough day. However the guys made it to the finish, satisfied with their performance and declared to be ready for the big ride in two weeks!

Some stats for those of you keeping track....

 

Road sign

Along the way from Katy to Sugarland there is a prison. Just before you reach the prison area this sign is beside the road. I had see it many times before but today I was finally able to take a picture as my dad was driving.

 

1 April

This year's the girls really got the idea of April fools day. They played jokes and had jokes played on them at school and tried it on me as well when they came home.

 

As I was cooking dinner, Floortje came up to me dressed in Thijs' clothes and said to me: 'hallo schat, heb je een goeie dag gehad?' ( hello darling, did you have a nice day?) - 'April Fools!!! I was pretending to be papa!'

 

Paaseitjes zoeken

Even though Easter is usually pretty uneventful for us we do keep up the tradition of looking for Easter eggs.

Norah was still here so she joined us in the hunt!

I got out the hard-to-find eggs again and believe me, the girls were much more excited than they look in the picture :)

Happy Easter!

Cheers

Just testing!

 

Crawfish boil

We were invited by some guys from Thijs' work for a crawfish boil in Houston. As you can imagine this involved a lot of crawfish and in this case also a lot of beer, margaritas and Cajun music!

There were about 300 people there and about 1000 pounds of crawfish! You need a big pan for that! I wish I had added something for scale to this picture but the pan is about 1,5 m high and you could easily put half a cow in there.

When I said to the guy who was 'manning' this monster: 'Quite an impressive pan you have there sir' he was quiet for a minute and then answered, 'thank you ma'am, I have never had a pretty girl compliment me on my pan before!' :)

So how do you distribute crawfish to 300 people at the same time?

Well, you line up a few foldable tables, cover it with some plastic tablecloth and put out lots of kitchen roll. Then you take the crawfish from the pan and put them in a wheelbarrow. Two guys then pick up the wheelbarrow and spread the crawfish along the tables. Dig in!

Then after about 10 minutes the table looks like this

 

Papa 65!

This year my dad was turning 65 and he wanted to celebrate that with the whole family. So a few days before the 21st, my mom, dad, Marc, Diana, Norah and Pep flew in from Holland to spent a few weeks with us.

 

Now, what to get my dad for his birthday? We didn't know. When we ask him he answers: 'lieve kinderen' (sweet kids) - he has been giving us this answer for as long as I can remember.

 

So we decided not to buy him a gift but give him a more personal present. In the months before his birthday we had sent an email to pretty much everyone we knew had been part of his live at some point and time asking for a memory they had of my dad. We attached no rules, long, short, funny, serious, pictures, or not, it didn't matter!

 

What a response we had!!! Incredible! So many nice stories, artworks, power points presentations, poems!

 

We got over 65 back. However, by putting some together, we were able to fill 65 envelopes with memories. We gave it to him in the morning and all during the day he took his time reading them. Overwhelmed, surprised, laughing, impressed and humbled are some words that probably come close to describing his feelings.

 

 

Of course we had to have a cake! Diana and I made this one (Not one of my most beautiful achievements but hey....) Great crema catalana filling by Diana though.

We ended the day with a dinner at Lupe Tortilla's Mexican restaurant. A Mexican happy birthday song put the cherry on the cake!