Seasonal Festivities

This week two very important things happened: the Sinterklaas celebration on December 5th and starting to getting the house all Christmassy,

 

 For Little Man this December 5th was his first real real Sinterklaas celebration. We watched all the Pieten en Sinterklaas coming to school. He absolutely loved it.

We made pepernoten, small cookies. Homemade pepernoten are the best!

And since it was Sinterklaas' birthday, the kids were showered with gifts. Lots of boxes of Lego and Lego Duplo. They were overjoyed and hyperactive!

Friday we got a bit of snow. Here is a view of our new botanical garden at school. I showed you this garden in June with all the wild flowers in it, but it has transformed since the Autumn break. Fifth year students from a colleague of mine designed an "Edible Garden". In this garden lots of fruits will grow with some ecological features for specific animals and insects.We hope to see lots of fruits and critters when Spring comes and we can get out into the garden and study there for ecological assignments. It looks lovely already and we have had some visitors in this new garden (Robin and cats from the neighbourhood).

This weather also calls for hot drinks so I am serving a lot of hot cocoa and eikeltjescoffee.

And today we got our new Christmas tree set up.

With some help of Little Man and Little Lady we unfolded our first big (fake) tree and started decorating it. I only used plastic ornaments this year because of lttle fingers and cats that can reach the tree. Hopefully in a couple of years I can use my glass ornaments again! It looks lovely though.

 

And right now I am typing away on the lap top and in the corner of my eye I see all the small lights twinkling in the Christmas tree. I love this time of year!