Leaves, leaves, leaves... One cannot underestimate the hours of entertainment that piles of leaves can provide.....
Sadly, something that we never experience in Brisbane.
December in Belgium is all about the lead up to Christmas, and not only the traditional christmas day, but on the 6th December they celebrate St Nicholas Day. My kids were fairly impressed that they got 2 christmases in one year!
Our favourite patisserie put on a spectacular display of christmas treats and although I loved this shop, I did dread taking the 4 munchkins in as the sights and smells caused them to go into sugar overload just from the fumes of it all..... Having to choose only one item each was a special form of torture for both them and me.
Before long, the temperatures dropped to zero and below. I was still walking the little two to kindi and back every day. And we were well prepared with hats, gloves and coats. Thankfully it did not rain. Ever. Who complained to me about Belgium being all grey and drizzly? We must have struck an unusual year for get weather! We finally managed to visit our local cathedral.... A beautiful piece of architecture- the Basilique.
I was so proud of my big two for participating in the end of year concert put on by their Solfege (music tuition) class. All in french of course. These are the sort of experiences that will be hard to repeat.
Along with end of year activities come the christmas lights and markets. We made sure to visit as many as we could. It looks a bit cold here...It was! We didn't stay too long...
We did manage to get a ride on the giant ferris wheel, which I am sure complied with zero health and safety regulations. But since this is Belgium, they quite possibly don't have any. It was scarily high and not really enclosed. All of us had a bit of adrenalin going, except the smallest one who completely loved it - crazy dude.
Yes we were higher than the buildings!!
And we didn't just visit the markets during the day but also at night to experience the beautiful christmas lights in the evenings...
We even braved Grand Place on a particularly freezing night and saw the amazing christmas light display.
Fortunately there were glow lights for sale to keep the little ones minds off the very cold weather.....
Some evenings it was so cold that we did not last very long and needed to re-fuel in Haagen Daz.
And finally, one of the highlights of our year... It snowed! The week before we left, we got snow. That lasted on the ground a good couple of days. Snowfights and freezing toes and fingers and we had a couple of hours entertainment for the troops.
Day one of the snow!
It didn't take long to settle- Day 2 of snow
And that was the end..... We left the country a few days later after saying goodbye to a few iconic and special places...
Our last gym session with our usual meal on a Friday night
And it was back to piles of luggage, wayward tired children, and negotiating airport check-ins and family UN-friendly airports.
Again we were THAT family.....
The next 6 months have been more than hectic, babies, commuting between countries for work, renovating our house and moving countries (AGAIN!) which would maybe explain why its taken almost a year to be able to have time to sit down and record this last part of our journey.
Will this be the end of the Ponky adventures? Possibly for a while, but I suspect there will always be something exciting just around the corner.
