Update

I haven't been here for a while and one of the reasons was, everything around me seemed to fall apart.
It all started with the van. Last december Robbert & I had been on some rides with new vans coz we could see coming that he one we have had to go. Too old, getting unpredictable and very important; someone wanted to buy it.
BUT, it took us forever to decide which new car we wanted (van vs car, ford vs mercedes vs volkswagen, mini cooper vs porsche, my thoughts were going nowhere).
Then the van itself decided to give us some hints.
Keep in mind that as of half december we constantly have had snow and the average temperature this month has been below zero!! Besides that Robbert had to hand in his leased car, so we definitely needed this one.
First the gear box died.
600 euro (say 900 dollars) and the costs of a rental car.
then the dynamo died. another 600 euro the dealer garage estimated.
No way Jose.
we took it to another garage, but still 400 euro.

The paint of the kitchen drawers is coming down and 3 weeks ago i simply pulled of the front of one of the drawers completely.

Then my phone started acting up.
Weird messages keep popping up and blocking the screen saying i am running out of memory (huh?) and i need to clean the place up. When I try to, it blocks all together.

I hate, hate, hate having to spend time on these ridiculous things.

Sofar we've got the kitchen fairly covered. A guy came over twice, with a new design and a frightening estimate.
Keeping fingers crossed but chances are we've got a new kitchen (with a cooker and 5 pits!, new oven, dishwasher in another place, new fridge and freezer and simply new closests, drawers and sinks) early May.

I also order a new phone online that will hopefully be here in a couple of days and today I am hoping for an estimate on the Ford Transit..

All I need to sort out now, is getting new contacts (hate it that i have to make an appointment for that) and having my hair coloured again (which takes me about 2,5 hrs. As if I have the time).

Still things could be worse I guess.

thumbs up!

Robbert has a blue belt in judo, knows jiu jitsu, did akido and boxing. Tonight at the dinner table Ally rightfully remarked he knows a whole lot of ways to hurt someone.

Of course then she challenged him by strangling him and he counterattacked by the sheer force of his thumb.

He also wanted to demonstrate he could do a counterattack with the force of his chin but that made her pee her pants so we left it at that.

A couple of weeks ago Morten & Timo were asked to do another judo training on sunday (1,5 hr running, 1 hr judo) to qualify for the regional team. Morten was selected (Timo is still doing the training with him) and today their team met some others in Den Haag.
He fougt 3 times and won 2 out of those. Both with ippon so the highest score possible. His whole team did very well and up till now are the team to beat.
So while outside an official weather alarm had been given (because of hard northeastern wind it felt like -15C outside), for the better part of the day we were in a sweaty dojo.

For those of you btw who are not following Rotteram daily photo; Caroline lost her 2nd front tooth over Christmas and is now having a huge gap in her mouth :)