Eliot's Travels

This morning I was able to leave Miles at home with Jim while taking Eliot to school. Edith is Eliot's teacher on Fridays. After hanging out awhile in the morning, I went out to run a few errands with Miles in the stroller. We went to the Belgian chocolate store (Leonidas) and to the smaller C1000. Miles fell asleep on the way home, so I left him in the stroller with Jim and headed to pick up Eliot via bicycle.
It was a beautiful sunny day, but still cool. Eliot has been getting an allowance (to help him learn that we can't buy everything we want) and has been saving his money to buy something special. Today, he asked if I could take him to the toy store to get a small model car. He has been wanting the blue and silver Smart car for at least 2 months. We brought along Eliot's "european money holder;" Miles had to bring along his change purse (with 1 and 2 eurocents), just like his big brother. Eliot paid for his car and thought his brother should have the yellow and black one to match. It was so cute, Miles kept handing the salesperson his coins (including British and out-of-circulation Nederlands coins), as she would hand them back to me. I bought Miles' car for him. Then we went to look at another toy store to get some ideas for our Sinterklaas wish list. We walked past the Oude Kerk on our way to the groente markt. With the leaves gone, we could look up and get a good view of the tower. We picked out a nice big wortel (very large carrot; think parsnip) for Sinterklaas' horse and some dried apricots for us before heading home. There was a beautiful sunset tonight. This evening, Eliot started coloring a picture from the newspaper for Sinterklaas. Miles colored and cut paper.
Sinterklaasjournaal
* The inside of the grote Piet huis is gedaan (done) and it looks great - with painted walls, fancy paintings hung, bunk beds in place, and the desk van Sinterklaas assembled.
* The Stoomboot sailed right through the regenboog (rainbow). At first everyone was scared, but then everything went sparkly and everyone became happy. When they had passed through completely, the flag decorations had changed from white to colored like a rainbow. The Piets were relieved that nothing bad happened.
* Rick took a tour of the lighthouse in Middelburg and the operator even let him light it to show Sinterklaas the way. When they were comingdown of the light tower, Rick turned off the light and also switched off the lighthouse. Oh no!

posted by Whitney @ 6:55 AM