Christmas

I realize it's a little late for a Christmas post but I've been too busy/lazy to post anything till now. Anyway, Santa here is a little different to say the least. Here in Belgium we have Sinterklaas instead of Santa Claus. In early November he sails over from Spain with his black-faced helper 'Zwarte Piet.' The children leave their shoes out near the chimney on December 5th then Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet leave the presents over night. Here's the wikipedia entry for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas

We were in Amsterdam with the Loyola students the weekend Sinterklaas arrived so we took the boys to see the parade. It was pretty weird to see all the people in black face. Definitely not something you would see at a parade in Baltimore.


Here's a few pics of the boys goofing around at a giant 'I amsterdam' sign located near the art museums. I think Jesse has a future as the class clown and Jack's going to be the 'cool' guy.

The boys also had some Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet art projects at school.

It snowed just before we left for the States. The Begijnhof had a whole new look with a covering of white.


Our flight to visit family in Lake Tahoe was a little longer than expected. We had a connection in DC which was canceled due to the large snow storm that hit the East coast. They rerouted us to London to catch a flight to LA the next morning. After a night in a hotel near the airport we went to catch our flight the next morning and were told that they had no record of our reservation. By the time we stood in line at the United desk to figure it out the flight had left. Luckily we managed to get standby on a New Zealand Air flight and made it out to LA. The New Zealand service and amenities were much better than our usual United flights, but the down side was that we had already spent 8 hours at the airport waiting to get on a 12 hour flight. We decided to get a room in LA and we made the short hop to Reno the next morning. We were a day late and sick of airports by the end of it but the boys did a great job on all the flights, buses, and airport lines. I guess they earned the right to have two days of presents, the first from Sinterklaas on the 6th and then from Santa Claus and the family on the 25th.

My mom came out to Tahoe so the boys had both grandmas to spoil them and help them build a snowman.

They also had plenty of quality time (i.e., logged plenty of time on the Wii) with their cousins

Cousin Joey with Jack and Jesse during a rare snack break between Wii sessions.

They also tried some skiing and snowboarding. By the end of the week they were both cruising down the hill like the big boys. Here are some videos of them on the hill.


This is Jack and Jesse both coming down together. Jesse decides that the best way to stop is by crashing into me, but he stays on his feet and keeps going down the hill.



This is Jack's first try at snowboarding. Somehow he already knows boarding is 'cooler' than skiing. We also think it might be that his brother knows how to ski now so Jack has to try something different.



At lunch the boys took some time to slide down this hill. Not sure what Jesse was doing here but I thought it was pretty funny.

The flight home went smoothly. We've been back a week but we're still recovering from the 9 hour jet lag.