Thursday was another busy day.  First trying to pack everything!!!  I have found lots of nice things and have been given lots of nice things, so I think I'll be just like Sinter Klaas when I get back!  Wiwik and I both had too much stuff to fit into the suitcases so I researched the best options.  Sea post isn't available any more (that used to be the cheapest option).  To mail a box of 20kg by air is about 106 euro while to take an extra piece of baggage of up to 23kg with us on the plane was 100 euro if we did it at the airport when we checked in and 80 euro if we booked the extra baggage on line.  So that is what we did!  Two extra pieces of baggage under 2 different tickets (for some reason, if the same person wants two extra pieces of baggage the price escalates to 240 euros!  I still had too much, so I phoned John (Oom Roel's son) and Esther (who are coming in January) and asked to use half a suitcase (I left nearly all my winter clothes as it will be summer in Australia... in the end, I had to leave my green and blue bodywarmer, which was a bit difficult as it is the favourite part of my wardrobe for the last few months...)  Don't worry Steve, I haven't been shoppin thaaaaat much, there are also lots of gifts from other relatives!

During the morning, my cousin Frea came with a gift from her and her sister, Irma - a whole set of Dutch cooking books!  I'm telling you Steve and kids, there is a lot of stampot and other dutch recipes (usually involving meat, potatoes and vegies) coming up!!  Lydia also came with her children to say goodbye and they also gave some very nice things for the kids (I'm not saying what they are as the kids might be reading this!)

At 11am Tante Herma came to pick me up to go Almelo.  We had a "gezellig" time walking around the markt, sat down to some delicious patat special and frikanel special..., went and had a look at some of the shops...

One thing I mentioned to Tante Herma was that I noticed lots of grandmothers with children.  Apparently there are more grandmothers than mothers walking around the shops with children because a lot of mothers work.

We went to Oom Henk's house after that to see where he lived.  He has a nice house in Almelo where he lives with his youngest son Gerben (he has six kids with his wife Tante Tiny who passed away a few years ago from cancer).  One of the really nice things to see was an album Oom Henk's kids made for him when their mother and his wife passed away.  Also there were some really nice family pictures on the wall that they had made before their mother passed away.

When we got back, Helma, I and Ramon went shopping for a bit which was really good because I like Helma's taste in clothes and she knows the best shops to go!

We got back to Oma's and then about 2 hours later we went out for dinner with the Botter family (as in Oma, dad and Wiwik, his brothers and their wives and me.  Helma, Arjan and the kids looked after Maddi at Oma's house which was really nice.  Maddi actually played up a little bit that night (she did for Oom Ben too the night we went to Peter's wedding - she must just know something is different, yet she is normally soooo good with new people).  Anyway, we had a delicious dinner at a chinese restaurant in Hardenberg and it was really...."gezellïg!"(as usual).



Tante Herma and I

Tante Geke and I

Afterwards we went back to Oma's place for a bit and had a bit more "gezelligheid"and then it was another late night again:)


Oom Roel and I