Going Swimming

The last couple of weeks has been fairly warm in Brussels (80's- hot for here!) On Friday, July 2nd, it reached the 90's, and Isaiah and I were smoking hot hanging out in our apartment without air conditioning. I really wanted to go buy Isaiah a little baby pool to put on our balcony, but riding a tram for 20 minutes, walking for 45 minutes and lugging a pool all the way back in the 90 degree heat didn't sound too appealing. So, we got creative! I found a Rubbermaid bin that held all my craft things, emptied it out and filled it with water. Carrying the water-filled tub from the kitchen sink to the balcony only resulted in minor damage to Luna and our wood floor, in the form of small rain showers. Isaiah got to wear his swimsuit from Grandma Smidt for the first time! I have to admit that I didn't have a water diaper, so Isaiah went "Commando."

Getting some pics before jumping in the water!

"hmmm, what is this fun string??"

Splish, Splash!!

Figuring out how this fun water toy works...

Whoops! Tower Tumble!

The Tango

I put on some Tango music while cleaning up the kitchen and started dancing and Isaiah was lovin' it!

Peek-A-Boo laughs

hahah! I caught Isaiah having a good time playing peek-a-boo with me :)

Villers Abbey

A couple of weeks ago our church family took an outing to Villers Abbey just outside of Brussels. It was a wonderful afternoon of picnicking, strolling, and exploring. The Abbey was founded in 1146, but most of the remains that can be seen today date back to the 13th century; the Abbey changed locations several times before that. In its "Golden Age" in the 13th century there were as many as 100 monks and 300 lay men that resided throughout the Abbey's 25,000 acres. I was very surprised by the vastness of the Abbey- I had envisioned seeing ruins of a small church, but was amazed at the Abbey's size!

Debbie, Becca & Jason eating typical Belgian sandwiches : Nutella & bread....If you don't know what Nutella is, it is basically chocolate hazelnut sauce...delicious!

Becca & Isaiah

Isaiah's friend, Caleb (He is the pastor's son)

The roof of the Cathedral

I forgot a sun hat for Isaiah and it was fairly hot & sunny, so we improvised!

The monk's refectory (dorms, basically); constructed in the 13th century.

The Abbot's gardens with fountains, terraces and flower beds.

Check out the look on Isaiah's face! I guess he doesn't like to eat flowers...

The hall dividing the library, chapter house and the cloister (a big courtyard area)

The cloister

The Church; construction began in 1197 and finished in 1267. It is 100 yards long with nave vaults reaching up to 70 ft.

Taking a little break to eat

Clapping!

Isaiah figured out how to clap this morning! O, so many new things every day!!

Luxembourgh City

We are trying to use our Saturdays to go to places that are within a 2 hour driving distance from Brussels, so a few weeks ago we decided to visit Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. It is so amazing that we can drive 2 hours and be in another country! Luxembourg is a tiny country, only about 100 square miles, but rather rich- it has the highest Gross Domestic Product per capita in the world! The main attraction is the old city walls and several amazing fortresses scattered around the city. It was a beautiful day, perfect for walking around the old wall.

Tons of building were carved into the walls of the city.

Sweet winding staircase into the valley that separate the old and new city.

This reminded me of the trees in the third Lord of the Rings books/movies- awesome! Also, see how tall the walls are?? There are little tiny people walking on the bottom left and that pathway was only half the distance down the total wall.

There happened to be a sweet flee market going on the day that we were there. I was sorely tempted to buy the old Gramaphone...

I was in charge of reading the map and figuring out how to get places- believe it or not, I usually beg Ben for this job when we travel. I love knowing where I am at on the map and then finding my way around to different places. This time I was supposed to be getting us to the path at the bottom of the wall when we stumbled across this old, chained up building filled with statues...It was very weird. It was like a statue graveyard behind bars.... And, by the way, I did get us to the path we were looking for- we just took the scenic route.

Climbing a ridiculously sleep hill...

Amazing view of the city in the valley

Ben under one of the many bridges.

Smelling the BEAUTIFUL flowing trees!

Here you can get an idea of how tall the city fortress walls were- VERY! Ben and I had to take turns scaling this enormous hill to get this picture. After Ben climbed it, he dared me to do it (thinking that I couldn't) and I smoked his time....Booyah...of course I wasn't carrying a 50lb hiking pack, but Ben needed something to handicap him anyway. Going down was actually much worse than going up because it was almost vertical part of the way- I almost fell a lot...really the whole way down.

We found a field of daffodils and decided to take some pictures of Isaiah _ sorry there are so many, I just couldn't choose!

Isaiah next to his future car...

Breakfast

Isaiah loves getting up in the morning and eating breakfast, so I thought I'd give you a little video of the big man working on some talking and breakfast :)