Christmas Traditions

Pakjes is one of our funnest Brink traditions and this year was no exception! Thanks all!

Grand-daughters day making Christmas baskets or wreaths has also become somewhat of a tradition here. This year we had 3 new participants but missed the oldest (Lizzi).
As usual they did a great job!

A couple guys snuck in to cheer/comment and gawk in admiration ;)

Here's close-ups of the lovely girls and their peices:

Betty and kids came for Maurice's milestone birthday the night before and were able to stay til Saturday so as to join in also of our Church Christmas program.

fun in the leaves

These are a few pictures of our leaf house and its residents, enjoyed on one of those very warm days in October. We eventually expanded the house and `built` a barn and restaurant as well. It afforded many hours and days of fun, especially when Joel and Tim (John`s sister`s boys) came over.

There were bathrooms, bedrooms, a kitchen and living room, and even beds, tables, and couches.

Adult Creations

Kids' presents

Everybody once again displayed incredibly great talent in their gift wrapping and poem writing, including the children. This is only a small sample of the many beautiful works of art.

And Anneke amazed us with the beautiful scrapbook she made for Sarah.

Pakjes!!

All the kids had great fun dressing up and goofing around together.

What are they so excited about?

A gingerbread house!

(Which they promptly and completely devoured.)

Our Dogs

Memories of Thanksgiving

"Now thank we all our God,

With heart and hands and voices..."

Thanksgiving weekend was a special time again with Betty & John and kids over for the weekend, with my friend Emebet joining us for a couple days as well.

"Who wondrous things has done..."

"and blessed us on our way With countless gifts of love"

What a grand full-scale turkey dinner we enjoyed - courtesy of Mom, our excellent cook with the contributions of Betty's garden produce and delicious baking.

Thanks be to our heavenly Father who provides such abundance of blessings to enjoy, and especially for giving us family and friends.

On Monday, we were joined by the rest of the family (except M&R who were with her family, and Chris & Heidi who were at the Creation Museum!).

We enjoyed a simple meal of a good ol' Dutch peasoup and buns, went for the customary hike, and finished with singing.
Joanna loves her Uncle Maurice, & even fell asleep on his back.

As people were beginning to leave, I suddenly remembered that I had meant to ask the guys to put the cabinet back up on the bathroom wall since Dad had a sore back. Graciously, even though they wanted to get going, Ralph & Maurice stayed to put it up and their whole families were richly rewarded for that act of service done at an inconvenient time because as they were were doing that, the most exciting event of the day happened:


They not only let us pet them, but also lead and give rides!
What a fun ending to a special day! (photos courtesy of Sharon - thanks!)

All praise and thanks to God The Father now be given,

The Son, and Him who reigns With them in highest heaven,

The one eternal God, Whom earth and heaven adore;

For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

Our trip to BC

This is extremely late, but I thought I'd attempt to get a couple pictures at least from our trip to BC. We thank God for the opportunity we had to see a bit of that beautiful country!

Our gracious hosts, Jack & Corrine Hummelman, and his brother & wife, took us for a trip to Mt. Whistler, and we even enjoyed some amazing rides on different gondolas and a ski lift up to the very top.

Here I am at the top of the world, with my own miniature version of the 2010 Olympics symbol (I left my mark there).

And John & I even sat on the real one for pictures. :)

The next couple are from White Rock, at the coast of the Pacific pretty much.