Happy Birthday Mom

Still in Holland

Well, Brian has returned to our house in Tallahassee, but I am still in Holland trying to see family as much as possible in the time that I have. We have been playing many games like Boggle (below) and Thurn & Taxis (second below).



Today we also made olliebollen, a traditional Dutch treat of fried dough with raisins. David and Mom did most of the actual frying, while Rachel and I took Josiah grocery shopping to keep him out of the way.



Overall, it has been a very nice visit. I have a few more days here before I am going south again to see Brian and the ferrets.

Merry Christmas to all

Happy Birthday Eli!

Today is Eli's birthday! We celebrated with a train cake made by his parents. He was quite calm through the cake time, as you can see below.


After cake, Eli opened his presents with the assistance of his older brother Josiah (and additional supervision to keep the assistance in check). Josiah is definitely more interested in present-opening than Eli, but both seemed to enjoy themselves.


Here is Josiah sitting in front of the cake. He has been asking about it for days, so he was really excited to eat some this afternoon.


This birthday celebration brought special guests to visit, including Peter and Anne (see below) and Grandpa and Grandma VanRegenmorter (Rachel's parents).

Christmas cookies

We decorated Christmas cookies yesterday. Josiah decorated many of them, helped by his mom, his dad, Brian, my mom, and me.

The Oath, part 2

Here are a few pictures of Brian taking his oath (mentioned in the previous post). In the first one, he is actually taking the oath. In the second one, he is shaking hands with Justice Wells after the oath. In the last picture, he is holding up his signed oath outside the court before turning it in.

The Oath

Today Brian took the oath to become an official lawyer! He was waiting on the review of his character that the FL bar was doing, which took a long time. He finally got the paperwork on Wednesday and set up the oath-taking for Friday (today).

One of the handy things about working in the court is that there are judges around. So Brian had his boss officiate the oath ceremony. His coworkers and I witnessed the oath. I took pictures of the event. It was a surprisingly long oath with lots of parts, so I had plenty of time to get many shots (photos). Since we are leaving in a few hours, I will not post any of those shots at this time.

Congrats Brian!

Artistic developments

Up until a few weeks ago, we had these three very nice pictures from the Dublin Irish Fest on our wall.


However. early in December we received some first edition artwork from an up and coming artist. We felt obligated to exhibit his work and promptly displayed his latest ultra-modern creations.


Many thanks to Josiah and his agents for these artistic originals.

As you might have guessed already, we got a nice package in the mail from David and Rachel for Sinterklaas. Rex duly inspected its contents for safety before we partook.



The box was also a hit and our Ferret Postal Authorities seized it. For our safety of course.


Thanks, guys!

Congrats Abby!!

One of my dear friends from high school got married this weekend. I was sad to miss it, but it was impossible for me to get away this weekend. She was in my wedding (directly to my left), and now she had her own wedding. I am very excited for her.

Happy December!