Happy Birthday Elias!!

WOW - the celebrating days are over.

I think we overdid it a bit - we had 3 birthday parties this year (as opposed to ONLY 2 in the US :-)

1) A party together with a classmate (who was celebrating his birthday in the same week) in The Nekker (Mechelen). It was a lot of fun, playing in an indoor playground and we even went to the outside playground cause the weather was so great (but it was so tough keeping a tab on all the kids that we drove them back inside after a while.
Almost all kids made it to this party - surprisingly because we were very late with sending the invitations (because of the chicken pox saga).

2) On his actual birthday we had kids over from all our friends. A big group (12 in total) which caused small accidents on the trampoline (they either don't want to jump, or all jump at the same time).

3) And of course a party for the relatives. We decided to have only one party for both Wim and my relatives, and it went great :)
Unfortunately Elias wasn't feeling so good by the end of the day because of tummy pains (to be continued).

Elias has the chicken pox

A week after a playdate with a friend, the mom called me and told me one of her kids had the chicken pox, so we should watch our kids.

And yes, sure enough, a week ago, Elias had two bumps on his face. But they looked nothing like the chicken pox, more like mosquito bites.
Then yesterday after school, he suddenly had more red dots, itching like crazy.

So this morning at 7:45 I went to the doctor with Elias (don't you love the hours here in Belgium) but he was just very confused. He thought it were insect bites as well. After much persuasion, he continued looking at every single one dot, until he found one that had a liquid inside, a sure sign of the chicken pox.
The reason why he had such a hard time diagnosing it was because Elias has had a vaccination for it, unheard of here in Belgium.

Here in Belgium most kids get the chicken pox in first kindergarten (age=2.5) when they start school, so Mendel can continue going to school because the chance she is spreading it is very small (since they all have gotten it).
Elias however should just stay home for the rest of this week (instead of the normal 10 days) because he has a mild version (because of the vaccination).

I have two new best friends.

Not just any friends ... friends that I've wanted since I was about 16.

For those who are still clueless... check out the following link:

Dr. Erwin Lemmens Website

Looking forward to summer now - if summer ever happens in this cold country (did I mention it snowed the day after Easter - kids liked it though)

More than a month later... (work-wise)

Time flies when I'm at work.

I've learned so many new things and am now putting them to the test.

I'm still struggling - plain Java coding is a lot simpler and straight forward - but I've created a few simple web pages (with lots of copy and pasting from others).

The 4 colleagues that work on the same project that I do turned out to be a lot less boring than I originally thought.

I really should NOT rely on my first impressions!!

As far as the project goes - it's very different to work on a product for a single customer, and if this customer is the Flemish Government, even more so. Oh, our end users will be prison workers, people who guide prisoners while they are behind bars.

Very different than an ACD server :-)

How to loose your teeth really fast

This morning when Elias just woke up, he asked Wim for a clean handkerchief cause he was going to pull out a new loose tooth.
It's the third loose tooth, he already pulled out two of them.
The first one was hard labor - weeks of wiggling and being afraid of it falling out.
The second one was a lot easier - go to the bathroom and pull out that wiggly thing.
This third one is .... well, different.
He apparently was trying for a while and came back to our bathroom complaining that he couldn't get it out, that it was bleeding a bit and that we should pull it out for him.
No problem ... Wim took the handkerchief and tried to pull.... only to realize .... it wasn't even very loose.
Ok, if you really tried you could get it to wiggle a bit! WAY too soon to be pulling this one out.
Elias was very disappointed and asked for a little rope to pull it out (which we didn't give of course - trying to explain that tooth wasn't yet ready to be pulled).

We are now watching him carefully - making sure he doesn't get a hold of a hammer or so ;-)

The Tooth Fairy Takes An Inflation Hit

Summary of first week back at work

I survived my first week at kZen (part of foresee.be, part of cronos.be).

It was boring in the sense that I spent entire days reading eBooks. I'm learning about the Spring framework. Will soon learn more about Hibernate framework and JSF.

Since I have not done any web development before, I am learning so many new things, more than in the last 7 years at Cisco (sad actually). It's quite exciting...

The "people" seem to open up a bit. Still quite 'nerdy' but at least one of the guys (that I hadn't met before) brings a bit of life to the group.

They probably think I'm a very quiet girl as well....

Looks can deceive ;-)

First experience with an Indian restaurant in Belgium

This Saturday we went to an Indian restaurant (Himalaya) - the first time since we are in Belgium.

I found it on the web, it looked cozy, I made a reservation.

When we got there, the entire restaurant was very full, so it must be good, no?

We ordered:
- sweet lassi
- rum coke (this, they didn't understand - rum AND coke???)
- glas of red wine (which never showed up, except on the bill)
- vegetable pokora (shouldn't it be pakora - and no - it was nothing like in the States, more like a vegetable rosti, very greasy and just not Indian tasting whatsoever)
- Vegetable Mixed Vindaloo (a spicy dish which was good, but again, I missed the Indian taste but maybe this is a Nepalese dish)
- Chicken korma (just chicken in a coconut sauce, no carrots or peas, and very very sweet)

Can you tell we were disappointed?

Not giving up though - we'll just have to try another restaurant next time.