Christmas Slackers

We slacked off in November and are late with this month’s update. Although we do have a legitimate excuse for this month – WE ALL GOT SICK! In November we were extremely busy traveling and studying.

We traveled to Detroit for Thankgiving to take Bimmy’s dreaded board exam and we were also able to hang out with Mike, Sarah, Roo, Alisa, and company so it was a two-fer. Bim was in full freak-out mode. Jay’s favorite memory (great fodder for future teasing) was the night before the exam when Bim tried the last batch of practice tests and performed dismally. She kept asking Jay (only half-kidding) if he’d still love her if she didn’t pass the exam. Those who know Bim well should find this story pretty funny. Considering the 3 months of study, lousy mom-cooked dinners, and pathetic social calendar, not to mention the price of plane tickets, the exorbitant cost of the exam, Bim still maintains that the question was a fair one.

She doomed and gloomed all the way to the testing center and of course passed. For those that didn’t hear, the printer at the center broke down the morning of her exam. So, only the edges of the printout were readable. The sheet said, “Congratulations, you have…” Mike kept teasing Bim that the sentence concluded with “…completed the test.” However, Bim was confident that she passed because of the “Congratulations” and because the exam ended up being much easier than the practice tests from the night before.

We received the official scores in the mail a couple weeks later, and Bim performed just fine… although I’m sure some of you can guess what she said when she saw that she earned less than a perfect score. It’s probably okay that Bim pushes herself to do better, but Jay thinks (rightfully so) that she is ridiculous sometimes. So, hooray! Bim is now officially a Board Certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and a heck of a wife and mom.

During December we decompressed from studying and prepared for the holidays. We got our Christmas tree up a full 2 weeks before Christmas, and (if all goes well) we should have it down by the end of January. (This is a big improvement compared to last year.) Shortly after returning from Detroit, we learned that our church congregation (the international, English-speaking ward) would be dissolved at the end of 2008. Now we’ll attend services in the Brussels First Ward – with folks who speak French. We look forward to the challenges that a new group of people will bring. Struggling with communication will definitely be humbling and will hopefully bring us closer together. We will miss the other half of our old congregation that will go to the Brussels Second Ward in downtown Brussels.

We went on a festive trip to Bruges and went to an Ice Festival (As a sidenote, the lady on the internet site is scary! But she wasn’t there – whew!). It turned out to be very cool (in more ways than one) - a whole ice maze filled with various ice sculptures with a Harry-Potteresque/ wizarding theme. A giant ice slide ended the maze so Jay and James went down it – James liked it since his bum didn’t have to touch the ice.

Christmas Day was fun. We opened lots of toys (James was spoiled), played Wii Super Mario Cart, and ate Christmas dinner with our neighbors and friends (the Harrisons).

We celebrated New Years in Vienna, Austria. We were there for 4 days, but struggled with illness and frigid weather the whole time. Fortunately, the company was great. We stayed with some friends, the Petersens, who went with us to Italy last summer.

Since temperatures turned out to be -4 Celsius, we didn’t do much besides walk around downtown Vienna. All of Europe is experiencing very cold weather right now and we are not used to it…especially not James. We also visited a Hapsburg Palace, Schoenbrunn that turned out to be very lovely and interesting. The cool thing about Vienna (besides that fact that everything is called “Wiener”) is that they have no restrictions on fireworks – it’s like the one thing Austrian’s go nuts over. So everyone buys big fireworks (not like 4th of July Home fireworks – BETTER) that shoot up in the air. The embassy hosted a party in a building downtown, so we went and welcomed the New Year with tons of fireworks 360 degrees around. It was cool.

Just a few words about James… He has been weaned since mid-December…yay! He weighs almost 22 pounds now, has a cute protuberant toddler belly, and is busy and talkative. We don’t understand much of Buster’s babble. The only understandable words so far are “hi”, “mama”, “more”, “uh-oh”, “arf-arf” (which means doggy), and an occasional “aaa duh” (all done) and “dink” (drink). James has also learned some sign language words which he uses sporadically (milk, drink, all done, airplane). He is a speedy walker and gets into trouble very quickly when his mom has her back turned. Fortunate for him, James has a cute impish grin and gives really great hugs, so we can’t help but forgive him. He has more teeth (eight) and sports what Jay calls a white-blonde baby mullet. Buster liked Christmas, especially undecorating the tree and tearing open wrapping paper.

Buster has been a trouper. We have schlepped him all over during the past 3 months and we are so grateful that he is a pleasant travel companion. During our most recent visit to Vienna, we were all congested and miserable on the flight back to Belgium. James was starting to develop a fever. Even so, his parents probably fussed more than he did.

We hope you have a Happy and Prosperous New Year. Come visit us in 2009!

California (and Utah) Here We Come

Old Man Winter approaches with his trademark nip-in-the-air…but we didn’t write to talk about the weather. So, we were boring last month, even Jay’s birthday was pretty low-key (though we did have awesome cake made out of chocolate). If you’re still looking for someone to vote for in the upcoming presidential election, Jay is now eligible.

For us, October involved getting ready to go to the U.S., and then being in the U.S., and then recovering from the trip to the U.S. As you can see we’re pretty patriotic in that the U.S. occupies most of our lives and we don’t even live there. We had a great time during our visit – it was really nice to see everybody and to meet lil’ Bennett for the first time. James enjoyed spending time with family and meeting all his cousins. Grandpa Biddulph spoiled James with all-he-could-eat berries which ended up spoiling his shorts but (fortunately for Grandpa Stu) we were the ones who had to deal with that. Jay got a chance to hang out with Matt and Dan on Strawberry Reservoir and (for those that haven’t heard already) Jay also experienced the colder side of Strawberry by accidentally falling in. What kind of lake trip is complete unless someone ends up soaked?

Since returning from Utah James has started to prefer walking to crawling. He’s not very good at it though and looks pretty much drunk all the time. Even though we joke about beating him, all those forehead and shin bruises are from his walking accidents.

We dressed James up in the obligatory Halloween costume this year – a purple dragon – and used him to get candy for his parents at the “Trunk or Treat” hosted by the U.S. Army Garrison. As you’ve seen in videos of his early days, James can produce some really great ROARS! So, we were a little surprised and dismayed when our menacing dragon ignored parental prompts to roar and ended up waving his index finger and babbling “scidley, skidley, scadily” to the treat givers. Fortunately, they all thought he was adorable and gave him candy anyway. James’ “conversation” sounded really important. I’m sure a babble translator would explain that he was expounding on something very profound about the finer points of Halloween celebration and lore but since we mock what we do not understand, we just laughed at him.

Jay has started biking to work (whenever he feels green and liberal or whenever Bimmy needs the car). He’s slowing getting better at it and didn’t have to walk his bike up the hill last time he rode to work. Bimmy’s friend Craig would be proud. Apart from our vacation, Bimmy mostly studied in October for her PNP Board Exam. She’ll take the actual test while we are visiting the Mike and Roo Peterson families in Detroit during “U.S. Tour Take-Two” over Thanksgiving.

Bye Bye Summer

The weather has turned cool, so it seems that summer in Belgium is pretty much over. Hopefully, we will be spared the rain and gloom for a while longer yet. We had a really enjoyable August this year. It’s difficult to believe that we’ve been in Belgium for a whole year now, with only two more to go. Without the sunshine, the summer would have been pretty depressing because of the mass exodus. Many of our friends left town on holiday and were gone nearly the entire summer. Then there are the families that moved from Belgium in July and August: both sets of neighbors, the Thains, the Scherbels, the Pehrsons, the Williams, the Spauldings, the Wingeters, the Sauers, and the Simons, to name a few. We really enjoyed getting to know these families and will miss them greatly. The fortunate thing about working for the foreign service is that you tend to run into people again.
Even though the past couple of months have been a little lonely (especially at church), things are looking up. Folks have returned from vacation and we have great people moving into the neighborhood.

Our last entry was a little devoid of Buster news, so we’ll try to get you back up to speed.James is 10 months old now and has grown up quite a bit. He has a little more white-blond hair and is nearly 19 pounds. Emily laments that he’s growing up too fast. His four front teeth are almost all grown in. His top lateral incisors are emerging too. James is cruising around furniture and sometimes we catch him standing on his own for a few seconds. He is a really speedy crawler, but we think he may give it up for walking sometime soon. James is very silly and (unless he is in front of a camera) is usually smiley. He’s a happy boy and a very curious little nut who loves to touch everything (regardless of whether or not he should). Months 8 through 10 have been especially enjoyable so far. Dan/Charone and Sam/Deborah…hope you are looking forward to a lot of fun.

James’ latest trick is to crawl around carrying the belt to Emily’s robe (or some other similarly-shaped piece of fabric). He rubs the belt on a piece of furniture or window and then moves along to other items in the room. The only thing we can figure is that he is mimicking Emily, since he often sees her cleaning up the house. James’ “cleaning” efforts are really funny to watch because he really concentrates and is very diligent about his “work”.

A few days ago, Emily introduced him to one of those back massagers made of wood with a handle and rollers on the end. James loves it. He drives it around on the carpet, shakes it in the air, and then drives it around some more. James also enjoys climbing on top of stools, riding toys, and the dishwasher door. It’s obvious that he’s related to Anders. James has started singing in Church during the hymns and squealing at/chasing one of the little baby girls in our congregation. We had hoped for a weird kid to provide us with hours of entertainment and it looks like we got our wish.

The last weekend in August, we returned to Paris and spent a couple of days just hanging out. We went to two art museums, (for those that know Paris) the Orangerie and the Museé d’Orsay. Both Museums have lots of impressionist and turn of the century paintings featuring cubism and pointillism. Orsay also has a bunch of sculptures and one of Jay’s favorites “The Gates of Hell” by Auguste Rodin. Walking through the museum, Jay considered how strange it is who society chooses to acknowledge as contributors to humanity: writers, painters, sculptors, sometimes architects, actors, singers, yada-yada- yada. Hardly any thought is given to the efforts of common workers which resulted in the creation of such a fantastic city and made possible the lives that these artists enjoyed. During our visit, we spent time walking around enjoying Paris in the summertime. We also met up with Suzannah Bingham who has been living in Paris for 3 years and has nearly completed a masters degree in French history. Of course, we couldn’t resist indulging in a delicious French meal. Our deepest respects go to the French peasants who built such a lovely city and created such delicious cuisine.

Rar!

The much awaited - over hyped video of Buster Raring.

Enjoy!

O’er the Ramparts We Watch

To honor our National Anthem this July we made it a point to visit lots of places with ramparts. While Old Glory wasn't ever gallantly streaming we still enjoyed watching o'er the ramparts. Being overseas makes us appreciate the United States more than you could understand- unless you have lived overseas. The trick is not to let working for the government spoil the added appreciation.

So we filled July with lots of day / overnight trips. We went to Flanders fields in Ypres first. Flanders is the northern part of Belgium and the famous WWI poem by John McCrae was written there. (We've included the poem below because it is a beautiful piece… and yes, red and orange poppies really do grow wild all over Belgium.) Ypres hosted one of the bloodiest fronts during "The Great War." The British, with the help of various other nations, withstood the Germans in Ypres and kept them from advancing to England. Both sides lost a total of around 500,000 men only to advance the front 8 miles (in favor of the British of course). The town of Ypres pretty much got flattened by the Germans so everything in the town is rebuilt. There are memorials and gravesites everywhere. We even found an F. Biddulph on one of the memorial walls.

It is often said that the United States saved Europe's bacon in both World Wars but by the time the United States decided to join the trench warfare, the British and their allies had beat the Germans down enough for the U.S. addition to tip them over the top. There is a great museum in Ypres – one of the eeriest parts is an exhibit of gas masks – World War I marked the beginning of chemical warfare. Also, the museum played recordings of air raid sirens and falling bombs. James hated that part. It was a very interesting afternoon but also quite somber to consider the many lives lost in the defense of freedom.

Bimmy wanted to include this poem

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

—John McCrae

To celebrate the 4th of July we enjoyed a traditional barbeque with our neighbors and then drove to Luxembourg the next day. Luxembourg City is built on the ruins of a great fortress. The fortress was built on top of and around the high, stony "Bock promontory". The Bock Casemates are a series of tunnels, rooms, and underground defensive passageways which were carved directly into the rock. The casemates expanded the fortifications and useable space of the fortress and grew to a 14 mile-long network by 1644, with some passages as deep as 131 feet. This earned Luxemburg the title of "Gibraltar of the North". Only a fraction of the tunnels remain open, but it is a fun place to explore. We hiked around the part of the casemates that were reported to be more baby-friendly. Otherwise we would have scraped off what little hair Buster has on the roof of the caves. While walking around Luxembourg City we found it to be one of the cleanest cities that we've visited so far in Europe. General Patton is buried just outside of Luxembourg City but unfortunately, we didn't have time to visit the cemetery. In keeping with our theme for the month, it is important to note that remaining portions of the Luxembourg fortress feature lots of ramparts.

The next day we visited the Ardennes region of Luxembourg which is also called the Valley of the Seven Castles. We visited two (which were reported to be the coolest) of the seven – it's a young boy's medieval paradise. The area is beautiful with lots of hills and streams and is very green. This area is near the site of the Battle of the Bulge.>

The Grand Duke of Luxembourg restored Vianden, the first castle we visited. We thought it was pretty cool – with suits of armor, a bedroom with large, very old tapestries and of course ramparts. The next castle we visited, Bourscheid, hasn't been restored and sat mostly in ruins. They have restored the tower portion, complete with ramparts, so that folks can get a good view of the area. James enjoyed all the castles and was a great sport during our wanderings.
We finished our journey with a visit to a quaint little town called Esch-sur-Sure which means "the town of Esch on the river Sure" but the pronunciation of the name reminds us a lot of Bob Loblaw (one of our favorite characters on Arrested Development- see Bob Loblaw's Law Blog).

Lastly, to support the troops Gary Sinise formed a band called The Lieutenant Dan Band. During July, he visited NATO and Jay got his Forest Gump DVD autographed ("To Buster") and posed for a picture with him. You'll notice that it's a bit Gumpesque in that it looks like Jay snuck into the picture. You'll be glad to know that Gary Sinise is a pretty cool guy and travels the world to play for the troops so he can do his part to support them. We're pretty sure that meeting him is way cooler than going backstage to meet the gassy old farts from Air Supply – Roo?

Beaker sings Ode to Joy

Not a video of Buster roaring - but that will come soon. In the mean time enjoy this video. Also be sure to check out the "I drink Your Milkshake" video on the right bar.

June - Star Wars & Lake Como Baby!

So it appears that we had to come to Belgium to experience a Star Wars exhibition. That’s how we started out June. We went with some State Department friends Jay knew in Lagos, Nigeria – we all have kids within a year of each other. We paid our respects to the Jedi Master Yoda and tried to begin the Star Wars indoctrination of James - at least we just want to make sure he knows the ways of the force and also understands that Jar Jar is lame. June, the month of our much anticipated trip to Lake Como in Italy, turned out to be much better than we expected – and we had pretty high expectations. It’s like Ferris Bueller said, “It’s so choice, if you have the means I highly recommend picking one up.” Ok, so you can’t really pick up a Lake Como but you get the point.

The pictures really don’t do it justice. It’s dotted with quaint little towns that have lovely villas over which you could easily break the 10th commandment. So back to Star Wars, much of the Nabu shots were at Lake Como – that’s where Amidala and Anakin picnicked, married, and delivered some of the most romantic and profound (LAME) lines of the whole series. Click on the Lake Como slide show on the right if you want to see more than what we included here.

We also spent one day in Milan and one day in Verona. Milan has The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci which we got to see, very cool, spiritual, and amazing that it’s lasted all these years. In case you were wondering, John the Beloved does look a bit feminine but so did one of the other apostles – read the Da Vinci Code for details on this one.

So what did James like about the trip? It’s easily the gelato -- preferably mint. He didn’t care that his parents bought him a really cool backpack carrier he just wanted the gelato. I think his dad made an addict out of him. We are also glad to report that he only blew his pants out once, at the apartment where we were staying in Bellagio. Lots of random Italian ladies would come up to him and say, "Bello, bellisimo!"

James has aspirations to join the military – he’s commando crawling everywhere and he’s very speedy at it.


We suspect that he’ll grow up to do something involving electrical cords because we can’t keep him away from them. He held still long enough for Emily to confirm that he knows how to sit. He also likes to roar and will sometimes do it for hours.

May - Up to no good

We had an eventful month in May. We started it out with a visit to a Belgian Blue-bell forest. It’s a spectacular little forest just outside of Brussels with flowering plants that blossom every spring. We spent an hour hiking around and enjoying the blanket of purple-blue covering the ground. Jay only sneezed once or twice and James enjoyed looking around.

While Jay labored hard to save the free world, Emily went on several outings with a group of women from our ward. She visited a tapestry factory outlet just over the border in France. It definitely proved to be tapesterific. Em bought a couple of items but mostly wandered around wondering how the stuff was made. Fortunately, she happened upon the factory’s loom museum where a man showed the ladies how the machines worked. It was really amazing but also very loud…Buster didn’t like that part.

Emily also visited the royal gardens Leopold II built during his reign. He started out bringing plants from his personal colony in Africa and needed a place to house them. The gardens and greenhouses grew from there and are truly spectacular. The greenhouses are mostly linked and the complex is huge and covers acres of land.

Em and Buster also visited an abandoned castle (Beersel). Apparently Victor Hugo stayed there at one time and did some writing…although not any of his famous pieces. Em and Buster also visited a chocolate factory with an outlet. Em reports that the place smells awesome! Three kilos of chocolate costs 30 Euros. Any takers?

Buster James keeps growing. He’s got a little snaggle-tooth breaking through his lower gum. So far, he’s not too grumpy about it. Buster still doesn’t sit unassisted, but maybe it’s because he just gets bored with sitting. He has started to get up on his hands and knees and dive for stuff… so we don’t think it will be long before he’s crawling. Buster has a funny personality and makes really funny faces. The problem is that whenever we get a camera out to catch them he goes stone-serious. Just before bed time he giggles and laughs like a crazy person. It really makes the exploding poopie diapers worth it. You’ll be glad to know that with the onset of solid food something else becomes more solid…well you get the picture. Of course, nearly all of you have experienced this already and the others will have the opportunity to very soon.

Here's a video of him jumping like a fool.

Biker Dude

We stopped by our neighbor's house the other day and she had us put Buster on their bike. He looks so natural on it. He'll never do this again - at least till he's 18 but hopefully all the public service commercials we get on the Armed Forces Network TV will teach him to ride safely.

March & April 2008 - Namur, Keukenhof, and Delft

Since we didn’t write last month, we’ll try to summarize both March and April.

We didn’t do much in March except that Jay’s sister came to visit us. So we did a tour guide of Brussels, Bruges, and Antwerp. Antwerp is known for fabulous shopping, the diamond district, and Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish artist known for paintings of scantily-clad, chubby folks). Heather brought along Becky Bell, a friend from law school. For those that don’t know the history of Bim and Jay… it all started at Becky Bell’s place. When a small group of us went to visit Heather in Boston, Becky graciously let us stay at her apartment. It was at Becky Bell’s house that Jay declared his love for Bim and the rest is history.

In April, we took a trip with some friends to Namur, which is a major city in southern Belgium. It is a nice town with some strategic advantage because it has a fortified citadel. This means that it has been conquered and reconquered about 50 times during various military skirmishes over the centuries.

We also took a trip to Keukenhof Gardens in Holland. It’s the most photographed place in the world according to their website. It also claims to be the world’s largest flower garden with seven million bulbs planted annually. It really did live up to our expectations. We saw a ton of flowers. Some tulips were no bigger than Bim’s finger and some were the size of her head. The gardens were only partially-bloomed (some tulips weren’t up yet) but it really did enchant and amaze us. “Nowhere else in the world are the flowers and colors of spring as glorious as at Keukenhof.” (We should be Keukenhof spokespersons, huh!)

The same day we visited Delft, birthplace of the famous blue and white pottery. We learned that most of the blue and white stuff you see at the stores is fake because the name Delft isn’t trademarked. The real, hand-painted pottery is only produced at three factories in Delft. The famous Flemish painter Vermeer (Girl with a Pearl Earring) comes from Delft. Emily got very excited when we discovered that VanLeeuwenhoek also comes from Delft. The doctors of the family may recognize his name as the father of microbiology; he invented the microscope.

James has grown a bit (nearly 14 pounds now). He’s rolling over and squirming around. We’re trying to get him to sit up but he loves to slouch. He’s got more hair on his head but it’s so light you can barely see it. He loves to jump in his jumper chair and is squealing a lot now. Also, he likes to grab people’s faces.

February 2008 - Mike & Sarah Visit

We are kind of silly and enjoy the small things in life. We spent February first anticipating the arrival of Mike and Sarah. We cleaned, organized our crap, ordered bedding, and other such stuff so that Mike and Sarah would be comfortable during their visit. Don’t worry Mom and Dad, we did the same for you when you came, we were just a little distracted with the impending birth. So, then Mike and Sarah arrived and we did a marathon tourist schedule…more on that later. Then, we spent the rest of February being sad (ok a little dramatic) that our visitors left. If you don’t glean anything from the above try to understand that we miss our families a lot and everyone is welcome to come visit.

So the tourism marathon consisted of a visit to downtown Brussels which included the Grand Place (pronounced Graand Platz) and eating mussels at Chez Leon. We also went to a Chocolate Museum that included a demonstration of how to make chocolates. The guy made it look so easy. Now we just need to figure out how to make that delicious raspberry paste that See’s Candies makes.

We then went to Paris and visited the following in two days: Versailles – the Palace where Louis XIV lived in splendor, the Louvre Museum, The Sainte Chapelle – the oldest cathedral in Paris, Notre Dame, The Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe. And we managed to eat a delicious French meal complete with foi gras, and oysters. Paris is a very charming city and we only scratched the surface. The next few days included In Brugge – I think there’s a movie out with the same title, Lueven just 10 miles down the road from our house, and Monschau which is in Deutschland just over the border – it’s been a tourist town for 1000 years.

We have already started a list of things we can tell Buster’s girlfriends to embarrass him. The latest thing on the list is that he blew out his pants at the top of the Eiffel Tower; so we had to strip him down to his flagrante delecto, ooh la la!

Buster James Smirking at us

Bim, Jay and Buster in The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles

Castle in Monschau Germany

Buster video

Here's James laughing.


He's starting to figure out how to use his hands - he mostly stuffs them in his mouth and chokes. We like to call it his baby-bulemia phase. I guess it's because I tell him he's getting fat and pinch his cheeks. We had a great video of him in his bouncy chair but it's 99meg so Jay has to pull out some video editing software and see if I can get it smaller.

James' blessing day