Belgium and Amsterdam

After the meet, we took a little vacation and went to Brugge, Belgium and Amsterdam. We loved the Christmas Markets, beautiful buildings, and history. One of our favorite things was seeing the Van Leeuwen name plastered everywhere.

Check out the sign on this car dealership. Our name is not so different anymore, huh Van Leeuwens?



We loved the windmills, wooden shoes, and delft blue china in every shop. Boy, we Dutchmen/women sure know how to make a good doughnut, too. Two of our favorite places to visit were the Anne Frank museum and the Reijks Museum. After going to the concentration camp in Germany, the Anne Frank house really tied it all together for us. And who can say no to Rembrandt? We are now back in Spain and the only way to get rid of the home sickness is to go on more trips. Join us again when we play "Where in the world is the Casperson Family?"

Samantha Swimming

On December 1st, our family attended Samantha's swim meet in SHAPE Belgium. She beat her best time in free style by 15 seconds. She is such a cutie.

Barcelona

Over Thanksgiving weekend we took a trip to Barcelona. We enjoyed eating at the Hard Rock Cafe and walking up and down La Rambla. We could see the Sagrada Familia from our appartment. The kids' favorite part was riding the metro.

Can you believe it? Joseph just turned five years old. We celebrated by having cupcakes at school (shown left), having a big BBQ/birthday party with his friends, and having a small family party. He thought his birthday was a week long. Soon after his birthday, he got his immunizations. He didn't even flinch or cry.

Samantha went to cheer camp Saturday (shown right) and will be performing at the homecoming game next Saturday. She has so much energy. She is swimming three times a week as well and loving it.

Brandon's building is almost done, thank goodness. He has been working non-stop for the past month, including weekends. We can't wait to see more of him. Sunday he went to work early so he could leave and attend the priesthood session but the HVAC system broke. He ended up fixing it himself while receiving instructions over the phone in Spanish from the tech. And you thought engineers just stood around in hard hats.

I (Kathy) just finished helping with the Sangria Social for the OCSC. I'm certainly keeping busy with my job at treasurer for OCSC and as travel agent for the family. The NAVSTA Choral has started up again and we will be doing the Christmas Cantata in December. We practice every Monday and it is good to be singing again after a long break. (Getting your spleen removed makes it hard to sing for a while.)

Paris

Brandon and Kathy were able to spend five days of bliss in Paris after school started. We went to all of the great sights: The Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, Tour Eiffel, Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Elysees, Hotel des Invalides and Napoleon's Tomb, Notre-Dame, Paris Sewers, Sacre Cour, Place des Vosges and Victor Hugo's mansion (where he wrote Les Miserables), The Paris Opera, Versailles. We "pigged out" on crepes with fromage(cheese) and Jambon(ham) and apricot croissants and took a boat tour of the Seine. All in all, it was just good to be alone together. (Well, Paris was AWESOME, too.) This is us (Kathy and Brandon) and the Eiffel Tower.

And here we are at Versailles. We loved every minute of it. The only thing that would of made the trip a little better was knowing how to speak French. Well, you can't have everything.

We were inspired by "other" family members to start our own blog. Here's what we've been up to. The beginning of the summer started with a visit from Al and Al. Here Al is at the Alhambra with the kids.

We spent the summer at the pool and beach and school started before we knew it. This is the kids on their first day of school. Samantha is in second grade and Joseph is in pre-school.