The weekend begins!
Friday is an exciting day, the long awaited St. John's Lions Varsity basketball games are here! Since the teams usually travel a good distance, the games are played tournament style with Friday night and Saturday morning games played by both boys and girls. The athletes from the other teams stay overnight with St. John's player families, and are called "housers"! Molly is beside herself to get to the gym. I am a bit panicked because I have very little cash and I have no idea how much it is to get in and how much the food is. Hope I can swing it! Quelle suprise! There is no charge, and in fact I am told later that they don't get big crowds and spectators are definitely appreciated. No worries there, we will be in attendance is I know my Molly. As we are walking in to the gym a voice calls out, "hey Danny" that makes me feel so good. Danny sits with us, but I tell him he can certainly go over with friends and after a bit he does. Yay! We watch the girls game, they win against Bonn,Germany. Then we go to concessions to get some bad-for-you-food. The kids choose frittes and nuggets and devour them. As I am hovering a gal walks up and says " are you Kerry?" I was so surprised! Of course I said yes I am and she said she was Anne of my buddy family. I had received an email a couple of weeks ago from her, but with everything else I had not responded. So here we were and both just tickled. Anne's husband is with UPS(tons of those guys here) and she has 3 kids, 1 has graduated and is in Australia with Anne's parents doing university, Zach is a junior and on the basketball team, and then mickayla is in 8th grade like Danny. We ended up chatting for the rest of huge evening, watching the game, talking about families ( she grew up in the church of the Salvation Army, plays the tuba,and does a ton of charity work with SA in Belgium-so interesting) she introduced all her kids to us, and every time one of Zach's friends went by she introduced them, grabbed Danny, told them to watch out for him,etc. She was awesome.
The boys squeaked out a win in a nail biter to the finish so Molly loved that. When the game is done she races over to congratulate the team and Coach D. Everyone is extremely nice to her :)
Anne suggests that Danny might want to come back over Saturday morning to watch more basketball, and I second the motion. I am taking the girls to SO practice and Danny can have a break.
I leave him sleeping and navigate my way to the track. It is cold and windy, but at least not raining! Practice is fun for the girls and we go to the pool again and do swimming as well. After I park near the pool I sneak into a patisserie and grab two warm croissant for my hard working athletes. They are thrilled!
We head back to Waterloo and swing into the school in hopes of catching a bit of Bball( as you can imagine, Molly so did not want to go to SO instead of the games this morning!) yay! The varsity guys are in the last quarter so Molly a gas a chance to cheer some more. Unlike last night they are up by quite a bit. Danny is at the gym so we grab him and all head home for lunch. Jerry's flight is delayed and the wind is the problem, it is still blowing like crazy. I decide to give in and let him grab a cab so to assuage my guilt I make a homemade potato soup. The house smells delicious! Jerry gets home around 4:30 and is a sight for sore eyes! He certainly has traveled through many time zones in the past week! But he is a good sport, as you know, so he offers to take. The kids to a women's pro basketball game in the next town over at 20:00(8pm) I decline in favour of a shower and peace. As the emails and photos pour in though, I regret my decision...apparently this is quite the operation, with fans with wooden clappers, an oompah band, random horn playing, a sound track and announcer coming over the PA, a crazy cacophony of non stop sound! Jerry says it is unreal! Next time I'm in!
Sunday arrives and everyone sleeps and sleeps and sleeps! I make the French toast I tried to make our first Sunday, when I couldn't get the cooktop to work! We head over to Danny's school to the chapel for 12:45 mass. Perfect! It is the same priest from last weekend, who we just loved. There are about 30 people in the chapel. Father sakes for a Eucharistic minister and after waiting so I don't take someone's spot I go up and assist. What a special moment and a blessing. In spite of the chill we all head outside, Danny and Jerry on the bikes and the girls and I running. We explore some new trails and get some exercise. Now that we have TV, with several BBC channels, we are excited to tune into our Sunday night tradition of Country File! Good to see Adam's farm again and our favourite presenters. Watching the jet stream blow around the British Isles and straight across Belgium lets me know that we will be in for the wind this week as well!
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