Holy visit from Sinterklaas

Previous week was all about Sinterklaas. 

It all started on Saturday morning. We had just bathed and got dressed when all of a sudden there was a loud knocking on our door and window.  Much to our (faked ;-) ) surprise, Sinterklaas and 2 of his Pieten were outside and asked if he could come in.  Fortunately Kabouter responded the door with a swift  "Of course Sinterklaas" .

And so, a moment later, Sinterklaas was in our living room and he checked his big book whether the boys had behaved. Kabouter talked and Beertje intensely observed it all from our lap. He recognised Sinterklaas already on tv and drawings but I don't think he had expected the Holy Man in our living room. In exchange for some Sinterklaas songs, the children both received a few small gifts and then the visitors left, swiftly throwing candy around in our living room.  Later on we discovered also some candy at our car and a kiss from one of the Pieten on the car window...Funny Piet.

On Tuesday evening it was finally time to set our shoe and to go to bed early so we'd all be asleep silently when Sinterklaas would pass over our roof. Since we had practised setting our shoe already before and Kabouter had set a gym shoe in school and Beertje had set a shoe in daycare   (hurray for last minute carrot shopping during lunch time to provide enough carrots for Slechtweervandaag ) , it went a lot smoother this time.  Beertje had paid attention well and helped putting his carrot in his shoe (once...then once again...and then once more). We added some more sugar, drawings, an apple (the horse must hate carrots by now, I figure) and then we were ready! 

On the 6th of December, Kabouter didn't want to dress first to go down....no please mommy daddy, can we go and look already in our pyjama's?  And so we did. Wow! Wooohooo! the excitement was great!

Beertje was a bit puzzled about it all. He was still unaware of the link between a shoe with a carrot and toys the next morning. I'm sure that'll be different next year :p. We had been forward looking and had set the alarm clock a bit earlier, allowing some playing time before school/daycare.  For the rest of the week eating speed records were shattered but also brother fights were more frequent, due to the "we must play with all the new toys now!" and "I don't want to share my new favourite thing" stress.

Kabouter asks another few times whether we should try to set our shoe once more, but that's really too late now.  Sinterklaas is back in Spain, sipping a sangria and eating some tapas after all that hard work!  Thank you Sinterklaasje, see you next year. We'll be good!