Opa, Balk & the forest

Sanders father suprised us all with a vist on the weekend. he was funny. he didnt realise i spoke engels and would often deliver long monologues before i realised he was talking to me :) As a treat for the Kinderen we took a trip to just outside Balk. A really pretty town 20 minutes away.

The sun was shining ( a rarity here) and the forest has a specific track for children. It has tiny wooden mushroom markers that you have to find. The adults of course no the way thanks to signs in the trees but the children think its a blast. Barber tells the children that there are  Kobowters living in the mushrooms (little dwarves) so the kids were forever knocking on the wood and laughing and saying they could hear them talking. very cute :)
I was enjoying not having to walk with my eyes glued to the floor looking for snakes and lizards :) a nice change haha.

After our trip in the forest we gathered up all our leaves (we bought a flower press for the kinderen) and we decided that chinese in Balk was our next stop. Opa advised me that chinese was going to be something of a treat for me. i just smiled. thinking yep Opa pretty sure we have chinese in Australia too. BUT what i didnt know is that in the Netherlands. Chinese food is mixed with Indonesian spices and dishes because of the Dutch trading history. so you get this kind of funky IndoChina flavour. tons of spice and rice :) just the way i like it.

Whilst waiting for the chinese i had fun taking photos across the road. The sun was setting- more importantly it was actually shinning haha. And the boats were coming in from the Ijselmeer. I almost fell in the water trying to get some shots. The things we do for art :)