In Manasssas on business, so far I’ve had dinner in the Backyard Grill (excellent ribs), Zabb Thai restaurant (good starter) and Akasaka Japanese restaurant (everything was good).

We went to Delft to try out a cafe that Jessica had read about and to visit an olive oil shop. We couldn’t find the cafe and the oil shop was closed. Delft looks worth exploring but it was too cold to enjoy strolling around. We’ll go back in the summer.

There’s a farm just outside Amsterdam that specialises in food with real taste (according to their website). They have some really nice stuff with the tomatoes in particular being the best we’ve tasted in a long time. It’s still quite cold here so most of the waterways were frozen over emphasising just how much water there is as you go further north.

Angus seems to enjoy trying to hold Scott.

Carnaval is a big thing in the south of The Netherlands. Children have to dress up on the last day before the school holidays and there is a parade which goes past our house.

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Katrina gave this to Scott. He hasn’t worked out that he can bounce up and down in it.

This is not how Scott normally eats his bananas.

Angus making waffels for breakfast.

We performed our winter ritual and built a snowman.

Angus was very excited the night before and kept coming downstairs with fake excuses about why he couldn’t sleep. He was so tired that we didn’t get up till after 9:00. Angus got walkie talkies from Santa, various PSV things from Colin, Thu and Becky and  multiple toys from Scotland including a watch which he has been wearing since he got it. Christmas dinner was Thai fish parcels, roast shrimp with red pepper dip and roast potatoes. Dessert was homemade tiramisu which was much better than I expected. I also made a Christmas cocktail with raspberries and mint and prosecco but there was too much mint for it to be really tasty.