small funny plane story + message in a bottle

two weeks ago, mette got a little doll from her favorite receptionist-guard, auntie may. she showed it to tom as soon as she got home and when tom asked her who that was, she said: "grote dad", big dad, the grandfather's name since generations for tom's dad, allard senior. tom thought that was hilarious and sent a picture of mette and grote dad to his family. ever since, grote dad had to be in mette's bed under her cover ("onder de beker/beken") when she goes to sleep.

mette got this cool erasable drawing board from her great playgroup friend maxi. it's the same as the ones we used to know with the plastic transparent film that you'd press with a pen against the underlying black background and it would stick in that shape until you'd slide the eraser which would detach the film and make it all transparent again. after fifty drawings or so, you'd end up with the film punctured and hence, the board broken.
well, this board is using magnets and magnetic powder and in the thee days since she got it for christmas and three hundred drawings and a dip in the hotel seckel pool later, it still works perfectly.

on the first stretch to new zealand, hk-auckland, laurian and tom played pictionary and mette was the judge. she guessed everything: flower, airplane, camel, pinguin, doggy, tree, everything. but when laurian drew a picture of mette - and it really looked like her - she said "buddha". we have a buddha statue 'at home' (wherever that is, maybe 'in storage' is more accurate) and buddha and non-buddha statues are always pointed out by her as buddha. since this wasn't correct, laurian had to draw again. this time the picture was of tom. mette judged: "buddha"! uuuuuh, wrong again! then laurian drew a buddha. "buddha". yes! well done, mette!

now it was tom's turn. he also drew a face.
"who's that?"
"grote dad!"
aaaaah, grote daddy's little girl.

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laurian had bought a cd with christmas songs. we played it at hotel seckel. tom was bottle feeding allard. at some stage he softly sang along a chistmas song. allard stopped drinking and started crying. tom stopped singing, allard stopped crying and restarted drinking. tom started singing, allard crying. stop, start, start stop.
laurian noticed the pattern as well and we all laughed.

the next day we tried it with non-christmas songs. it didn't work. it had been allard's expression of his first christmas celebration.