I fell off the blogging horse in February and the longer I stayed down, the harder it got to get back in the saddle.

The process wasn't helped by discovering twitter. If you're really interested, you can follow my inane 140-character ramblings there.

The girls have grown up some more in the meantime. So much so that the nudge I finally needed to sit down and write an update was making humus for Irmie's 40th birthday party on Saturday. I will do almost anything to avoid dealing with chick peas.

So what's happened in the time since I last wrote? 

Mostly the usual stuff.

First the big deal: Irmie started her own OT practice. 

Go to www.ergotherapievoorburg.nl to read all about it (assuming you read Dutch).

It's going very well so far. Irmie's basically been doing it a month and is already getting new clients (I'm apparently not allowed to call them patients) referred to her every week. She's still doing her part-time job in Delft while she builds up contacts among doctors etc who can send her more patients.

While Irmie has been hard at work doing securing our future for when twitter makes all traditional journalism redundant, I've taught myself to open one beer bottle by using another beer bottle. 

The girls are at school, learning stuff with varying degrees of success and are still swimming and playing hockey  every waking moment. They now ride to school on their own in the mornings once I've taken them across the busy road at the end of our street.

Other stuff briefly:

We got new windows in our house.

Our fence blew down and I (well, Irmie really) had to erect a new one. Our neighbour was supposed to do it with me, but he showed even less enthusiasm for the project than me.

Our television blew up.

I bought a very handsome new bicycle courtesy of a tax windfall.

A week after buying the bike, the tax office said (incorrectly, I hope) I owed them 6,000 euros. 

Esther's hockey team, coached by me and another parent, beat a team 1-0, after having lost 12-0 to the same team earlier this season. I nearly wept with joy. Our victory was made all the sweeter by the parents of the losing team moaning afterwards that their best player was sick etc, etc. How they managed to not be happy for my girls - who had just won their second match of the season - is a mystery to me.

We've booked out tickets to Australia and Hong Kong this summer. I'm compiling a list of stuff I'm looking forward to (this is a small sampling and is in no particular order of preferene, but you can be sure I will tick all of these boxes):

Seeing gum trees wave their branches in the wind.

Listening to magpies and kookaburras.

Eating meat pies with Esther and Julia.

Watching rugby league on Channel 9.

Cooking large steaks on free public barbies.

Driving over the harbour bridge.

Laksa.

Eating fish and chips washed down with cold beer next to the beach at Dee Why and Balmoral.

A whole load of other stuff happened too since I last updated, but it's all too long ago now so I won't try to play catch up. Hopefully, now I've started again I'll post stuff a little more regularly/frequently than so far this year.