Things are going well.  We are very happy and busy, there is lots of work to do around improving Lea's mother house.  It has also been great to unearth the treasures in her garage, her wardrobes and many other places :-)

School started for the girls, they are both very happy with their new teacher and class mates.  There was some nervous tension last Monday when the first day of school came around, but things have calmed down now.   Lea has some pictures, I'll see if I can get her to post them.

I am trying to move over to a shorter blog format in the hope I'll make more posting instead.  Not sure if it is going to work, but it is worth a try.

Short entry #1:

We have often walked past this seemingly unassuming eatery three blocks from our house:

We went there last Thursday and it was spectacular!  Behind a facade and name ("Local") that reveals nothing , hides a beautiful and delicious kitchen and serious wine bar.  We are so happy to have found the equivalent to La Cucina in Ginneken, also around the corner.  Obviously, Local is a bit pricier than La Cucina, as is everything, but we are not complaining...

Six months later

So people complained I do not blog enough and they are right.  What can I say, life is interesting, lots of fun and quite full.   Here are some snapshots:

Santa Monica on a Sunday night:  Fancy car, funny top hat, and the living is easy.

I was in San Francisco for work, where these bananas had just participated in a race (the annual Bay to Breakers race -- 12km are run by about 50,000 people, many in costume).

We went to an amazing Frank Gehry exhibit at LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

Amazing sunset over the sports fields next to our house (it was even prettier 2 seconds ago, but then they switched on the lights)

And you know these two, growing like weeds.

We will be in Europe in the second half of June, so we may see some of our readers then :-)

Walk around the block

This post was created in January 2016 but somehow did not get published until now.  I blame Blogger, not your late night part-time blog operator.  

Hey all and happy new year if I haven't seen you in 2016 yet.  As usual we are running pretty late with our cards, I even considered stamping "Hope this gets there before the Chinese New Year" on the back of the envelopes..

Either way, we are doing well and have recovered from what must have been the busiest half year ever.  If you ask me, I'd say we have been in Santa Monica for two years already; it seems like I left Breda ages ago.  I do miss it sometimes and Delphine had a tearful moment when a Dutch  "Kinderen voor Kinderen" song came by that she danced to with her class back in Holland.  We found some pictures of our wonderful house there and that was bittersweet too.

I have been to Southern California many times but actually living here in the winter is still a little bit of a new experience.  I had a panic the other day when I realized that I had not seen any of my jackets since June and I really did not know where they were.

I have since found my light rain jacket and I carried it with me to work a few times, but I have stopped doing that as I never need it.  On the three days that we got massive amounts of rain, which we did, I took the bus or Lea drove me to work as she had an errand to run anyway.  I thought I would miss the cold, but I am actually fine without it so far.

Please find some pictures below from a little walk around the block I did in my lunch break the other day.  I take a walk many days, but that one day I felt inspired to take some pictures.  Enjoy!

Third Street Promenade

One of the pretty and older buildings

A street musician on Third Street

Fancy office building next to my work, the beach is just behind it

Movie set sale: all kinds of clothes (didn't buy any, sorry)

The "Johannes van Tilburg" building

And this is not a video I made, but I have seen Chelsea Williams perform several times on Third Street, and this video gives you a good impression of the atmosphere.