raxacorricofallapatorius

First, especially for niamh_sage :



(Passed on from amadruadaboleyn)

Sinterklaas mania has come and gone for another year, and so far the kids are still true believers. The day started off with a visit from the Sint at the school. The kids were all lined up outside the front doors, while a number of Piets climbed around on the roof and behaved in a generally silly manner. The Sint was scheduled to arrive in a lamborghini, but alas, had automotive trouble along the way and arrived instead in an ANWB van. For those of you in the US, the ANWB is the Dutch version of AAA.

The principal greeted Sinterklaas, and the Piets handed out kruidnoten to the kids. Then everyone trooped back inside for a more close-up and personal visit with the Goed Heiligman. Each child shakes Sinterklaas' hand, and then receives a gift. The children then put on a performance of songs and poetry as a thank you. The whole thing is repeated from class to class, and by 11:00 everyone had had their fun. Sinterklaas waved goodbye, and headed back to wherever the heck he was staying to get ready to deliver gifts that night.

By the time Lukas and Marissa got home, they were almost climbing the walls with excitement. I had a few errands to run that afternoon, and I could NOT convince Lukas that Sinterklaas was not going to sneakily show up at 3:00 in the afternoon while we were out and about. Finally I gave up and we went home to twitch in private.

We'd asked out neighbor to do the honors of pretending to be a Piet for the evening, so right after dinner we sang songs and drank hot chocolate and ate speculaas. Or rather, Fred and I did; the kids were bouncing in their seats, every single little noise made their eyes bug out. Finally, there was a loud BANG! BANG! BANG! on the window, and the kids ran to the door to find a huge sack of gifts. We took tons of pictures, the kids were happy, and everybody went tiredly to bed an hour later, including me.

That was Wednesday. Every day since then, the kids have been pestering me to put up the Christmas deco. Oi!