events and thoughts

Our weekend's settling down and except for going to the birthday of our neighbour's son, there's little planned on the agenda today. A good thing as the entire week has been quite a bustle of trying to get things done and arranging for pickup of various goods.

Friday was really exciting as I travelled to The Hague with Samuel and met Crista Ermiya. Such a lovely lady and her boyfriend's such a nice guy. I really liked them a lot and I hope we'll continue to keep in touch.

From The Hague, I went on to Leiden where I met up with Jan who was returning home from his two week work-related trip in Czech Republic. Samuel was quite excited about seeing his Dad again. He had this look on his face that could easily be interpreted as saying: So, there you are. Where have you been all this time?

Something really sweet is how Jan's acquired the habit of "Pasalubong" buying. He came home with toys for the boys, chocolate for our good neighbour, and a book for me.

Saturday turned out to be one of the most hectic days of our lives together. There was no sleeping until late in the morning. We were both up at about seven o'clock, shoving furniture around and clearing a path for the arrival of our /new/ couch.

And what a couch it is. It's sitting in my living room, giving the room such a sumptuous and luxurious feel that I can't help turning around and staring at it again. Never mind that my ironing board's standing on one side of the room with baskets of clothes that need to be ironed...if you look towards the side of the room where the couch is...well...it just exudes that stepped out of the catalogue air.

Where it came from, they barely sat on it. I doubt that will be the case in this house ;) Joel's in absolute awe of the couch.

Lovely couch, Mom. He says.

But the couch wasn't the only thing that got picked up yesterday. Jan's been wanting to learn how to play the Bass Guitar and he managed to get himself a lovely Ibanez bass off of Marktplaats. He did have to travel quite a bit to pick it up, but he was still in time to pick up the space station I'd bought for Joel's Sinterklaas surprise.

Hence, the usefulness of planning and organizing trips ahead of time comes in handy.

Before we launched on this buying spree, we did set a budget. I had set a budget limit of 25o euro for a couch, Jan had set a limit of 150 for his bass guitar, and for the boys I'd set a limit of about 50 euro for presents.

We did spend 250 on the couch, but we got Jan's bass at 95 and Joel's present cost us 30. If I can arrange for the pickup of that cute little car for Samuel, that'll set me off another 10.

Being transparent about expenditure is important to this blog. The numbers are personalia, I know. Who needs to know how much a couch costs anyway?

My point is, sometimes we are so hung up on the cost of things. I remember this character I met at a party who somehow managed to drop hints about how expensive her shoes were or where she'd bought her coat (which gave you the idea that it was really expensive), and I remember sitting there with Samuel on my lap, feeling quite small while she fussed over another guest mom who was dressed to the nines and who had top of the line baby luggage with her.

What I loved about the dressed to the nines mom was how when the other lady said: Oh but your baby looks so nice. I bet you buy his clothes at (insert brandname) store.

The top of the nines mom said, No, I don't. I buy his clothes at the HEMA.

Which made me feel really warm and glowy towards the top of the nines mom and her no-nonsense, non-elitist attitude towards material things.

I think of how we're often pushed into purchasing something because of a need to prove our ability to buy. Sometimes, we are so busy with the "image" we project that we forget what's really important in life.

I sat there thinking of how what really matters isn't what others perceive of us. It's not "image" that counts in life, it's relationships and feeling good about yourself. As the Dutch say, "zit je lekker in je vel".

In the list of life's priorities, relationships come first. And for us, this means family and friends...and the necessary trips home in order to help our children understand that they are children of two cultures, and that's something money can't buy.