Moving Day...

Sorry for the lapse in my blog, but we’ve been busy moving. We were notified by our landlord in January that his family was moving back in and that we had to vacate the house by the end of May. We managed to find a nice rental nearby so that Ashlynn could continue to have an easy commute for her final 1.5 years of school. 

It’s actually been three weeks since our furniture was moved into our new house and we started sleeping here, but we still had a lot of small bits to move and work to get done in our old place. Luckily a friend loaned us her car for several weeks while she was travelling. We then had to borrow another friend’s larger car to make five trips to donate stuff to the local charity shop.

It took nearly two weeks for our Internet to be connected because either the previous tenants or their movers cut all the wires in the house, but luckily our next door neighbor was kind enough to share his connection. Speaking of connections, I’m still not connected to our photo storage server, so I’m going to skip a few entries to use some photos that I already have on my computer. Thanks for your patience.

GCSE Awards Day & Silver Award...

The speeches were kept short when the GCSE Certificates were handed out. I failed to get a good photo of the handover, but here’s one shortly afterwards...

...and one with Ashlynn’s friend group.

Jimmy and I are both very proud of Ashlynn’s outstanding GCSE results, although there’s no photo with him.

Of course, I didn’t forget to take a photo with her best friend Sophie.

Four days later, Ashlynn was dressed up again and we witnessed her getting another award at school: her Silver International Award.

This time I caught a decent shot of the handover, but didn’t take any group photos. At least I remembered to take one once we got home. 

More Ghetto Flower FAB...

Her make-up artist posted this photo on Instagram...

...and the photographer posted this one.

I love this shot that was chosen for the magazine...

...and this close-up for the inside back cover. 

The final photo is a bit more risque. Ashlynn was lucky that she wasn’t asked to smoke a cigar like Jynthe. It was a full day’s work without pay, but she had a lot of fun and the photos turned out great.

First Dutch Editorial...

Ashlynn missed a day of school in early December to shoot her first Dutch editorial for The Hague Magazine with another model from Dune Agency. As you can see, the clothes were very colorful. Ashlynn was very impressed by her hair and make-up artist, who worked incredibly fast at crimping her hair. 

Here’s another behind-the-scenes shot...

...and here’s the shot chosen for the magazine. Ashlynn was featured on four pages of the Ghetto Flower FAB spread plus the back inside cover. 

She said she felt like a Christmas tree in this green sequined onesie with a red faux fur jacket. 

Her outfit was quite a contrast to the one worn by Jynthe.

Sinterklaas Parade...

After finishing my shift at the payment table at the AWC Holiday Bazaar, I headed into The Hague center to catch the end of the Sinterklaas parade. 

While some cities have decided to move away from covering white faces with black make-up, The Hague was still full of very black Zwarte Piets with only a handful of faces covered in just smudges of black to better depict chimney ash.

As always, the parade was quirky and thoroughly enjoyable...

...with Sinterklaas arriving as the grand finale.

A Depressing Presidential Election Breakfast...

For the most part, we followed our usual tradition for our third US Presidential Election Breakfast by getting a room at the Kurhaus for a few hours of sleep and then watching the returns in our room before joining the crowd at the breakfast (this photo was taken early before the place filled up). 

What made this year different was that we had Reinhardt and Inga camped out in our room. Much to my chagrin, Reinhardt had been convinced for months that Trump would win and, as you know, he was right.

Early on I was still smiling, but as the results came in, I was in complete shock. It was definitely a very different experience than the two previous Election Breakfasts when the crowd was full of hope. After months of being addicted to the train wreck known as the American election, somehow I had still remained hopeful that a woman was about to be elected as president for the first time. I was not the only one in tears.

At one point I needed some fresh air and I stepped out to see the new Ferris wheel on the pier, which looked very cool in the dark.

Despite our depression, we still managed to smile when we posed with Hillary at the end.

A Fall Cycle Ride...

In early November, I cycled to Wassenaar to attend a coffee morning at an AWC member’s house. Rather than taking the most direct route, I headed towards an area where I hoped to see some fall colors so I could take some photos.

Along the way, I saw some cool fog across the fields.

As the fog lifted, there was a nice view of The Hague’s skyline in the distance.

There were plenty of fall leaves on the ground as I entered the park in Wassenaar; in fact, you can hardly see the bike path on the right.

 As always, I loved the reflections in the canal.

 This reminded me of the classic book The Secret Garden.