This weekend will be happily filled with family and friend events. Niek's grandmother will turn another year in her calendar, and we're hauling all the kids down to Eindhoven tomorrow to celebrate with her. Max and I are going gift shopping for her this afternoon. Unlike Nicky & Rowen, Max is usually quite a delight to take shopping. On Sunday, friends Eric and Ingrid will bring their delightful son Sven over for a quick morning visit. And later in the afternoon, friends Anja and Ab will arrive with their little boy, Andreas. We're hoping to enjoy a nice, informal dinner out in the backyard, so cross your fingers for us!

On the technical front, Niek has been 'this' close for three days now to ordering us a new computer. One thing and the other has prevented him from actually ordering the computer, but he's very close. LOL! As I told Annemarie, when it comes time to replace our digital camera (which will not be that far in the future, I fear), you can rest assured that I will take that purchase on myself!

And on the personal front, we had a long meeting this morning with a mortgage advisor and were pleasantly surprised to find that the sort of home we'd really like is actually within our means. The next step is to have a couple of realtors come by and give us some estimates on what we could expect to get for our current home, and what chores we have to do to make it more saleable. We already know we'll have to box up a lot of stuff and put it in storage to de-clutter the house. Toys! Toys! And more toys! And someone made a sneaky suggestion that some of my stash could also go into storage, but surely they didn't mean it.

PS: The picture is not of our future house - something like that would run in the millions over here! But it is pretty!!