July 4th - Keeping Four Adults Awake

We had been waiting for this day for a long time. My grandma was to arrive with my two aunts and my parents to head off our summer of visitors! Although my grandma (86 years old) got pneumonia and couldn't make the trip, my aunts and parents came to celebrate with us. K's parents would be arriving next week.

In case you haven't noticed from the blog, we (and I mean other expats as well as ourselves) don't tend to get many visitors on this side of the pond, so when we do see company arriving in the near future, we get REALLY excited. Since family was arriving on the 4th of July, I tried to talk my aunts into packing some fireworks in their luggage so we could celebrate in style, but probably because one of my uncles is a police officer, that just didn't fly. Instead, they found some table decorations, necklaces, and other toys colored red, white and blue to make our celebration complete.

My sweet friend, Amy, went all out and for some reason has more hours in her day than I do...I'm not sure if it's because she lives closer to the main road in Waterloo or what, but she came up with so many festive ideas you'd think it was her family coming from America instead of mine! She bought wonderful beef patties for hamburgers (to grill out of course) at a shop in Brussels (because trust me, American beef at the grocery store cannot be from America), found the only few American decorations in stores around here to hang and display, found corn on the cob, baked and decorated an American flag cake, put together a 4th of July trivia game complete with prizes (and good ones too!), and painted her daughter's nails with the festive colors all in a few days. I'm convinced she doesn't sleep - ever.

When my family was making the haul over here, the flights usually happen over night, so you snooze from about 6 or 7 at night until you wake up and you're in Belgium around 8 or so in the morning. You're not supposed to think about the fact that you only slept for about 4-6 hours (if you're lucky), but stay awake at all costs so you can head to bed early here and sleep all night to fight off jet lag. We had a job to do - keeping 4 adults awake until bedtime. I'd say Amy's party planning was just what they all needed to war off the nods.

Here they are arriving at the airport.

Check out those nails!

With sunglasses it can be tricky - is Nana asleep or awake?

You can see their mouths moving...they're definitely awake!