September Fun

September was a very fun month here in Belgium. Of course it's my birthday and anniversary month, so it's usually always a great time!

My wonderful girlfriends surprised me with a Hard Rock Cafe dinner for my birthday!  It was such a fun night and my girls are too sweet!

Then the kids were jealous because they hadn't been to the new Brussels Hard Rock, so on my birthday we took them there.  It's in the Grand Place, which is one of my favorite places in Brussels!

My friend Theresa took me and little E to Leuven for a birthday lunch.  I hadn't been there yet and it was such a great city!  It's only 20 minutes from my house and has great shopping and food.  I couldn't believe that we had not been there yet!  I'm realizing that last year I was very hesitant to do too many new things, plus there was a baby coming, and probably a little sad to be away from my friends and family.  So, this year I feel so much better to be living in Belgium and I have tons of great friends here that make it even better!  

Mike and I went to Antwerp for our anniversary dinner.  It was also a new place for me and was so much fun as well.  It has more shopping and food.....and DIAMONDS!  Lots of them....may just be my new favorite place :)

This was the beautiful church and the cute little alley way to our restaurant.  It took us a while to find the restaurant but it was worth it.  We had a few weird tasting things (lobster tiramisu) but most of the food was very good.

We finally made it to mini-Europe.  It's a big touristy spot in Belgium, but I had been wanting to go and check it off the list.  It is just miniature replicas of many different buildings in Europe.  It's like visiting a lot of countries in one day!  It was actually really cute, and was also a nice sunny day so we wanted to take advantage.

Netherlands

The Grand Place in Brussels!

Holland

This is the real Atomium that is on the same property as mini-Europe.

London

Eiffel Tower

Sacre-Coeur in Paris

Preslee found Trier!

Athens

Preslee had a birthday party to attend at a Japanese restaurant.  We hadn't been there before so we decided to go for dinner.  They give everyone these robes to put on and the boys looked too cute in them.

Mike's sushi that he ordered was very fancy with dry ice and all....

Drake trying to catch his egg in his mouth!  Preslee and I were the only ones who caught it....I guess we know who has the big mouths in the family!

Spider catching day!!  From my previous posts you know that Belgium has some pretty big spiders.  I am totally terrified of any spider, so I'm not too happy about them crawling around here.  Luckily, we have only found a few in the house.  Today was one day that we did.  I cannot stand to kill them, not because I am nice but because for one I don't wanna get that close, but for two I couldn't stand the crunchy sound and feel of killing a big one.  So, typically I will catch it under a cup,  usually shrieking as I'm even doing that, and wait for Mike to get home to get it.  Well, the kids surprised me (because they aren't fond of them either) and decided to get rid of it themselves.  It took teamwork and some goofy faces, but they got the job done.

Next up is a visit from Windy!!  Yay!  She has lots planned for us to finish up this fun month of Sept!