Hanging Out In Jersey for The Holidays

I made the basketball team at my school!!  Now I play on both the school team and the local club team.  Most of my friends from my class made the team too, so we get to travel together to play at different schools in different countries.  So far, we went to Germany and the Netherlands.  We travel on these awesome double decker buses and I usually sit up top with my friends.  My mom says that she was lucky if they got to ride in a rickety old yellow school bus and travel to the next town.  This sounds a lot more fun than that!

In Belgium, before heading home for Christmas, after sports my heel was hurting a lot so mom brought me to this person (I don't know what the heck they are) that told me why its hurting. It turns out I have a fatal disease... just kidding its because my bones are growing faster then my muscles and if I don't stretch enough before I do sports, it will hurt like crazy. I keep on forgetting to do it so its not really getting any better. 

Clearly Beau doesn't have any problems stretching.  This is him sleeping on the beanbag couch in my room...nice and comfy!  Here he's helping me with my homework.













On Dec 6th, Sinterklaas comes in Belgium.  You have to leave 2 shoes out by the fireplace and he comes and fills them.  This year he left me some of those 3D puzzles that I love.  I made Nan a dream catcher and I made Mom this great thing for her desk to help her to keep her stuff organized.

On Dec 13th, we flew to NJ.  The Jets were playing and so Pops picked us up at the airport and we went right to the game.  We even made it in time for kick-off.  And the Jets even won, which I think is because we don't have Rex anymore.  Mom doesn't agree, but Pops and I think she's wrong.

Mom's always happy going into a Jets game,
just not always coming out

Me and my Pops at the Jets game.  I know a lot more about football now and I love going with Pops!

Then it was time to get ready for Christmas.  




We have a tree that Sunshine Mary got us for the hotel so Santa can still come.  Sunshine Mary pretty much takes care of everything, she works with me, but she's really more like a member of our family.  Mom says she won't move to another job unless she can take Sunshine Mary with her.  Which is good because things would surely be a mess without her. 
Mom made me take my picture with Santa and it wasnt so bad.



I also had to try on outfits for the wedding that I'm going to be in.   Aunt Amy says I look like James Bond.  I'm not sure who that is??



JJ stayed over Christmas Eve with us and when we woke up there were presents everywhere!!!! Look...JJ got muscles for Christmas.  Mom got me a hoverboard, but Aunt Bear made her send it back so it wouldn't explode.

I got a lot of great things for Christmas like a MindStorm robot, these cool rollerskates, and a couple of drones from Nanny and JJ and LaLa gave me this really cool loom that I wanted and I already made something on it and Pops gave me an Ice Cream maker which is GREAT because I can't get mint chocolate chip ice cream in Belgium!


Also while I am home I love seeing Aunt Bear and Lauren like every single day to hang out. We did so much fun stuff like wrapping presents, sleeping at her house, riding roller-skates down the hotel hall with hot chocolate or jugging while she pulls me and stops me short (I hope the hot chocolate didn't stain the carpet, whoops :|?) and a lot more. I am going to miss her and everyone else very much when I get back to Belgium.







One day I was trying to teach Aunt Bear, Lauren and Scuzzle how to do the whip and neigh-neigh...it wasn't pretty.

Speaking of Aunt Bear I went to her house for christmas. Before dinner she was testing me to see if I could tell the difference between all the different color peppers.  I love peppers every since I had them with her and Lauren.  I didn't do too bad guessing.

Then we ate dinner which was manicotti. It was delicious, so delicious that I had six of them.  I think Poppy makes them or maybe he used to make them and now he just buys them and says he makes them.  I don't really know, but anyway they taste great.

After that while we waited for Greg (Karen's husband) to come back from somewhere, I dont know where, and then we did the first activity. We split into two groups. Each group got a box that had the parts to make a gingerbread train, and had to build it. Greg was the judge when he got back and we lost badly because ours was falling apart by the time he came. 

When he finished judging we had some pork (I didn't have any because I was stuffed from the manicotti) then we started our next game. It was the game where you all sit in a circle and each person picks a card and goes in that number order and picks presents. You can steal from someone and number 1 always goes last. Well, mom was 1, Nan was 2 and I was 4 so we got a lot of stuff.  

Then we all had desert. For desert there was pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, cannoli (my favorite), chocolate pretzels, thumbprints, peanut/chocolate cookies and some other stuff. After that my team came back and won in the cardboard Rudolf making contest. You had to put pieces of him together and we did it faster.

The next day we went to the Poconos with my cousins Timmy and Chris and with Pops and Mary Jean and oh yeah, with Mom.   We went to this indoor water park where they have a ropes course and big wave pools and slides and a wave rider thing that's really fun.




Mom even went on the ropes course with us, but she wasn't liking it very much.

Then we went on the zip line and mountain coaster outside because there wasn't any snow to go tubing or anything.

Timmy and I coming down on the zip lines

Mountain Coaster

I really liked the wave rider, but it wasn't that easy to do.  This was a time that we snuck in under the rope when they had said it was closed for the day.  Timmy and I both made it on another time.

I also snuck under the rope to play the piano in the lobby.  People were really liking listening to me play, but then the man from the hotel told me that I had to stop.  Then someone came and programmed it to play by itself and it played boring Christmas songs and nobody stayed to listen.  That's one of the great things about Europe because everywhere you go there is a piano that says "Play Me!!" on it.  In the train stations, the airports and other places.

While I was home I also got to see my friends, Kelly and Chelsey.  We went to the movie to see the new Chipmunks movie and it was a lot of fun.  





















Then we went to the park to play, but it was really cold that day.  We still had a lot of fun, we always have fun together and never want to leave each other when it's time to go.









Now while I'm writing this, I am in the car coming back from a party at TT's and Jordan's. It was so foggy that when mom was on the ramp to go onto route 23, she went on the wrong lane and a car started coming towards us but mom saw just in time and we went on the curb thing in-between the two lanes. I was laughing but mom said that its not funny because we could have gotten killed.   It was a little funny though.

Ok, so the party at TT's. Yeah thats what we were talking about. Ok, so we had a party at TT's house. I don't know if it was for christmas or for New Years but it doesn't really matter. (Wait, no it couldn't be for New Year's because TT doesn't let kids come for New Years so Aunt Bear and Lauren had New Years at their house so I could come.) While we were at  TT's, we took out Jordan's karaoke set and sung songs like "Thats Not My Name" by the ting tings or songs like "Pussycat" by ???? I don't know, i don't really pay attention to artists. We unwrapped presents and I got 2 knex sets and a robot arm from Jordan and TT, these  delicious s'more chocolates and $75 for iTunes from Amy and CC which I really, really wanted and an awesome shirt from NONO. I had a really good time and the food was delicious (thanks TT:)).  Mom didn't have any pictures from TT's so I don't have any to put on here with Amy, CC, NoNo, Jordan, Annette or TT.

On New Years Day we had to go back home to Belgium.  Our puppies had been waiting for us and they were very happy to see us.  Here they are at the place they stay when we're gone                       and with their New Years hats on.

I had fun being in NJ with my family and friends for the holidays.