A Beautiful Day turned Sour

Today it was Queen's Day, the day that we celebrate the birthday of Queen Beatrix, queen of the Netherlands. Some of you may have seen the news and know what happened today, but before going into that I want to share the good things of today with you.

My owner's boss at the catering service also owns a clothing shop, so we started today with a visit to her shop. She has lots of pretty dresses there.

Next we went to the 'Vrijmarkt' (free/open market) in Groningen. It's a kind of really large outdoor fleamarket, where everyone who wants to can sell stuff without having to get a permit. It's held all over the Netherlands at Queen's Day. We saw lots of junk and also cool stuff. As you see the weather was lovely and there were lots of people all in a festive mood because of Queen's Day.

There was a woman selling these pretty balloons.

Chinese Lantern Art.

When we got hungry from all the walking around at the fleamarket we bought something to eat: 'Patat' (french fries, but these are a bit bigger). We had mayonaise, ketchup and onions with it. Delicious!



We had planned to do lots more today, like going to a Celtic Market, but then we got a sad message from my owner's OH, which put a stop to our plans:

There had been an attack on the queen and her family.
As is usual on Queen's Day, our queen was visiting a city to join in the celebrations of this day. As she and her family were in an open bus on their way to the next location they would visit, a car actually ploughed through the cheering crowd in an attempt to hit the bus. It killed four people and wounded 17 more before it crashed into a monument, missing the bus.
After hearing this news we didn't feel like celebrating anymore, so we went home.

I feel very sad that something like this happened, especially on a day when everyone should be happy and celebrating. I wasn't sure at first if I should post my pictures of today, but I think it's important to share the good things of a day like today even if it all ended so terribly sad.

Birthday Fun

I went to a birthdayparty yesterday with my owner. As it was really late when we got back I didn't have time to blog about it until now. Can you guess what we bought as a present?

Yup, a bottle of Wild Pig!

We also bought lots of chocolates.

Here I am with the Birthday Girl!

It was a really cool party: a View-master Party.
There were all these View-master thingies which you could use to watch pictures. Very Cool!

There also was a very nice owl at the party and we talked a bit and listened to records, like this one with singing nuns. I really enjoyed myself.

Well, off to celebrate Queen's Day now, talk to you soon.

Traveling bag once more

I told you awhile ago that my old traveling bag was worn out and that my owner got me a smaller one until she found a better traveling bag for me.
Well, here it is:

This picture was taken at work and is a little bit blurry, but as you can see this traveling bag is much bigger and can fit me and my little voodoo doll Voodoo Bride without any problems. (Voodoo Bride was too shy again to have her picture taken and was hiding out in the bag as usual.)

Tomorrow we have to work again, but this Thursday it's Queen's Day here in the Netherlands. I hope to show you lots of pics about Queen's Day thursday evening. Start hoping the weather will be nice and dry!

In 'Other' words

As I didn't do anything picture-worthy today, I'm posting another 'In "Other" words' picture. If you missed out on what this is: check out Eve's blog for all the info on it.

This time a weird/fascinating picture:

An insect trapped in amber.

(picture was taken by my owner when she was visiting Copenhagen some years ago)

Nothing much new, just relaxing

Yesterday evening we watched 'The Simpsons' with some of our housemates.

Today I spend relaxing and doing nothing much in general.

Paper Bird and Flowers

Another Saturday spend at the office. When I was bored I went exploring a bit and found this little paper bird that had fallen behind a computer monitor.

Isn't it pretty?

On our way home we enjoyed the nice weather and took our time to stop and smell the roses.
Well.... flowers anyway.

Sunny Groningen

As Urok Burok already said in a comment to an earlier post: Today it was really nice and sunny weather again, so me and my owner went into town after work together with a good friend of my owner.

First picture I want to show you is of the Martini Tower again, from yet another angle.

This strange fake bunker is standing at the Ossenmarkt (Ox market) at the moment. It's a multimedia expo that's about WWII.


Home and soaking up the last few rays of the sun before it sets.

In "Other" words game and Cake!

Eve started a new game on her blog and I decided to join.

As far as I understand it, you post pictures of things that mean something special to you or that you find beautiful, weird, interesting, etc...

So from now on I will post an occasional 'In "other" words picture on this blog next to my normal pictures and stories.

Here is my first one:

Have you ever really looked at how beautiful a pig is?

Or felt how incredibly soft it's snout is? (And I'm not just talking about my snout.)

(This picture is a picture of a picture btw: There are not many pigs living in the city, so I didn't have a pig closeby that is not related to me and you have all seen my family before.)

On to other things: One of the owners of the cateringservice had her birthday this week so we got chocolate cake to celebrate it!

Fickle weather and candy

This picture was taken yesterday morning, as you can see it was beautiful, sunny weather and for today they gave a simular forecast.

Hmmm..... Sunny: no. Beautiful: I think so anyway.
All in all it was windy today and it even rained when we went home.

I can hear some of you thinking: 'What's Sullivan doing with pieces of chalk?'
Actually this is candy, liquorice to be exact! It is made to look like pieces of school chalk, but in fact the outside of the candy is a layer of something minty and inside it's soft. They're very tasty and I got these from my owner today.

Stuff...

Here are the things that I bought this saturday. A new book and the piggy I told you about.

The book is about a cat who's raised by mice and is called 'The cat who thought he was a mouse'.

Another beautiful day today. Can you spot the crow? There were several flying around, but just one was kind enough to pose for this picture.

Zwolle

Today we went to visit my owner's family who live near Zwolle. We didn't have time to take pictures except for this one, which was taken near the trainstation in Zwolle. As you can see we had lovely weather again.

Saturday Shopping

It was a lovely spring day and me, my owner and two of my owner's friends went shopping.

On our way into town we came through the park, it's really beautiful and green there at the moment.

At one shop they had all kinds of porcelain thingies, like these eggstands.

We bought a little ceramic piggy there, which I might show you one day.

After all the shopping we went to get a smoothie.
Mine had raspberry, blackberry, strawberry and apple in it.

And I got a double chocolate muffin!
All in all it was a great way to spend the saturday afternoon.

Renovation

The renovation of our neighbourhood has started. Sights like this will be common sights for the next year at least.

News from Canada full of even more Easter fun

I got another email from Moira to tell me about her Easter. Below her story and pictures of Easter in Canada.

Hi Sullivan and everyone! I had a really fun Easter.

The Easter Bunny hid all kinds of goodies all around the house for Princess to find and I helped her look for it.

This is a chick filled with chocolate, isn't it cute? We found lots of them.

The Easter Bunny also hid chocolate filled eggs like this one.

And look: We also found the Easter Bunny's footprints!


Here I am with all the eggs and chicks that me and Princess found.


The Easter Bunny also left all this candy for everyone to enjoy.
I ate some of the pink ones.


Talking about pink: the Easter Bunny left even more besides all the chocolate and candy. He also gave this really pretty bike to Princess. It even has a basket in front for me to sit in.

We also ate cupcakes which were all in pretty spring colours.

I got a pink one all to myself!

Well, goodbye for now. I'll keep in touch!

Book and Tv

Today at work my owner brought a girly vampire book again to read when it was quiet.

So I watched some tv. It was a program about cooking, very fitting I think.

Cemetery

My owner and I went for a walk at the Northern Cemetery today.

Below some pictures that we took there.

Easter Walk

It was a beautiful day so we went for a walk. The Lady's Smock was already in bloom, which is really early as here it's called Pinksterbloem (Whit flower) as it usually blooms around Whit.

There were also nettles as you can see.

We stopped at a beautiful spot to have an Easter Picknick. My owner's OH had even boiled some eggs and we brought those with us on our walk.

The basket in which we brought the eggs was perfect for sitting in as I ate.

Some pictures of the spot where we had our picknick.