Balloons, Renovation and IKEA

When I went outside this morning the neighbours had balloons on their door! What a fun way to let people know they had a birthday today.

A picture of the renovation in our street. There are no gates and scaffolding around our house yet, but there will be soon.

We went to our house to do some last chores before leaving it to the construction workers.
Bye, bye house. See you after the renovation.

This afternoon we went to the IKEA store as my owner and her OtherHalf needed to replace some things.

there was lots to do at the IKEA store.
I talked to some animals living there.



I played with this really cool wooden crane.

I spotted this great traffic sign sticker on the floor.

I did some climbing on this counting rack thingie.

And found these cool plush vegetables!

And even a plush knife and cake!

Having a chat with a box full of plushies.

All in all the IKEA store was lots of fun and I hope we'll go there again some time.

A very cool package!!

Today my owner finally had time to collect our package from the post office!
It was send to us by Hammie and G. as we were the 1000th visitor to Hammie's blog. The package was for me, Coco and our owner's, but Domo and Angus were very curious to what was in it too.

It said 'Hip, hip, hurray, 100th visitor' on the side of the package!

Ooooh, a piggy sticker!

We opened the package together and it was full of cool things!!

There were two new housmates! And a cool cross stitch card that my owner really loved and balloons among other things.

There was also a balloon pump. Angus used it to blow up some balloons.

I tried to make one of them into a flower or animal, but it was hard work I can tell you.

The end result did make a nice seat though.

Domo tried it on as a necklace thingie, but it was too big for that.

There was a cool frog in the package too, which was meant for my owner's OH, but Angus absolutely loved the frog so he hogged it.

If you press on the back of the frog, it sticks out it's tongue!

The eyes of the frog have flies on them! Scary!
(And if you want to see what Coco got and can't make it out in this picture: go to Coco's blog, he'll be making a post too about this package.)

And even more new animals: A hippo for my owner! The hippo and Domo got along quite well from the start.

Here's an overview of us and the cool contents of the package! There was also very yummie Sinterklaas chocolate and kruidnoten in it! Hmmm....
Hammie: you spoiled us! Thanks!

And closing with a picture of the two new pigs that Hammie send to us. The small one is called Spot and the bigger pig is called Babs.

A Walk and Balloons

Yesterday evening we went for a walk in one of the nearby parks. We came across this really beautiful and mysterious lane.

Taking a short rest to admire the pond.

Today there were lots of balloons on our way to work once again! This time they were red and they said to vote for some kind of student organisation.

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.

Return of the Yellow Balloons

Today the yellow balloons were back!

This time we were able to get close to one and it turns out they're to promote a congress about Societal Marketing, whatever that may be.

Mysterious balloons

On our way to work today we came upon a trail of yellow balloons.

All along the cyclepath there were balloons tied to lamp posts and to trees.

It was like they were put there to lead you to something, but we couldn't figure out what that was, even though we did follow them as far as we could.

When we went home after work the balloons were all gone.

Weird!