The Krauses in Rhineland: Belgium & The Netherlands

This weekend we: 1. Bought a new family car. 2. Took the kids and went to an antiques market in Belgium.

Lets start with the new family car. Personally I have always been morally opposed to mini-vans. Who gets onto the freeway (or Autobahn) behind a mini-van and thinks: "Wow, that is an awesome car. I bet they are going to do the speed limit, and stay in their own lane, and not be annoying in general". No one. That's who. Everyone cringes when they see a mini-van coming with a 200 foot radius of them. But now, as a mother, I understand why....when we see that mini-van driver swerving all over the road, I assume she (yes, she) is turning around in her seat telling one sibling to stop tormenting the other or blindly feeling around the backseat with one hand for a missing binky or the sippy cup her kid chucked as hard as they could out of pure fury. So at the expense of being mercilessly ridiculed by family, we decided that we could no longer ignore the functionality of a mini-van. After looking for weeks we found the perfect van for a great price. And I can't wait to drive my van ;)

Moving on to the rest of the weekend in Belgium- we drove out with some friends and stayed at the most beautiful Chateau I've ever seen. I wish we had a little more time to spend walking around the property and gardens but we were on a mission. We loaded up 4 adults and 4 little girls (all under the age of 4) and went to explore the local village. We ate some fantastic pizza and tried to keep, mainly our kids, from destroying the restaurant. This morning we went to the antiques market, walked around and found some really fun stuff. We drove home and had a nice evening before wrapping up the weekend!

The new Krause family swagger wagon