Fall

I believe that fall is truly upon us. Leaves are mostly changed to oranges yellows, reds and browns and what hasn't fallen yet is ready to soon. There is the cool crispness in the air that I love about fall. Time for sweaters and mitts and scarves(hats too). Just around the corner Christmas will be here and we will get to celebrate the birth of our Saviour. This is my favourite time of year when we get together with friends and family(when we are close enough to) and celebrate being around each other hopefully with no arguments. I am looking forward to celebrating this holiday season Dutch style and hope to learn more about the traditions that are in this part of the world. Soon we will be putting up our Christmas tree and other holiday decorations. I will have to take pictures and post them on Facebook(maybe even here if I can figure out how too. Have a happy fall Everyone.

More busy, busy, busy!

Well now that we have been into a few weeks of soccer, I have to admit that I am really pleased with my children and how well they have adapted into the playing of the game. Alex had a game in Brussels on Saturday. I wasn't able to go with him as Shania had a game as well here in Brunssum. He said that they won, so I will take his word. Shania did really good as well. She was playing as a defender and blocked a few shots from getting to the goal. I was really impressed. This coming Sat Alex has a game at Shape(Mons) Belgium I don't know if Rick will go with him or if he will take Shania to her game. I guess we need to talk about that. This week I have a lot of things going on for myself. It is the start of all the American Spouses clubs mini clubs. On the 26th there is a cooking club at my neighbours so that will be easy to get to. Thursday there is scrapbooking( I may actually get som pages done:) ). Tuesday night for Enrichment we are having our discussion for our Book Club. We read the book 'Sunflower' by Richard Pauls Evans. I read it in 1 day so I am not sure if I am a really fast reader or if the book was that good. Maybe both. Well that is about all the time I have for my blog at the moment. I need to get my kids off to school. Will write more at another time, maybe even later today. You all will have to wait and see.

Busy, busy, busy

Well I am still trying to figure out what I got myself into this school year. Alex and Shania are both playing soccer(football or voetballin dutch) with the CYS(child youth services). Their first actual game is this Saturday. So we will see how that goes. So with soccer comes practices which are on Tuesday and Thursday after school. I take Amina and we go watch them practice. It gets us out of the house and give Amina some time to play outside. On top of soccer both Alex and Shania are doing after school activites. On Monday's Alex has athletics and Shania has art. Tuesday is Cricket for Alex and Shania is doing jump rope. Which slightly interferes with soccer practice. They only miss about 30 min of the hour and a half practice. Alex is in Cub scouts and is a Webelo 2 this is really his first year doing it so he has to catch up some to the other boys in his group but he should make it. This year for the scouts in April there is a big gathering of scouts from all over Europe in Normandy. Apparently it only happens every 3 years so this is really exciting for us to be able to attend it with him. We have already booked our accomodations for it, so we are set. Shania is starting girl scouts which is the 2nd and 4th Monday right after school so she will miss a few of the art classes but we already talked to the teacher and he said it was alright. The kids are also involved with some lunch time activities. Shania is taking Latin Thursday at lunch and a Roots and shoots class, on Firday at lunch, which deals with the environment. So we are prety busy just with the older 2 kids. This year I joined the American Spouse club (ASC) and signed up for some different groups with them. The nice thing about the ASC is that a lot of my neightbors are member as well so we get along really well. The other neighbors have kids doing things with mine so I have a lot of opportunities to talk with and fellowship them. This morning we had a brunch at one of the homes in the neighborhood and I think this may turn into a monthly thing, we had a lot of fun sitting aroudn and talking and eating. Amina isn't really involved in anything yet but I may sign her up for some things if they are offered for her age group, we will see with that. Well I think that is enough for now. have a great day everyone. Until next time. Tot Ziens!

August ??

Okay this year has gone by way to fast so far. It can't be August already, well according to the calendar it is so I will have to get used to it. We recently returned from 2 weeks in Canada where it was HOT. Temperature wise it was in the 30's (celcius) or for those not used to metric 90's. One day I believe it reached over 100. We had a great time visiting with family and friends. Shania our oldest daughter was baptized while we were there as well so it was a nice way to finish up our vacation. We arrived in Canada on the 17th and took care of my passport in Calgary on the 18th (as it would have expired in Sept) then we went down my parents and had curry for supper. Yummy, I love curry. We had our famil reunion from the 19th until the 21, all of my siblings but one sister was able to make it so it was a lot of fun. The cousins had a great time to gether and surprisingly enough there was only a few squabbles during the time we were there. The squabbles were between Amina and her two 2 year old boy cousins. Rick's Dad and step-mom were able to drive up for Shania's baptism so it was nice to see them. We had a really good time even iwth the heat that we arten't used to living here in the Netherlands. Well I just wanted to update a bit on our life. School starts for the kids in 2 weeks. It will be nice to get bakc into a more structured routine. Though it has been nice not to have to worry about waking up at a certain time. I think we are over the jet-lag now. SO we should be good to go by the time school starts again. We have a bit of shooping to do before then a few more clothes for the kids(stop growing) and then the supplies for the year. Until next time. Cheers.

Time to update

Well there went another month without a post from me. Where has the time gone. We have been busy this past month with the kids finishing school for the summer. Rick and I also celebrated birthdays in June. On the 3rd I turned the big 36 and 6 days later Rick turned 35 on the 9th. We also have a few other members in our extended families with birthdays in june. David (who is my brother Marks oldest) turned 9 on the 6th. Troy(Rick's sister Kim's husband) had his birthday on the 26th (he is 23 days younger than I am) and his son Anthon turned 1 on the 21. the only other thing worth mentioning in this blog is that for the whole month of June and the first full week in July it rained every day. So we don't want to hear about it form you folks over across the ocean. We had a beautiful day today and I think the kids were a bit rowdy in church to day because they were actually getting some sunshine in their life again. Rick and I were asked to speak in our Ward today as well. Our talks were from April Conference. I spoke on the talk given by Sis. Vicki Matsumori entitled "A Lesson from the Book of Mormon" and Rick's talk was by Elder Russel M Nelson "Repentance and Conversion". So that is about all that has happened inour life this past month. As we look forward to a new month the Norris family will be leaving the Netherlands for 2 weeks to go vacation in sunny southern Alberta. Or so I heard that it was sunny there. A full report of the festivities will be given when we return. Thanks for listening, or reading or whatever it is that you are doing at this moment in time.

It's been a while...

Well I just realized that it has been almost a month since I had written anything here. Where does the time go. Last weekend we went back to Baumholder to visit(Rick also had a Dental appointment which was the main reason for the visit.) It was nice to see friends that we probably won't see for a while since they are moving back to the states in the next month. It will be different when we go back and visit Baumholder again after the core group that we were there with has all moved on. Thank goodness we still have lots of friends there for us to visit. We went to the Monte Mare water park in Kaiserslautern while we were there and were very impressed with it. We wondered why we hadn't gone there before. It was really nice to play together as a family in the water. As we were leaving the park though there was a bad rain/hail storm that we got stuck in. that was sort of fun to run to the car without getting any wetter than we already were. Maybe one day we will go back there again. Amina was talking nonstop about Brother Horton(he was nursery leader with his wife whiel we were there) she cries for the first few minutes after I take her in there but she is perfectly happy after that. She has mentioned him almost every day since we have been home. We had stayed at their house on Saturday night the 26th of May and Amina was upset that we were leaving and not going back to Brother Horton's house. Well that is all for now. Hopefully the next update won't be so long in coming.
Jill

Church Callings

Rick and I have finally received callings in our Ward. Now that we have been here for 2 months we now really feel like part of the Ward and not just a long time visitor. Rick has been called as the Sunday School President. I have been called as a Primary worker. I will be team-teaching the sunbeams(3-4 year olds) with another sister. It should be fun. My first Sunday teaching is this week. There was a slight mix up with the way I was called which was to be nursery teacher. Which is with the 18 months to 3 year olds. That would have been Amina's class. I didn't feel comfortable about that but accepted the call anyways. The Primary President came to me and said that I was called in the wrong way, not to the nursery but to be a primary worker. I was set apart as a primary worker so it is all good.
For those of you wh o are reading this and not familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and are a bit confused feel free to email me and I will try to explain.

Fun Day with Friends

So this happened a few days ago, April 30th to be exact. We spent the day with the Meister Family from our ward at Phantasialand. It is an amusement park in Germany about 45 min away from our house. The Meisters moved to the Netherlands from Canada(Ontario) about a month before we did. They have 5 children and 3 of them are the same ages as Alex, Shania and Amina. So we get along really well. We met the Meisters at the front gate to GK(Geilenkirchen) and we were on our way. The day started off a bit cool but it ended up being a very pleasant day. The reason why we were able to go on a Monday in the middle of the school year, was that it is a holiday here in the Netherlands which is Queens Day. I am not sure exactly of the history of it all but it was a day of school and work so we took advantage of it.
Phantasialand is like I said an amusement park. The areas of the park are separated into different regions of the world. There was an area from China, Mexico, US. We had a lot of fun. The nice thing about going there is that you can bring your own food so as to cut down on the cost somewhat. The promotion that the park had for the month of April was free tickets to go again in the season up until the beginning of November. So we will take advantage of that. So when people come to visit us and want to go someplace fun with amusement park rides now we know of a good place to go.

My First Blog(a bit of our history)

Hi, everyone. I just thought that I would try out this blog thing and see what the big deal with it is. I have seen a few other blog of my family and friends so I figured why not me too. This way I can point people to here when they ask me if I am on myspace.com. I guess that this is somewhat the same. For those who don't know the reason that I chose the title of our blog to be Netherland Norris' is for the very simple fact that we are living in the Netherlands. How do you like that? To give a bit of history on our family. Rick and I met 12 years ago in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was at the time serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He happened to be living in one of my areas. A few months after meeting him I ended up teaching his step mother at the time. I went back to visit in September after I had been home for a couple of months in June. The rest as they say is History. Rick amd I have been married for 11 years this past April 10. We have 3 children Alexander will be 11 on December 31 of this year, he was born in Sandy, Utah. Shania just turned 8 years old on March 15th hopefully will get abptized this July when we go back to visit family in Canada. Shania was born in Raymond, Alberta. then we have Amina. Amina was born In Landstuhl, Germany and will be 3 this coming July 27th. Rick has been a member of the US Army for 6 years and we have lived in Georgia and Germany and are now stationed in the Netherlands. In upcoming posts I will go into further detail on each of those places. We have been in Europe for 41/2 years and we love it. Well that is all for now stay tuned for more news on the Netherland Norris Family and there happenings.