Summer Fun

We have had so many fun events going on recently that I haven't had time to blog! The people I have been babysitting for moved back to the States so I now have lots more free time. It has been wonderful! However, the minute you get free time, someone else wants you to volunteer, so I have definitely not been sitting around. Our church hosted a service project for a week to do work around Brussels. Click here for all of the photos. Kyle did one of the service projects, but I stayed in the kitchen the whole time. I was cooking for eight of the eleven days of the work camp so needless to say, Kyle and I have been enjoying lots of take out recently.

However, it was not all work becuase I got to learn so much from the woman in charge of all the cooking. Laina Graf used to live in LA and had cooked for many Hollywood stars as well as catered numerous weddings and parties. But she and her husband wanted to give their children an international experience and felt the call to come to Amsterdam to be missionaries. She was able to figure out how to cook for anywhere from 80-1000 people depending on the night during Serve the City, and all on a church's budget! Not only was she calm throughout the whole process, but she also decorated and presented each dish in the most beautiful way. Whether she was doing it for the tired volunteers who had worked all day or the Brussels homeless, she wanted to lay down a banquet "as if the skies had opened up and Heaven was shining down on the table" which is exactly what she did. She also knows alot about personality testing so I had fun asking her all about that too!

Emily deep in concentration about how to

best cut the peaches for the dessert.

One night we went to two Fourth of July parties (read below) and the next night we were lucky enough to be invited as guests of Deloitte and Touche to attend a dinner at a great restaurant on the Grand Place to watch the Ommegang procession. The parade re-enacts the original procession back in 1549 to welcome Charles IV to Brussels. Click here for the photos.

Many good friends work at Deloitte, including Tim and Lynn Keck. Lynn being the sweet wife that she is organized a Belgian breweries tour for Tim's birthday. So bright and early on Saturday morning nine of us headed all around Belgium to three different breweries. It was a perfect Belgian day -- sunny, cool, and lots of good beer. We ended the night at the most picturesque restaurant. Click here for the photos of the day.

In between all this I have had my cooking club and Babes With No Babes dinner group which have both been lots of fun. We are off again soon, so I'll have lots more to share when we return!