🎃 Week 271 - Halloween

We continued our holiday at Center Parcs in De Haan, Belgium.

We kept our boys busy. As well as daily swims/slides in the Aqua Mondo swimming pool, soft play, mini golf, foot-golf, badminton, and table tennis, they had workshops for making binoculars, lanterns and pizzas.

There was a Halloween pool party (also for reluctant parents) where staff dressed up as zombies, ghosts and blood-soaked clowns, and half-chased swimmers around the pool with fake knives and chainsaws. Our children loved it. I was pleased when it was over.

We hired bikes and took advantage of Belgium’s excellent cycle infrastructure to ride north past the forest and back. Good exercise for everyone. Our boys haven’t really spent much time on bikes, preferring scooters, but H is now pushing for a grown-up bike this Christmas, ready for his cycling proficiency test at school in the new year.

And we enjoyed another trip into Bruges for a canal boat ride, shopping for chocolate and lunch with Andy and his family. It was a nice, relaxed week, our third and probably last visit to De Haan.

Back home, we went trick-or-treating around the village on Halloween night. There were noticeably more children on the streets, most likely from the new homes that are now being filled. I kept an eye on our security camera feeds and our big mixing bowl of sweets was emptied much quicker this year.

H’s football team romped to a 11-0 win on Sunday afternoon. It was an annihilation. They most likely need to go up another division to find their level, but in the meantime, they’re enjoying themselves. It’s also far more enjoyable for spectators than his last team’s winless run last season.

The Celebrity Traitors finished: it was addictive, captured the nation, and showed how the quieter, more introverted players (Romesh and Sebastian) are best suited to win as Faithfuls.