Well the whether has been up and down the past few weeks. One day it’s in the 80s the next it’s in the 60s.

That being said we are getting ready for some summer travel when my parents and sister come to down towards the end of June. We are planning to spend a weekend in Brugge, Belgium and then head over to Budapest, Hungary for a few days. While in Budapest we may also take the train to Vienna for a day. It’s about a 3 hour train ride.

We also hope to get down to southern France and Portugal this summer.

Yuki and Timothy left on Thursday for Japan. I’m out today and returning next weekend. Hope to see some friends and relax.

I awoke last Monday around 3:30am to sounds coming from downstairs. So I got up and checked Timothy’s room and looked down the stairs to see a guy with a flashlight in the entryway at the bottom of the stairs (INSIDE MY HOUSE). I yelled at the top of my lungs and charged down the stairs at him. I think he crapped his pants and took off The police arrived within 5 minutes and we are now getting an alarm system put in.

It’s been almost a week now and we are still having trouble sleeping at night. Every little noise, our hearts pump and I get ready to go into action. Hopefully we’ll relax over time.

All that being said, we’ve got better locks on the doors now and our alarm system will be installed this Tuesday. And we are feeling a little more secure already.

During our recent trip to the West Coast, Bonny opened up her place in EV for a Sloan party. We had a great turnout with about 12 or so Sloans and their families. It was nice to catch up with folks again. A big thank you to Bonny for setting everything up.

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve put a post up.   I’ve been traveling a lot the past few weeks, hitting the Czech Republic for a couple of days, East/West/South Germany, Belgium and also the west coast of the Netherlands all on business.

We are now in LA on a little vacation and will be heading up to SF tomorrow for the weekend.

I added some pictures of Timothy bowling, getting ready for ski lessons, our trip to Paris with the Colebrook/Willis Families in November, and some initial pictures of our trip to Portugal.  I’ll be adding more pictures over the next week.

Click here to see the pictures.

This morning we got up and visited Cabo da Roca which is the western most place on the European Continent.  Then we had lunch right on the water with De Mello’s (Goncalo, Pureza and Thomas) and the Cunha-Vaz’s (Ricardo, Xu, Matilde and Laura).  For those Sloan’s who went on the International Trip extension to Portugal this summer, we ate the same great seafood place we did together.

The weather was awesome today.   When we got back from lunch, we went for a bike ride and tonight the adults are heading into Lisbon for sushi.

We flew down to Lisbon, Portugal yesterday to spend Christmas and a few days with the Cunha-Vaz Family who live in Cascais (just west of Lisbon), right on the coast. We had a great traditional holiday dinner with some of their family last night. The weather was rainy yesterday but the sun is out today.

We’ll be here until Saturday and then we fly back up to Brussels and take the Eurostar (high speed train) over to London. After one night in London, we’ll take the train down to the Colebrooks to spend a nice relaxing New Years with them. They live about an hour southwest of the city.

Tomorrow I’m heading to Seattle for a few days of business meetings.  And I fly back the same day my parents are coming to visit for a few weeks.

Also my sister and brother in law arrived in NL last friday for a 10 days visit to euroland.  They left today for a 4 day visit to Stockholm Sweden before they fly back to Arizona.  It was a short but great visit and I hope they come back soon.