Hopper's 1st Overnight Guest

Ok funny and awkward story. I try to speak as much Dutch as possible but often my conversations with Hopper's teachers are peppered with English. It was no different a few weeks ago when picking him up, teacher Judith starts going on in Dutch about someone coming to sleep over for the weekend. (Mind you school lets out on Thursday, who in the hell is staying at my house for 4 days?!?!) My brain is scrambling to understand just who exactly is coming over without any warning and I start to panic as she mentions "he" will need his swim trunks to join us at the beach! (I've only packed lunch for us 3!) Resorting to flustered English, I was so relieved to hear that it was Puk, the school's plush doll mascot and learning totem. Effen Whew! My brain was all prickly. I'm sure the alarm was written all over my face. And in my relief, hearing about the sweet Puk ritual for the first time, I started to giggle. And cry. Just a little. Sweet tears of mixed emotions.

So Puk came over with his own little suitcase including PJs, toothbrush and paste, comb, change of clothes, manual flashlight and bedtime story. (The point is to take responsibility of him, a Montessori Tamagotchi if you will.) And of course the addition of swim trunks and sunglasses so he could spend the afternoon in the sand with Hopper Mama and Daddy at Zandvoort!

We love the beach! And even went swimming. (No not Puk, though we joked about burying him the sand for a photo op then decided we all have enough sand brought into our houses by little feet and it wouldn't be fair to the next kid's parents for their inanimate guest to splash out sand onto their *wink* clean floor.) We walked, played soccer, found hermit crabs and jellyfish, and played on the slide and bouncy castle. It was a gorgeous day, the last proper beach day of the year, and we soaked up every last minute of it, staying late to have dinner at a beach cafe, toes in the sand.

Oh, and for the rest of the weekend, Puk joined us for meals and some tossing around the house and at the end of the 4 days, we made an entry into his "travel log" with photos and some lovely words for the next kids to read. Hopper got to show-n-tell about it at school and all the kids loved the pic of Puk hangin' cool on the beach blanket. Such a lovely thing to do for the kids.