Gerrits - January 2024

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The Gerrits Family

Marie is 33, Sya is 32, Felix is 3, Caleb and Keira are 4 months

(Nuan Mishoen is 66, Tika Mishoen is 40, Catherine Penninkmeijer is 34, Abby Gradonni and Annie Tora are 33, Marcus Young is 32, Elisa de Leeuw is 29 and Magda Sels is 24)

Narrated by Sya

The start of a new schoolyear always brings a lot of meetings for Marie. And with my shifts at the hospital and 3 young kids in the house, most of those meetings are held at our house. And they usually take up quite a lot of Marie's time.

Marie has been spending almost all of her free time this past summer at the school. Since they moved to a new building, there were still quite a lot last things that had to be done, but everything seems fine now.

But still Magda and Elisa, the other teachers, spend quite a lot of evenings at our home, to discuss all those last things, the finishing touches as the call it.

When Marie isn't at the school, or isn't holding meetings, all her thoughts still go to the school. The start of a new schoolyear always is a hectic time around here, but with the move it all seems even more hectic.

Keira and Caleb are 4 months old now, and I had to go backt to work myself. I was able to get an adjusted schedule. But it still doesn't leave much time at home. Sometimes I'm really glad the Felix is such an early bird, this way I'm able to see him before I have to leave.

And even though the twins almost always sleep through the night, they still need a lot of attention when they are both awake. And for some reason they always seem to be awake at the same time.

I like the hectic household, mostly because I know that one day it will all calm down a little bit, and we might even miss those busy days. At the moment we just try to enjoy a nice glass of wine together right before we go to bed.

Mom comes by often, to see the kids, and give some advice, wether we ask for it or not.

As much as I appreciate mom's advice, and how well she raised both me and Tika, she never had twins and she never had kids this close in age. But it would be rude to tell her that, and some of the things she say do come in handy.

It sometimes seems easier to accept things from Abby, Annie or Catherine. Maybe it's because they are the same age, as are their children.

I think it's amazing that we are still friends, even though we don't see each other that much anymore. We do try to make it at least once a month, sometimes it's dinner with every one's partners, sometimes it's just the 4 of us, like at uni.

I was kind of surprised when Tika called me to ask if I wanted to do something together, and if I knew something we could do. We were never very close, but she still is my sister and it's  nice to do something together once in while.

I was more than happy to take her out to one of Marcus' basketballgames. It seemed that Tika wanted to get out because things at home aren't going great at the moment and she needed something to get her mind off things. I tryed talking about it, but she kept changing the subject, so I let it go, but I was pretty chocket about it.

It was a good game, at least the part we saw, despite the fact that she didn't want to talk about the things going on at home, we did spent more time talking than watching the actual game.

After the game, we stayed a little bit longer to meet up with Marcus. It's true what they say, that you have to make time to see your friends, I don't see enough of my best friend!

It sometimes felt a little bit weird that Tika was there too, we never went out much when we were younger, but I liked having her there, and I do wish we can do this more often in the future.

Tike seemed to have had a nice time as well. She also said we should do this more often, after things calm down at home. I really hope things at home will get back to normal soon.

Extra:

I redid their garden a bit, they now have a nice terrace, a pond, some play equipent and a footballgoal for when the kids are older.

And a shot a night, because I just love the look of it. The buildings at the background have changed since I last played this household, since I'm in the proces of redoing my downtown area.

Notes:

• Finally I have this update ready! It's about time, it took me over 2 months to write it!
  I've made some calculations, and if I can stick to my own schedule I'll have updates for you up untill October. And if I can keep playing in the mean time I'll even have more!
• Next update will be the elementary school, and I was really looking forward to playing that one, especially since it was the first one in my new school.
• The place where Sya and Tika went to watch one of Marcus' games, is also a new lot. I needed a place where they could go to watch the game, but seeing it was winter, my other lot wasn't good enough, so I build this sportshall. And seeing Marcus is pretty famous, I want to hang some - maybe a lot - of pictures of him at the cafetaria of the sportshall :)