At the beginning of October, I, Tatjana, went to the Netherlands for 3 weeks to spend time with my parents who are struggling with age/getting older. This trip had been kept a secret from everyone except a select few and there were a few people to surprise on arrival. I started by suddenly appearing in my parents’ hallway. It was quite a shock for them, but they were happy to see me. Next up was Jeremy who was so shocked that he closed the door in my face. Nathan was last and when he saw me, he looked like he’d seen a ghost and turned white as a sheet. I had a tremendous amount of fun with this and really enjoyed everyone’s reactions.
But I was in the Netherlands with a goal. I got to support my parents emotionally and practically and we also got to just enjoy the fact that we were together. It was a time of crying, laughing, realizing things, organizing, visiting doctors and a lot of coffee and tea.
Right at the end of my 2nd week in the Netherlands, I was at Jeremy’s house with my father when Jeremy got a phone call from my mother-in-law. My father-in-law had suddenly gotten ill and was being taken to the hospital by ambulance. Because no one else was picking up their phone, I immediately started making my way to the hospital. Not much later my sister-in-law finally received the message and raced from her work to the hospital. The doctors initially thought and hoped it wouldn’t be too bad, but it turned out much worse causing them to decide to operate immediately. Due to the risks during and after the surgery Peter and Chester flew in as soon as they were able.
It was an intense time in which we moved between the parents to spend as much time with both sides and to be able to help them as much as possible. Luckily the risk factor has dropped to well within safe limits and we can all breathe a little easier. Our fathers really know how to stir things up.

For more than a year Chester has been asking for a onesie, preferably an elephant onesie. He even dared us to get him one with the promise that if we did, he would wear it out in public. While Peter and I were in Australia we were walking through a market and saw a whole stand with only onesies but no elephant onesies. In the end we decided to go with a green one as that is Chester’s favorite color. It is basically a crocodile.
When Peter and I returned to Thailand Chester was still in Pattaya working at a conference, so we came up with the idea to stuff the onesie as if there was a person in it and put it on his bed. We had hoped to scare him, but it didn’t work.
Chester might be even more crazy than his parents because a month later he took the onesie with him to the Netherlands, put it on at the baggage claim at Schiphol airport and walked out to surprise me. He kept it on until we got to where he would be staying and got to surprise his grandparents as well.
Sadly, Chester can’t wear the onesie often in Thailand as it’s a bit too warm there to comfortably wear one. Now we just have to hope the winter is cold enough to allow him to wear it in Thailand.