St. Martin's Day

On St. Martin's Day, children in some parts of the Netherlands go door to door with a paper lantern they created themselves, and sing St. Martin songs, in exchange for candy. In the past week, Nienke and Inge have created their lantern at school and Ellis did that at the daycare centre. Especially Nienke and Inge were very excited to go door to door today.

Weather was horrible: winds up to 100 km/h, rain and very cold. This meant the girls didn't want to visit many houses. In the image Nienke and Inge are at Aunt Jannie's door, together with another girl who also lives in our street.

When the older girls were cold and didn't want to go any further, we picked up Ellis from daycare and then we visited my parents and after that Martine's parents so Ellis could join in the fun too. The girls all came home with huge amounts of candy. We also had lots of candy to give to children who would come to our door, but because of the bad weather there weren't that many and that means there's lots left. I'm afraid I will eat a lot of that stuff...