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06/12/2005: "Angela's birthday party"
music: Nothing, just the typing on the keyboardmood: Tired but ok
Well, the morning after the day before so to speak!
We've had Angela's birthday party yesterday and even though dad wasn't there and we had just received the news of Pete's passing the day was quite a lot of fun.
That was what I had intended when sneakily emailing friends and family behind her back...
I knew this day would stand out because of it being the first birthday without dad and I wanted to try and do something special so it would not just be remembered because of that but also because of some nice surprises (which we and Angela in particular) quite desperately needed.
Well: the surprises worked indeed!
The first surprise I gave her was the present which a lot of people paid something towards as well (which I guess surprised her too). The first weekend of July we are gonna have a nice trip to Newcastle with DFDS Seaways. It basically comprises of 2 nights aboard the ferry and about 5.5 hours in Newcastle on the Saturday. We talked about this but have never done it before and because it is hotel and the travel all in one go it's very relaxing (unless one of us gets seasick obviously)!
We are greatly looking forward to this relaxing break and I want to thank all our friends and family who have decided to help pay for this. It means a lot to us that you care that much and we will certainly enjoy it/put a travel story and pics up on this or Angela's website. Hopefully that trip will give us a bit of the positive boost we need!
The second surprise was something Angela had not ever been able to guess either.
When emailing people about her birthday I also emailed some of her Ericsson ex-colleagues and at first thought that I would never get in contact with any of them anymore, as the mails all (or well, almost all) bounced. To my surprise however 1 week later one of her ex-colleagues from The UK replied and we have been in contact ever since.
Sean said that he would try to come over together with his wife Verity and one of his mates (and colleague) Chris. They indeed did and contacted me about that they would be in Amsterdam for the weekend. You can't believe how difficult it was for me to keep my mouth shut about this, but in the end I succeeded! They walked toward the clubbuilding and it took about 3 seconds for Angela to register who they actually were! This as she thought we had simply lost the contact after not emailing for about a year and it seeming like emails came back undeliverable. So yep, it was a great surprise!
They stayed the whole afternoon and we had a spendid time. It was so great seeing them again and also seeing the looks on Angela's face... That was just priceless!
Hopefully also everyone else who was there had a nice time, including Tiny (it just felt so wrong seeing her on her own without dad), my mum & dad, Leo, Dirk, Willem, Henk, Kees (which was a surprise, I had not expected him), Natascha, Ome Jan & Patrick (well, they were mostly there working on the mast, but still)...
In the end we stayed till just after midnight and then we went home tired but feeling good.
Hopefully my plan worked at least a bit and this birthday will be remembered for both the very sad reason but also for the nice time and surprises!
Will post some pictures in the picture gallery when I get time to sort them!
It means so much that so many people think about us. We do the same back... It's great to have such a wonderful bunch of friends!