We recently celebrated Jacob’s 21st. The theme of the party was “Holland won the world cup”. Holland didn’t win the world cup, but we didn’t let that hold us back. Jacob decorated the party room with orange streamers, flags, hats, blow up crowns and a couple of Dutch flags.
Everyone got dressed up in a soccer team’s colours.
Jacob dressed in Orange, and Gerie in Green and Gold.
Dad and Jacob dressed up ready to party.
Yes, dad is wearing a pink bow tie with his orange shirt.
Lindsay being an honorary Dutchman joined team oranje!
Mum was the only one with decorum, wearing her pearls. I meanwhile put a dutch kerchief around my neck, over my blue dress and declared that I was wearing the traditional Dutch national dress.
We managed to get a whole family photo before everyone arrived.
The party started and Mum and Dad started churning out the Dutch food. First up was bitterballen, or mini crochet…we were not too sure what they were supposed to be. But they were good!
Halfway through the evening we stopped for speeches.
Mum and I worked together on a speech, her talking, me doing the tech. The Gerie put together a nice speech, this was followed by a funny speech by Pat and Daniel. Where they informed us that Jacob is not very good at a game called “4 kings”.
This was followed by cupcakes, prepared by my friend Mel.
The words are supposed to say, Nederlands Champions! But mum and I somehow made it into Nederland is Champions. Oops!
After the cake Mum, Dad and Lindsay put their Dutch Aprons on,
And started preparing more deep fried Dutch food, with a side of sausage rolls for those not brave enough to try the frikandel speciaal.
But we should not have bothered with the sausage rolls. The frikandel speciaal were very popular. With the clever people coming upstairs and watching Lindsay prepare the frikandel speciaal. The moment he dropped the last piece of onion, they grabbed themselves a piece.
One party goer sitting next to Lindsay, watching him prepare the sausage in awe said to him “You are a very important person in my life right now”. We had brave volunteers take plates of frikandel speciaal downstairs, only to have them return seconds later with a rather terrified look on their face. It seems the food was so popular the guests downstairs would have the plate licked clean before they even reached the bottom step!
Mum and I had spent the weeks before finding lots of old photos of Jacob to use in our speech for him. They are all up on flickr, but here are some of my favourites:
