It's time for an update cause a lot has happened last weeks.
At work it was busy as usual till October 10. That day I received a mail from the board that there was planned an audit about all dossiers from students which received a diploma last year. They made a random choice of students (12) and I had to put all kind of things together. A copy of Diploma was the easiest one, but they also wanted all curricula, testprograms and testpapers they made in all years the student was with us.... I spent quite some time in the archives lol. For the location I work for it wasn't a big problem but we also have two (a bit smaller) locations where it was not that easy to find it all back. In general it meant a lot of stress cause we only had 5 days to collect all things.
Friday the 14th I only had to do 1 dossier when my wife called round 9 am. Her father died in his sleep that night so...... it became a very weird day.
We all knew that it was going to happen cause his health was going backwards very quick, but this kind of news always comes very sudden. I left (leaving all things on my desk for it was the final day to collect things) quickly to the retirement home where my father in law lived for about 5 years now. We made arrangement with the staff there, phoned for an undertaker and were able to see him. The undertaker took care of a lot of things off course and after waiting for about 45 minutes they came to get us to show how they took care of him. He was lying in his bed in quite a peaceful way. It was not scary watching him, he was like we always knew him (i have seen it different a lot of times so it was a relieve).
In his room we couldn't do much anymore, so I brought my wife back home, lunched a bit and went back for school to finish things for the audit (that afternoon fall break started so I really had to do it). I brought all dossiers to the board of directors and went home again quickly.
That night the undertaker came back to make preparations for the funeral and so. A quite friendly young guy who accompanied us in the week to come till Wednesday, the day of the cremation.
So, till Wednesday it was a bit of weird week. In these conditions you live a bit "in a daze" as we call it (dunno of that line is familiar lol).
The "farewell celebration" was a beautiful one ( we had chosen nice music, nice poets and my wife had written a nice and emotional "walk through his life"). We accompanied the coffin towards the cremation centre and did a last farewell.
It's strange to go home then again, so we already had decided to go out for dinner with my sister in law and her husband. While dining there we talked a lot about what happened in his life, shared good memories and , strange perhaps, had quite a good evening. For us it really felt as a good end of a weird week.

Because it was fall break we already had planned a 2 day visit to Breda, a nice place south in our country. Originally planned was a hotel from Wednesday to Thursday but because all circumstances we were able to change that one day later. So Thursday morning we drove south. After all a good decision we made cause it brought us back to life a bit again. Good weather made it even a bit relaxing after a heavy week.
We made a nice "walking" city tour and did a lot of shoppings. Now a new wardrobe is hanging in the closet.
We drank nice drinks and ate a good dinner (Martin: it was a nice salad then a steak and finishing with some nice icecream and coffee).
Friday afternoon we drove home again. After all good we did it cause we really needed it actually.

Last Saturday we went to the centre of the city and spent a terrible amount of money. First my wife needed a new phone. The old one was making probs so.... She decided to take an iphone so now the whole family is "i-connected" lol. After that we went to the travel agency to book our planned holiday to Turkey next may with the whole family. We thought we were early in booking but.... a lot already was booked so our first 3 choices werent available anymore. We decided for a week on resort titan select in Alanya (https://www.titanhotels.com/titanselect/en/ ) With 8 person in a school holiday quite an amount of money but.... promised is promised lol.
While in the travel agency we also decided that our destination next summer will be Vietnam.

Finally a quickie about yesterday. We decided to go to "paleis het Loo" in Apeldoorn (https://www.paleishetloo.nl/templates/frontpage/page.asp?iPageId=0&iLangId=2 ) Once we were in the ticket centre waiting for our turn to buy tickets i checked my phone for missed msg's. There was one from a nice guy i met in my chatroom. He is from Croatia but staying in Holland at the moment ( I knew that btw) He msg-ed me he was in the Paleis het Loo in Apeldoorn......omg what a coincedence. After some messages i knew he was in the restaurant. Because we also wanted to eat something we went to the restaurant ( my wife decided she wanted to go to the other restaurant so i told her i just needed to see whats on the menu here lol). When i entered the restaurant i saw him sitting with his friends. I couldnt do much more then a little wink but it felt so weird ...so unexpected but still excited as well. We discussed it later and both still felt good about it. We both wished we would have been able to talk a bit more but that wasnt possible...:(