I'm in Atlanta today. It was an early morning -- up at 4.15 am, Uber at 5.00 am and then breakfast at the airport. When the stock markets open at 9.30 am we have a conference call, which I took from the rental car on my way to the office.

In the plane I saw someone reading a physical newspaper, something that's getting rare.

I'm already looking forward going home tomorrow.

Right after I got home I took the kids on a ride in the bakfiets. The weather has been great these few days, and we didn't really need jackets.

We went to Whole Foods, where the kids did not find cheese to taste but they were well behaved and it was just a fun trip.

The new Google Arts & Culture app has a feature to compare a selfie with works of art.

For Adrian it found a good match with this painting. It's in the Phillips Collection in D.C. so we can check it out one day.

Yesterday we went to the Vermeer exhibition at the Gallery of Art. There was a 30 minute line for the exhibition. It was probably busy due to the holiday weekend. The boys were getting restless, bored and hungry so I left the line with them, and we had lunch together. It was very cosy with them in the restaurant; we had the sandwiches we brought from home and talked. After lunch we went back upstairs the room with old Dutch art, which was so beautiful. The boys even appreciated it.

Sasha and Nora saw the main exhibition which had works by Vermeer and his contemporaries. After that we met up in the restaurant again, which the boys liked because there would be more food...

A terrific morning together. When we were in the car going home Adrian asked if we were going to have "brood kaas" at home. But no, two lunches was enough.

Last night Sasha and I watched Market Call, a film about the financial crisis.

This was the first movie we saw together in three years, and it was a nice evening together.

The film was entertaining, though not a highlight of movie making. We both commented on the lackadaisical HR procedures and logical errors, but it was fun to watch it.

We watched the movie for YouTube, $3.99 for the HD version.

"Сокче, сокче, рестурант!", we heard this morning ("juice, juice, restaurant").

We didn't pay much attention at first but then we realized that they had opened the bottle of cold medicine (Motrin, which is ibuprofen) and they were happily drinking from it. They probably drank 20 to 40 ml...

We called the Poison Control phone line and they weren't too worried. Told us that they should eat something to prevent an upset stomach but there's not much risk otherwise.

Well, that's a bit of a transition... on Wednesday morning we were still in the pool in Puerto Morelos -- today we're in a deep freeze.

Nora's school started an hour later today, which was good because she is still getting used to getting up early.

The bakery near our house, LeoNora, is moving to Falls Church which is unfortunate. But not a surprise, since they moved their ovens away a few months ago.

We came back from our trip last night -- beautiful warm weather -- right into a snowy cold day. Nora's school is closed today.

During the winter break I had the gear cables from my bicycle replaced, since the old ones had water in them and froze up during cold days. That worked nicely today -- it was quite cold but the gears worked well (though I still need to tweak them slightly). The new standard worked well too, I haven't used my new coffee holder yet that Sasha gave me for my birthday.

The boys are no longer using their "baby chairs" for breakfast and we now have a routine where the kids sit next to each other.

Today they had muesli (though Leo preferred rondjes) and we read the Christmas story by Dick Bruna.

We both had a day off today and we started preparing for Christmas. Compared to two years ago we're taking it much slower -- it's easy to be overly ambitious this season but there's really no benefit in it.

We had a nice and relaxed day. In the morning I bought grape leaves with the guys. Normally I'm always in a rush when shopping and it was so nice to have time with them. They wanted their own karretje? No problem. They wanted to see the car toys? No problem.

Yesterday we were at Lubber Run, today we walked at Bluemont Park.