Sinterklaas is a special holiday celebrated in the beginning of December in the Netherlands and Belgium. I love drawing a name and writing poems and creating the “surprise”, or handmade gift that embodies some attribute of the person. It makes it that much more special than just giving a gift because of the time and effort spent.

In addition to the surprises, rather than exchanging gifts at Christmas, we do it at Sinterklaas. It seemed everyone was thinking the same thing when choosing presents for Dook and Els!

We began with the youngest for the surprise. Barbara drew Dook’s name and created a James Bond-esque game for him. She created the crime scene, suspects (like Killer Koen), their alibis, and a list of instructions for Dook to solve the crime!

Now it’s Dook’s turn to give his surprise to Nikki. Because her gift was a projector, he created a camera!

Nikki created an OCR, or Obstacle Course Run, for Sofie. The figurine even had a Dutch Mud Chicks shirt and an OCRWC, World Championships, medal!

Sofie crafted a heart for Els.

Els drew Koen’s name. This year both mine and Koen’s licenses have expired and we both decided it’s not necessary to get new ones. We were met with a bit of protest from family to have our licenses renewed anyway. But it turns out we waited too long and now if we want to have new driver’s licenses we have to retake the test! So for Koen’s surprise Els created a game to test Koen’s knowledge of driving!

And Koen had….me! From the first line of my poem I knew it was going to be embarassing. I have to back up the story by saying I think it’s super funny to swear in Dutch. The words and phrases are so ridiculous and it always makes me laugh. Koen warned me that Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten were listening but I kept swearing anyway.

Last but not least, I was able to give my surprise to Barbara! Barbara loves baking and works with x-rays, so I combined the two. I baked a cake and hid her presents inside it. The guy from the Operations game was the inspiration for the face on the cake, but I’m not sure how well you can tell! I created x-rays for Barbara to use to perform surgery to find the gifts.

And of course, no post is complete without photos of the food! For dinner we enjoyed delicious sushi, followed by cheese, and ending with Sofie’s rhubarb crumble!