Though
father Teun really only has time to work on the church, the little owlets kept
nagging him and Thelma about celebrating ‘King's day’. In the Netherlands we
celebrate the birthday of our king every year on April 27st. The Dutch have big
free markets, where children can sell toys, cookies or other little trinkets.
And Toby and Tibby really wanted to participate!
After
Thelma admitted she would also like to take part in the national holiday, Teun was
convinced: “Alright, we’ll celebrate King's day!’. Toby and Tibby were ecstatic
and with the help of mother Thelma they started gathering orange accessories,
since orange is the Dutch national color. Toby found his orange cap, he wears
every time the Dutch soccer team has to play.
“But what
will you be selling on the market?” Teun asked wisely. They hadn’t
thought about that yet… And Kingsday is tomorrow! Teun suggested the children could sell some of
their stuffed animals, but Tibby was absolutely against it! “I’m not gonna
sell my sweetest bunny!”, she said with tears in her eyes.
Luckely Thelma had a
better plan: “Why don’t we bake donuts and decorate them in the Dutch colors?”
That plan was approved in no time. And Toby wanted to sell some of his enormous
cap collection.
The little
ones first helped finishing the orange cloths. Toby and Tibby crafted a nice
orange hat for father Teun and Thelma made a dress for herself and a skirt for Tibby. She also made a blanket they could put on the ground. Now they only
needed to bake the donuts!
With some
eggs, butter, flower and milk they made a batter
and after the donuts had been
baked, the little ones could start decorating them. Thelma had made some icing
of orange juice and powdered sugar. Toby and Tibby loved brushing the top of
the donuts with icing.
Besides the orange ones, they owlets also used blue,
white and red icing (the colors of the Dutch flag). After a little while they
had a big pile ready.
Now we can
only hope father Teun won’t eat them all before tomorrow…
