My Turn

Well, Laura has asked me to post today. Something about it being my turn since she is quite spent by all the posting she has done lately. Sure she has posted 20 entries while I have posted only 11 but really the 11 posts about Holland are all still just related to one topic right. That shouldn't really count as 11 posts should it? (As you can see we are having a playful argument tonight...) So now I sit here straining myself to blog about something while she sits over my sholder watching me and correcting the way I type shoulder, I didn't want to post anyway and now I have to do a good job at it too? Wives can be soo demanding. Oh, and now she thinks I am joking, and is daring me to post this... like I am going to these lengths for a joke?

So since this post should have some point to it, I will kindly ask you to help solve some mysteries for Laura. You see, she has been watching you. Keeping tabs on who is reading the blog. Everyday I come home and she is asking me who we know who lives in Ottawa, Pickering, or Montreal. I mean, I can't even get out my "Honey what's for dinner" and she is all over me on who is reading our blog. So I ask you to please let us know specifically if you are that person in Ottawa, Pickering and Montreal. Laura is really dying to know.

Well I think that counts as a post. Better go up now and see if I'm allowed in to bed.

"Randomness"

I'm not even sure that "randomness" is a word, but this best describes this post. Just random pictures of "little bits of everything" from our household!

Lately we've been having some amazing thunderstorms around here. I'm pretty sure we've had one almost every other day for the last couple weeks now! I love watching these storms (from inside) - watching the clouds form and begin to swirl - and the sheets of water raining down. The last storm we had was fairly local, and when I say local, I mean really local. We had about 4 downpours on Sunday, all of which including some hail (and not just little specks, this hail was the size of marbles!) - but, 10 minutes away at my parents house, they had none (this is quite often the case, I've come to the understanding that anything past Stone Church Road, heading South seems to have a totally different weather system - weird!). Below is a picture of the hail I collected (while being pelted fiercely on my back!) during one of the hail down pours.

Our cool kids (Anna's quite the diva here!).
Danielle and I participated in a "song and poetry" evening last weekend. We decided rather "spur of the moment" to do a Sound of Music 'diddy' together, a spoof really, as both of us are not on the "extremely" talented side of singing ;) All in all it was good fun, despite the butterflies in the stomach - it's good to get out and be a little crazy once and a while - keeps life on the lighter side!
Caleb has been enjoying a new morning routine lately - tea. He loves it and asks Alvar quite often for it (we haven't made him an addict yet...he only gets it a couple times a week at the most!) and enjoys sipping his morning caffeine fix ;)
This is what I walked into the other day with Caleb and Anna - they were giggling like crazy, having a great time just "hanging around" with each other!

Saturday mornings can sometimes be crazy with Alvar and I running here and there trying to get errands run and things done around the house and also spending time with the kids. But, if we are lucky, and the flyers have arrived late (meaning Saturday), it gives us a little "slow time" as it's one of our favourite things to browse thru (find all the good deals!)...ask any of our friends, we love finding deals!! I think that the kids have picked up on our love for flyers...as they joined Alvar quite enthusiatically on the couch last week....
Today is the last day of school for Esther and she is quite excited about it! It's not because she doesn't like school, I'm pretty sure there wasn't a day where she didn't "feel" like going there, but it looks like summer is going to be fairly busy - with a lot of the "busyness" revolved around her! In May we signed her up for soccer, which she is absolutely LOVING! It's fun to watch the kids run after that ball - most of the team in fact seems to be where ever that ball is! Actually, things seem to be improving as they are learning that soccer is in fact a "team" sport - and that there are benefits to helping each other out!

Well, that's it for now! Time to relax, school's done and there's no more pressure to get out of the house in time (well, maybe just for a beach day or something!!).

Commercial in the making?

The kids had started singing this song about a month ago (I think it was actually on the radio more than a year ago already), and very much enjoyed singing as loudly as possible - often much to my dismay! Even Anna gets in on it even though she doesn't know the words too well ;)

For best "audio" experience, turn your volume WAY up!

Day 11 - Coming Home!

It’s hard to believe, but today is the last day in Holland. After 10 days of touring here, there and everywhere, it is time to get back on the plane to go home. The trip has flown by incredibly fast – we have a million and one memories flying thru our heads from all the things we had seen and done. So many things in fact, it’s actually pretty hard to keep them all straight (hence the mix up of when we went to Belgium)! If it hadn’t been for the pictures (and some “msn’ing” with Alvar’s Mom!), I’m not sure how we could have remembered it all ;)

We enjoyed our final breakfast together at the Koophandel – a wonderful buffet of fresh baked buns, gouda cheese, yogurts, fresh fruit, boiled eggs and lots of other delicious things! After breakfast we got our bags together and packed up the van – our plane at Schiphol Airport was calling our names!

We got to the airport in great time, and even had time to grab a light snack and coffee before boarding the plane. We went thru customs without much hassle…”not much” meaning that I only had to take off my shoes and (unfortunately) Alvar got “frisked”, other than that, we got thru no problem!

Alvar and I decided to get the movie players on the plane on the way home – it was going to be close to 7 1/2 hours; and so we thought, rather than sleep, we’d wind ourselves up with some good old television. The flight home had some minor turbulence, nothing to get too stressed about ;), we also were able to see some fantastic icebergs while flying somewhere over Greenland, and there were also some amazing cloud formations as well (some pictures of that following).

After saying our good-byes to the family we headed back home again. I have to admit, the drive home was fairly “boring” as the landscape in Holland was much more “alive” on the highway drive out there – guess that means we’ll have to go back again (start saving up some serious money!!)! We picked up the kids right away, and boy, was it fantastic to see the kids again J Caleb wouldn’t let go of me, Anna kind of “bounced” around, happy to see us – and at first I thought Esther was so happy to see she broke down and cried (but, I found out later she was quite sad to leave, she lived “next door” to a good friend of hers from school, and was going to miss her dearly – so it wasn’t me she missed!). I think (hope) maybe deep deep down somewhere, she was happy to see us again too ;)

Kids opening up their gifts from Holland - best part of the parents coming home!

All and all it was great to be home again, get back into ‘regular’ life and routines (although, I didn’t really miss laundry, diapers, making lunches or getting up “on-time” during our trip at all either!).

I hope you all enjoyed the little “tidbits” of our days in Holland. It was great to ‘re-live’ the memories again as I wrote them and looked thru the pictures. I might be taking a “breather” from all the blogging for a bit (like a day or two ;) – so I can catch up on some evening work around here again as it took up just a little bit of my time!!

Day 10

Well, it was time to say good-bye to our lovely windmill. We headed back to Delft today as tomorrow we would be returning home already. We drove to Delft to the Hotel de Koophandel. It was in the middle of a really cool square, full of various restaurants and cafes and even lots of trees! When we arrived at the Koophandel, we hardly thought we were in a hotel! The outside doors were in between two other businesses, pretty much “squished” on either side. But once inside there were stairs going everywhere, the hotel actually had 25 rooms (and not these teeny-tiny rooms you can sometimes get), they were really spacious rooms!

Entrance to de Koophandel

View from our window at the hotel

Another view from our window

We dropped off our bags in our rooms and walked around looking for a café to sit and have a snack in. There was one in particular that Mom and Dad wanted to take us too – because it had a really cool bathroom! Well, the restaurant was packed, so we didn’t eat there, but we still had to take a picture of the bathroom. So, here’s what seems to be my latest fad (pictures in odd places)!

My second "bathroom" shot...at least it's just the sink this time!

After we ate (at a different place), we left to go look around Delft and to finish off any last minute shopping. Our first stop was the Nieuwe Kerk – and what a first stop! We climbed all the way to the top of the tower using a very steep and winding staircase – it was quite the workout! There were two look-outs, I thought the first one was high…but boy oh boy, we were incredibly high up on the second one! The view was amazing from the top – I would imagine that we were about the tallest building around. We were even able to see the area around our first “home” while in Holland, the Lusthof. After making our way down the steep steep steep stairs (it seemed to be harder to walk down then it did to go up!), we toured around inside the main floor of the Church. Although not as decorated at the Saint Jans Cathedral, it was still a very impressive Church too see. The church is the burial spot of Prince William of Orange and members of his family. The Royal House still uses the vaults there as their final resting places as well, there were some very impressive monuments there in recognition of that family.

Nieuwe Kerk

Going up, up, up!

View of Delft thru a little window on the way up the stairs

Alvar "hanging out"

View from the first "deck" of a neighbouring Church

Alvar's Mom is actually sitting at these tables, we waved, she waved back!

View of City Hall from the second "deck" (i.e. really really really high)

Long, long, long way down

View of Delft from the top (second deck again)

View of the neighbouring Church again, from the second deck

Inside view of the Church

Organ in the Church

Monument for Prince William of Orange

Statue of Prince William, and his dog - apparently went with him everywhere

After the tour of the Church, we left to do some sight seeing and shopping (souvenirs!) around the area (no shortage of shops for that!). We joined up with everyone else for dinner later that evening at the Billy Beer – I very much enjoyed my chicken sauté (absolutely loved the peanut sauce!!). When dinner was done, we had a bit more free time to roam around Delft at night – it was surprisingly quiet (unlike the square where our hotel was). We met at 10pm for a “night-cap” and last evening together – it was enjoyable sitting around together outside (even though a bit chilly!) – watching all the “commotion” around us from all the other bars and cafes. Our last night in Holland, it was hard to believe.

Canals in Delft

Can the cars get a little closer to the edge???

City Hall in Delft

Day 9

I’m noticing that after I post on the blog each day, I take a look at our itinerary to see what the plan was for the next day. Then I take a quick peek at a few of the pictures to see if it’s going to be a big or little post. Then I spend the next ten minutes remembering all the little stories that happen during and in between the outing(s) of the day. I’ve come to realize that we really did a lot. Hands down, I don’t think I’ve ever had so many memories of places I’ve visited in a one and a half week time span in my entire life. It’s been fun remembering everything that we did; and now sharing it with all of you in our blog. It has brought back a lot of memories because when we first came home it seemed to be a bit of a whirlwind because of all we did! But, enough of that…time to move onto the next day…

Today we travelled to the Open Lucht Museum, just outside of Arhnem. This was quite similar to the pioneer villages we have around Ontario, just quite a bit bigger! We received our maps of the museum and walked around at our own pace (meeting back after a few hours). There was lots to see there, that’s for sure (unfortunately we had to share the museum with about 500 hyper school kids!!), and it was overall another enjoyable day learning of the days of old. There were lots of farmhouses, school houses, medical buildings, churches, train stations and windmills; pretty much anything you could think of was there – and often these buildings were actually brought in and restored in the museum (as opposed to creating them from scratch).

Inside one of the farmhouses

Outside the Millhouse

Leave it to me to take pictures of the kids' toys from years ago!

Lift bridge

Might be a tad hard to tell here, but there was mother duck with her babies, and for some reason or another, she had one yellow duck with the rest of her brown babies. It looked really funny as obviously the yellow duck really stood out!

This carriage was actually a virtual ride. You sat inside watching a t.v. screen which gave the illusion that you were actually taking a ride in a carriage! The carriage also moved back and forth a bit, so we even got the feeling that we were on a ride as well!

Windmill way out yonder!

This is me (duh!) at the top of the windmill. I will admit that it wasn't really my cup of tea. You could see thru the planks of wood all the way down (it was a long way!!), and I'm not a huge fan of heights - so the combination of those two made me a little queasy! I think that's actually as close as I got to looking over the edge too...and to think, I used to love rollar coasters (can you tell I'm getting older!).

Our next stop after the museum was Kasteel Hernen. Unfortunately we got there a tad late, and were unable to get inside :( Instead, we walked around the castle, getting as many “outside” pictures as possible. A few of us decided to walk from Hernen back to our windmill in Bergharen. The walk was nice although I almost passed out along the way. I hadn’t eaten enough that day (sight seeing is way more important than eating!) so we had to make a side trip to the local variety store so I could scarf down a couple bananas and a some granola bars – I felt much better after that!. After we got back home, we left again to go out for dinner.

We were waiting for this dinner with much anticipation; we would be treated to pannekoek! So off we went to a little restaurant called Sprookjeshof in the town of Appeltern. Very cute restaurant, totally geared to kids (nice playground outside, a ballroom inside and the walls were all decorated with fairytale type stuff). The pannekoek was delicious – you could pretty much have anything you wanted in/on it. I choose strawberries, icecream, chocolate sauce and powdered sugar. YUM!! Alvar had one with bacon, and I’m pretty sure he enjoyed his too (maybe not quite as much as me, if I had a choice between bacon and chocolate, chocolate wins hands-down!).

"Sprookjeshof" Restaurant

My meal...mmm, mmm, mmm!!!

But, as much as the pannekoek was really good, my favourite part was when we used the “facilities” ;) Just take a look at the picture below and you’ll see why ;)

After supper we walked around Appeltern (to work off the pannekoek!). It was a beautiful town, very nice area to walk thru. There was even a house that was completely surrounded by a moat (one of Alvar’s “dream-house” ideas was right in front of him!). When we were ready to go back to the windmill, Alvar had the opportunity to drive the van. Although there was lots of “pretend” screams from the back…he did a great job! I have to admit that I would not like to drive at all, I found the signs so confusing and on top of that, you have to be really on the ball for all the bicyclers too! Alvar’s Dad did all the of the driving for us during our whole trip…minus the 7km Alvar drove that day!

Alvar's future house, surrounding by water :)

We walked around a nice path, taking us thru huge trees

Cool bridge in between the trees

Lots of ivy growing up the trees in Holland too

Nice brick bridge

Me feeding the sheep (well, it looks like it here, he didn't really eat the grass I picked for him, guess the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence!)

We returned home and enjoyed a game of Yahtzee; which we did regularly since we arrived at the windmill; there was a closet full of games there! We even managed to play a game of Risk too, which Alvar enjoyed immensely as he annihilated us very quickly!

I also wanted to show you a picture of our spider friend which hung out on one of the windows every night. It was an outdoor spider (thankfully) and it was huge!! I usually would check to make sure it was still on the outside of the door before going to bed, otherwise I’m sure if I didn’t see it, I would be up all night freaking myself out to where it could have possibly gone (i.e. in my bedroom).