Koninginne Dag

Queen Beatrix

Saturday was Queen's Day and it was so much fun! We were going to go to Amsterdam but after Koninginne Nach and how crowded it was we decided not to go there where it was going to be 50x more crowded with tourists! So instead we decided to go to Scheveningen where the queen was going to be and spend the day on the beach. I'm so glad that we decided to do that because it was so nice and so Dutch. All the tourists were in Amsterdam mostly so we got to experience the holiday the way it was supposed to be. :)


Look it's the queen!...What? You can't see her?...Neither could we there were way too many people, lol. Oh well.


The beach at Scheveningen

There's a club called Crazy Pianos that we've been to a time or two it's a really fun place. They have live piano music and you can request songs and everything. It's just kinda fun and different. Anyway, they had a stage set up outside so after getting a bite to eat we went over there to check it out. It was a lot of fun! We stayed there for a couple hours probably just singing, dancing, getting into the music and having an all around good time.


Caitlin, Mili and I dancing and just being silly


They even got a conga line going at one point


The best by far though was the cute old couple that really got into the music for awhile and danced together. That's how I will be someday, hehe :)

After we were done with that Anna Maria, Mili and I sat on the beach for awhile and just enjoyed the nice weather and the view.


It was soooo beautiful!

We then went back to Anna's house and waited for the fireworks to start.


Us girls watching the fireworks


A perfect end to a perfect day

Koninginne Nach

My weekend was great! It started out with Koninginne Nach (Queen's Night) in Den Haag. Basically they blocked off the entire city center and set up stages and different bands played through out the night. It was pretty nice. Here's some pictures of the evening.


Dutch flags over a street in Den Haag


Good times, good times...


It was very crowded!


It's a small world, Carrie's from Indiana too! lol


One of the main stages of the night. It's all about orange!

So it was a pretty good time. It got a little overcrowded as the night wore on and our group began to lose each other so I called it a night pretty early. Over all it was a great experience though. The Dutch really know how to party!

My current favorite

Worship CD right now:



If you don't have it yet I highly recommend adding it to your collection.*smile*

I love lay overs!

...at least when other people have them, hehe. This morning Pastor Dan, the director of Fuel International, and his family were on their way home from Africa and they had a lay over at Schiphol Airport so I decided to stop by and see them. Their plane got in at 6:15am which meant that I had to leave my house at 5am. It was totally worth the loss of sleep though. We got to hang out for a couple of hours and talk and stuff. They're so great! Anyway, it was super nice getting to see them. And hey, if any of you happen to travel internationally and have a stop at Schiphol don't hesitate to let me know *wink*


Seth and Alyzsa wanted me to take a picture, they've grown up so much!

Bloemencorso 2005

Well, spring is officially here. Today Ineke, the kids and I went to Sassenheim where Robbert's mother, Toos lives and saw Bloemencorso (the flower parade). It was so pretty! Everyone decorated their transportation with flowers,


The Bikes


The trucks


And even the Police Cars

But the best by far were the floats in the actual parade, here are some of my favorites


A flower made from flowers!


Yep, that's a purple cat, hehe


That's me in front of the clown float :)


This one is supposed to be the queen's golden carriage. I actually saw her riding in the real one last fall (that one was really neat to see...but this one smelled better, *giggle*)


Well there's no question about it, we're in Holland. There's Sinter Klaas made out of flowers!

Ok, well there's bunches more but I won't bore you with them all *wink* Everything was very beautiful and put me in a very "springy" mood. However, the most wonderful thing about the parade I can't transfer onto Blogger. That is the smell. It was the best smelling parade I've ever been to in my life! I wish I could've bottled it and taken it home with me, mmmmm! Oh well. So, that was my fun for the day. After the parade was over we spent a little time at Too's house and then headed home because everyone was very tired.


A good day, but we were all ready to get home...

Duck, Duck, Killer Goose!

The weather has been beautiful all day today, the sun is shining and it's nice and warm. Since it's been rainy for what feels like forever and I was stuck in bed for three days, I had to take Caroline out of the house. We decided to go to our favorite spot, which is the lake close to the house where the ducks live.


Look at it, isn't it pleasant?

The ducks were there and we spent some nice time relaxing by the side of the lake and picking daises


My pretty little girl

We made our way down the lake so that we could find our "friend" geese. We'd visited them before and had given them bread. The mommy goose had a nest the last time we were there so we decided to check on her. Unfortunately for us, by this time we'd run out of bread...

Daddy goose decided that since we couldn't feed him we were no longer friends and charged at us. I had to scoop Caroline up into my arms and run as fast as I could onto a bridge in order to escape a painful attack. We would've just called it a day and moved on except that he found our stroller and decided to hold it ransom!


apparently he was really hungry :S

After poking, biting, and pulling at it for five minutes he decided that it wasn't going to hurt him or feed him. So, just to prove he was boss he strutted around it threateningly for another five minutes or so before he finally got bored and wandered off. We quickly got the stroller back and continued our way.

So, our moral for today is: Beware of fair weather friends because when the going gets tough, they just might turn on you and steal your stroller.

Dress Up Day

The boys were allowed to dress up for school today. Timo went as a pirate and Morten went as a knight. I snapped this photo when we got home and I couldn't resist posting it. They're just so much fun, aren't they?

Feeling better, yea!

Well I was pretty sick over the weekend. I'm a very healthy person in general so this was probably the sickest I've been in years, no fun. I went to the doctor which was an interesting experience in itself, lol. The doctor was much more comfortable speaking Dutch than English and even though normally my Dutch is pretty good, when I'm running a fever my brain doesn't work as well. Luckily Ineke was there with me and served as kind of a translator. Still, the doctor couldn't really figure out what was wrong with me, oh well. Anyway I just wanted to explain why I've been pretty much MIA over the past few days and hopefully I'll be back in the swing of things in no time at all *smile*

Spiritus

Today the weather was even prettier than yesterday! It was so warm that I finally wore my flip-flops for the first time this year. Yea!!

*does a little dance*
*falls flat on face because i've forgotten i'm still wearing my flip-flops*

hehe, ok seriously though...for a good part of the day all I really did was relax in the sun. Sometime in the afternoon I decided I had better do something productive with my day, so I decided to go to Ineke's office and clean the outside windows, they were in desperate need of it. When Ineke asked me to do it she also said that I needed to buy something to put in the water called Spiritus. It's almost completely alcohol and it keeps the windows from streaking and stuff, I guess. They didn't sell it at the store across the street from the office so I walked down the street to a little Turkish shop to see if they had it there...no luck there either. Oh well. The Albert Hein and Blokker are just a few minutes extra down the road and at least one of them was sure to have it so I walked down there. They were closed! I mean, ok it's sunday, day of rest, blah blah blah, but the sign on the door said they were supposed to be open on sundays from 08.00 till 20.00, so what in the world is it doing closed at 15.30 in the afternoon?! I miss Wal-Mart *sigh*

At that point I was pretty much at a loss as to what to do. I needed to get the windows clean which meant I needed to get that darn Spiritus but I really didn't have a clue as to where they would sell house hold cleaning products. So I started walking kind of aimlessly towards more stores. I didn't see anything promising and since there was a tram stop right there I figured my chances of actually finding somewhere that sells it AND is open would be in the center.

After about ten minutes I was at Centraal station and again began a somewhat aimless walk into all the promising looking shops (let me just add at this point that I was dressed for cleaning so I had on capris, a grubby tank-top, a zip up sweatshirt and absolutely no make-up, yikes! At least I didn't make any small children cry...that I noticed anyway, hehe)

First shop, no luck. Second shop, no luck. Third shop, again no luck (ok, so this one was a clothing store but still). FINALLY, I went into the fourth shop that looked halfway promising and they had a decent selection of cleaning products. I looked up and down the aisle and still didn't see it. At this point I was just about to give up. My feet were sore from the darn flip-flops (I always forget how they make that little blister in between your toes the first few times you wear them, ouch!) and I was simply getting frustrated. I decided to make one last sweep of the shelves, reading every bottle, when I saw it, BrandSpiritus. YEA!!! I grabbed it and paid (only €.90 not bad) and then headed back to the office. I didn't even have to wait for the bus cuz it was sitting there when I got to the stop. God loves me *smile*

Five minutes later I was at the office. I poured the stuff into a bucket and was greeted by quite possibly the worst chemical smell I've ever smelled in my life! UGH! It was truly wretched. I managed to fill the bucket without passing out and got it outside. Once outside the smell wasn't quite as bad and cleaning the windows was actually pretty enjoyable.

I finished with all the outside windows and grabbed my stuff, walked to the door...and realized that my purse and the keys to get in the office were sitting safely inside! *sigh* So I walked home and found out that was the only set of keys besides the set Thea, the lady who works with Ineke, had. Luckily, everyone was really nice about it and Thea came and unlocked the door and everything was fine.

So yeah, that was my adventure for the day. At least it was a beautiful day and walking around the city was enjoyable once my mission was accomplished. Who knew that cleaning windows could be so complicated!

Hair

Caroline and I have so much fun together every day. One of the things I enjoy doing with her is playing with her hair. Here's some of the fun styles I've done.


a simple pony tail


piggy tails, always cute on little girls


half up


two little braids


a french braid


and the proof that she loves having her hair done! All these braids took me about an hour and a half to do and she loved every minute of it


Ok so technically this isn't a hair style but when she put this hat on I thought it was too funny.

So, there's the styles I've tried so far. What a cutie hé? :)

1 April

één April
kikker in je bil...

lol. That's what I heard all day long. Luckily my kids aren't old enough to really understand the idea behind April Fools Day and so I wasn't met with any unpleasant surprises, hehe.

The weather is becoming daily more springy which I am extremely happy about. I took the kids to the park and spent about 3 hours with them there, they're growing up so much. It's amazing to me how much they've really grown even in the short time that I've been here. I got to spend some extra time with the boys this week because they had holiday from school so that was nice. I enjoy having all the kids at once. I feel like Caroline gets all my time but that's only because the boys have to be in school. I don't think about it usually but weeks like this remind me how much I miss being able to play with Morten and Timo too. They're just great kids and a pleasure to spend time with *smile*