Netherlands 9: Horseback Riding/Biking/Anser Dennen

On thursday, we were finally able to go horse-back riding. We could take the horse through the woods (dwingelderveld) all by ourselves, as long as I help the rope. The girls wanted to have th horse run too, so I got some excercise. They both loved it, and felt very comfortable riding it.

Below a video of each.

In the afternoon we rented bikes for the girls again and biked about 8 miles roundtrip to a very cute teahouse in the 'Anserdennen'. It was a beautiful ride and they had delicious 'boterhammen' (sandwiches), cookies, cakes, and herbal tea. We ordered virtually everything off the menu, mmmmmm. The lady was nice enough to get the 'sjoelbak' out so the girls could learn how to play that very old-fashioned game, where you have to slide wooden pucks through 4 holes, for which you get points. When I was little we very often played that game in the weekends on (many) rainy days, and we learned early on that once the pucks are stacked in front of the holes, the only way to get more in is to slide the next ones very very hard. Ofcourse that meant that the 'sjoelbak' that my grandpa made himself, got ruined: all 4 holes merged into 1 gaping hole.

Back at home, the girls were plenty tired and had had a wonderful day! Pictures below.

Netherlands 8: Giethoorn

I just realized this is getting out of order, but on tuesday my mom wanted to take me and Jasper to Zwolle (nostalgie), while my dad took Josh and the girls to Giethoorn, also known as 'Dutch Venice' because of all the cute canals etc. The rented a little 'fluisterbootje' (whisper boat -one with an electrical engine). Ofcourse, wherever my dad goes there is ice-cream as well. The girls don't mind, and neither does Josh! They had a lot of fun!

Netherlands 7: De Keukenhof

The Netherlands is famous for its flowers, and in the spring a favorite for tourists is 'De Keukenhof' where fields and fields of flowers are displayed. Sadly enough, even I had never been, so we took this opportunity to go as a family. It was a little early especially considering the cold winter, but we still greatly enjoyed the beauty of it all. So did the girls. We were there for almost 3 hours and they loved it, despite the rain. See for yourselves.

As it was so rainy we had had enough and wanted to drive home. However, after 1 km, we were stuck in a traffic jam forever, so we took the first exit we could find and drove to Amsterdam. We were lucky to get some blue sky while driving there. After parking the car and asking for some directions within the city, I managed to steer us immediately into the only streets I did NOT want to go to: the Walletjes (the red district) I felt awful and like the biggest fool, especially being there with the kids. Tjonkje had ofcourse no clue, and we managed to get the girls out of there without them knowing what was going on in that street, except for some 'funny smells'. There were some very close to naked women behing 3 windows, but luckily Sofia looked the other way, and I covered Lilian's eyes enough for her to not notice either. We made it pretty unscathed, except for me, I felt bad for another few hours, but could laugh about it too. Typical for me. Oh well. We ended up on a fair, where the girls and I took a ride on the rotating and rising swings, it felt like we were at least 100 ft up in the sky. Man, can feelings of fear change once you become a mom! The girls loved it though, and I personally did too. We also took a canal boat tour which was fun! Some more pictures of that!

Amsterdam has a town-square, famous for its pigeons. The girls had a lot of fun chasing them!

Netherlands 6: Visit Soile and Jerry

On sunday we drove down to Veldhoven to visit our very good Swedish friends Jerry and Soile Vennerholm and their 3 kids Tilda, lukas and Elias. We met them in Goteborg in church, and from the moment I joined the church there, Soile and Jerry were my family. I am so happy that they are in Holland so we can stay in touch more easily.

It was general conference weekend, so we got to listen to a few talks at their home. We all went to a playpark near their home which had a zip-line- sofia and lilian's favorite. Tjonkje got to do most of the same things including the zip-line. It was so wonderful to catch up, and to eat delicious smorgastarta and many other foods.

The next morning Josh and I played tennis with Jerry, while Soile colored with the girls and Jasper took a nap, while their kids were all in school. Jerry LOVES to play and is really good despite the fact that he never had lessons. We had a lot of fun and so had the girls. Soile is the sweetest mom that I know, very soft-spoken and calm-something I still need to learn! We then took everyone to a cute little petting zoo nearby, where sofia and Lilian got to hold a little bunny, both of them ended up with scratches on belly and eye! They still had a lot of fun though. On the way home, we stopped in Den bosch for a delicious Bossche Bol (a huge puff filled with heavy whipped cream and covered in yummy chocolate, about 5000 calories per bite :) ). What a fun weekend. We're looking forward to seeing the Vennerholms at our home someday!

Netherlands 4: Biking

We rented bikes for the girls and my dad and I went on a little ride with them (about 8 miles). It was beautiful weather, and we stopped to feed some horses some grass, as well as at a cute playpark next to a cute teahouse. The girls loved it, with the favorite part feeding the horses. they were very seriously counting the horses, and as we drove many times along a certain route with at least 10x 10-15 horses, they added up quickly. Soon they were at 1000 and above. I began to be a little suspicious when the count was at 9000+. I just listened as they went up 9073, 9074, ....9099, 10,000. Hmmmm, something went wrong there. They obviously started to eb a little confused after 1099: not 1100 but 2000. :) Oh well, in short we saw a lot of horses.

On wednesday I visited my friend Saskia first at the Soesterberg airforce base, which was really interesting, and then at school to pick up her kids, Annefleur and Bastiaan. It was fun to show the girls a Dutch school, and that all kids are picked up by bike, with the kids biking themselves next to their mom who might have more little ones either or on the front on a 'bakfiets' or on the back and front in kids-seats. Fun to see. We went to a little forest place with petting zoo, play-ground and a little area with lots of sand, some water to wade through, and some fallen trees to walk over. The kids played well together and had a great time. We ended with a yummi dinner that Saskia made, where Sofia and Lilian put their olives on their fingers which was immediately immitated by Annefleur and Bastiaan, and which didn't make Saskia very happy (I always let them do this since they ate olives from their fingers since they were under 2-Saskia didn't agree :) Sorry, Sas!).

On thursday my dad accompanied me and Jasper to Eindhoven in the afternoon to meet some friends from the triathlon club, Patrick, Roger en Frank P. It was a lot of fun with many good memories and renewed relationships. I always love reconnecting with old friends, and it was worth the long drive. We also stopped at the Mechanical Engineering building at the University of Technology where I went for almost 5 years. Jasper felt pretty comfortable there, and was proud to be the youngest student there. :) He was in fact so excited to be there that he filled his diapere with lots of yummy ingredients, just when I had forgotten my wipes. Oh well, I hope no one had to go into that bathroom for a while- stinky Jonkje!

Netherlands 3: Tjonkje loves Opa and Oma

Tjonkje loves his opa and oma, and they sure love him a lot. He has been very happy playing in the pack-n-play that my mom had for him. He didn't get too much of a chance to get in there though, as he was mostly held, snuggled with, taken for a walk in the stroller, to the playpark onr a swing or slide, or in the car on yet another trip to see mama's friends. He was just lovintg it. The only few times he'd cry was because he was HUNGRY. We could all tell when he was sleepy as he would throw his head from left to right and whimper a little with his lips moving funny.

He was lucky to get a lot of tastes of treats, including ice-cream (by papa), pudding (by papa, whipped-cream (every feeding from mama and a little bite from papa), crumbs of pancakes, ....etc. He loves it all!

He talked a lot, would just gaga and laugh a lot, as happy as can be. here some pictures and videos. Lief jonkje!

Writing

Sofia and Lilian are already writing a lot in school, and to help them practice, I encouraged them to write a little note to papa about their day. In Holland this was especially nice as Josh wasn't with us the first week. The girls love writing about their day, they can do it in their own words and don't have to spell it correctly as long as they think themselves about the spelling phonetically, papa loves reading their notes, while I love reading the way they think and spell (nice souvenir for later): 'jimnastics' for gymnastics, 'chrampulean' for trampoline (I guess I pronounce it funny) etc. I would recommend this to anyone who needs their child practicing writing.

The Netherlands 1: Grootoma's 90th Birthday

My grandma (we call great-grandma: grootoma) turned 90 on March 27th, which was for us reason enough to go to Holland and celebrate that event. I traveled alone with Sofia and Lilian and Jasper which was quite interesting. The girls travel really well, as they are easily entertained by coloring, reading, activity books, pictionary etc, so after all that they watched 1 movie on the portable DVD player (thank heaven I took it as the airplane's tv's were not working at all), brushed teeth (yes, I am a teeth-brushing freak) and went to sleep..... each a head on one of my knees, and Jasper on my lap.... 'only 5.5 more hrs' :) I was very happy when we could get up and get out of the plane! We went through very smoothly thanks to the baby bjorn, and walked to Budget to get our rental car. As soon as I saw the Budget sign, I knew something was wrong....very wrong! I had forgotten my driver's license! I was a little in a panic although we could have just taken the train, and then Josh (who came a week later) could have rented the car). Fortunately my dad came (by train) to help us drive the car back and he was able to rent it instead.

The car was put to good use, as the first week we spent time to visit everyone I wanted to all across the country.

We started ofcourse with my grandma. It was so nice to see her happy to meet jasper, and he was his usual happy self, giving her as many big smiles as she could handle. The girls were very well behaved too, and cleaned up the whole vase of water they knocked over all by themselves :).

After the visit with grandma, I was able to visit a friend from the university that i hadn't seen in 19 yrs! Sandra and her family were very welcoming and the girls had a great time with her Larissa and Hugo (6 and 4), for more than 2 hrs while we had a marvelous time reconnecting. How fun to be able to do that. hopefully they will be able to visit here someday too!

Pictures of our first visit with grandma!

More Kids' fun

I am so happy that the girls love to play outside. The love their little baby brother Jasper, and they love to play with their neighbor girl Emma. Life is good!

Playgroup

We started a playgroup for the girls to have more fun and time to interact with their classmates. Although the idea was to rotate on a weekly basis, the playgroup is usually at our house with more and more kids coming. It is always a lot of fun, and a little mess is not worth the fuss when you see the joy it brings to Sofia, lilian as well as to the other kids. Here some pictures.

US Space and Rocket Center

The Society for Automotive Engineers had a special meeting in Huntsville Alabama at the US space and Rocket Center. As a member in the section I was invited to come, which I really wanted to do. I called if I could take the baby, and the organizer said that was fine, that in fact someone else was bringing a youth. So, I decided to bring all 3 kids, as she described it as a 'family-event'. There was to be a dinner, a museum tour and a 1-hr talk from a NASA representative. What more did I want (as my astronaut aspirations were finally shot down once again by rejection of my application :) )? So, I took the girls out of school early, drove 4+ hrs to Huntsville (I thought it was maybe 2.5 hrs, eeeeks), toured the museum with the girls, had a very quick dinner, felt embarrassed coming with my stroller and 2 5-yr-olds (the other 'youth' must have been 19+ yrs old), listened to the talk with the girls behaving perfectly until Jasper decided it was his time to talk, then left to explore the rest of the outdoor part of the museum. We all loved it. Inside was the apollo 16 which had actually been to the moon, with the charred exterior from entering the atmosphere. There were many other space items that were very interesting and that showed the interior parts of the space shuttle. Outside was an actual space shuttle with fuel tanks, as well as various rockets. Space camp was going on, in which the girls were very interested and listened in on some of the stories. We were allowed into the simulation room, where the space camp kids were experiencing various accelerations in rotating devices, etc. We all had a blast, adn the girls decided they wanted to become astronauts growing up too! At least space camp is on their (and secretly also on my) wishlist. The drive home was tiring but a piece of cake as all 3 kids slept most of the way!

The following day we decided to make a 'kijkdoos' (not sure what to call it in English): a closed box which walls you decorate and mount upright figures on the bottom. By allowing light to come in through the top (cut big holes in the lid), cover with transparent or colored transparent paper), and cutting a hole in the small side, you can get a 3D picture of whatever your creation is of. We made a 'space/rocket/astronaut' 'kijkdoos.' It was really fun to make, the girls were totally into it and it took like 1.5 hrs. Here are some pictures of the 'kijkdoos'.