15 years and counting

Eric and I both turned 35 this week. I didn't think much about this milestone until it hit me that we'll be 50 in just 15 short years! Especially when you consider the fact that Eric and I have been together for 13 years and that time has absolutely flown by.

It also occurred to me that in 15 years, the kids will be 18 (going on 19), 17 and 15. We'll have three teenagers. Yikes and I thought that three toddlers were a handful.

Eric's birthday is today. Unfortunately, he's travelling in Germany this week and was unable to celebrate with us. Happy birthday, my dear. We missed you today. Here's a little greeting card from your little ones.

If Dylan's cheeks look a little rosier than usual, it's because he's contracted fifths disease. It's similar to chicken pox in that you get this nasty rash all over your body in addition to really rosy cheeks. It almost looks as though someone slapped him on the face. In fact, they also call it the slapped face disease. Luckily he's not uncomfortable.

Our new wheels

We were going to use our car allowance to buy a car in Denmark. Since we'll be neighbors with Sweden, we started looking at Volvo's, xc90 (a very fine riding machine). Then we found out that Danish the car tax is 180% of the value of the car!!! Yikes. They do offer a reduced expat tax, which is 25% + monthly taxes throughout the duration of your stay. Needless to say, we decided we needed to rethink our wheels. So, we went out and bought a box bike. They are very popular here in Europe. I see people all over Holland driving their kids around in these things. I couldn't picture anyone having one in the states.

Here's a picture of our new wheels

This is what I'm going to use to take Dylan to school, which is 3.5 miles from our house one way! This is a good thing since I plan on indulging myself with Danish pastries and ice cream when we move up there. Can't wait.

Some cute pics of the kids:

Elizabeth enjoying a cup cake on Queens day:

The ever loving brother with his new sister:

Koninginnedag

Queen's Day is a celebration in the Netherlands on April 30. It was originally a celebration of the queen's birthday, it is now mainly known for the 'vrijmarkt' (free market), which is the one day of the year that anyone is allowed to sell anything in the streets. Every other day of the year, it is illegal to sell your items in an open market type setting. Therefor, there are no garage sales here.

We took advantage of this day to unload some of the stuff we didn't want to take with us to Denmark.

The major vrijmarkt is in Vondelpark, in the city. Nearly 500,000 people come into the city that day to scour the park for their next treasure. Luckily, the street in front of our house is closed down for the vrijmarkt as well. Thank goodness we didn't have to drag our stuff into the city.

People started setting up their selling stations at 5:15 AM! They woke me from my sleep! We reserved our little square the week before hand. You have to be aggressive if you want to win on Queen's day. Here's a picture of our street at 6:00 AM.

Eric and I decided we'd better get outside and set up before someone came along and took our coveted spot. It was a good thing we did. About 10 minutes after Eric set everything up, someone came along and wanted to squeeze into the second half of our square. Eric had to beat them off with a stick.

People were selling everything imaginable that day. We say trailers full of board games (who knows where they really came from), bathroom sinks, toys, clothes, furniture, almost anything that you can imagine was sold that day.

Eric and I selling our treasures:

We were able to sell almost everything. Although we bought a few items that day too, defeating our attempt at uncluttering our lives. We had a really fun day. We closed down our square at 1:00 PM and went off exploring with some other families that we met over here. We ended the day by inviting everyone back to our house and ordering out Chinese. All in all it was a great day. One that will stand out from our memories of Holland.

Here is a picture of the outside of our house. Our house is the one with the awnings pulled down.

Keukenhof

We have had very warm weather this spring. Therefore the tulips arrived a bit early this year. Last year, when we went to the Keukenhof, we went at the end of April. It was so cold that we had to wear hats and gloves. This year, it was sunny and 80. We wore shorts and needed sun screen. Big difference!

The tulips really were amazing. The Keukenhof is their flower exhibition center. The grounds are 9 square kilometers and they are covered with the most beautiful flower displays I've ever seen. To smell it is amazing as well.

We packed a picnic lunch and headed out there a few weeks ago. We walked around the grounds for a while and then let the kids play in the play ground.

Some scenes from the gardens

Actually, I tried to load more pictures, but the blogger is not letting me. Perhaps I'll try again later...

Elizabeth's Birthday

We were lucky enough to celebrate Elizabeth's second birthday with a few members of my family. My brothers, aunt and grandmother were all in town visiting that week. We had a wonderful time. It was so nice to have family around to help us celebrate such a special occasion.

We spent the day sight seeing in Amsterdam. Eric took the day off to watch Dylan and Elizabeth. I took Patricia and my brothers and I met my grandmother and aunt in the city. We went to the Rijksmuseum. It's the museum that houses Rembrandts paintings. It also held quite a few paintings from Holland's colonial days. It was interesting to read about their colonial and merchant history. I felt a little wiser about my host country once we left.

Afterwards we headed out to lunch. We went to Wok to Walk. It's a fast food asian restaurant that serves a variety of stir fry options. The meal was really tasty for being fast food.

We then headed back to my house to visit with the kids and get ready for dinner. Once again the weather was gorgeous. We hung out around the house until dinner time. After dinner we sang happy birthday to the birthday girl. She was so excited to blow out candles. It was very cute. I can't believe my little one is already 2. Time has flown by.

Easter

I'll start off my first blog with Easter. We had a wonderful Easter holiday here. The Dutch get Good Friday and Easter Monday off. So we had a nice four day weekend to enjoy the holiday. It was made even better by the fact that we were experiencing a warm weather stretch. It was sunny and 80 every day.

On Friday, Eric colored Easter eggs with the kids while I spent a blissful couple of hours at the gym.

Then, on Easter Sunday, we started off the day looking for "Easter baskets". I didn't find Easter baskets here so we (Eric) crafted our own.

After our Easter egg hunt was over, we headed out to church. We went to an English speaking service at a church in the Hague. It was a lovely church. There were so many different cultures there. They even had an African "band" playing traditional African music during the service. The music was so beautiful. They had the entire congregation clapping and swaying to the beat. Afterwards, we went out to brunch with another expat family. We ventured out to a little beach town, called Noordwijk, a really lovely town just North of the Hague.