and no pictures yet of windmills!
so we took a sunday family drive (i can't remember the last time
driving was recreational!) to explore noord holland and see if we couldn't find any windmills. we left amersfoort after lunch and took a 20 kilometer road right over a bay off the north sea. it was amazing and made you realize why people used to think you could drive off the edge of the earth. we made our way up to Enkhuizen
which was a beautiful port city--to the right is a boat picture i took for grandpa ken.
we then looped inland and headed south towards the zaans schanse where we were told we'd see windmills. and we did. it was an entire little windmill village--complete with cute dutch dames making wheels of gouda in little white frocks, a clog museum complete with giant yellow clog for climbing on, fancy clogs for getting married in, and teeny little baby clogs. and ducks hanging out on little bridges quack quacking. but i did promise windmmills, didn't i?
so here we are in holland
owen meets van gogh
We seem to be falling behind on our posts, so I'll do one from Saturday now.. and we'll try and play catch-up this week -- as we took lots of pictures, and we still have pictures from Brugge to post.. But Saturday we took a quick trip into Amsterdam. After leaving the car at the airport, it was a quick train ride into Amsterdam Central station... but for Owen it was a once-in-a-lifetime ride on the choo-choo. He was pretty mellow on the way out, but couldn't stop talking on the way back -- just very excited to be on the train.
We walked from the train station, past all the frat boys and tourists, to the museum area. We went to the Van Gogh museum, which was amazing, and fun for the whole family. We got there at the start of an exhibit on Van Gogh/Expressionism. Afterwards, we explored the park area behind the museum and thankfully enjoyed the good weather.. although it was a bit windy. Check out the new slogan (Rijksmuseum in the background):
there's no turkey here . . .
. . .but we're still enjoying a little thanksgiving of our own. apparently you can still sit down with loved ones and count your blessings even if you don't have an oven to make stuffing, or bake pie, or make that marshmallowy yam stuff. because if you have a stove top, or even a hot plate you can still make yummy star anise earl grey homemade cranberry sauce, sautee some chicken and apples, boil up some cheese ravioli and throw in some nutmeg to pretend that it's really the homemade pumpkin stuff, and just spread lots of "grasboter superieur" over everything.
so all this to say i had this realization that it was my first thanksgiving away from my family and had just recovered from a nasty
bout of homesickness. but just as i was thinking that, i looked up and there was michael and owen playing football in the seven square feet that is our "living room" and that i wasn't away from my family at all. they were right here with me. bearing the rain and bad dutch haircuts and evil frau. and those damn gaps in the bed. but they were here, we were here, walking down langstraat together with six bags from the plus market hanging off the well-worn maclaren stroller, bundled up in "mittens! mittens!", up the red carpeted staircase and into our room, together.
and we're on our sixth room change but somehow, this morning it seems, it happened. we settled in here in amersfoort, netherlands. michael and i have the tuck-the-six-suitcases-out-of-sight game down pat and as long as owen has his choo-choo-people-train and elmo bed and he's happy to be here (a mini bar fridge is some kind of prereq too). the wireless is up, the flowers are on the table, and since we're all together it's home. but we do miss the sierra dog and even crazy izzy kitty too. and owen says night-night to grandma and grandpa, nana and papa, all his aunties and uncles, and our favorite people before he settles in with mickey mouse (no longer "mee moo" but "micka mou") and elmo. so do we ;)
these boots are made for. . .
stomping cobblestone puddles!
warning: you will need to rotate your monitor clockwise, or lie your head down comfortably--preferably with a cup of tea and a biscuit--on your table.
B is for Brugges
at last some quiet time, with a pot of tea, a telnet wireless connection and abba playing in the background. ah, we must be in belgium. because i kid you not, this is the fifth time we've heard abba here in brugges. and there are cool "b" s everywhere to remind us. anyhow, michael and owen are up in our crazy "studio" room (which means downstairs armoire, toilet room, bathroom and crazy spiral staircase to the place where the beds are) snuggling up to elmo and counting sheep and i'm in the hans memling hotel tea room.
so when i used to keep a diary and i'd miss a week of entries i'd have all this anxiety about
whether or not to go back and 'catch up' with the week or just start in on the present day. and now i'm having hte same because i've taken some cool amersfoort pics over the last week (owen riding a pedal-less bicycle outside the tommeetuppee toyshop in drakken alley, owen stomping leaves around the city ring, and owen eating his first kindersuprise chocolate with i'mallowedtospoilhimandgivehimsweets-janae). but i'll save those for a rainy day back in the netherlands (which i'm sure we'll have many many more of) and get back to those "B"s. so here is michael and owen in front of said "B"--we've arrived just at the beginning of holiday decorating which makes the seven-degrees-to-freezing-weather feel festive.
in the main square of the st. joris cathedral we're a week too early for the ice-skating rink but we've managed to spot some windmills, take a horse and buggy ride (because owen absolutely could not stop saying "more horse? more horse? horse? click clack. horse? more horse?"--that and "more bus" but taking a horse ride seemed cooler than a bus ride), and eat some proper belgian waffles with chocolate sauce. we're hoping tomorrow to go to the chocolate museum and take a canal boat ride. or maybe just eat more waffles.
not so lazy sunday
The weekend was busy. Janae came over to see us in Amersfoort as our first visiter during our stay here. She arrived just as we were moving to the Tabaksplant hotel. We had to be out of the room at 11am, and couldn't check-in to our new place until 1pm, so there was a lot of slowly-moving luggage down the street to the new place... There were 6 suitcases plus other bags and such, so that wasn't a problem.
Sunday we went to the Kröller-Müller museum with is in the middle of the National Park "de Hoge Veluwe". The weather was cold, bet we decided to get some bikes anyway... because you can't go to the Netherlands and NOT do some biking. Unfortunately the rain started when we were at the museum and didn't get around to much of the sculpture garden.
who needs starbucks?
today owen had his first steamer--or "warm milk" as owen calls it. we had just gotten back to the de gaaper from a chilly afternoon out and about (see post below) and jeanaka (i know i'm doing injustice to this beautiful woman's beautiful name) made him a special steamed milk in his special red ikea cup in his "king chair"--what everyone calls owen's highchair that gets left downstairs just for him. today was a good picture day, with the clouds and rain of yesterday giving way to the sun and just a few drops of "drip drip" here and there. enjoy these pics. and i'm sure nobody will be surprised that owen says "mama's coffee" each time he sees a coffee mug. now he's thrilled with his own "owen's coffee." what can i say, start 'em young. . .
owen in the garden
yesterday owen and i spent the afternoon at the flehite
museum which was ecclectic
to say the least--everything from an impressive jukebox collection to a barbed wire holocaust memorial. i really wanted to check out this massive wooden statue outside but when we left it was raining. so, this afternoon after going to the post we spend some time in this funny little garden. you can see the scale on the left next to owen. there's a sign that says paradise, i'm guessing, in dutch. so i assume this is a rendition of eve. owen was pretty impressed by what i think is her knee. and then he mostly pointed out the water hoses inside the little rose garden.
he was quite the little art model though, and his new thing is
to sit down and smile everytime i take a picture. you can see a little of the amersfoort landscape--a lot of cobblestone, muddy little river going around the city and very neat brick buildings. i think this is the closest i'll find to a park in the city but owen seems to make do. just need to make sure he doesn't get the desire to go swimming, as the steps just end at the water.
well tonight is shopping night--everything stays open past five so we'll go out and stroll and get some dinner. tomorrow we move rooms for a night and then switch inns on saturday. so the adventure continues. . .
day three
here we are in front of the de gaaper after having our tea on our way for a stroll down long street or langestraat. today seemed like our first "real" day here in amersfoort. we made it to breakfast, had a nap at naptime, had an afternoon tea and then strolled confidently alongside the bicycles and mopeds. well, we both had on our cool hats and went to some fun shops. i bought owen his first dutch toy-- a cute wooden train that he's been playing with since we got home. hmmm. there is something quite cozy about this little
town that makes it easy enough to call this funny room a home. here's a picture of our window from the langestraat-->
the three rectangularish windows right below the spire. so we've got this crazy sloped ceiling but it's quite comfy.
and i think there's gotta be something ok about a culture that seems to live on chocolate, cheese and little tea crackers.
owen lag
it's 5:07 in the evening, but in california. out here in amersfoort it's 2:07--in the morning. but as michael just said as he rolled over in bed--two is better than four. we started today with 1 am wake up call from owen then we all got up and watched telletubbies and ate cookies in bed until sometime after three 
3. then we all slept gloriously until 1:30 in the afternoon. tonight owen fell asleep at dinner,
around 8pm literally swaying in the fancy dutch highchair until we had to take him out and put him in his stroller for fear he'd fall asleep and knock his head on the table. our plan to keep him up until 10 was thwarted but we had an amazing italian dinner. it even felt like a date.
so it's ok that when we got back and did our bedtime rituals that he only went back to sleep for 20 minutes. this time we all watched elmo's world until we got sleepy, or we minus owen, and he sang his way through everything he knows for about two hours rolling back and forth between "mama!!!" and "dadadadadaaaada!".
and i'm sure it's all because i screwed us up by letting him sleep on the way home from the airport and didn't implement a jet lag regiment. but owen lag is ok, even if it takes longer. because he's just soaking it all in. and really, so am i.
amsterdam didn't feel like much of a change. everything at the airport was in english and my biggest impression was that it was very clean and people queued up in very straight (and very long) lines. and getting into the country was easier than trying to get into disneyland--the passport guy (who couldn't have been more than fifteen) high-fived owen on our way into the country.
being in amersfoort is different, but in a familiar sort of way. perhaps in that freudian heimliech/uncanny kind of way.
partly because i'm mapping the city through the photographs and images michael's described. like when we walked to the hof, i knew exactly where the inn was that we were staying. they were breaking down the saturday market and the brood pirate was stashing away the last of the sweet buns. and i knew to expect that, and the remaining bits of paper and debris that were still remaining this morning all blown into a pile near the fountain.
but its also familiar because i'm remembering languages i thought i'd forgotten and just tapping into that adaptability we all have when confronted with the unfamiliar--which we all have, but it gets rusty i think because the unfamiliar so quickly becomes familiar (or if you live in a perfect little community you are never confronted with anything different that might disrupt its beauty). on our way to the inn we stopped at a grocery store to pick up some essentials--bananas, milk, yogurt and cookies. and everything was in dutch. but we deduced that stretchen or something like that was the sour milk we didn't want and halfvolle was like 2% so we wanted the volle. and we picked up pastries and tea for lunch at a french cafe, and i remembered ananas was pineapple and at dinner where the menu was in dutch and italian i had the most amazing rigatoni with zuchini and eggplant after recalling important words like melanzanne for eggplant and of course vino rosso for red wine. oh, and never forget grazie. or donkuevelle (not sure on the spelling on that one).
and finally it seems familiar because it just feels like where fairytales take place. we took a walk this afternoon around the city--between the brick wall and the river--and i felt like this, walking in the brisk air alongside the bicycles and dogs, was why we came here. owen stomping on leaves, michael pointing out trains, and me happily pushing an empty stroller. these are the pictures i wanted to share, but alas the camera's memory card was still in the computer. i'm hoping though not only to take some beautiful pictures soon but that this is a regular thing.
so my resolve here is to embrace this uncanny, this adventure and not give way into the absolute panic i had this morning when i was trying to unpack six suitcases so it didn't feel like we were living out of suitcases. or that tomorrow--rather a few hours--when michael leaves me and owen here in this room to go to work we'll face our day as one with possibilites and have many adventures to report on at the end of the day. even if it's just walking down long street and admiring the euroboots we're not allowed to spend 150euro on and buying brood instead. . .
we're here
The airport was a breeze, and the plane actually took off early (for a change). Owen was happy playing with stickers, watching Blue's Clues dvd, and playing with the three-year-old sitting behind us for the first 2-3 hours of the plane ride. He was then well-fed by the KLM flight attendants and fell asleep soon after.
Soon after that, Dada and moma became a little tired, and little Owen was very uncomfortable.. although we did have a whole row to ourselves. We gave Owen 1/2 teaspoon of Benadryl which actually wiped him out for the remaining 5 hours of the trip. Overall had a great plane ride, although it was long... They kept the movies coming, but didn't catch much of them.. I think they played You, Me & Dupree, Devil wears Prada, and the latest Pirates of the Carribean movie. That benadryl really wiped out Owen, as he kept sleeping until we got to the passport counter.. Here are some pics from the airport, and when we arrived at the de Gaaper hotel.. where mommy had a well deserved coffee a daddy snuck in a Belgian beer.
things we'll miss in the oc
wednesdays with our wednesday friends in the park, with a ball, and cupcakes.
cookie monster
when you're getting ready to go on a really long trip the best thing to do is make six dozen oatmeal chocolate chip cranberry raisin walnut cookies. owen thinks so too.