Mieke and I were reading this series of fairy books that she likes. She reads one page, I read the next, and so on. I'm not a fan of these books because I don't consider the story, characters, or writing compelling in any way, but the girls love them so I agree to get Mieke up to speed so she can read them on her own.

Anyway, Mieke's reading along and she comes to a line where Kirsty says, "I hope we don't run into those goblins again." Mieke stops, marking her place with a finger.

"Mama," she said, "I know they're going to run into those goblins again."

"You do?"

"I'm sure of it. But the writer of this book should make it not so obvious, make it so you think they will run into the goblins but then they don't. Or make you think they won't, and then--surprise!--they do. That would be more exciting. The writer should really do that."

"You're right. She should."

We kept reading and sure enough...goblins.

Mieke just shook her head. "These books are all the same."

Back Home

Well, we've been back home from our European vacation for 10 days now and it's been more of a whirlwind than when we were travelling. I guess that means it must have been a relaxing vacation. Already we've said Bon Voyage to my sister, sending her off on her great Asian adventure, we've been camping at Timothy Lake, and we've been to my family's annual swim party down near Eugene. As usual, it was a blast.

The kids only managed to stop swimming when Steph brought out the snowcones. There's Paul in the water feeling much more like himself...and look at that wavy new hair! Linda calls it his chemo perm.

Michiel is back to work today. The kids have one more week of freedom. The house is a mess of half-unpacked, half-organized things. And I keep finding spiders in the bathroom. Big ones. I'm beginning to think Jo, Jim, and Tash (who stayed in our house while we were gone) left something more for us than tp and extra towels. There's not a spider's nest you forgot to tell us about, is there, guys?

A Few Pictures From This Last Week

Tomorrow we head to France for a week of camping, castles, and oh...Paris. Here are a few pictures from this last week:

We climbed the Peperbustoren in Zwolle, a church tower with a spiral staircase composed of 236 steps. Even Mieke made it to the top by herself!


Happy kids modeling their new slippers:



Getting around the Dutch way...in a bakfiets. Boy, I wish we had one of these!





Annabel surfing the canals of Leeuwarden:

The Little Things

When we get back home, and the routine of a new school year starts, the kids will look back on our trip and one of the first things they'll remember is this:



Trampolining in the rain. They all got soaking wet (kletsnat, we would say in Dutch) and loved every minute of it.



They may not remember the churches and cathedrals, the castles and towers, the old city walls. But they will remember that the neighbor let us borrow the trampoline because his teenage boys don't use it much. They'll remember helping to set it up in the yard. They'll remember racing to jump on it every night after being excused from the dinner table. And they'll remember that one time when a warm rain fell, and they didn't think we'd let them, but Papa joined them, and they jumped and jumped while the water sprayed up all around them and fell down on top of them and they got wetter and wetter and they wanted to go on jumping all through the night.

Back home in Oregon, they will sometimes watch the rain fall and remember that joy of lightness, that bliss of flushed cheeks and shining eyes, and they'll wish they had a trampoline so they could recapture that time when they were truly happy.



Other things they will remember from the trip, those everyday things that might not make it into a scrapbook:

• getting to eat hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles) and nutella and other yummy sweet stuff on bread every morning for breakfast
• getting to eat vla (a sort of pudding, only better) every night for dessert and Oma taking them in turns to pick out new flavors--dubbel, strawberry, blanca, stroopwafel, speculaas
• watching cartoons every morning when they wake up
• riding on the back of a bike with feet in the saddlebags, or dangling free in Alexander's case
• trying to squeeze into the baby bathtub because Oma and Opa have only a shower. Really, even Alexander tries to do this.

Echte Nederlands

Real Dutch. That's what this post is about. Sure, there's cheese and windmills and klompen and stroopwafels, but what happens when you get beyond tulips and coffee shops?

Well, one thing that happens is spekken. This is a sort of marshmallowy candy that is soft, pink & white, and pure sugar. Spek is the Dutch word for bacon. What this candy has to do with bacon, I'm not exactly sure. Perhaps it is the pink and white that is reminiscent of marbled fat? Mmmm. Isn't your mouth just watering?

We all felt a bit sick afterwards.
Another thing that happens is Sjoelen, an old Dutch game were you slide wooden discs across a wooden board and try to get them into four different slots, each earning you different points. It's a fun game but I haven't yet got past the sliding-as-hard-as-I-can-in-hopes-that-something-will-go-in strategy.

Another thing is Ijs van Co, which is this hugely popular little soft-serve ice cream place that Jeanni's parents used to take her to when she was little. The lines were long but moved quickly because there were about seven teenagers packed into this little hole in the wall and serving up ice cream. Annabel and Mieke got two ice creams because their first servings were small, and well, Oma and Opa need to spoil them!

Maastricht

Two days ago Michiel and I had a little day-trip getaway to Maastricht, in the south of the Netherlands.

Here is het Vrijthof, the big central square. Check out that red bell tower!


I also dragged Michiel to an art museum, the famous Bonnefantenmuseum full of drawings from the Renaissance. And also some modern art--some cool and creepy and some of it, well, let's just say it was a little too modern for us. This one was cool...the only piece of art work in the museum's central dome:



And the whole reason we were there was to meet dear friends from Innisfree! Stephanie and Olivier from Belgium on the right, Jamie and Christian from Virginia but visiting his parents in Germany in the middle, and then us. Such a fun group!

People Pictures

There are many more, but that's it for now!

More from Germany

We also went to the Ittertal Historischer Freizeitpark. Think Enchanted Forest only older, smellier, and a bit creepier. It was fantastic! Alexander annoyed his sister. Mieke got to jump to her heart's content. And Annabel made friends with a girl from a refugee family from Libya who spoke more English than German.

Jaunt to Germany

Sailing with Markus and Tina:
 

Open Air Museum:


Ice cream (of course). This was our second stop at the ice cream shop.


Everyone who came to the family gathering at Franz's house:

Getting over Jetlag...

...in three easy steps.

Step 1: Tickle your cousin
Invite family and friends over all at the same time. Eat, drink, and tickle your cousin. Try not to fall asleep.


Step 2: Koffie en Koek (Coffee and a sort of cross between a cake and a cookie)
Celebrate everything, especially birthdays, whether they happened yesterday or in March. Teatime? Let's celebrate! Try not to fall asleep.


Step 3: Glitter tattoos...of course. What else? Borrow bikes from neighbors so that all 10 of us (Michiel, Lisa, Alexander, Annabel, Mieke, Jeanni, Carel, Tatjana, Maarten, and Kiril) can ride to Zwolle for a festival. Six bikes, ten people. You do the math.

Momentous Day

Today was one of those days where a lot of things happened. It could have been a stressful day. There was a lot of scurrying around, a lot of dropping off and picking up, a lot of persuading and bolstering, and a lot of "I don't want to!"

But the sun was shining. And I was steady.

At the dinner table, we had three things to toast:

Alexander had his extra tooth pulled, and he was quite brave. I spoiled him like a grandparent afterwards.

Annabel learned to ride a bike. She never wanted to do it with the training wheels, and today with Grandma and Grandpa, she got on a regular bike and off she went! Steering is still a bit tricky, but she's got the pedaling down.

And Mieke? Mieke learned to draw circles. She always wants someone to draw a snowman for her, but now she can do it herself.

In the end, it was one of those days where I was really glad to be a mom. These were the highlights of my day, these three things that made me incredibly proud.

The Rose-berry Bush

Last week I was tidying up the girls' room when I looked out the window and saw this:

 At first I thought, "I didn't know we had a holly bush there." Then I looked closer:

I burst out laughing. One of my children had decorated the thorns of the rosebush with berries collected from the bush by the front door. Obviously, this was the work of Annabel.

I went through the next few days telling everyone and getting a spark of delight every time I glanced at our new "rose-berry" bush. What creativity! What fun! That Annabel is a special girl!

But the story did not end there.

When I finally got around to complimenting Annabel on her artistic effort, she said, "It wasn't me. It was Alexander's idea. But he let me help."

I was floored. This was not Alexander's style, I thought. Then I remembered that, as recent incidents have pointed out to me, I may not actually know my son that well. How fantastic to learn that he has rose-berry bushes inside of him! How thoughtful of him to cover the sharp thorns with squishy-bright berries.

Once again, I am reminded that the surprises my children have in store for me will never end. I hope there are more like this one.

20 Questions

Last night we introduced the kids to the game of 20 Questions. Here's a sample of our family fun:

ME: Are you man-made?

ALEXANDER: Yes.

ME: Are you bigger than this pillow?

ALEXANDER: I can be.

MICHIEL: Are you a toy?

ALEXANDER: Yes.

ME: Are you many different colors?

ALEXANDER: Yes.

MICHIEL: Oh, I know. Do you originally come from Denmark?

ALEXANDER: Yes.

ANNABEL: (running into the room and jumping up and down) Oh! Oh! I know it! I know it! Are you a peacock?

ALEXANDER: Sheesh, Annabel. It's Legos!

Do You Do Kissing?

I'm rather smitten with my middle child right now. She is such a delightful creature.

The other day I let her watch a bit of Downton Abbey with me. There was a kissing scene. Afterwards she told me about how some kids do kissing at school.

"But only when the teacher isn't looking," she informed me.

"Oh?" I said. "Kids do kissing?"

"Yeah, they hide so the teacher can't see."

"Hmm." And then, as casually as I could manage: "Do you do kissing too?"

"No, no. Not me."

"Alexander, did they do kissing when you went to school there?"

Look of horror. "Are you crazy?"

"So, Annabel, have you ever kissed anyone? Besides family."

"No, no, no. Well, yes. I kissed Cade." (A boy at her school.)

"What was it like?"

"His lips were wet. And they stayed wet for a long time."

"Were you kissing him for a long time?"

"No, but I could just see that they were wet."

We'll see if she has the same observations about kissing when she's 15. If she'll still talk to me about it.

Spring Break!

We were going to take a road trip down to the California redwoods for spring break, but instead we decided to stay home and do fun things around here. Things we don't usually do. We each got to pick something that we wanted to try together as a family.

After a little family bike ride, Dutch-style, we began spring break with a trip to the zoo.

We usually go up at Christmas time for the zoo lights. I don't think the kids even remember being there in the daylight. Annabel kept asking when we were going to see the bats. Not so interesting during the day.

Alexander and Michiel drove up to Vancouver for Gamestorm. Now they have plenty of new games on their wish lists.

My pick for a spring break adventure was ice skating. Annabel was a bit shaky but seemed to do much better when she wasn't holding onto anyone. Alexander loved it! Just loved it! He wants to go back right away.

I got away for an overnight trip to the beach with a couple of girlfriends. Nasty weather, but we didn't mind one bit. While I was gone, the rest of the family tried out Superbounce.

The thing that Annabel wanted to try over spring break was skateboarding. (She also wanted to climb a mountain, but we didn't quite make that happen.) We hit up Uncle Eric to bring his skateboards and give a lesson. Super fun!

And what vacation would be complete without a night of eating dinner in front of the TV? Alexander even coerced us into buying TV dinners!

Next year maybe we'll take a road trip, but this year's spring break was perfect!

Annabel is 4!

Annabel turned four on February 21st. Here is a portrait of our girl at four:

Annabel is our lover. She loves to snuggle. Loves to kiss. Loves to love. Whenever Michiel and I hug or kiss, she has to get in the middle of it. She calls it a sandwich hug. 

She is not at all shy, and gives hugs to people she just met. It is a little heartbreaking to watch her offer hugs to her brother and see him reject them again and again.

Annabel is earnest about everything she does. She lives in moments of intense emotion--quick to cry, quick to laugh. She is determined, yet thoughtful and observant.

She loves to help with everything. Laundry, cooking, cleaning. And she's so articulate and capable that we sometimes forget how young she is and expect too much of her.

She's very social, and sometimes it's hard for her to play by herself. A common refrain when we are home together is, "But I want an adult to do it with me!"

She's turning out to be a little girly-girl, but she's keeping her spunk, so we're happy. She likes getting dirty, doesn't mind spiders, and loves to rough-house.

Annabel's favorite colors are pink, blue, gold, and silver. She loves dressing up and having "princess hair." That's when I put a bunch of little twisty buns in her hair at night, and she wakes up in the morning with curly hair. Often, she'll gaze at herself in the mirror and say, "I look beautiful."

Now that Annabel is in preschool, she's coming home with all sorts of new skills. She is so eager to read and write. Everywhere we go she sounds out words or picks up a pencil to write. Here's the shopping list she made for her birthday.*

The older she gets, the more I realize that Annabel is my girl. She loves to run and is almost as fast as her brother. I've been taking her to my drama and art classes, something Alexander never wanted to do. Annabel jumps right in. My little budding actor-artist! Here's a picture of the painting she did for her birthday. I came up with the Kandinsky idea, but she did all the painting.

Happy Birthday, Annabel!


*whipping cream, cupcakes, m&m's, frosting