Today

The lasagna is in the oven, salad is ready to be served. All that is needed is the setting of the table and the baking of some french bread. I'm so looking forward to this meal!

Today I
- cleaned Tristans room
- did 3 loads of laundry
- cleaned my shoes (after the stoute cross, they needed it!)
- went for a bike ride and a climb up a tower with a friend
- unbuilt a bookcase (cannot for the life of me figure out the right way to say this!)
- went to Harderwijk with Herman to look for new glasses
- grabbed the opportunity to check out 8 new books from the library in Harderwijk
- and took a quick peek into one of the churches there
- made the lasagna
- paid some bills
and later on I will hopefully
- call a friend
- download some pictures
- and settle down for a good read.

What did you do today? I'd love to hear!!

Pumpkins (or rather, the lack of them)

I have been itching to get my pumpkin pictures up here, but it just isn't working! So terribly annoying to want to do something and not have it work!! And yes, I know I can just google a picture of pumpkins and put it up here, but somehow that just doesn't feel the same.
I guess it says a lot about the state of my life when I can get worked up over pictures of pumpkins....

See, this weekend was one of those perfect fall weekends with blue skies and a tang in the air. Saturday morning I went to two rummage sales and to a pumpkin market. The colors of those pumpkins! Oh my... enough to make my mouth water. I took pictures with my cell phone because I had forgotten to bring my camera with me. And now they're stranded on my phone.
I did however, manage to take these other pictures later on in the weekend.

I love scrounging around at rummage sales. I bought this colored glass to add to the collection that I'm putting on the shelf by the shed. I usually have flowers there, but seeing as summer is gone and my flowers are dead, I opted for this colorful option instead.


And today the sun was shining so brightly I went out for a bike ride by myself. Herman is to sick to accompany me, and the kids are not up for a bike ride........ ever.
I went down the usual pretty lanes and past this pretty harbor and town.


All in all it was a weekend to treasure. A moment of rest after a busy week, and a time of peace to prepare for the busy week ahead.

Vacation

Today, or maybe tomorrow, is the first official day of our vacation. Not that we're going anywhere...a move and a trip to Ethiopia have depleted our wallets for now. But we are free from work for three glorious weeks! To celebrate Herman is now slouched lopsided on the sofa, snoring away.
I took a long bike ride with my Dad today which included farm lanes, a bicycle ferry, views of the lake, an old village, a museum, and more farm lanes, all within 30 kilometers (which was about the length of our round trip). No need to get bored in this area of Holland!

We will spend the coming weeks fixing up the garden, clearing out the attic, celebrating birthdays, having great friends over, going swimming, catching up on our photograph albums (so very very optimistic of us) and sleeping, sleeping and sleeping. Marinda will work at the ice cream place and I will manfully try to keep Tristan from spending too much time behind the computer and the tv. A battle I feel I have already lost.
I'm not sure how much I will be posting. Lately I've noticed it takes more effort than usual, and I feel I might be ranting and raving a bit too much. So I'm giving myself the leeway to blog if I feel like it, and not blog because I "must" (I mean, it's not like anyones life depends on me writing about whatever happens to hit my fancy!)

Now before I forget, I would like to praise my husband to the skies for being the very very handy man that he is. He took leftover laminate flooring from the bedrooms and transformed it into a huge desk/storage space in the attic (with lighting underneath!!). He bought a secondhand bookcase and rebuilt it to fit underneath the eaves of the attic. He hangs up stuff, fixes stuff and pretty much caters to our every handyman whim. I love him. (Ik hou van jou Herman!)

Have a good summer everyone!

Ice Cream

Went for ice cream after dinner today with Tristan and his friend. We have a lovely option just around the corner from our house, 10 minutes walk or a 3 minute bike ride. It's a farm that sells ice cream in a little shed on their property. It has a little playground with a big trampoline and it's located in the middle of the fields around my town. I'll take you for ice cream there if you come around for a visit.
The other option is Marinda's new place of work. She's become an ice cream girl at a restaurant/cafe in the middle of my town. It gave me such a thrill to see her there on her first day of work, smiling her gorgeous smile and serving up ice cream like she'd done it all her life. Something about seeing my kids doing something that they're good at always gives me such a thrill. It bring tears to my eyes every time.

Blogging

I'm having the funnest time (not good english, I know!) checking out why people end up on my blog. With my Feedjit counter I can see if people pass by after googling something, or if they link through from somebody elses blog. It's really interesting! Just now somebody landed on here after looking under "job offer holland". I've had several hits on my alcohol post for some strange reason. The other day somebody googled "poop art holland" and ended up on this post.
Two days ago I got a hit from a town just 8 kilometers from here which made me kind of nervous. I've been keeping this blog "secret" from most of the people I know here. I like the freedom of talking about my life without having to think too much about the consequences that it may have for the dutch people I know. Imagine my surprise when on my first day of work a colleague said she had googled me by my maiden name and ended up on this blog! I never thought someone would do that because here I mostly introduce myself using Hermans last name. I don't think she's checked it since then, which is fine by me!
I love having people read this though, and thrive on comments, and sometimes wonder how many people might be lurking, or wonder if people think this is interesting enough to come back to and check out again!
And blogging has a lot of advantages. I find myself putting situations into words more consciously than I usually do, and I also take more pictures. Like today, when I was on a glorious bike ride with Marinda (have I mentioned how I love the surroundings here? They're just gorgeous!). I took my camera with me with this blog in mind and I enjoyed myself even more because I was so conscious of what I was doing and how I might write about it.
So now I will leave you with some pictures, so that you can see what I saw today.....

We had coffee and a lemonade at a little stall that also sold homemade jams and jellys. The cash register was a little tin can and trust was the basis on which we paid.

We biked through fields of green and yellow, past old farms, saw cows and sheep grazing, swans on the lake, boats sailing in the water, a windmill, the blue blue sky. We felt the bright sunshine on our shoulders and a fresh breeze blowing in our faces and I was very very happy.

Bicycles

I like this picture because it pretty accurately portrays the amount of bicycles you can find in any city or town in Holland. And these bikes are "parked" pretty decently. Go outside the train station of any big city and you will see bicycles piled up like trash to anywhere within a kilometer circumference of the building. I always wonder how people find their bikes back! There's a lot of bicycle stealing, with insurance for the bikes being a lot higher in some places than others. I went to school with a girl who thought it to be quite normal to steal someone elses bike when her own was gone.
Without a bike, one can be quite alienated! That's why I keep putting off having my bike checked, who knows how long I'll have to do without, as it's rattling and the gears are all out of whack.
Another dutch thing. Kids get bike and traffic lessons at school. Next week Tristan will have to make a 5 km bike ride through the town and will be judged if his bike is up to standard, and if he's obeying the traffic rules. I'm afraid he's going to get lost, as it's not a route that he's ever done before!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
currently reading: Nothing! I'm all out of non serious books and have no desire whatsoever to read anything "heavy".

Coming Week

Another week is coming up when I will be at home, jobless. Although I do have a second job interview on tuesday, so things are looking up for the weeks after! If I do get this job then I hope to start immediatly. And my main motivation is not even the finances, but the fact that I need the structure in order to stay sane. I wish I had the discipline to create my own rhythm, but I desperately need other strutures to keep me up and at them!
One of the things I really need to do is go to the gym. I have gained about 12 pounds since my lowest weight last summer, and it's bothering me. Not bothering me enough to change my eating habits though, even if I have made some vain attempts. Getting some energy from going to the gym should be of help. Getting that bike ride in the other day was a start anyway! I saw some people rollerblading yesterday and it reminded me that that's something I like to do as well. I will check out the roads here to see if that's an option. There's no use in rollerblading over cobblestones, which is what a lot of the roads here are made of. I've tried it before and I thought my eyes would shake out of my head. Not an experience to be repeated!
Today we will be biking to church since it's another gloriously sunny day. I will take my camera this time and hopefully take some picturesque shots to show here. Yesterday we were in a village close by which needs to be framed and mounted, it's that cute! And the funny thing is that it's a village I lived in when I was about 2 years old. My sister was born there (the only one in the family to be born in Holland!). I will get our old adres from my parents and see where our old house is. So Herman and I do have some roots in common, in a very small slight way!
Now I will stop rambling and start labelling my old messages, making it easier for everybody to see what I've written about in the past (as I'm sure you're all really curious :-))

Bike Ride

I worked up the energy to go on an exploratory bike ride today and didn't regret it! Had a big grin on my face and regrets because I didn't bring along my camera. I saw some scenes that I would have loved to share with you. What to think of 5 farmers in blue overalls with yellow clogs (yes, clogs!), leaning on their rakes, standing in front of an old barn. Or a washing line in front of an old farm with long johns hanging on it. Or a grandmother, busily wiping down the shutters on the house (that sight alone fills me with admiration, seeing as I love housework so much!). And this windmill, by the side of the road (without the seats in front of it, too cold out today!). I passed a farm where they make old fashioned farmers ice cream and another where they make cheese.
The goal of my trip was the lake close by and it was well worth the effort. The sky was blue, the shores of the lake were covered with tan colored grasses, there were white swans floating on the deep blue water. It was quite poetic, and made me realize how pretty Holland can be. In the summer you can take a bike ride across the lake on to the next village. Next time I will bring a camera and see how well I do in promoting my new "home". Can I tempt anybody to come on a visit?

Last times

Last day at work today, yesterday was my last
bike ride "home". Yesterday was Tristans last soccer practice. This picture is of the last social event for my volunteers that I attended. Here I am unwrapping the last gift that they will ever give me.
Tomorrow is Tristans last day at school. And Marinda's last visit to school. I'm doing my last loads of laundry, typing possibly my last post in this house. I will wake up early for the last time in this house, we had our last dinner here tonight.
If I'm not careful I may get emotional!
Not really though. But I do want to make sure that I am aware that we are leaving here. I want to make sure I say my goodbyes properly and not leave anything unfinished. So far, that's working out pretty good!