Delft, The Netherlands

Some friends of ours said they found delicious huge stroopwafels at a market in Delft so we decided to head up and give them a try.  I wish we had done this a long time ago.  Delft is such a cute town full of picturesque canals, stores, pedestrian areas and of course bicycles.  The stroopwafels were good, however both Ryan and I think we like them better cooled so the inside is more chewy.  Kherington was set on having the pink one which was actually a liege waffle dipped in a strawberry coating.  We wandered the town exploring which would have been awesome if our Mr. Meltdown hadn't started up one of his tantrums.  Ryan ended up taking him back to the car (kicking and screaming the whole way) while Kherington and I picked up some strawberries and bananas from the market to snack during the drive home and some extra stroopwafels to pack back to the US.

This town is definitely worth a trip and to make things even better, it is only 20km from The Hague LDS Temple.

Trunk or Treat - 2013

We took the kids trunk or treating at the garrison with the Hatch family.  Kherington decided she wanted to be a cooker and Kevin stuck to Bob the Builder.  The Hatch's were Mario (Seth), Luigi (Isaac), Waluigi (Eric) and Bowser (Benj).  The bowser costume was pretty amazing and Jenny made it.  How awesome is that?

When we got home from the Trunk or Treat, Kevin had a huge meltdown.  Like major, major meltdown.  He ended screaming his head off for a good hour.  I can't remember what actually set it off this time.  It was sad that he missed out on going through the candy.  No worries, Kherington enjoyed it enough for both of them.

Moving Time

In preparation for our move, Ryan and I went through and organized/de-junked almost everything we own.  We missed about three boxes that were down in our storage room.  It took a lot of time and effort.  We also sold a good chunk of stuff that we plan on re-buying in the States (like our kitchen table).  I forgot to take before pictures of our place, but luckily the rental company came by to take some to post on their website (so weird to see our stuff on the site).  Our place is listed at 85 square meters (approx 915 square feet), 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1 toilet room, 1 main room and a garden (since we were on the ground floor.

The movers came and boxed up all our stuff.  Actually I have a lot of ikea square cabinet things and they just saran wrapped the whole unit organization boxes and all (except for the 5x5 one).  Our place was so empty when they left.  We borrowed some bedding from friends and camped out on the floor for a couple nights.  We wanted to stay at our place so we could put the kids down for bed and still be able to do some cleaning.  During one of the days the sister missionaries came and helped us clean for a couple hours. One of the Sisters (Anderson) is from Seattle and her sisters was college roommates with my sister.  Small world.  The picture is from when we had them over for dinner.  Anyways, the Sisters were a huge help.

It is normal to get a big fine when you move out of your apartment here.  The expectation of normal wear and tear is not really taken into account and you are expect to bring the apartment up to 'like new' standards.  With 2 little kids we knew we would be seeing a big fine.  We deep cleaned the apartment which included cleaning places I am positive were not cleaned before we moved in.  In the end we got charged 680 euros (floor, paint, broken fridge drawers and cleaning fee).  I expected all of that.  The cleaning fee kind of annoys me, but I still think if we hadn't cleaned as well as we did the inspector would have looked more closely and found more things to fine us on.  Realistically I was expecting to pay three times that.

Playdate - 5 boys, 1 girl

I really wanted to get the kids out of the house for the day so they couldn't make things dirty again so we headed up to a friends house.  We even got to take Seth and Benj along with us.  When they were all loaded in the car, I just kept thinking this is so much fun.  Kherington and Seth were in the back and Benj and Kevin in the middle...each of them with their own iTouch to play with on the drive.

Sarah has two boys (Charlie and Casey) which once again left Kherington as the only girl.  Someday she'll have playdates with other little girls, but for now she seems happy.  The kids played, painted and made sugar cookies.   Sadly I didn't take a picture of Kevin awesome black/blue/green hand spider.  Most of the kids enjoyed rolling, cutting, decorating and eating them.  It made me laugh that Benj didn't want to roll or cut or frost, but happily downed his cookies.  The kids mostly played well together except Kevin just seemed to move from one kid to the next annoying them.  I think this little monster needs to start having naps on a more frequent basis. I think everyone had a blast and I loved being able to just relax and chat. 

When we got back to the Hatchs house, the kids got a Kit Kat after cleaning up their toys.  Kheringotn took her Kit Kat unwrapped it, took a look and with out even trying it tried to give it back because she didn't want it.  Now for the funniest trade even, Jenny says, "I'll give you a bowl of peas if you take a bite of chocolate."  Haha....Kherington looks at her, thinks it over then took a small bite so she could have her peas.  That's my girl.  She has some strange eating habits.