Amsterdam

A couple weekends ago we went on a day trip up to Amsterdam which is now my favorite city in Europe! It is about a 2 hour drive and it was beautiful. I really want to find someone that lives on a farm that we can go visit. They looked so cool. We passed a lot of windmills. We saw the smallest car ever...even smaller than the typical SmartCar. Kherington was a great travel girl this trip,

We weren't sure exactly what we wanted to do there.  We had looked up a couple museums to go to, but when we arrived in Amsterdam and saw how cool the town was we decided to just wander the streets. As is standard with us, we started at grand central train station and went from there. I saw more bicycles than I have ever seen in my entire life. People riding them all over the place, bikes leaning up against anything stationary and HUGE parking garages filled only of bikes. I am not exaggerating at all. I even saw a bike that had a wheelbarrow bucket attached to the front with a seat belt in it...so cool...needless to say, I want to go back, rent some bikes and ride around!

There were waterways all over the place with boats lining the walls. We also passed some interesting food. The picture below is in honor of Ryan. He loves hot dogs, but since moving here has seen them in a very different way than in the US. Mainly they are just canned, but during our wandering we saw a couple different shops that had them in a bun with pizza toppings on top. No, we didn't try them (we opted from some delicious focaccia).

As usual, we passed some cool churches that were nestled into everyday life. We explored the touristy shops, found a huge clog to sit in, and wandered the tulips tents where bulbs of almost any color an be bought to grow at home.  Or you can opt for some wooden ones that last forever.

We are still trying to figure out what we want to purchase from each place we visit. I'm not big into trinkets...they just seem like clutter...so we'll see what we do for the long term. We did come away with some amazing Holland Cheese.

Kherington getting "INTO" March Madness

March Madness is here! As you know March Madness is Ryan's favorite time of year. He sets up a tournament for his family and the winner has their name printed onto a plaque that they then get to display in their own home until the following March Madness. Kherington wanted to get in on the fun too, so here she is doing her first March Madness picks:

Miss Adventure

Kherington loves her daddy and loves being outside.

But she has to stay home with mommy all day! We can only explore so much since we also have to get the normal things in life done.  I did figure out how to keep her out of her favorite cupboard:

That doesn't stop her from having fun. She loves to push her music table around (she has a little walker, but that's not nearly as much fun).

Her new thing is climbing on everything. Notice when she's on top of the music table she started crying (hence the sad face).

We got a package today from Grandma Glover (thanks!). As soon as I let Kherington down from her high chair, she went straight to the box and did this:

Yep...crawled into the box and started folding the flaps down (all by herself!). Apparently she wants to go see people other than her mom.

Antwerp

This last weekend we went up to Antwerp. Our initial goal was to go to the American store up near there and buy some Pam. I must say that is the most expensive Pam I have ever bought. Since we were there, we headed to the heart of the city: Grand central train station. The station was amazing.  There is an awesome recording of a flash mob that can be found by searching on YouTube.

We also walked around town and saw other cool buildings and almost any type of food you could think of.  We didn't actually stop to eat except for a chocolate waffle. My favorite statue was this camel.  I have no idea what its significance actually is though.

10 Months Old

Kherington is 10 months old today! Can you believe it? She is a very active and determined little girl.

She crawls all over the place. She has learned how to unload the cupboards. I went into the kitchen yesterday and made a huge "hhhhhhuhhhhh" sound and she jumped dropped the onion that she'd been peeling and crawled away from me. Very funny.

She LOVES chocolate. There is a chocolate outlet relatively close by where you can sample all the chocolates for free and buy them at a significantly discounted rate. She literally pulls my hand with the chocolate to her mouth...and she's strong.

Story: She loves other kids, but does NOT like to share her toys...most kids she has 'played' with have been younger than her and not really into toys, but last Sunday we had a family over that has a 19 month old and she did NOT like it when he tried to play with any of her toys...we'll have to work on that one.

She stands up in the middle of the room on her own and when she's playing with her toys she'll go from squat to stand and back, but doesn't yet have motivation to walk except for occasionally behind her wheeled walker.

With the start of her new schedule, she now takes 2 naps a day and sleeps through the night (9pm - 5am, has a bottle then goes back to sleep 5am-7:30am). She also isn't as resistant when we put her in her car seat but would still much rather be behind the wheel.  Here she is driving the mini.

Favorites
Color: not sure yet
Toy: musical house...all day, every day
Food: banana or Gouda cheese
Dessert: chocolates
Word: ma ma ma ma
Book: "Water, Water Everywhere"
Activity: driving the car or bath time
Teeth: 6 (3 top, 3 bottom...got bottom first then the top)
*Least favorite activity: diaper changes...she wiggles and crawls away which is really gross when it's a stinky diaper...I've gotten good at wiping and putting diapers on backwards.

Belgian Explorations

We're in Brussels, Belgium along with the COLD weather...brrrrrrrr....So what have we (being mostly me and Kherington during the day while Ryan's at work) been up to?

Building - We built a TON of Ikea furniture (European apartments typically don't come with closets, wardrobes, curtains/curtain rods, light fixtures, etc). Kherington helped me with a couple items while Ryan was at work, then we bought and built together. We ended up making quite a few trips to Ikea because our car is a the mini cooper.  Nothing was too large to fit which was nice and we only drove illegally once. Someone from our ward came over and drilled a bunch of holes this last weekend to actually put the curtain rods and light fixtures up (very very helpful...we had drilled 6 holes and none of them worked...apparently you need the right type of drill to drill through cement).

Okay, Okay. Now the good stuff.

Artistic Trees - Made out of wooden crates
Grand Place - Tons of statues on the building
Waffles - The best Liege waffles (sugar waffles) are hands down found at Stockel Market (open Mon, Tues, Fri, and Sat morning). I have not yet tried the Belgian waffles (normal waffle) in the picture, but they do look like the best Belgian waffles I have ever seen.

Brewery - Toured the last old fashion brewery in Brussels and got some cute Kherington pictures

Museums - First Wednesday of every month after 1pm, a bunch of museums are free. We went to the music museum...guess what instrument this is (completely rhetorical...I have no idea...but it looks cool)
Gardens - Cool landscaping accompanied by some guards pacing.

Churches - there are churches all around

Brugge - We drove an hour and went up to Brugge a couple weekends ago. It was fun to walk around, but very cold. Kherington put up with this for about an hour and a half before letting us know it was time to go. We'll definitely have to go back when it gets a little warmer.

SNOW In Brussels

For a place that doesn't get snow very much, it definitely is coming down pretty hard!