Tulips in the Netherlands

This past weekend we headed back to the Netherlands to see the famous tulips in the Holland province. They were a definite must see!!! The season for the tulips is from mid-March to mid-May, but they say that the end of April is the best time. We were able to see a lot of amazing flowers; however, next time we will probably wait a couple more weeks to get the full effect. Below are some pictures to recap our experience.

THE FLOWERS

Vote which flower picture you like best.

A) B)

C)

D) E)

THE KID FRIENDLY PARK

The petting zoo was a hit for Kherington. As the picture shows, she loves the goats, especially the baby one that is just her size. She looked so cute that many other visitors started taking pictures of her as well, who knows how many scrapbooks she will be in throughout the world.

This is another thing the Netherlands is known for, the clogs. Kherington fit perfectly!!! Again, she is going to be famous with how many tourists were able to get a snap shot of her.

A park, or in the U.S. would be a ropes course with a legal liability form to sign, that kids can play on. We found out later they even had a zip line for kids to go on. A great place for kids to explore while there parents look at more flowers.

MISCELLANEOUS PHOTOS

Finally a collage of photos to end the post with. We hope everyone enjoys. Also, don't forget to begin making your reservations with us now to come visit during this time for you to experience the great fun we had this past weekend. Remember it is from mid-March to mid-May!!!

Easter Abroad

There are quite a few perks of being abroad. The most recent one was a very cool Easter present.

We drove out to a high end outlet store in France on Saturday and this was the purchase. I am very very excited! Even more excited to know that by the time we leave Belgium I will be the owner of a very nice set of Le Creuset cook/bakeware. We bought this one piece and decided to go back during the sale months (we heard they are an additional 20-30% off the already discounted outlet prices). Ryan also found that in November you can buy at the actual factory location (2 hours away) for a discounted price.  We are just not sure if that is any cheaper than the 20-30% off sale month at the outlet.

I'm really not into the polish pottery stuff (people around here have a TON of it). Some of the pieces have cool shapes, but I think I prefer just a solid color. But Le Creuset, that's another story. So here's the first dish I made with my new pot (Chicken Quinoa Stew).

Can You Guess...

Any taker's for what Kherington's current favorite food is?

Also, today at the grocery store the cashier was handing out bags to chocolate eggs (yes, each kid got a whole bag of eggs). Kherington was thrilled and didn't put it down for an hour after we got home.  Then I guess she realized that she was supposed to be able to get the eggs out of the bag so she could eat them (she ate chocolate eggs last time we were at the chocolate outlet so she was familiar with them). Well, here she is after I let her eat one egg:

(as I'm writing this she is trying to get me to let her eat another one...I resealed the bag and gave it back to her)

Everyday Life March 2010

There hasn't been anything too exciting going on here.  Just the normal everyday life. And what does that mean you may ask? Well here is my typical day:

Wake up around 6:30am. My body is finally back to that. I'm a morning person. I like to be up in the morning and crash at night. I checkout my emails, blogs and read the news. Kherington and Ryan wake up around 7. We read together (well, Kherington climbs from one person to the next...whoever is holding the book). I feed Kherington breakfast, clean her up and we play. She goes down from morning nap around 9am. I do my Slim in 6 workout video while watching a TV episode (it makes the workout go by so much faster...right now I am working my way through the West Wing series). Some days she doesn't feel like napping, but I get at least 30 minutes to myself to get through the cardio part of the workout. If I hear her, I check on her at the transition and if she's up she comes and joins me for the last 30 minutes. Kherington has a snack and we play some more. By then, I have finally cooled off enough to shower. Kherington's new enjoyment while I shower is finding anything on the ground, picking it up and putting it in the tub with me...clothes, towels, shoes, books...yeah, fun times. Then we have an early lunch and plan what to do the rest of the day. Usually that means figure out if we need to stop by the store for any grocery items and decide where we want to walk.

This last week I found a really cool park that's about a mile away. There were donkey's pulling a trash cart, ducks, swans, bird houses, and interesting playground/workout type things. The second time we tried to go it was closed for some unknown reason, but we went again yesterday and took some pictures. The weather was nice except for a 5 minute hail storm.

It's usually about 2pm when we get back from our walk. We play some more, walk over to the store if need be, go to the playground (right behind our apartment), etc. Kherington goes down for her afternoon nap by 3:30pm.  If it's a good day she's sleep for 2 hours.  If it's not, she'll talk to her rainbow bear for 30 minutes, I'll go get her and we play some more.

I look at a lot of recipe blogs to try and decide what to make for dinners.  Here's the criteria: a) does it look good, b) does it sound good, c) can I find the ingredients here (that 's usually the kicker), d) how expensive will those ingredient's actually be.  I like to cook. In the U.S. where our fridge was actually cold that was okay. Here, not so much. Leftovers keep for a day, if that. Our freezer does work great, but lacks space for the most part.  I like to bake even more that cook, but ya know, we really don't need to eat sweets all day everyday (sad, but true) and we don't know many people here to take our treats to (even more sad, but still true). So, cooking/baking has been cut back a little, but I still love to checkout the recipes.  Oh and side note, the BEST soup I have ever made is found on the sisterscafe.blogspot.com. It is called Heartly Healthy Chicken Quinoa Stew. I love it. I think I could live off it. I tried freezing what we didn't eat and it reheated great. I just had to add some extra water.

Well, back to our everyday life. I make dinner (assuming there isn't leftovers that must be eaten), feed Khertington and put her in the tub for bath. She still loves her baths. Not so much splashing, but talking to her bath animals and reading her bath book that Auntie Michelle gave her. Ryan get's home around dinner or bath time. We put some PJ's on her, daddy chases her around for awhile and it's bottle and bed time at 8pm.

Yep, so that's the standard everyday life here. There's always the exciting 'going to the chocolate outlet day' or 'heading to the market day', but in general this is what we do. I really don't think it's that different than living in the US aside from walking everywhere.

The Kherington Update and more...

We received a package (tax docs, mail, books, clothes, magic jack, shoes for Kherington, stroller parts...thanks!) from my mom in the mail awhile ago and I was so amazed at her packing job, that I decided to take a picture. It was pretty cool.  Come to find out Belgium postal people had opened the package.  I wouldn't want to figure out how to repack that. Inside was also Kherington's birthday card.  Mom is way on top of things. It even says postmarked on Apr 23rd and do not open until then. Well, I set it on the coffee table and when I look back, Kherington had snatched it and was biting the corner.

Random tidbit - some packages we have to pay 10 euros to receive, others we don't. I asked about this at the post point where I picked up the package (I didn't have 10 euros cash when the post guy came by out apartment so I had to wait until the following day and pick it up at the grocery store), and the guy working there said there's no rhyme or reason.  Some you pay for, some you don't. Haha, that's Belgium for ya.

In the package from Ryan's mom, she sent Kherington a Purdue dress that she made.  It is just in time for March Madness! Each day Purdue plays, Kherington gets to wear the dress and daddy changes into his Purdue shorts when he gets home. Very cute. Here she is doing her thing. Also notice the cute shoes that Michelle picked out!  Kherington loves to eat anything that we eat.

After we got the stroller parts, we went to fix the stroller (more Ryan than me). We learned how to drill out rivets and re-rivet. It took a lot more time than we thought it would, but it worked! We now have a functioning stroller. Kherington and I have been exploring all the areas around us in order to get back into the NikePlus challenge I recently sent out.

Kherington has now learned how to get into many many things. We have a gate to keep her out of the kitchen (when it's not up, she gets into the pots and pans cupboard and scraps her teeth against the pots). She learned how to open the drawer beneath her crib, remove the diapers and wipes and climb in, how to open and empty her bucket of blocks, how to climb into her crate that we keep all her random toys in and how to climb on top of boxes under the table. I'm thinking this means she's going to be a climber.  I'm not so much looking forward to that.

For the first time ever, she fell asleep in her high chair (picture below...Ryan used to do this too). In her crib, she always sleeps on her stomach (like her mom) in the corner closest to the door.

Some other tidbits of our 11 month old: She LOVES other kids and thinks that they all want to play with her. She recently started this 4 legged crawl with her rear stuck up in the air. She has done some side stepping on her own, but still hasn't shown much interest in actually walking (kinda a surprise because she has been standing up by herself for a long time now). She loves pulling on cords or wires. She loves getting chased by her daddy. She still likes her mac n' cheese but some new favorites include veggies cooked in broth (pulled out of our soups), cucumbers and black beans.

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: