First Week!

Ok! Well. The internet here is very sporadic and is off for hours at a time, it has been out the past 20+ hours.  This is fine, it's not a lifeline or anything...she says as she white knuckles the table...  We will have to see if the connection improves or not during our stay.  We do have some fairly significant things we had been planning to use online services for but... it's fine.  Really.  Really. Just fine. 
So! Days 1-7!  The first few days were definitely an exercise in getting food and sleep.  Period.  Grocery stores have some interesting differences that have made feeding our family of 6 a full time job.  How many individually packaged heads of broccoli should we get?  No Costco here!  Each store appears to have very different specialties. I suppose this would be true of America too... a trip to Winco would be different than one to Market of Choice.  In one grocery store we could not enter before checking out a coin pay shopping cart, it had an electric sensor to make the door open! 
And the answer to why we were looking for what we now know is illegal bleach (yes, bleach is banned here) would be Landon and Anneke using the bidet to wash their hands.  Then as a drinking fountain.  Then urinal.  Ack!!! Going to have to pick just one use kiddos!  And also, AFTER we dump rubbing alcohol all over it....
The kids all responded to jet lag a little different.  A lot of this...

sleeping until 1:30!
and this... "Just somebody give me some coffee"  (AKA Drinkable yogurt)

but also this!  Two happy kids, the only ones up, playing with new toys special for the trip...

3/26
Landon came rolling out of bed at 11, earliest time yet and said in one long speech, "Mommy, its light outside, you should get making breakfast.  I'm going back to bed until you get done. Wait. I should order what I want.  Does Germany have bread and cheese?"
3/30
Everyone is fairly on track sleep wise now and lucky us we just got to have our second daylight savings time when Germany lost an hour today. 

So here we are in Germany! Or as Anneke would say, "GernAmy"
The end. 
Not!
Are you kidding?  I looove blogging, so much better than Facebook in that I get to tell you all about my life but don't have to hear anything about yours!! Oops, was that out loud?  In all seriousness, I am so excited to have this great excuse to get back to one of my favorite things, writing about my most treasured family and sharing pictures of their beautiful faces. 
Anyways... this first post will be a little, um, boring? Informative? Factual? Long? As Landon would say, "Check. Yes. Got it. Check."
The kids all did great on the long trip over.  Considering.  Actually not even considering.  They were fantastic troopers.  We started off driving up to Seattle on Saturday.

 Mom dropped us off at a labyrinth of a hotel wherein I promptly got lost.  Well, actually, first we tried to send Landon and Anneke off in the elevator all by themselves.  Emma thankfully alerted us through her hysterical giggling and flapping of arms and gesturing that they were the only ones in the elevator and the doors were closing... 

So after rescuing them we spent a nice evening of fast food,  swimming and hot tubbing.  The next day we had time to swim again. Anneke tired quickly however, and wanted to return to the room.  See previous mention where Mommy and Anneke head off, get lost, are unable to remember room #, try to call front desk via a courtesy phone, clerk is uncourteously unable to provide room # to non-registered guest and trek all the way back to swimming pool to admit we are lost... Mommy carrying Anneke up and down flights of stairs the whole way...

The kids quickly fell asleep, a shout out here to Emma's class, clutching their new stuffed caterpillars that were given to them as part of a super fun gift bag of plane activities.  Thank you Mrs. Sisler's class! We miss you all!
Whew! This is a long post and we are not even on the plane yet!  :)  
Breakfast, a hasty re-pack and we donned our matching "Hazard Yellow" Bad Margentheim custom logo T-Shirts and boarded the "Cookie Bus" to get shuttled over to the airport. 

Extremely helpful assistants lent a hand both in loading and unloading luggage as well as dropping us at the correct spot and before we knew it we were the only people sashaying up to the "Icelandic Air" check in counter.  All bags checked in at under 50#, whew! The kids signed their brand new passports (Sam carefully penning out, "Sam van Hecke"... Thank you, Mrs. Carmichael!) and off we went to visit the friendly people at TSA.  That was another walk in the park! Anneke had fallen asleep in the ergo backpack so we got the "Family Screen" which was easy.  The kids were all great at removing shoes, placing things in bins and Sam even got a compliment from the TSA agent as he carefully replaced each bin as we retrieved our belongings!

The wait in the boarding area did not last long and I made Sam and Landon work off energy by taking turns shuttling the wheeled carry-on back forth.  Anneke slept away.  

Boarding call!  Let the screen time begin!  The kids were all thrilled with their private screens and Anneke quickly upgraded her headphones to the free kids courtesy headphones that Icelandic Air handed out.  They were pink as opposed to the silver ones that Daddy had gotten her.  She navigated her little screen and carefully tipped Tic Tacs into her palm.  I think Emma tired first.  Sleep eluded everyone, the plane heated up quickly and thirst was prevalent.  Around 10:00pm our time people were out of sorts with the inability to get comfortable even though tired.  Anneke did sleep, Emma a little and finally Sam slipped onto the floor in front of the boys seats and conked out, Landon fought off sleep and protested loudly but eventually also slept a little.  We dis-boarded in Reykjavik at midnight our time and had 40 minutes to get through customs and to our next plane.  It worked. Not sure how, but it did!  Did you know Iceland uses 99% renewable energy?
Well, this is getting embarrassingly long winded... tune in next time for our arrival and to find the answer to why our first purchase in Germany was an illegal substance here.... AKA, bleach.

Happy Birthday L!

L is two. His favorite things include emptying boxes of dry spaghetti noodles on the floor, using the office chair to climb onto the kitchen counter, painting his toy bus slide with shampoo, climbing into the full bath tub fully clothed and pouring a gallon of milk onto the kitchen floor. He prefers to do these things in a span of 15 minutes. All. of. them. But you know what, you gotta love this little guy. He is sweet and cuddly and so, so smart. And very, very busy! And he sleeps sometimes!
We had a great Cars themed birthday party. The kids used paper plate steering wheels to race around the yard for prizes at pit stops. I made a cake with "Cars" figures. L got a dump truck full of presents that he promptly emptied out and took off with. It was classic.

Finally the boys!

When all else fails a book brings great appeal. Opa and Oma read to all the kids several times, even bed time stories. One of the memories I think Opa and Oma liked best was watching J read bedtime stories at night out on the trampoline.

What fun! A visit to Daddy's work and school with even Opa in collegiate wear!

Just the Girls With Opa and Oma

E had a great time playing badminton with Opa. I think it looks like Opa had a pretty good time too!



E and Oma shared a smile over some memories playing on the slide show on the computer. E enjoyed showing Opa and Oma her dance recital video as well as performing a couple of her own choreographed dances! They also got to see her practice at for the local dancing in the festival coming up.
Oh and the star of the show! What a stinker. She had not let her daddy hold for the month previous to the visit and we were very worried that she would not let Opa and Oma hold her either. But this is what she did with both of them the whole time!

More Visit Memories

A Wonderful Visit

We were so honored and thrilled to have a visit from Opa and Oma, all the way from the Netherlands, for two weeks in June! The kids had a great time and aside from us trying to run them ragged, I think Opa and Oma did too! We did some fun day trips to a few places- Wildlife Safari and the coast and we had a little picnic at the cabin for Fathers Day. Mostly we tried to keep it simple and let them see a little of our life here and let them bond with the kids. Which they truly did. E, S, L and even A each spent special time with them. The kids really loved this visit and the day after they left S woke up and said, "When will Opa and Oma get here?". Even after I reiterated that they had gone home to the Netherlands and would not be coming, he asked if they were going to come the next day. Sigh. He is the most reserved of the kids right now but is also very sensitive, if that makes sense, and he had really been enjoying the visit. E got to write a page with Opa in the travel journal that he keeps for every vacation and that has inspired us to have E keep a summer journal. Her first page? "I had fun when Opa and Oma visited".


Picking them up at the airport. This is E and S... and what looks like a small little Dutch child that they apparently brought with them!
And an emotional meeting of A.
The girls proved to be much more cooperative with the picture taking! Consequently the pictures of the boys with Opa and Oma are few and far between! But look at this beautiful picture of A and Oma! Oma had just traveled a day on the airplane and was in a different timezone and still managed to look gorgeous and so stylish. I must have been taking care of looking jet lagged for the both of us!