Happy Easter! Sunday morning everyone was up by 8am except Amber. About 15 min. later I was on my way up to get her and she was opening her door. So the kids were excited to go downstairs and see if the Easter Bunny had come.
They found their Easter Baskets and goodies and started munching away on the candy!
Jason's mom had brought over cute little Easter bags for them to use for their Easter egg hunt, she also had to bring the plastic eggs as they don't have those here either. So the Easter bunny put some candy in those eggs and hid them.
So after getting into their Easter goodies they did their egg hunt.
Here in Europe this is not really quite the same tradation. Normally there would be no basket, the kids would just get a chocolate egg. No easter egg hunts, as they don't really have plastic eggs. And no jelly beans either!
We had a nice big breakfast. Then the boys started watching their Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies they had gotten from the Easter bunny. After lunch they all walked over to the big park down a bit from our house and then on over to the Pirate park. It was a bit chilly out, so a bit later Jason called me to pick everyone up from the pirate park, since that is almost downtown right before the city center. And then he went for a run and ran home.
Once home I opened my "ham" I had gotten from the butcher and we realized it is more like a pork roast.
We were calling it the "mystery meat". I then looked up online fresh ham and it says that it is more like a roast then a ham. Too bad I didn't know that earlier b/c it would have been good with stuffing and applesauce. Instead I made a maple glaze that turned out to be really good. The meat ended up taking longer then the butcher had said so dinner was a bit later. But we put half of the glaze on and then put the other half on the table to use with the meat, and everyone thought it all tasted good. So I was glad it turned out ok b/c we were all excepting something else.
For dessert I had made a bunny cake. This was our Easter cake, and Jason's and his mom's birthday cake as well, multi purpose cake! That was yummy!
As I was tucking Sean in bed he said "Mom it was just you doing that stuff for the Easter Bunny and then for Santa clause too, right?" I asked him why he thought this, and he said " B/c my friends said so at school." Bummer I thought. When Jacob was in kindergarten he asked me a bunch of questions about Santa and then not really a comment since then.
Monday morning when Sean came downstairs he found Papa sleeping on the couch. When Papa woke up Sean told him that he did something to him while he was sleeping. Papa was scared!
But Sean was just kidding him. That Sean!
Today the Easter holiday is celebrated with a day off, Easter Monday it is called. So Jason had a call this morning to take but didn't have to go into the office. So after his call we drove out to a town called Remich on the Moselle River. It is just about 30 min. away. Unfortunately the weather was a bit cold, and sprinkling so it wasn't great weather to walk around in, but they had a flea market in town along the river and so walked around there. I picked up a gravy bowl to go with my Luxembourg pattern of that Villoroy and Boch china. Jacob picked up an old Portuguese coin, and a cool almost new poker set in a closed case and Sean got a little match box car. They also have big boat cruises you can do down the river, but it would be nicer on a better day. So then we just ate at a diner type restaurant by the river. From here we finished walking around and then went to a winery just down the road. It was really neat.
We took a tour of the cave where they ferment and process the wines and champagnes. The cave was built from 1919-1921.
This is where you enter the cave inside a building already.
The tour lasted a half an hour and then ended with a sample of champagne and then wine if you paid more for your tour. The champagne was good, and the kids got white grape juice and were very excited.
We bought a couple bottles and then the kids wanted a bottle of their white grape juice so we got that too!
Then we just drove on back home.
Since it is a holiday today not much is open here.
Tuesday Jason went into the office. But we did go out and pick him up for lunch and ate at a cute microbrewery just down the street from his office. It was a very traditional type of Luxembourgish place with sausages, quiches, sliced meats, and salads.
Attached to the restaurant is a butcher, suppose to be a good one, so we picked up some meat as well.
After lunch we dropped Jason back off, and then dropped all the rest of the boys at home and Jason's mom and I took Amber to her gymnastics class which Amber actually got to stay all the way until the end and do the bubbles since the boys didn't have school. And from here we went to the grocery store. They had bagels for sale in the bread section today! I couldn't believe it. I have never seen them for sale. They were prepackaged 4 in a bag. We are moving on up!
Wednesday morning Jason drove his parents to the airport at 4:30am. That first flight out at 6:20am is a dousy! Jason them came back home and went back to bed!
We had a good time with them and hopefully they will come back and visit us again while we are here!
Later in the morning we had a lovely Easter tea get together with some of Amber's friends and the moms at a friend's house.
After lunch Jacob had a friend come over and play. I am so happy that the trampoline is back up and in use to keep everyone busy outside!
Thursday the boys had haircuts in the morning and then we had chircopractic appts. It had been sprinkling a bit all morning, but when we come out of the chiropractor it was down right pouring. It must have hailed a bit too, b/c once we got in the car there was slush all over my windshield.
We came back home for lunch, and then I played Jacob in a game of checkers. So last time we played he was upset b/c he didn't know you could double jump, so I told him we are double jumping if the option comes up. So this time I triple jumped him with a King. He is now back to tears and says I am cheating! Finally I just said we had to end the game b/c I had to take care of some things and we had been doing this for awhile. Since he had more men on the board I just told him he could have this one!
In the later afternoon we went back to Amber's gymnastic place for a makeup class. She was excited to be able to stay until the end. The boys had to come with us as well.
So the one class ends and the teachers shakes the bells for the new class to come around, and Amber takes off running toward the door inside the gym and I bend down to get her shoes. All of a sudden I hear her screaming and I turn around and she is running towards me. I am like what happened why are you crying. We sat there for about 15 min. watching the class, and I couldn't get her to go in. She would cry and then stop and then start all over again. The only thing I can think of, is there was a bigger man in the corner who had a lot of black on and then had both his arms tatooed all the way down. I am wondering if maybe she ran into him on the way to the door b/c he had crossed the room too and maybe Amber got scared. So we ended up coming home.
Tonight I packed things up for our trip this weekend.
Friday morning we celebrated Jason's b'day and then he went to get a hair cut.
He came back and worked from home, we had an early lunch and then packed the car and left for Amsterdam. With the traffic and the rain on and off it took us about 5 hours to get there and we stayed outside the city too. Amber slept for about 1 1/2 hours in the car and Jason had a lot of calls to take. Once we got to the hotel Jason had a meeting and needed his computer so we just hung out at the hotel. We decided to stay a bit outside the city b/c I had a hard time finding us a reasonable priced room for 5 of us and there wasn't much available. Also on Sunday we were going to the tulip gardens and so this way we were about 1/2 way between both spots.
After he finished his call we walked to this big center next to the hotel. In there was a bowling alley with a 50's diner. It looked like they also had some rooms for parties people could rent. They had a wine and champagne bar (: We went to the Salsa restaurant. We walked in at 6pm and we are the first people in there on a Friday night, crazy. After us more people came in and it was pretty full by the time left. So this place has a grill on your table and if you chose the grilling choice like Jason and I did they bring the raw food out and you cook it. The kids ordered their own plates of food. So we grilled chicken skewers with Pineapple, filet of beef, and a good seasoned veal. Then some vegetables too. For dessert they had a small buffet with a chocolate fountain that the boys were oohing over. So we did that with the cream puffs, biscuit like cookies and fruit to dip in it. Amber decided she wanted strawberry ice cream instead. So it was a good meal. Then we just went back to the hotel.
Sat. morning we got up and had breakfast in the room that I had bought. I called to see if they could bring up 2 glasses of milk for our cereal and he said that he could but they will charge me like $6 for a service fee just to bring it up. So I went downstairs and got it myself. They had breakfast at the hotel but I wasn't crazy about paying $23/person for breakfast!
There are a ton of things to do in Amsterdam so I made a list and thought we will see what we get to.
We were all packed up and left the hotel I think around 9am. Jason asked at the front desk about how much would a cab be from here into town, and it was going to be about $200 round trip. So we decided to drive. The guy at the front desk gave him the infor. where we drive right to the outerskirts of town and park in a park and ride garage. So we pull in there about 9:20 or so and it is mostly empty. It is connected to a nice, big shopping mall. You take you ticket inside, which the mall was closed but I guess this ticket office is open 24 hours. You show him your parking ticket and he gives you a free tram ticket to get downtown and back out! So we go and walk a couple of blocks to catch the tram going into the city. We ride it for about 15 min. and then Jason looks on his GPS and figures this is the stop we get off and walk over to go see the Anne Frank House. When we got there we had to wait an hour in line to get in.
The line and a church tower.
Anne Frank was a 13 year old jewish girl whose family of 4 plus 4 others went into hiding in her father's top 2 floors of his business for 2 years during WWII until they were found. Her father had sold his business, and the new owner and a few office people were the ones helping them hid there. While she was in hiding she wrote in a journal and after the war out of the 8 in hiding her father was the only who survived the concentration camps. Anne and her sister actually caught typhoid and that is what they died off. It seemed many people died of that as well in the camps. It was close to the end of the war so maybe if they hadn't gotten sick in the camps they would have survived. But one of the people helping them hid had kept her diary and journals after the Germans had taken them and when her father returned she gave it to him. She wanted to write a novel about her time in hiding and she named it the
Secret Annexe. Her father took it and got it published and it is a famous book today. We bought a copy of it while we were there too. The house is very interesting to see, but also very sad. They couldn't use the bathroom much between 8:30-closing time in the bottom floor of the warehouse since the workers below might here them. They had to sit in the living room all day during working hours. They were never allowed to look outside or go outside and this is for 2 years! They would only bath on Sat. downstairs when no none was there.
So the house on the left was the business that ran there. Then in the front they had offices, and the Secret Annex was on the back of the house that you couldn't see from the front of the street.
After this we had lunch and walked around a bit.
Amsterdam is a bit like Venice. It is a city on canals. The buildings here are so pretty and they date back to the 1600 and 1700 century.
This is cheese.
There are about 2000 houseboats in the city and no more new ones are allowed. A lot of them are in bad condition. One we past on our canal tour had sunk and they had to fish it out. One that was all made of brick had just sold for about $500,000.
A lot of the buildings aren't straight anymore and they are leaning on one another. Here is a picture Jacob took. Look at how far foward the blue building and the one next to it are leaning.
A lot of these pictures have bikes in them. Everyone here rides their bike. We saw a sign that for parking on the street downtown here is like $7/hour! We saw some street parking right along the canal, and in some spots it is parallel parking. But there are no rails or anything to stop you from having a tire go off the street into the canal- yikes! They would be fishing out my car! And a lot of bikes end up at the bottom of the canals as well if they aren't locked up.
Next we did a canal tour on this boat.
After the cruise we walked a bit to the famous Dam Square they have.
Next I stopped and saw George Clooney!
From here we went to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Here they have famous people made out of wax where you can take your picture with them. Hence the picture above. We waited about 1/2 hour to get in.
Here the boys did a movie following Charlie Choplins moves. It was funny.
After this we walked for awhile to get over to Hard Rock Cafe. We got there at 5pm and they said there was a half hour wait. So we sat outside under a heated umbrella since it was getting quite chilly out and waited. We were suprised it was full already since that is early for dinner here in Europe. We had a nice dinner. Our table was on the 2nd floor next to the window over looking a canal. So we watched all the boats going by. From here we walked to a tram station, and got on and headed back to that mall we had parked in. Got off and walked to the mall ticket station and paid. We were there for 9 1/2 hours and we only had to pay $10! That worked out great and saved a bunch verses taking a cab! Then from here we drove back to the hotel as we were all pretty exhausted after a long day of walking around.
Sunday we went to the famous Tulip Gardens in Holland, Keukenhof Gardens. It is south west of Amsterdam, closer to the ocean. Driving there you can see different tulip and flower fields from the car. This garden is only open from the end of March until the middle or so of May to see the flowers.
So it was a bit chilly and windy so we only stayed for 2 hours. Beautiful flowers everywhere and it smelled so good there, especially the big indoor flower showcases.
These were the main flower at our wedding. They smelled so good!
I told the kids 2 rules here, don't step on the grass and no picking the flowers. So then everytime we see people trying to walk among the flowers to take a picture one of my kids is saying "Look mom there not suppose to be walking in the flowers!" And they were right. There are signs all over that say no walking in the grass.
So we walked around in the garden, it is quite large. They actually dig up the bulbs at the end of each season and then plant for 2 months in the fall around 7 million bulbs!
They have an old windmill you can walk up. From here you can see out into the fields of tulips and flowers that you can't walk out to, but from here you can take a little 1 hour motor boat ride around a canal that goes out into the fields. It was a bit cold and windy for that today so we passed.
This is us up on the windmill platform. And behind us all the fields of flowers.
They had a little playground in there for the kids.
So just a lovely, peaceful place with beautiful flowers.
Famous Holland wooden shoes.
I bought a big poster and framed it and am going to put it above my desk. So when rainy season starts again next year I can just stare up at the pretty flowers!
From here we drove over to the beach, a short drive. They have a long pedistrian only walkway with some restaurants so we ate there and then walked over to the beach. It was super windy out here. We couldn't even stand to be out there so long it was so windy. But beautiful sandy big beaches with some restaurants right on them.
Down the beach a bit we see a bunch of people windsurfing. They must be crazy and I hope they had their long underwear on under their wetsuits, b/c they had to be freezing!
From here we drove home which was about 4 hours.
Busy weekend with the driving too, it makes for a long trip. But beautiful places to visit.
