I'll be doing catch-up posts over the next few days and backdating, unless I decide not to.
Anyway.
If you've been sitting here wondering, hey, what the heck is going on over there that we are hearing not one single peep out of walkitout? Are the kids really _that_ all engrossing? Well, they are if you take them to the Netherlands. We spent 4 nights at Efteling Bosrijk and 4 nights at a VakantieHuis at De Kuilart in Koudum. We did a day trip to Ameland.
And now we are home. We got up this morning at 5 a.m. NL time (11 pm the night before East Coast time), drove an hour and a half or thereabouts to Schiphol, dropped off the rental car, worked our way through several layers of security and bag check, and then sat at the gate for over an hour waiting for time to board. We arrived shortly before our listed arrival time (12:35 or thereabouts, East Coast). Once home, I ran the dishwasher (seriously? The housekeeper came _twice_ while we were gone, but didn't run it. So there was mold. There was still Bad Smell after I ran it -- on sanitize -- so R. investigated and decided the filter REALLY needed to be cleaned). I went to the grocery store. I took T. out to dinner at Crossroads Cafe.
I have now (mostly) unpacked and laundry is running. Since it is midnight in the Netherlands and 6 p.m. here (and I had about half a manhattan at Crossroads) I am def ready to topple over.
For the record, while we would never voluntarily do two big trips back to back (about 40 hours at home between a week at the Cape and a week and a half in Netherlands) again, and while it was def harder than the carry-on only 3 day trip to Disney in August that we did a year or so ago, everything went great.
Anyway.
If you've been sitting here wondering, hey, what the heck is going on over there that we are hearing not one single peep out of walkitout? Are the kids really _that_ all engrossing? Well, they are if you take them to the Netherlands. We spent 4 nights at Efteling Bosrijk and 4 nights at a VakantieHuis at De Kuilart in Koudum. We did a day trip to Ameland.
And now we are home. We got up this morning at 5 a.m. NL time (11 pm the night before East Coast time), drove an hour and a half or thereabouts to Schiphol, dropped off the rental car, worked our way through several layers of security and bag check, and then sat at the gate for over an hour waiting for time to board. We arrived shortly before our listed arrival time (12:35 or thereabouts, East Coast). Once home, I ran the dishwasher (seriously? The housekeeper came _twice_ while we were gone, but didn't run it. So there was mold. There was still Bad Smell after I ran it -- on sanitize -- so R. investigated and decided the filter REALLY needed to be cleaned). I went to the grocery store. I took T. out to dinner at Crossroads Cafe.
I have now (mostly) unpacked and laundry is running. Since it is midnight in the Netherlands and 6 p.m. here (and I had about half a manhattan at Crossroads) I am def ready to topple over.
For the record, while we would never voluntarily do two big trips back to back (about 40 hours at home between a week at the Cape and a week and a half in Netherlands) again, and while it was def harder than the carry-on only 3 day trip to Disney in August that we did a year or so ago, everything went great.