Day 5 - Amsterdam

After a week of sunny and only occasionally sprinkly weather, storm clouds rolled in last night and we went to bed with lightning brightening our ceilings and thunder booming through the pounding of the rain. We thought for sure our Amsterdam bike tour would be canceled this morning, but we hear that if the Dutch waited for good weather, they'd never go outside. Alycia said she'd watch Sophie and Stone all day, so Erik, Lindsay, Lucy and I set out in the rain on the bus to Amsterdam Central Station to meet Ed, Elayne and Erik's cousin Jessica (she's about 8 years younger than us and was born and raised in OC near Erik). Jessica moved to Amsterdam "for a few months" and ended up marrying a Dutch man and has now been here for 5 years. She was an incredible guide - and it was so fun to see her!!

There are separate, official bike lanes designated by red brick. Many Netherlanders don't own cars because it is so convenient to get everywhere by bike! They are very confident in those bike lanes and their bike skills - we have seen thousands of bikers and not even one single helmet. The bike rental place didn't even have them. Today we saw a mother biking fast through heavy traffic with an infant in a baby carrier on her chest, and we often see teenagers biking two or three to a seat, dangling off the end. I was a little nervous about Lindsay and Lucy but they did great.

It was windy and freezing cold (it's still August, right?? We didn't bring any warm stuff with us but the Clarkes lent the girls coats) but the rain let up so Jessica led us to some fascinating places to explain history and culture. I was absolutely exhilerated - learning about history, flying down the streets with my family in the fresh air, surrounded by more architectural and natural beauty than my eyes could take in. I felt like my heart was bursting.

After a quick ham and cheese sandwich at a local bakery, we met Jessica's husband Edgar at the famous Rijks museum. I had bought children's books about Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Vermeer, so we were all really excited to see the original works that we had studied. Erik has a Pavlovian fight or flight response to Art Museums because of the childhood trauma of being dragged through them too frequently as a young boy, ;) so he stayed on his bike and explored the city while we went inside for a couple of hours. Here are Elayne and Lucy taking in Rembrandt's self portrait.

We listened to the absolute best audio tour I have ever heard - I always think they're interesting but they can be so dry sometimes. This one was very personal and conversational and brought the Art to life in a way that was accessible to both the adults and to Lindsay and Lucy. Here Lindsay and I are experimenting with different points of view - Rembrandt painted the table to be viewed from below, as it was originally hung high up on a wall.

Ever since Opa affectionately told Lucy that she reminded him of a Vermeer painting (Opa is quite a painter himself), Lucy has had a fascination with Vermeer. This is a famous painting that I loved even more seeing it in person. We learned about the incredible skill that was required for the artists to mix their own paints - the paint used in the woman's skirt was pigmented with genuine crushed lapis lazuli.

After the Rijks museum we grabbed a quick falafel. It was at this point that Lucy's bike tire slipped on the wet street, hit the curb, and she tipped over. I heard the crash behind me and skidded to a stop with my heart in my throat.... to see her jump up, hop back on and take off again. I was so proud! Next we headed to the Anne Frank house. I had been here once before with my parents - we stopped in Belgium and Amsterdam on our way home from Israel when they came to pick me up after my Semester Abroad there when I was 20 - and I had always wanted to return. Lindsay just read the original Diary of A Young Girl last month and Lucy read a description of the war and Anne Frank story, so they were very interested. It was just as I anticipated - terribly, terribly sad. I cried as I do every time I read or talk or think about it. This is a picture of us outside the house - the building in the background is the church from which Anne could hear the church bells from captivity in the secret annexe.

This is us at the end of our tour. We took a taxi to the Clarkes,' made tacos, and now the kids are snuggled on the couch in their jammies watching Spy Kids. We're being weaned gradually off of American comforts - they've seen and heard a lot of new and amazing things but they're still surrounded by friends in an American-feeling house and have eaten pizza, ice cream and tacos, and almost everyone can speak English to them. Tomorrow night we leave for Spain and I'm not sure I'm ready for the final rip away from "home." Spain is going to be hot and very, very different - wish me luck!!

Day 4 - Family History Day

Today Erik's dad led us on a family tour of Haarlem and Zandvoort.

  

This is the house in Haarlem where Erik's grandma ("Oma") Margaretha was born and raised. It was here that her parents invited her friend Frans to stay when we was hiding from the Germans under Nazi occupation (he had escaped from doing forced labor for the Germans and was on their wanted "AWOL" list). Margaretha's parents took a medicine cabinet out of the wall and Frans (a 6'3" 18-year-old) crouched behind it during soldier raids. They married after the war was over.

This is the house where Frans and Margaretha moved after they married. Edward (Erik's dad) was born here and lived until he was four years old. Mormon missionaries knocked on the door one day and his parents converted to the LDS faith. They left Holland shortly thereafter and sailed to New York, then took a Greyhound bus to Salt Lake City and eventually settled in California. Aunt Rea told us Margaretha cried every day for months "I'll never see Holland again." After such a long journey it felt like she was at the ends of the earth, but they did save up money and visited Holland every few years while Ed was growing up.

 Backing up chronologically, this is the house in Zandvoort (a beach town) where Frans (Erik's grandpa, "Opa") lived with his 11 brothers and 2 sisters. Ed told us stories about their shenanigans like jumping off the roof with bedsheets trying to fly(breaking bones in the process). During the war, the Germans evacuated all the Dutch living in coastal towns because they feared they would assist Allied troops approaching by sea. So Opa's family was moved to Amsterdam, where the 11 brothers would put on boots and stomp through the streets so people would think they were Gestapo soldiers and leave them alone while they hunted for firewood for the family. Their father had recently died and they were desperately poor as their single mother tried to support all of those children during very hard times.

This is the house where Frans was born. We wish he could have come with us so we could have taken a picture of the four generations of Allebest men together at his birth place. He lives in Mission Viejo, CA - we just saw him last week.

We visited Ed's Aunt and Uncle still living in Zandvoort, and Stone quickly tired of sitting still in the formal living room while all the adults spoke Dutch. Luckily there was a cousin there with a long board! I am always amazed at children's ability to communicate without knowing each other's language. This boy was so sweet to Stone!

After a long but very special day visiting buildings and relatives, the kids were excited to get out and run along the beach. That's the North Sea and it was really cold! Grammy told us the Aunts used to say "If you swim out and hear people speaking English, you'll know you've swum too far." England is a short boat ride away.

Day 3 - Zuiderzeemuseum and Enkhuisen

Moments from today:

-We all woke up in the middle of the night again - this time Stone got in bed with me and I feel asleep with him scratching my back and repeatedly kissing my cheek. Lucy took 2 hours going back to sleep and Erik and Lindsay gave up and just got up for the day at 2:30 a.m. 

-Erik rode Pete Clarke's bike (Pete is 6'5") across the freeway to pick up a rental car, getting in trouble with police (but making them laugh) for misinterpreting the "No bikes" for a "Bikes ok" sign. Driving, biking and even walking here are scary!! People go fast, don't wear helmets, and claim their right of way without mercy.

-We met Ed's Aunt and Uncle and their grandson to drive to Enkhuisen, a quaint town by the sea where there is an open-air museum of an entire fishing village reconstructed as it would have been in 1905. Many of the houses and stores are actual buildings that they saved and restored from the Island of Urk - some of the house frames go back to the 1600's, and they employed actors in costume based on actual families who lived there. I had several thoughts: 1. People need a village. This one was unified by geography and common culture. Each member had a part to play: like "Fiddler on the Roof" there was the village tailor, the village scholar (the only one who had been to post-primary school and could write), the washer woman, the butcher, the cheese maker, and so on. I lamented the loss of the "village" in modern suburban life and felt grateful to belong to a community of friends who provide that feeling of common identity and the joy of allowing myself to rely on others and be relied upon. I've lived through phases of my life when that was missing and I felt like the sailor I read about today who drifted out to sea on an ice floe. He survived, but it wasn't fun. 2. I love history. Tell me about Physics or Computer Science and my brain is coated in Teflon. Tell me a story about a person with a face and feelings and no matter when or where or how they lived, my heart beats with theirs and I laugh and cry with them. I love human stories. 3. I wonder if my kids' ancestors dressed in clothing like my kids tried on today. I sometimes wonder who in our family history looked or felt or acted most like me... I wish I could meet her! And today I wondered the same thing about my kids in their wooden shoes. I would like to meet the ancestors who wore that clunky footwear and eclectic mixes of stripes and flowers and see those people button-nose-to-button-nose with my kids. 

-Jet lag is trying to destroy our family. Not getting enough sleep makes people grumpy on even the most beautiful of days! :) 

-After the museum, we got take-out Indian Food (the Netherlands has tons of ethnic food, especially from all regions of Asia and Africa. This dates back to the days when the Dutch colonized those parts of the world) and ate it aboard Uncle Dolf and Aunt Rea's boat. Stone hated his food and bonked his head and wouldn't stop crying and Dolf and Rea were stressed out about the curry staining their boat and the kids falling in the water... but it was a nice thought.

-Everyone fell asleep in the car... then woke up at 9 pm when we got home. It's past 11 pm now and I'm sitting outside the door of Sophie's and Stone's room still listening to the air mattress creak. At least my threats have made him stop kicking the wall and yelling "I can't sleep! I don't want to sleep in a purple bed!!" (I started out with reason, kindly-explained boundaries, appealing to his empathy, then incentives - Nutella sandwich for breakfast, back scratches and lullabies, then more sleep medicine and finally 5 minutes ago I grew horns and a tail and breathed fire and what do you know - it worked). I promised I would include Allebest moments and Alleworst moments and everything in between.

-But let's end on a great moment - today was beautiful, I love Holland... and look at those kids!!!

Day 2 - Don't miss this if you're in the Netherlands with kids

So I forgot about the other half of jet lag. I was feeling like all was success when my kids fell asleep before their bed-time song was even over last night... what I didn't plan on was that their brains would wake them up ready for breakfast and play time at 2 a.m. Luckily we had our snack bags only a few head bumps and toe stubs away in our dark room, and a half dramamine eventually weighed down their eyelids (the amount of time awake was in inverse proportion to their ages, not surprisingly). Erik and I went out for a run at 7:30 and returned to find Avery and Lindsay making pancakes... all the rest of our kids slept until 10:30!

Lindsay and Avery tried two batches of pancakes but rejected them both and ate rolls with Nutella instead

Alycia let her kids skip school so they could come with us to Linnaeushof, which the sign claims is "Europa's grootste speeltuin," which must mean it is Europe's awesomest place for children - Northern Californians, picture Happy Hollow plus Dennis the Menace Park plus The Jungle (but outdoors) times a thousand. And picture no motors (even Merry Go Rounds were arm- or leg-powered) and absolutely no ride supervisors to enforce inconveniences like turn-taking or safety. Some gleeful Dutch boys jumped off a ride into a lake below with no harm to them or anyone around them (unless you count their bare bottoms as they changed into dry clothes as inflicting harm); small children could buckle themselves into chairs attached to ziplines, push a button and be hoisted and whizzed into the air. We spent six hours in this expansive, completely enclosed, grassy paradise. I thought how some of my California friends would be wringing their hands at the possible safety hazards (it really wasn't that bad, but would never be allowed in the States), and how the children reveled in their freedom and the responsibility of needing to use their bodies to make the machines work (as opposed to an automatic switch or the insertion of a coin). The other thing I loved was that Ed's Aunt Rea and her grandson met us there. I had met her a few times before when she'd visited the States, and it was so wonderful to visit with her and realize as her Dutch-speaking grandson played with my kids that they are relatives! She commented on Stone's independence and constant climbing, running, exploring and narrating that "that's just like Edward was as a boy." And it's just like Erik too (as a boy and not much different now!). I have never seen so many blond (and some red-haired) children in my life. And there seemed to be a recognizeable Dutch face, too, which Erik, Lucy and Sophie blended in with. I wonder what would have happened if Erik's grandparents hadn't left the Netherlands. Erik's dad was a little strawberry-blond boy just exactly Stone's age when they left.

A few steps out of the Clarkes front door is a misty forest

We got lost and ended up at a quaint little farm

Sophie captains the paddle boat around cobra-slide island

Grandpa, Erik and all the kids use yellow oars to make the spinny ride go faster and faster

Hamster Dance, Day 1

The kids just reminded me that the first time Sophie heard me talk about Amsterdam, she thought I was saying "Hamster Dance." This mental image then led to an absurd string of sound-alikes that included the dikes in Holland being built by hamsters (hamster dam) and unsavory garbage sandwiches (dumpster ham). If I were an expert blogger I would ask for submissions for best Amsterdam pun. (Spain puns are easier - wait a week and I want to hear your best).

Lindsay guarding the luggage at LAX Sunday morning

Packing and weighing the suitcases Saturday night

So the theme of the past 24 hours is: Make friends with the worst case scenario. I started employing this strategy 11 years ago when I first started waking up every hour of the night with a baby, and it is still a useful mind trick! On the way up to the airport, we told the kids (and ourselves) that we would probably run into some snag or another at the airport, that we would at some point have to eat gross food, that we would definitely fall and get hurt, that someone would be super mean to us, that we might have a 3-hour flight delay while sitting on the Tarmac and then have our flight canceled (thank you for the heads up, Ali!) and we could all be throwing up from jet lag (thank you, Suzanne!) So we practiced saying "Woo Hoo!! I'm having my disgusting food moment!" and "YESSSS, I fell!! I've been wondering when that would happen!" So when we DID end up being at the wrong terminal and having to walk to a different wing of the airport with 14 (yes, 14) pieces of luggage, and then after boarding sitting on the Tarmac for 2 1/2 hours before take-off for the 11 hour flight, it was amazing how not-bugged we were! I'm serious, it was really amazing. And then because I had already walked myself through the possibility of kids throwing up on the plane and/or Stone foaming at the mouth with strapped-in despair and arrived at "I'll live!" I was thrilled when none of that happened. I doped the kids with dramamine and they actually slept for several hours, so while I only got about 15 minutes of sleep (holding Sophie on my nearly-numb lap), I was really grateful it was me going bleary-eyed cuckoo and not them.

Once we arrived in Amsterdam we were a little tired and grumpy. We temporarily parted ways with Erik's parents (they are staying with relatives; we are staying with our friends the Clarkes, who were our neighbors during grad school and like cousins to our kids - they just moved to the Netherlands last Spring). We got through customs at noon (4 am California time), took a huge taxi (we were expecting our luggage to not fit in one vehicle so again thrilled), pulled up to the Clarkes' gorgeous home in Amstelveen, and had a joyful day surprising their kids with Lindsay and Lucy picking them up at school, relaxing and ordering pizza ("I keep forgetting we're in Europe!" my kids kept saying. Felt just like home), walking through a forest on the way to a gelato shop, and even squeezing in Erik's workout and a nap. This is such a beautiful place and we are overjoyed to be reunited with these dear friends. And so excited for the next few days that Erik's dad has planned for us! If I were a hamster (and weren't so tired), I would definitely dance.

Now

A few months ago a dear friend of mine gave me a necklace with a simple silver pendant engraved with the word "NOW." I've worn it frequently, grateful for the reminder to try to be awake in what is happening in each moment, whatever it holds. This has been a challenge over the past few months as our family has been nearly consumed by a really exciting future: After years of dreaming about taking our six-person family abroad for an extended learning trip, we finally decided to do it! In two days we leave for Europe to spend "Fall Semester 2012" in Seville, Spain. Our thoughts have been consumed with the planning - passports, taxes, schools, organizing, selling, storing, packing, traveling, etc... from buying the plane tickets to picking through every single Polly Pocket shoe, we are finally organized, streamlined and string-snipped free as birds! I read a stack of at least 10 Spain Travel books, and the kids read about 60 children's books on the History and Art of Spain and Holland this Summer so we will be prepared with mental frameworks to support all the learning we'll be doing once we hit the ground. I'm really happy with our preparation, but the downside of all this future-orientation is that I have let so many minutes pass without noticing them, worrying or fantasizing about our adventure while the magic of life happens right under my nose. So the theme of this blog will be the goal of my life: to be awake to the magic around me every day, whether awe at Art museums or tantrums in train stations. I'll write about Allebest moments and Alleworst moments and everything in between, capturing as many "nows" as I can as they go by.