We're Home, or are we?

After three flights and 23 hours, we were so excited to finally land in Salt Lake after a long but relatively smooth day of traveling. (Smooth if you don't mind running through the airport and hearing the final boarding call for your flight well before you see your gate.)We were amazed and grateful that all our luggage made it to Salt Lake with us.

We arrived in Providence at about 10 PM, after having stopped in to say hello to the parents, brothers and sisters and cousins. It was a strange feeling coming home - are we really home or really visitors? Did we really leave in such a hurry that we left a big mess or has the mess been accumulating since we left?? I'm sure we will acclimatize and even get use to having a couple of homes and not taking all our supplies back and forth each time but for this first time, it is a really strange feeling.

Andrew, with some help from Lindsay and Jessica, worked really hard to get the two upstairs bathrooms remodeled before we got home. They mostly got everything finished and now just need to do the final finish work and clean up. Andrew did a great job and they both look so much better and are much more functional.

A Fun Outing

This week I've been busy working on a quilt for Lisa. It is coming along fairly well, considering I've only had about a two weeks to work on it. (My sewing machine was damaged in the move here and between getting the parts ordered and getting all the other problems worked out it has been a long, patience promoting ordeal trying to get it up and running again. Dennis did most of the technical work on it and solved several of the major problems and we had to take it into a sewing machine shop here for them to fix another little problem.)The bonus of the whole deal was that I was able to find and buy and old Bernina machine that works perfectly and so now I have backup machine here.



On Wednesday, I took a break from the quilting business. Well maybe that's not quite true. My friend, Armanda Bos, and I went up north to Leewarden to a big quilt show. We had this little trip planned for about a month - long before the exhibit ever opened and were really excited, well at least I was. She enjoys quilting also and her mother is an extremely talented quilter so she knows quite a bit about quilting.


We arrived in Leewarden and got parked about 15 minutes before the museum opened. We had noticed an amazing hat shop across the street from the museum so we went to look at it and ended up talking to the owner for quite a while. She has a great business making hats for the Ascott horse races in England and she also makes all kinds of nice hats for cancer patients. She also teaches or hosts a knitting group. It was very interesting.



The quilt show was mostly quilts from all over Europe with a lot from Holland, and a few from the states. There were some really amazing ones and some really strange ones. Unfortunately, they didn't allow photography. I did get a couple of shots in before I realized that.

We also stopped on our way home at Staphorst. It is a beautiful little village, kind of like the Amish settlements in the states. The women still wear the skirts and vests and little hats and many of them still wear clompens. They do have cars and electricity and such but tourists are not allowed in on Sundays and on Sundays they aren't allowed to drive cars. Armanda told me that picture taking was not allowed but I got a quick picture of a house as we left town. We were able to spend some serious money there so that was fun. Hopefully, we will be able to spend a little more time there when some of our family come to visit.

Clompens

Today, we wanted to go look at a digital piano up in Appeldorn and thought since we were more than half way there, we may as well go on up to Enter (yes, that is the name of the town) to the Clompenmuseum . (It took Alyna a while to figure out why all the souvenirs in the gift shop said Enter on them.)The museum was just a little three room afair, with one of them being the gift shop, but it had an amazing collection of wooden shoes. We watched a video of how they were made by hand, although most of the shoes today are made with some sorts of electric machines. It was very interesting and fun to see all the different designs and styles.



Afterward, we stopped at a house with a big wooden shoe out front and even though it was late on a Saturday afternoon, the clompen master let us go into his work room and look around and then he took us up to the loft were all the finished shoes were kept and we bought a variety of shoes, scraping up all the cash the three of us had in our wallets. (Actually, Alyna forgot and left hers at home but luckily we had just enough with a few cents left over for how much they cost. It was so interesting to actually be in the work area where the shoes were made and painted.




I keep my eyes open for cute wooden shoes of all sizes. The only places I've seen them is in souvenir shops or farm stores. It's kind of funny to think of going into a Cal Ranch or IFA and find a big wall of wooden shoes but that's who wears them the most.


We made one another stop on the way home to the toy museum. We got there 10 minutes before closing time. They didn't want to let us in because they didn't think we could go through it in 10 minutes but we, did with a minute or two to spare! It was really fun to see because it brought back lots of old memories. There were a lot of toys and games I either remembered playing with when I was young. Who remember Tiddley Winks or Barbies first pink convertible car of the doll where you push the button on it's back and the hair grows? some of them also reminded me of games and toys that were at my grandparents homes. Alyna thought that maybe I hadn't ought to admit such things as it makes me seem really old.

Our $15 Christmas Tree

I debated whether or not it was worth it to put up a Christmas tree this year since trees are not suppose to be put up here till after Sinterklaas day (Dec. 5) and we would be leaving on the 18th. Well, it really wasn't much of a debate, just a 2 second pause to figure out how much I felt I had to spend to get the joy out of a little Christmas decoration. While Jessica was here we did some shopping and found this "great sale" on this tree. I don't know if we were just excited at finding such a good deal that we didn't really look at the display tree or what, but when we got it home and started setting it up, it was truly a $15 tree. Either some parts were missing or the wrong poles had been used becuse there was no way to connect the base piece to the top 2/3 of the tree. I ended having to go buy a dowel and shove it in so that everything would fit together. There were big gaps in some area and...well it just wasn't going to look anything other than what it was.
I then had to buy another $100 worth of stuff to decorate it. :) It was kind of fun to make some of the things I've been collecting since coming here, such as wooden shoe key rings and little delft blue plates into tree decorations and then find other Dutch themed stuff that would tie it all together. I stuck a large pair of wooden shoes filled with pepernotens (a special little gingerbread cookie sold only at Christmas time) in the biggest blank spot.
All in all, I think it turned out pretty cute and it is nice to have something up to help it feel like the holidays.

Castles and Palaces

Since coming to Holland, we've been able to see a few of the castles in the area. Some have been restored and are beautiful, in the castle sort of way.(Not to be confused with Palaces - which are usually where the really stunning architecture, furniture and art works are located.)

Since some date back many centuries, there are many in ruins and beyond hope of repair yet a few walls remain standing to remind people of the history of the area.



Recently, my visiting teacher sent me a bunch of information about all the castles in the area. (The two pictures above are ones she took a couple of years ago.) There are over 80 castles listed. All within a 2 hour drive from our home! I believe that Doorwerth Castle is in our ward boundaries. (http://www.castles.nl/doorw/doorw.html) Dennis has been wanting us to ride our bikes the 12 miles to it but there is always something that prevents us from having quite enough time.

While Jessica was here, we went to Duurstede Castle. It is not very large and they mostly use it now for special events like weddings, Christmas parties and such. There was a work Sinterklaas party going on there when we arrived so we didn't get to peak inside. We were able to walk all the way around it in about 25 minutes so it's not very big.

I'm excited to go see a few more of them, hopefully in the spring or summer when it is a little warmer.

Hollands big celebration - Sinterklaas

SINTERKLAAS

The Dutch celebrate Christmas on the 25th, but the giving and opening of gifts is celebrated on 5 December, which is also known as Sinterklaas. The story is that Sinterklaas lives in Spain and comes to the Netherlands by steamboat each year with his 'zwarte' (black) helpers to give gifts. For more information on the tradition, go to http://www.thehollandring.com/sinterklaas.shtml.

Food like pepernoten (small hard or chewy gingerbread type cookies), speculaas (a softer gingerbread cake-like food commonly with an almond paste in the middle), marzipan, and chocolate letters are popular holiday snacks.



*This photo is the traditional way Sint goes through the towns--on his white horse with Zwarte Pieten surrounding him.


You also write poems, as if written by Sinterklaas, for each of the people receiving gifts from you. The poems tend to tease the recipient, as well as give hints about the gift. The wrapping and giving of presents is a chore in itself since you don't usually just wrap each gift as is. It is common to incorporate some tricks in the packages, like putting the gift in multiple boxes, wrapping it several times, making the gift impossible to get into, making the box itself into some kind of object, writing clues on notes to where else the gift may be hidden, etc., etc. It's great fun and sure to make you chuckle.


Last night was our ward Sinterklaas party for all the young men, young women, young adults, their leaders and the missionaries. Several weeks prior to the event we had met after church and all drawn names for someone to give a gift to. We were all given $5 to spend on the gift. Buying the gift was a little challenging - where's Walmart or Target when you need one?! The only shopping options here are little Kings type stores so you have to be very creative. But the shopping wasn't the hardest part of the job. Wrapping the gifts cleverly took a little time but writing the poem was the real chore. I suppose it would have been easier if we had known our recipients better. I had a 12 year old boy and all I knew about him was he had a bunch of brothers, he loves soccer and graffiti.

Here's the poem I finally came up with for him:

Sinterklaas has been especially watchful this year,
To see if the rumors he was hearing caused fear.
Was Sem growing and behaving as good boys should?
Or was he making all of the mischief he possibly could?

School work and homework are always, ho-hum
But when a chance to play football you could be counted on to come.
Euro Cup matches made June full of fun,
Watching and cheering till each match was done.

Now the question is, did you cheer all the way through?
Or did you give up on football and practice that graffiti you drew?
But will your choice put your name next to naughty or to nice?
Open your gift and enjoy before it goes to the mice.

The gift was a small nerf type soccer ball and some chocolates wrapped in soccer ball foil.

The creative gift wrapping was pretty amazing. Some took real ingenuity to figure out how to even open the gift. Elder Allen got a beautiful pear he really had to slice into to find his gift.














Some of the gifts disguises had something to do with the person receiving the gift. For example, the bishops' gift was wrapped in something that looked like an iron because he hates to iron. One of the youngest boys got a gift that took a lot of trial and error and suggestions from the adults and finally a little muscle work from one of the young adult men. I was in a small crate with latches and such but even after opening the latches the crate wouldn't open. A screwdriver had been provided and it ended up that the top had to be pried off. Inside was a lot of dried grass and a chocolate letter.

Thanksgiving was Wonderful

It's now Monday morning and all is once again quiet here. We took Jessica to the airport early Sunday morning and it would have been very difficult to say goodbye to her except that we'll be seeing her again in 18 days so it wasn't bad. Dennis is off to another busy week at work and Alyna procrastinated getting up long enough that she had to get ready for school and out the door in ten minutes.

Before we get to the actual dinner, Dennis and I celebrated our 27th anniversary on Thanksgiving day. We were very spoiled with all kinds of wonderful floral gifts from his work and neighbors and friends. Dennis bought me/us some folding chairs - very timely and practical.

Thanksgiving dinner turned out really nice. I told the girls they were in charge of the table decor and they did a really nice job. It all looked very beautiful. We had to borrow big wooden tables and chairs (not the folding type) from the church as well as some from the neighbors so it was a lot bigger job just getting the tables set than it would have been at home.

Everyone brought lots of yummy food and the neighbors were kind enough to let me use their oven for the stuffing. I bought a chafing dish so I was able to get the turkey out of the oven at about 2:00 and get the ham in and by the time I had the turkey sliced and in the chafing dish, the ham was ready to come out and be sliced. Everything stayed nice and warm. Luckily, I had some great kitchen helpers who ended up making the gravy while I helped welcome people and help get their food things situated.