So, I guess I snuck out of the country without announcing it on el blogo. In case you guys where wondering why I have been so quiet, Vincent and I went to Holland for a really quick visit to see his family and to celebrate “SinterKerst” van Acht style. which means that we rented a large enough house to accommodate 11 people to spend the weekend. We cook, drink, eat, visit, hike, exchange gifts, and did I mention that we cook. And when I say we, I do not mean me. Vincent’s family is full of wonderful cooks, and they always make the most amazing things.
Like on the first night I was told to make this dip that consisted of 2 cans of anchovies, 2 cans of sardines, half a small jar of capers, half a can of olives and 2 tablespoons of mayo. Toss it in the food processor and add a bit of lemon juice and voila a super yummy dip. And might I add, I don’t like olives, sardines, capers, or anchovies…..I thought, but this dip was wonderful, so maybe I need to reevaluate what I like and what I don’t like.
But before I go any farther I need to show you guys something……
Ta-da!!!! Kas!!! I think that is he beautiful. I tried to bring him home with me, but he was too heavy to fit in my suitcase. I held him so much this weekend that my arms are a bit sore. At the house we were staying there was a trampoline, and Vincent decided to jump with Kas, I was worried that he would not like it but actually he had a great time….
Also did I tell you that it snowed? No, well we got to have a “white Christmas”, and everyone went for a walk, except me ‘cause it was SUPER cold and I am a weenie. Also there were several snow ball fights and I did not want this to happen to me…..
I think it looks more painful than it actually was, but still I don’t like snowball fights.
So really fast my week….
Tuesday 12/15 - after 4 hours of sleep wake up and go to work all day, Go straight from work the airport. Deal with some really stupid check in agents and get my baggage fees knocked down from $200 to $50. Delta, please please please teach your employees how to count…..it would save me tons of time. After a delay that would fill another blog….arrive at Detroit- eat- board the plane to Amsterdam.
Wednesday 12/16 – arrive in Amsterdam at noon – try to buy perfume in the airport only to be denied (Outbound passengers only) gather the luggage and try three times to catch the train to Utrecht. Finally get a train to Amersfoort and then to Bilthoven, then the bus finally home. Visit with Lia (Vincent’s Mother) make a quick trip to Utrecht via the bus and meet Kas for the first time and join him in getting his H1N1 vaccine. Come home (again) eat and go to sleep.
Thursday 12/17 – Wake up early take the bus to Utrecht then the train to Amsterdam, shop, come back to Utrecht buy a few more gifts, meet Jurriaan (Vincent’s friend) go to his house meet his newest addition to the family …. Ian. We all go back to Jos and Lia’s house eat a wonderful dinner. Then go to bed.
Friday 12/18 - Wake up early. Run in the snow to the Werkplaats (the school where Vincent’s parents work) see a few of the projects that Vincent’s Father is working on, see a really cute play. Run faster this time back to the house, shower, repack bags. Get picked up by Shanti (Vincent’s sister) and Menno (Shanti’s boyfriend) and pack small car with a ridiculous amount of stuff. Drive to Eindhoven see Shanti and Menno’s new house and put even more stuff in the tiny European car. Drive around Eindhoven for an hour trying to get on the fast road to the southern part of Holland but they where all closed. Finally find a road and drive to Mechelen, where our super cool rental house is. Greet Sjors (Vincent’s other brother), Samira (Sjors’s girlfriend), and Sander. Help make a massive dinner, which included hand making pasta. Later Jos, Lia, and Kim (Sander’s girlfriend) joined us by train and we eat dinner for about 4 hours!!! It was soooooo good.
Saturday 12/19 – Get a personal wake up call from Kas. (The best alarm clock ever!!!) Try to be super sneaky, get dressed really quickly and quietly. Go outside to take a “secret picture” with Vincent and rest of the family for his parent’s Christmas present. Totally get caught by his mother, but she still acted surprised about it when she opened it as her gift. Ate breakfast, went outside and played with Kas on the trampoline. Worked on my Christmas presents for my family in Texas while everyone else went for a walk. Talked and visited with everyone while our family of cooks prepared a feast. Ate an absurd amount of food and enjoyed every bite. Opened presents with the family in front of the fireplace with the snow falling outside. I received sooo many nice things and I was surprised with a copy of the picture that we took that morning. I made out like a bandit.
Sunday 12/20 – Wake up really early because it is sooooo COLD in our room. take a shower then accidently get the temperature gauge stuck on super hot, wake up Vincent to fix it. Go down stairs to try for 30 minutes to light the fireplace, but I was only able to get one tiny flame. I decided that I would set the table for breakfast but the dishwasher was not turned on the night before……so I just start the dishwasher and semi set the table. Everyone starts getting up and I get ready, Vincent’s grandparents meet us for breakfast at the house, we have a wonderful breakfast with lots of bacon (yummy!). Afterward we just visit for a few hours, and Vincent and his brothers go out for another snowball fight, Lia joins them and everyone else watches from the comfort of the couch in front of the fireplace. We all bundle up to drive over to Aachen to go the Christmas Market, but after driving in the snow a bit it was obvious that Sander’s rental car was not going to make it on the snow, so we turned around and went to a bar for drinks. I needed for get a prescription for antibiotics for a UTI, so Vincent, Menno and I drive to Heerlen got the prescription, went back to the house. Met up with everyone else and once again ate a wonderful dinner, afterward we played one of my favorite games Werewolf for a few hours. Went to bed but this time I wore two pair of pants, two shirts, two socks, and a hat. Then I crawled under 4 blankets, I slept like a baby.
Monday 12/21 – Wake and get informed that we need to leave in 20 minutes…..Oh! I run around packing and cleaning with everyone else. watch with great interest how we were to fit all 10 people, 1 baby, luggage, baby things, all the bedding, gifts, and left over groceries in a small car and a station wagon. We did not fit. Jos and Lia take the bus the rest of us load up and go to Roermond to see Vincent’s other Grandma (Oma van Acht) we ended up eating breakfast there and visiting with her for about an hour. Then everyone parted ways, we said some good byes and heading to Eindhoven. Dropped off Shanti, picked up Jos and Lia at the train station drove to Bilthoven, unpacked, washed clothes, took a MUCH needed nap, ate dinner, visited with Vincent’s parents, worked on Christmas presents for family in Texas, re-packed, weighed the luggage, un-packed, re–packed again. Went to sleep at 11:00 pm.
Tuesday 12/22 – wake up at 3:00 am with 4 hours of sleep, get a taxi in the crazy snow to take Vincent’s parents and us to the airport. Jos and Lia are leaving the snow in Holland for nice and sunny Morocco for Christmas. We get to the airport check in, but have to wait over an hour to check our bags?!?!?! We were told that we could check them in at 4:30 but no one showed up until 5:00, by then there were well over 500 people in the line. Luckily Vincent and I were in the front. Jos and Lia had to get to their gate and we told them we would meet up with them at there gate, but by the time we got there and were informed that we have to go back through passport control again (which is no joke) Vins and I decide not to go to the gate, besides we were not sure if they had already boarded or not. Eat a super expensive breakfast, wait at the gate and watch the snow fall, wonder if our plane will be delayed. Finally board the plane and fly to Paris. Which by the way I will never do again. are you kidding me?!?!?! passport control for a layover? Terminal 2E2? Vague signs in French only? Then we get on our plane finally! I thought we were flying with KLM but we got an Air France plane and it was really crappy. The overhead bins were too small, the flight attendants were rude, the in-flight entertainment was the worst I have ever had on an international flight. Everyone watched the same thing from a big TV in the front of the cabin, and water was dripping on me for the last hour of the flight. When we landed an overhead bin came open luckily nothing fell out……I will try to avoid Air France in the future. BUT, flying in to Cincinnati as a port of entry was wonderful. No lines, plenty of space, it was heaven compared to Washington Dulles where last year we waited (I am not exaggerating) 3 hours to be admitted into the USA, and I am a citizen so it was “fast” for me. Luckily we had a 5 hour layover and we did not miss our flight like 90% of the other people we were standing in line with. They were pissed. Anyway we fly to Charleston, WV get picked up by Amelia, go home, then I unpack while Vincent drives half way to Fairmont to pick up the wiener dogs. I repack, shower, and print tons of DVD covers to insert on the way to Texas. It take me 45 minutes to figure out the reason the printer won’t work is that I am trying to print to Jos and Lia’s printer which is located in Holland while I am located in Charleston WV. By this time we have been awake for 23 hours. Vincent comes home we decide to leave for Texas in the morning instead of the night as we planned. We crash…..
Wednesday 12/23 Wake up on my own at 5:30 (yeah! for jet lag) lay in bed till 6:00am for Vincent. We get up, get dressed, pack up the car and are on the road by 6:18 to drive to Texas while burning DVDs with our new DVD burner that we had to buy in some town in Kentucky. We can’t find the map or the directions, but since we have made this trip so many times we decided to just go and if we get lost then we will buy a map. Decide that we, and by we – I mean me – will burn about 80+ DVDs on the way to Texas. Once we get to Kentucky and the sun comes up I get started just to realize that oops the laptop doesn’t have a DVD burner, so we stop in a random town and buy one. We plug in the burner into the cigarette lighter that we converted into a plug-in and get started. I was really happy that there was no snow and the weather seemed to be fine. After driving about 12 hours it starts to rain and it rained and rained…..finally 7 hours later we arrived in Texas around midnight.
Thursday 12/24 – Wake up early again (jetlag), eat breakfast and get informed that SURPRISE! I get to go to Wal-Mart (the only store in my home town, well there is also a Tractor Supply….) I notice that it is starting to sleet and snow. So Vincent and I take off for Wal-Mart, then visit a few family members. We arrive back at my grandparents and the weather is getting down right nasty. The snow is coming hard and fast, and the wind starts blowing. Then the national weather service issues a blizzard warning. WE. HAD. A. BLIZZARD. IN. TEXAS. The Christmas Eve service at church was called off, there came reports that people where getting stranded and stuck. It took my grandpa over 8 hours to drive 30 miles. My car got stuck in the drive way, we did not have our family Christmas eve gathering. I was pretty bummed.
Friday 12/25 - Wakeup to a shit load of snow. It had snowed about 14 inches, which is unheard of in my part of Texas. Vincent and I go out and shoveled snow off of the porch and sidewalk. Then we dig out the car and play around driving it in the snow and ice. My grandparents own several large pastures that we played in. I was happy for the practice. After playing all morning in the snow we went in and cooked lots of food and waited for rest of the family to show up. Finally everyone who was coming made it. It was so nice seeing everyone and visiting. Vincent and I decided to stay the night with my Aunt and Uncle so we re-packed all of our stuff loaded up the weiner dogs and made the treacherous journey to the other side of town. Since I come from a part of Texas in which it NEVER snows there was NOTHING done to the roads. It was still really slick and there was lots of sliding around, about this time Vincent and I were very thankful for the new snow tires we bought. I am still shocked at how horrible the roads were…after 14 inches of snow, no salt was put on the roads, there were not graded, no sand, NOTHING!!!! After we got to my Aunt and Uncles house we talked and visited then went to bed.
Saturday 12/26 – wake up and take the wiener dogs out potty, and all the other animals start smack talking us. My Aunt and Uncle live on a farm there are cows, horses, dogs, chickens everything but cats. Finally I get my two dogs to focus on the task at hand – go and potty! Vincent and I do some laundry and get fed an amazing southern breakfast. Monica called and invited us out to play in the snow, her son is 7 years old and to see this snow is very VERY unusual so we wanted to take advantage of it. After several hours we decided to go in and play videos games. I totally kicked butt. I also got peed on by a baby, it was gross I don’t think I will every offer to change a diaper again. After playing several hours Vincent I needed to leave, we intended on leaving early that day but I rarely get to see my family and we delayed our departure by 8 hours. We finally got on the road at 5 pm, once we got out of Montague county the roads were fine. We drove for 2 hours then heard a ticking sound in the car. We got nervous but did the responsible thing – we drove faster and crossed our fingers. There was nowhere to stop – it was Saturday night, the day after Christmas, and I needed to be at work on Monday. Finally the ticking stopped. And I fell asleep, we planning on staying the night in Texarkana.
Sunday 12/27 – I wake up to find out that Vincent was not sleepy during the night so he kept driving and we were in Kentucky!!! WOOT! only a few hours from home. Vins pulls over and lets me drive the final 3 hours of the 17 hour drive, we get to Charleston by noon take showers and sleep for rest of the day.
Monday 12/28 – Go back to work…..Boooo!
WOW!!!! So needless to say I have been a bit busy the last two weeks with a crazy amount of snow in places where it normally does not snow. I am sorry this post is absurdly long, but I am happy to be home. Even if I really miss all of my family…..
