Photos of the Dutchland

In an effort to make my blog more fun, I decided to add more photos. So I consciously started taking more pictures (well, I started today) that people will hopefully enjoy. When I uploaded the photos to my laptop, I realized that I never posted our pictures from the Netherlands! So here you go:

My mom always dresses like this:

And my dad looks like this. Note the barcode at the front of his hat.

Without joking, the above photos were taken during their annual mutual birthday party, that attracts a lot of friends (around 40 this year, I believe). It was fun to actually participate this year.

We managed to show during the one week of cold weather the Dutch had this year. Well, at least we didn't have to acclimatize, and it made for some great photos. This is the oh so famous castle of Amerongen (above).

And cold weather is synonym to skating. People go nuts when it comes to skating, and I can't recall the number of times people asked us if we'd brought our skates. Uhm, no, we left those at home. We have a canal we can skate on as well. For a whole 28 days this year...

Here is Willem looking up to Sien, who is above him. Hiding.

Sien is evil, as you can see.

On our last day in Amerongen, we went for a nice long walk in the forest around Amerongen, and visited the Lonely Oak. We almost got lost as well. I guess I don't know the area as well as I used to.

Next up, more photos from our lives, including our cats, and our new snow blower! Yes, what a time to get a snowblower delivered. We were almost thinking winter was over, but were proven very wrong when we were treated to another snowstorm on Friday. Except for the fact that I had to miss the UofT field tour at the PRF on Saturday due to poor road conditions, we don't really mind this weather! We even managed to get a 17.5km run in this morning, despite cold wind and snowy sidewalks. The sun made up for it; we both came home with our faces covered by freckles. Time to get the sunscreen out!

Home away from home

A quick update between all my travels. And again another update written on my BlackBerry while on the bus on my way home. I'm getting pretty good at this!
First of though, Fertile. After an improvement Monday morning, she seemed to be worse when we came home from work. She was still not good Tuesday, so we decided to take her to the vet. They ran a bunch of tests and checked everything out. Also to be sure, they gave her some fluids. The tests all came back negative, but she still didn't really seem to get better. Until Wednesday morning, when Nolan reported that she was pretty much back to normal. She even fought with Murphy again. So we won't know what happened, but maybe the fluids did help.

After I got back from the vet, I headed to Petawawa where I would spend the next few days. AGM of the Friends of the PRF Tuesday evening, and then we hosted a 'take your kid to work day' on Wednesday. With 5 kids and 12 adults it made us wonder if some of the adults also wanted to check out the PRF and maybe just spend the day in the bush.  But it was fun to tour some of the Ottawa folks around as well. The weather was absolutely amazing, and who doesn't like to spend a day in the bush when it's so nice, right?
One of my Ottawa co-workers said: so this is where you spend so much time. Nice!
Nice indeed :)

After I got back to the hotel, I decided to go for a run, since it was so beautiful outside. There is a nice trail system in Petawawa, but as usual, I was paying more attention to the surroundings, and not so much to the trail, which resulted in a flat-forward-saved-by-my-hands fall. I didn't really hurt myself, but my right shoulder is a bit sore today.
After my run, I met up with Krista, which was really nice. It had been a while since I'd seen her. It also made me realize that I sometimes do miss the valley. However, I am also very happy with our place in Kanata, and this way I have the best of both worlds!

This morning we toured the Base Commander of CFB Petawawa around, which went very well. If only we'd had more time! Unfortunately the nice weather we had yesterday left us today, and we made due with grey and rainy weather. But still nice to be outside.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Port Hope and then Granaraska for the OWA chapter summit until Sunday. So Nolan is having a lot of alone-time, but I think he is somewhat enjoying that as well. Of course, I will leave him a honey-do list :)
And how could I forget, Monday was Halloween! We had a total of 158 kids, and then had to turn the lights of, because we ran out of candy! I have never seen so many kids on the street. Good thing we ran out of candy: I really had my fair share..