Summer Vacation 2010 Part III -- The Netherlands

E, S and Baby M, who is 18 months and very mobile. And cute.

French fries with lots of mayonaise at Kijkduin beach.

Mother and daughter in purple.

S and E with cousin B on the beach at sunset. This is 9 pm and it won't be dark for another hour at least. E in a dress from Costa Rica from Nana.

Visiting Nelleke, Peter & family. They are old friends form Cairo (Sinterklaas Committee), now stationed in Sudan, and in Holland to deliver their third child. What a beauty!

More new baby visits though this sweet girl was born a while ago.

The daughter of my high school friend Mark and his wife Vera.

No trip to Holland is complete without a visit to our friends from the Montessori school. We were lucky with beautiful weather and walked to the beach in our old neighborhood.

Waves! A little different from the swimming pools in Cambodia or the lake at Deep Creek. But so much fun that everyone swam until their lips turned blue. Hot chocolate at De Kwartel next!

Oma and Opa are treating the kids and grandkids to a visit to Circus Renz in Scheveningen!

What was more fun? The elephants, the clowns, the acrobats or maybe the horses?

The cotton candy and pony rides were awesome, but so were the

cool light up spin around torches that Aunt Jantineke bought.

Summer Vacation 2010 Part II -- The USA

Hello Summer 2010! Tubing on the lake in Dad's new boat.

Dara, our previous babysitter from Cambodia came to visit us. She now works as an au pair near Boston. We all miss her tons and are so happy she could visit us.

Lets go FAST!!

It is chilly here when you get out of the water. We have gotten so used to warm weather and water in Cambodia!

We went hiking at Swallow Falls with Dara.

Time for a snack.

Family photo with the tall fall in the background.

All the snow from last winter made the falls and water high.

Back at the house. Nothing better than a free kayak ride!

Dara and Charlotte together at the lake. Two worlds colliding. Dinner at Steve Senior's house.

One last boat trip before Dara has to fly back to Boston!

Happy Fourth of July!

The annual Fourth of July MMLane parade! Complete with decorated

bikes,homemade necklaces, painted faces and people on stilts.

Jim proudly riding his new bike, named "The Kennedy" after playing

football by bike, much like the Kennedy's did once upon a time.

Part of the parade!

Watching Holland play another victory during this sweet World Cup.

Our friends B and E in Baltimore were happy to go orange with us when we visited them.

S has watched every game possible and kept score in her sticker book.

The final against Spain has just started here.

Intense game. Almost too hard to watch...

We ran into Bill at the Dulles airport when we arrived this summer. It had been 4 years since had seen him. We had just arrived from our detour to Holland and Bill had come in from India. We were able to convince Bill to come see us with Donna at the lake to catch up and rehash Cairo stories. They arrived just in time for the final and effectively consoled us with some wine and funny stories after Holland's loss to Spain.

Chef Jim cooking up a storm. The part of the deck behind him has a

restored buffet but the roof was installed later that summer.

Lets hope winter 2010/11 will do less damage to our lake house.

We are going on a hike to Swallow Falls because it is Nana's birthday.

Birthday picnic lunch by the falls.

Cake and presents tonight after a bbq dinner.

Birthday girl and two of her granddaughters.

Jim, Cathy and S at the top of the falls.

We still need to find one of the boxes hidden by the falls.

Can you read it again please Uncle John?

We're going on adventure with Kim and the kids. Drive to the river, hike down and cross the railroad, reach the river bank, swim in the water falls and have a picnic. Bask in the sun on a rock and listen to the silence of nature. Pure heaven on earth.

The current is strong in this part of the river. Swim baby, swim!

Summer Vacation 2010 Part I -- The Netherlands

So great to see Oma and Opa again! Oma is showing S some herbs, Opa is getting some help with the dishes from E. Of course the kids showed off their report cards and received a few Euros. S is not looking her usual best. We only found out a week later that she was in the middle of full blown Mono (Pfeiffer) while visiting Holland. We thought the end of the school year and the jetlag were just harder than usual...

Summer 2010 was all about Football!

These pics are at the beginning of World Cup 2010.

Hup Holland Hup!

Even the youngest learn to be fans from an early age.

Our nephew M. sweetie!!

Harry Potter Birthday Party

S choose a Harry Potter Birthday Party this year. We had a lot of fun planning it and the kids had a great time. Some kids came dressed up as wizards and witches, one girls was in uniform and one boy had the official Quiditch cape! They all started the party by making magic wands with real feathers inside.

The Sorting Hat came alive again and sorted kids into the two Hogwarts houses represented: Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. You guessed correctly that S ended up in Gryffindor.

The two houses played each other in a game of Quiditch on real brooms with lots of "flying" balls and a golden snitch. Unfortunately it was almost 40C outside so after 10 minutes we had some Butterbeer and popcorn at the airconditioned Leaky Cauldron.

Creating Lava Lamps during science class with Professor Snape.

Decorating goblets with gems during art class.

After writing class with quills and a dragon egg hunt in the forbidden forest with Hagrid, it was time for the traditional party highlight: the birthday cake and Happy Birthday sung in two languages.

Presents made the day complete. While the parents lingered at pick up time with a cold drink and appetizer the kids got comfortable inside and watched the first Harry Potter movie. We had let S watch it once on a long plane ride before and she was impressed I had actually bought her the movie at the Russian Market. So far she has only read the first and second book. I guess she's a real fan now and is probably old enough to move on to book three...