Carv Man is Six

Carver turned 6!  To celebrate, I sent him to school with his favorite home baked treat - chocolate chip cookies.  But since chocolate chips are hard to come by around here, they were M&M cookies - and for the record we eat them every Sunday night.  It was still his treat of choice, which is obviously an easy request for me to fill.  He also got to bring treat bags for each member of his class.  I think he was more excited about those and the cheap dollar store type toys inside each bag than he was about the prospect of getting presents.

Since we love a good party around here, I decorated a little bit the night before his birthday.  He was allowed to open one gift in the morning - the batman shirt he wore to school from Grandma.  He was very excited to get a couple of lego sets (chima, his favorite these days, and also hero factory).  He also got presents from both Grandma's, since we were just in the US for Christmas and we all planned ahead.  Lucky boy.

That night, we ate pizza and Mulit Vlaai Pie after we sang to Carver.  Then we had family movie night, our Friday night tradition.  A few weekends later, we took a little trip in Carver's honor.  We all went to Dordrecht (a nearby town) to see this HUGE Noah's Ark replica.  I took my parents to see it when they were here, but Ryan and the kids hadn't seen it yet.  The story goes that a local Dutch carpenter was inspired to build his own sea worthy ark matching the exact dimensions as Noah's in the bible story as closely as possible.  This thing is a MASSIVE boat (like, cruise ship massive) with many fake animal statues inside, as well as some live animals.  Sure, it was nice to walk around inside the ark, sit and watch a movie in the theater, and relax in the restaurant.  But mostly, it was really neat to see the layout of the ark and imagine how such a huge undertaking might actually be physically possible.

In other Carver news, I just had a parent teacher conference at the school for him (and the other kids), but his teacher raved about how great Carver was.  I know all the teachers do that at these conferences (you know, tell you how wonderful your kid is), but regarding Carver I believe every word of it.  He is such a gentle, loving, helpful, eager to please kid.  His primary teacher at church says the same thing about him.  He just makes the most sincere comments and though he is still a busy rambunctious boy, he tries to listen and do his best all the time.  I hope I can still say that about him in 10 years when he turns 16.
Below is a picture of a gift I made for his teacher for Christmas.  I organized the class gift this year, and all the parents pitched in to buy the teacher a gift card.  I saw this wreath here and decided to give it a try.  It turned out to be pretty easy, so I made them for Elsie and Ava's teachers too.

Happy Birthday to my favorite son!

Switzerland

And now, for the last and final post of our summer 2013 trip...

There are some seriously heavy traffic days throughout Europe during the 6 weeks that most kids are out of school.  They have these "black out days" that you could potentially be trapped on a freeway for hours because there are so many vehicles in transit.  At the very beginning of our trip, Ryan planned carefully, checked the ANWB website, and we left at the crack of dawn to miss the black out traffic.  I thought he was being a little paranoid and a LOT crazy.  

At the end of our trip, we got a little more casual.  We rolled out of bed in Italy and headed up to Switzerland hoping to spend at least 1/2 the day in Zurich...and then we hit the black out traffic.  So our 6 hour drive took 4 extra hours.  Some of those hours were spent sitting.  SITTING.  Sitting on the freeway, with the car turned off, looking around, waiting, needing to pee, starving, and so on.  FOUR HOURS.  At one point, I thought we would definitely run out of gas waiting before the next station.  Alas, we made it to the station and so did the 4,546 other cars that were also in our same situation.  The bathroom lines were killer...but unlike the many other drivers and passengers around us who just hopped right out and relieved themselves in front of everyone on the side of the road, for me the proper stall and running water was worth the wait.  At least we were surrounded by this lovely scenery...

Coca Cola had this ad campaign going on during the summer that went something like, "Coke is love, share a coke"...okay so I don't exactly remember the point of it.  But what I do remember is that each bottle had a different name on it.  So it said, share a coke with...whoever.  Well, Ryan, Carrie, and Dawn have been known to consume some serious amounts of coke.  So it became this kind of game when we'd go into gas stations and stores in each country to see if we could find any names that we recognized.  They were usually pretty weird names, depending on the country.  My mom and I found Thomas and Nicole at one point (I think in France).  In Switzerland, Ry hit the jackpot with this one...

We had to explain the Arrested Devolopment reference to my mom, but I laughed and laughed.  (As a side note, Elsie has this kid in her Dutch preschool named Tobias - pronounced "toby-us" and it is hilarious to hear her talk about him.  I'm sure he has some little denim cutoffs under his pants).

 Once the traffic finally got moving, we could really appreciate how gorgeous this country is.  It seemed like we were always surrounded by mountains, and the kids made a game of spotting waterfalls.  We pulled over and snapped some pictures by this lake.  Look at that water...

 When we finally made it to Zurich we were in for another dreaded surprise.  We had just finished reading all this info about how clean and modern Zurich is - one of the cleanest cities in the world, etc...  Well, all the major roads were blocked off for this HUGE gay pride parade.  The entire city was trashed - seriously, litter along the side of all the major roads, at least, the ones that weren't blocked off.  The plus side is that everyone in site was either dressed in drag or some crazy body paint or costume...awesome!

So we missed out on a proper tour of Zurich, but we got plenty of car/roadside shots...just enough to make us want to go back and do it right.

Back to reality and hopefully more day to day posts on this here blog of mine.

Lake Como

Lake Como is a little slice of heaven where Italy meets the Alps.  This is the place where travel dreams come true, and here's why:

It is charming

There's a little bit of green everywhere you look

Lots of hidden steps and cobbled alleys

 The water is surrounded by beautiful mountains

 The mountains also keep it nice and cool (as opposed to the rest of Italy in the summer)

 There are fabulous villas lining the water

 George Clooney sitings are no big deal here, since they happen so often 

(we weren't THAT lucky...if we were, you definitely would've heard about it by now)

 The food is ridiculous.  Just so good.

 Ferry hopping around the lake is a cinch

It isn't crowded.  Not sure why.  

(at least it wasn't in Varenna, where we spent most of our time)  

It is pretty much the perfect place to end your busy trip to Italy.

I highly recommend it.