Sad to go....

Our last full day is done... hard to believe that 3 weeks has come and gone already. We spent the morning walking around Amsterdam and doing a little shopping. We bought some cute stuff for Julia's birthday party in a few weeks (the party decorations are so different than ours!) and although I saw a lot of cute things in the stores I was feeling too lazy to try them on.


We headed back to our apartment because the owner had told us that he could potentially take us out on his boat this afternoon. Unfortunately he had an unexpected visitor and we would've needed to wait for a few hours so we decided to decline his offer, even though it would've been great to get a private canal tour! Instead we headed out to Aalsmeer where Jeff's uncle (and family) had a market today. We spent some time perusing the merchandise and ate quite a bit of greasy food - loempias (spring roll type things), stroopwafels (yum!) and fried fish which even Chloe gobbled up. She isn't typically a fish lover (unlike her sister) so that tells you how good it was. Our other main purchase was the 'funderwear' purchased for Jeff... admittedly it was mostly us girls who wanted him to buy it. One pair of underwear is bright yellow with sunflowers on it and the other pair has a soccer ball pattern but in turquoise. Who knows if he will ever wear it but the girls had a lot of fun buying it!


Uncle Marty drove us back to his place where we had another great visit with him and Greet and then we went over to Sven and Joyce's place for dinner. Sven and Jeff were great friends back when Jeff lived in Holland when he was 18. They now have a 2 year old daughter (Luna) and have become domesticated like us.... We had a great evening visiting with them and again our kids were amazing and played happily until almost 11 pm. (They can be easily bribed with Dutch licorice...)!


Now we are home and have the task tomorrow morning of packing up our things. We had great intentions of an early night tonight but it's now almost midnight and the kids have finally gone to sleep and we are not remotely interested in packing our suitcases. So, tomorrow we'll try and jam everything into our bags and hope for the best! Can't believe the next night we will be in our own beds... how weird! Good and bad at the same time...


Oh, it may be interesting to note the casualties from the carry-on experience.... So, obviously we had limited clothes on this trip. Here is what is NOT making it home with us and is instead in the garbage can... Remember, small bags equals limited clothes which means lots and lots of wears!
Julia - one dress with two holes, one pair of sandals with the sole almost completely apart on the right foot.
Chloe - one pair of (fairly expensive!) shoes with a strap that fell off almost 2 weeks ago. Been carried around in the hopes that there will some sort of immaculate re-connection while in a suitcase.
Jeff - shirt that has seen way too many trips around the world. Very nice, but the collar started to come undone and we figured it was time to lay it to rest, it had a good life. One pair of Gap underwear, it's day had come.
Me - Pair of jeans that today (good timing!) got a giant rip in the bum! Started as a small hole but as the day progressed became increasingly large and embarassing. We were far from home with no chance of changing so I just had to go with it... yikes. At least I had on decent underwear.

So, that has made more room in our suitcases for licorice, candy, party decorations, a bottle of wine from a French vineyard and a bottle of Champagne from our friend Jennie (we intended to drink it and never did! Must celebrate at home with it- as long as it doesn't explode!!)