We are in Holland!!!!

 

It has taken us a week to get over our jetlag, Our first nights we all seemed to wake at around 3 or 4 am and that would be that, so we would have breakfast at 4:30 am and the kids got really tired during the day but could not sleep but we are all good now, waking at around 8 am , that is better then in NZ! Anouk usually managed to wake up around 6:30 there, so you could say that this is a nice improvement.  here is Anouk, in Edam on our first walk, very early in the morning, the boys were still sleeping.

It has been so lovely to see all the family, and for the kids to see that they have family, and quite a lot of them too! 

It is nice for me to be a tourist in my own country, We all know that children can show you a new way of looking at things and it is no different now when they are showing me how cute and beautiful Holland is and can be! They really notice the small things, Kai got really excited when he saw a lily pad in the water the other day because he had read about them in fairy tales like the princess and the frog, but had not actually seen them. Waiheke has no lily pads, or frogs! 

It is also great that kids are so eager to learn, so when we are walking through the old and cute village of Edam we can show them the old homes that are leaning forward or how the tired houses have sunk into the ground a bit and off course we are all learning about the cheeses in Edam, how can you not when you are here:-)

The kids are loving it here, and they are really trying to speak dutch, especially Kai, at the playground they make friends while running back and forth to us to ask us how you say this and that in Dutch, very cute.

We also went to Hoorn, which is a City about 20 minutes drive from Edam, and it is beautiful with lots of history we enjoyed walking around and taking pictures, on the way back we decided to take a detour and go around "the dijk"  unfortunately we got stuck behind a truck that picked up the fences from the marathon that had been there a few hour earlier and the guys from the truck refused to let us and about  7 or 8 other cars behind u, through, so we had to drive behind them for about 20 minutes or more while they could have let us pass, they just decided they did not feel like it, all the while singing a dutch song that basically mocked us and said, "and we are not going home, not for a long time) they seemed to take pleasure out of it, I got pretty angry, not only because it was insanely rude but also dangerous, what if there would have been someone ill in one of the other cars and in need of a hospital, or something else..... I am pretty sure it is illegal as well,  it showed dutch rudeness through and through and that was shitty especially after such a lovely day, but my sister did say that was probably one of the rudest things she has come across in a very long time. here are some pictures of beautiful Hoorn.