Reflections on our 7th Year - Part 1...

Happy New Year! We survived another firework-filled New Year’s Eve in Holland. We missed the deadline to participate in the New Year’s Dive into the North Sea, but since the sun was shining Jimmy and I went on a 5-mile run. Now its time to catch up my blog and squeeze in a few extra postings. Our 7th anniversary in Holland was on November 22nd, but we didn’t manage to have our traditional anniversary dinner at La Lantera Pizzeria in Scheveningen until December 30th. As usual, between courses, we reflected on the highs and lows of our 7th year. Let’s start with the lows:

• MICE! Our efforts for a humane relocation program was a complete failure, but we waited too long to resort to poison and lost a lot of food in our pantry.
• It was a bummer that Jimmy couldn’t join us in Tuscany and that he worked in Mons, Belgium for 9 months
• Travel inconveniences/disappointments: ripped off by bad tour guide in Tuscany, Vivynne and family missed the first day in Marrakesh with us due to Air France strike, double charged by KLM for unaccompanied minor fees, stuck in crappy Florence airport for 7 hours, missing the last tram into The Hague on New Year’s Eve, couldn’t buy tickets to the Olympics because we don’t have a frickin’ VISA card 
• Melissa: nearly constant bickering between daughters (afraid that this will be a repeat entry every year)
• Jimmy: Dirk (work colleague) passing away, falling through the ice bringing skating to an early end, bad luck two weeks in a row on the international train when in a rush to get to school events (1st hit a construction crew and 2nd hit a jumper), never got into any Trappist breweries on Trappist brewery cycle weekend
• Veronica: very stressful 1st term of Year 11 (10th grade), no longer being within walking distance of Pronto’s Pizza, couldn’t see Grandpa despite being in the same Swiss town at the same time
• Ashlynn: bike being stolen, losing Dutch ID