Love Those International Signs...

On the Atkins' final day, we toured Den Haag's city center and found this colorful sign. I'll attempt to interpret:

* Pickpockets welcome here
* No peeing on signs that say "No Drugs & Alcohol" if there's a camera
* Throw away trash if you can find a trashbin
* Don't poop on the sidewalk
* Don't park your bike on signs with cameras

Never Know What You'll Find in the Newspaper...

While we can't actually read the newspapers here, we often flip through them just for the photos. Today's paper featured a similar photo of two of these unusual urinals in a small town in southern Holland with the headline: McDonalds Takes Away Urinals After Complaint. From what I can tell, a shocked American saw them and reported it to the corporate office. Turns out that Virgin American had considered installing them in their VIP bathroom at JFK Airport and when they scrapped the order it actually helped the local company here in Utrecht. Apparently the designer didn't realize that it could be demeaning to women; she meant it as a sexy cartoon mouth. To read more, click here: Kiss Urinal

Paybacks are Hell!

After almost 10 years of borrowing snow shovels, wheelbarrows, eggs, you name it, you'd think our Cary neighbors would have been thrilled to get rid of us. Instead they decided to get even with us by invading our home. It took almost 8 months, but we're excited to finally have our first visitors. The Atkins family is staying with us for 5 nights before heading to Spain. The girls are still in school, so my tour guide services have limited hours. I did manage to take them to Rotterdam where we took a harbor cruise and toured one of these unusal 1980's cube houses. Otherwise, they've enjoyed exploring on their own, except when Elise got lost in the Amsterdam train station (at least it gave her kids a laugh.)

What Wacky Boats!

We're so glad that our neighbor told us about the boat parade through the canals of Leiden on a gorgeous night this week. We canoed into the centrum to find thousands of people partying along the canals to watch this wacky event. Two of our favorite boats had Rembrandt themes. The one shown on the right here was "The Bird Watch" in honor of "The Night Watch"; the other featured 5 guys dressed as the famous painter and 15 folks dressed as his paintbrushes. There was also Elvis, Cleopatra, Van Gogh, the Ghostbusters, belly dancers and a lot of bands. It was definitely worth keeping the kids up late on a schoolnight.

Soaring Like an Eagle...

...or maybe more like a baby bird first dropping out of the nest. Jimmy and buddy Jim Busch (who's fault it is we live in Holland) went to England for a boy's weekend to learn how to paraglide by day and to survive life in a British pub during World Cup at night. Unfortunately, Jimmy didn't get any action shots, but here he is getting ready to hike up the hill for his first flight over the rolling hills. The flights only lasted about 30 seconds, but they both loved it.

Raising Adventure Girls...

So glad that the girls are taking after their daddy when it comes to athletics--not necessarily the best at any one sport, but not afraid to try. Here's Veronica at buddy David's 10th birthday party at an outdoor survival course. She may have been the youngest there, but she had fantastic balance and wasn't afraid at all as she scrambled across rope bridges, under simulated barbed wire and up & over a variety of obstacles. She's looking forward to Ashlynn being tall enough to take her along sometime.

Love those Traditional Costumes...

One of the highly anticipated events at school is International Day. We didn't think to bring Pilgrim, Native American or Southern Belle outfits with us and didn't want to just use the traditional dress of the average American kid of jeans and a Disney shirt, so Ashlynn was a cowgirl and Veronica was a hula dancer. Their school is truly international and their were a lot of great costumes. Ashlynn's the only American in her class and Veronica has just 2 others, 1 of which was born in Holland. Many of the children are true expats moving from country to country every few years. Shown here is Iyala who was born in London, but only knows her parents' native Kenya as a place to vacation. Ashlynn had to give her first speech, a culture talk to explain where she's from. We just love that the girls are being exposed to so many different cultures.