An Audience with the Queen...

As Anna and I were heading to Amsterdam Centraal, part of the road was closed. We were curious what was happening, so we stuck around for a few minutes and were rewarded with a quick glimpse of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima getting into a car.

Imagine our surprise when we saw the Queen again the very next day, but this time from just feet away as she was walking through the Mauritshuis (she’s the blonde). When I posted this photo on Facebook, a few folks thought the lady in front of the Queen might have been me. While it’s sweet that I have friends that think I might hang out with the Queen, I can assure you that I was with the rest of the museum visitors in the corner of the room with a security guard.

Playing Tour Guide in Amsterdam...

In late March, Anna from Sir Walters Hash House Harriers in Raleigh came to visit for three nights. We had a beautiful day to explore Amsterdam. My usual first stop is the library to see the view from their terrace, but it was closed for renovation so instead we headed to the rooftop garden of the science museum...

...where the views were incredible. 

We had lunch at my favorite dive bar and had a great walk around town.

We ended our Amsterdam tour at Wynand Fockink for a jenever.

Making Meerkats...

We fondly named our meerkat Stripy in honor of the stripes still to be added.

Here you can see a model of what Stripy will eventually look like along with the other six meerkats to be scattered across the traffic circle.

Emilie explained the complicated methods to be used to secure the meerkats from thieves and hurricane strength winds. I look forward to seeing the finished work of art in early September.

Me, a Sculptor?

When I first met Dutch sculptor Emilie Cummings at an AWC Coffee Morning, I was impressed with her passion to lead a community sculpture project by working with schools and a variety of clubs. Later when I was offered the chance to join some AWC ladies at Emilie's home for a morning of sculpting followed by lunch, I went along despite my lack of artistic ability. Here you see Emilie giving an introduction to her project while standing next to what will be a 10-foot (3-meter) tall meerkat, which is obviously still missing his head.

Emilie had already created the frames of the seven meerkats that will eventually be placed in a traffic circle in Wassenaar.

Our job was to help put additional wax over the frame. The finished wax sculptures will be used to make the molds that will be brought to a foundry that will pour the iron and complete the sculptures.

Celeste and I worked as a team to place the mix of black and purple wax over the bottom third of this meerkat. This shot was taken before...

...and this after. We sat in chairs for toddlers so we didn't have to strain our backs too much. It was surprisingly easy and relaxing work.

Celebrating Jimmy and Sally’s Birthdays...

As we often do, we celebrated Jimmy's birthday with Sally, whose birthday is the day before, and her family. This year was especially funny as John and Sally had purchased Jimmy a gift that had them cracking up before he even opened it. 

Of course, once he opened the package to discover that they had ordered him a Fred Flintstone costume, we fully understood why they were so full of laughter. Little did they know that their timing was perfect as we were heading to Belgium Nash Hash the following weekend and Jimmy was in need of a costume.

Breaking in Her New Boots...

Ashlynn was adamant that she didn’t want leather hiking boots for her 50-mile (80-kilometer) hike in Kenya, so it was very easy making a choice as there was only one option of waterproof nylon boots at our local outdoor adventure shop. Of course, I encouraged Ashlynn to break her boots in slowly like I did, but she had no intention of doing that. At least she was willing to walk around Vlietland with me and Kati on a beautiful day in early March.

Here she is testing her boots to see if they’re actually watertight.

They survived this very quick test, but the real test will be four days of hiking through the Kenyan rainforest.

Making a Difference...

We're so proud of how the girls have embraced volunteer projects at school. As the Environmental Officer at UEA, Veronica was instrumental in putting together a vegan fair on campus. Here she is posing with her favorite makers of vegan pizza: One Planet Pizza.

Ashlynn actually arrived in Kenya on July 15 with 29 students and 5 teachers from the BSN, but here she is months earlier helping to raise funds at an expat fair in The Hague...

...and here she is at the celebration when the team hit €30,000 raised (fast forwarding several months, the team’s grand total was a whopping €40,000!).

The only thing the girls were volunteering to do when this photo was taken was to eat masses of sushi (vegan, of course, as Veronica became a vegan on January 1), but I’ve included it as a reminder that Veronica visited for a week in February. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a very exciting visit as Ashlynn was in school and Veronica needed to pack up her room for our upcoming move.