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Monday, May 28, 2012

Memorial Weekend Camping

It's become a tradition for us to join up with Paul & Mandy's family, along with friends from Phoenix Christian Reformed Church, for camping east of Payson in an area known as Larson's Ridge. Dispersed camping means there are no facilities, but also virtually no restrictions - except for fires. Due to high winds and dry conditions, we could not have camp fires. Winds were bad on Saturday when we drove there, but not as bad as last year. Sunday & Monday were the most gorgeous camping weather you could imagine.

Ellie putting up with the wind as we prepare to go for a hike on Saturday.
Nate holding one of the Horned Toads that are frequently found in this area and a real favorite with the kids.
Hiking down the road near camp.
Mandy & Eve.
Did I mention that it was windy on Saturday?
Ellie helping Oma make sandwiches in our Eurovan Camper.
Eve loved helping Oma with her knitting.
One of my experiments with limited depth of field on our new camera. I got limited depth of field, but I'm finding it a challenge to determine just what it's focused on.
Sitting on Nate's bed in the tent-trailer and relearning how to play Mille Bornes.
Eve & Ellie love hanging out in the camper with Oma! (Especially when there is hot-cocoa involved!)
Ellie helping Opa make coffee.
Nate, teaching Oma how to play Flash Scramble.
Riding in the Ranger was a popular pastime.
"Ladder Golf" is a popular camping game. This is Elaine making a toss.
Getting the golf-balls to wrap themselves around the rungs from 30 feet is much harder than it looks.
Eve decided that Marv Faber's truck was in need of washing.
Ella & Ellie were pretty worn out at supper after a busy Sunday.
Eve & Ellie - Sitting on the upper level of Opa & Oma's camper van is pretty cool!
Whether it's with a pocket-knife or a nail, Nate is an ace stick carver!

Saturday, May 19, 2012

More Kitchen Progress

Long ago, in a galaxy far away... we had a project to put tile on the floor and wall where our front door and wood stove were located. After watching the video on how to grout tile, we said "how long could it take?" and started the job. Never mind that it was about 10 p.m. and it was winter so we had to work with the door open. When we finally finished it was the wee hours of the morning and the phrase "how long could it take?" has never been seriously uttered in our home again. Doing it was so traumatic that we never did grout the wall tiles, and it instilled a steadfast fear of grouting.

Well, today was the day to grout the backsplash tiles in the kitchen. In contrast to our earlier experience, this was a dream. Yes, it took pretty much all day, but it really was a successful job. Unlike many home improvement activities, this one did not even require a trip to the hardware store in mid-job for something that went unexpectedly!

This is the last major project in the kitchen remodel. We still need to paint, but that's a minor undertaking.


This came out so well, and went so smoothly, I'm ready to take on bigger things. We've got a shower that needs replacing...

Things we learned in the Netherlands

Being out of your normal environment always seems to heighten the senses to what is new or different from one's usual surroundings. That's even more true when you are in another country. Since we our trip to the Netherlands was the longest we've ever been able to do, we had the chance to learn some things we had not observed before.

New Words
Listening to Dutch radio is great fun, just to hear the language from native speakers and see how much one can recognize. Sometimes you learn new words like this one - "puntenell". This one is always a suffix which is applied to the end of other words. For example, we heard "zevenkattenpuntenell" and "wolhallapuntenell". Now the Dutch love to create compound words, but these are a bit of a challenge. It helps when you can see them broken down into smaller pieces, or just written - like this: zevenkatten.nl or wolhalla.nl

Opa Freek
I'm sure that there a lot's of folks who think I'm a bit strange, maybe even a bit of a freak. Well, in the Netherlands we received confirmation of this. Here's a photo of me to prove it.


I'm standing next to the sports complex across the street from our apartment. The game is voetbal there, but there are sponsor ads just like little league in the U.S. See that yellow sign to the left of my shoulder? Well here's a close-up:

My guess was that this was for a dentist, but it turned out to be a local firewood and oak barrel supplier. (Of course this isn't really pronounced like the English word "freak". It's pronounced "phrake" and is the Dutch nickname for Frederick. Still, it's fun to notice the differences in languages and where they'll take you on first glance at something.)

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Flagstaff Spring

Often, the surest sign of Spring in Flagstaff is that it's sunny with spring-like temperatures, and incredibly windy. It's a time when you really want to get out and bicycle, but the wind is too nasty. When it comes to the fruit trees the result is often that they start to bloom, but never mature enough to result in fruit on the trees - the wind just blows them right off the trees.

It's too soon to tell about fruit, but this Spring the blossoms managed to survive a late-season cold spell and bloomed for long enough to put on a show. It was even pleasant bicycling weather. I'm not sure what some of these are. I'm pretty sure the white ones are apples, but the pink ones I'll have to watch and see what appears later. In the meantime, it was beautiful for about a week.

I pass these everyday on Hwy 180 near the Arizona Pioneer Museum
These are in a neighbor's yard near the top of our street.


Sunday, May 13, 2012

Windmill Day

Yesterday was National Windmill Day in the Netherlands. Each year on the 2nd Saturday in May all the participating mills are open to the public. It's a real testament that most of the mills in the country are open.


We couldn't be there for the big day, so I did the best that I could to participate. This is me, wearing my souvenir orange voetbal t-shirt, and posing with the molen on my mother-in-law's patio. Unlike Tienhoven, where the temperature on Saturday was about 60F, in Phoenix it was about 102F when we took this photo.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Kitchen Progress

Our kitchen remodeling has been in a "functional" state for quite awhile now. We've been hung up on trying to select tile for the backsplash. Along the way we even toyed with the idea of just painting the wall, but the paint tests convinced us that it wasn't a look that worked. Once we finally selected tile, it had to be ordered, then reordered because it was made in the wrong pattern. Finally, just before our trip to the Netherlands, the tile arrived and this weekend we set a goal of getting it installed.




It's not grouted yet so there's still work to do, but WOW - what a dramatic difference it makes. I can hardly wait to get this done.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Molens

This is "de Trouwe Wachter" (The Faithful Watchman), the molen where my great-grandmother was born. The first time we met the Verbiest family there it was a weekend where they were just hanging out and their friend Bart was there doing some painting. They weren't expecting visitors, but let us just join in for a couple of hours. Because of the family association, but especially because of the warm reception of the Verbiest's, I've come to think of this as "our mill". I've often dreamed of just hanging around on a Saturday, scraping, painting, or whatever needs to be done - real, everyday, normal stuff that helps to preserve a family heirloom.

Jan Verbiest sent us a DVD from a Dutch TV series "The Story of Dutch Windmills". We finally got a chance to watch it tonight. It's a little tough to see everything you want to see on the screen when you are trying to read the English subtitles, but it's a great set of videos. Watching part of it again, with Dutch subtitles turned on was fun too! Once in awhile I could actually match up what I was hearing with the words on the screen, which is actually helpful for getting a sense of how Dutch is spoken.

It doesn't matter that it's not realistic to think of actually living in the Netherlands, but watching that video makes me wish for it even more. One of the millers mentioned that people come from all over to get the flours they grind because you can't get them anywhere else. It's true - we brought home 3 kilograms of waldkorn flour and wished we could have brought more. It makes the most glorious bread and I'm going to cry when it's gone.

Another of the millers in the video talked about how windmills just grab your heart and won't let go. It's true. Now I want to go learn how to be a miller and make that great flour in the Netherlands.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Aircooled Cruise Night

I'm not sure if it was jet-lag or that Google changed the Blogger interface to Dutch (it can't be my fault), but at any rate I forgot to mention the close of our first full day in the Netherlands.

The timing of our trip meant that we could participate in the first Aircooled Cruise Night of the spring. This is gathering of Volkswagen nuts from around the Netherlands that takes place in Zevenhuizen. We got to see some great cars and meet some great people. VW people are fun no matter where you are.

The first vehicle we encountered was this unknown vehicle. I was intrigued by seeing on the sign that it was a 914. Since my Dutch isn't very good, I was thinking it might be built on a 914 platform. It turns out that it's powered by a 914 engine & transmission (with the ring gear flipped). An interesting ride that looks good from 50 feet, but I'd never think of buying it.



Here's some additional photos from the evening.
















Besides the owner of the unknown yellow car, we probably spent the most time talking with the owner of this bus. He's an Irishman who is married to a Dutch woman. He's lived in the Netherlands for about 11 years and this is his daily driver.