Museums and Dumpster diving

Joe had the whole week off, and time flew by. Monday we went to Amsterdam. Tuesday I took professional photos of a property my dad is selling.

I also helped Emma pack for her big move. She is moving out of my dad's house and in with 3 of her best friends. This is great for her, but I'm a little sad still, because she is moving to Den Haag. Den Haag is only 20 minutes from here by car, but I just KNOW I won't be able to see her as often. No more early morning wake up calls. No more quick visits with the kids on the way home from school.Wednesday I felt so exhausted mentally from all the outings, that all I wanted to do was stay in, and sit on the couch. I have those kind of days too often for my liking. Especially since it sometimes keeps me from participating in fun outings.

Wednesday afternoon, Joe took the kids exploring in some woods by Rotterdam, and they built anawesome fort. I could have enjoyed that time with them, but instead I sat on the couch and looked for summer vacation ideas. Laymoo! Anyways, Joe will do his own blog post on their fort adventures, but I wanted to give a quick sneek peek of the awesomeness.

Yesterday was kind of fun. Joe had to pick up his residency permit at the Immigration office in Den Haag. Afterwards, we visited the Panorama Mesdag museum. It's a panoramic painting of the fishing village Scheveningen in the 1880s. Really high quality work, and fun to travel back in time.

We bought a 1989 VW golf to use while we live in Holland, and although it only has 57,000 miles on it, it obviously is still old.

Certain gaskets and hoses just fall apart after a certain amount of time. Joe already replaced a seal on the engine, but we also needed to replace the main engine fan. It makes a ton of noise! So we went looking for a junkyard. Junkyards in Holland are different from the US ones, because there's obviously less space. Instead of having fields of cars, all the useable parts are taking off, and stored in a large, randomly organized warehouse. Each part has the make and model of the car marked on it.

When Joe came home from taking the kids to school this morning (he has been super sweet and done that for me this whole week), he told me he'd done something naughty and to look into the backyard. I looked, and saw 2 unfamiliar bikes. "Did you steal a bike?" I asked. Of course he didn't, but as he was riding home, he saw a lady putting those bikes on a pile of trash. Today was "grof afval" day (large items), and piles were neatly stacked all along the roads in the neighborhood. Dumpster diving has always been intriguing to me, especially after watching Joe's cousin Katy come home with treasures over and over. So we took the car, and started our dumpster dive. It's amazing what people will throw away. Perfectly nice couches, bikes, lawn furniture, and of course a lot of crap.

We came away with some great finds

A dresser for Sterling's room. Poor Sterling has stored his clothes in suitcases for the past 3 months, and lined up his toys on the floor.

3 bikes, a park bench, table and 2 chair set for backyard, and a boogy board.