Wednesday, December 31, 2008

A day later

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. We've been too busy in Maine doing nothing. It's been wonderful!

We were supposed to leave today, but last night we checked the time of our flight online we saw that our reservation was gone. Somehow, this last day of travelling got deleted from our itinerary last week when we were dealing with delays coming from Florida. Continental said we can get you out on a flight on January 8th!!! You can imagine, we did not accept that answer. In the end they ended up putting us on a flight for tomorrow. So, if all goes well, we should be back in Holland on January 2nd. We're not counting our chickens before they hatch, though, because there is another snow storm tonight and Continental has been cancelling a lot of flights for no apparent reason.

We'll try to keep you posted. But hopefully there is nothing to say!

Back to Holland

By now you are probably getting sick of seeing this airplane... well we are, too!  Today we make our way back to Holland.  We leave Portland at 2:20 PM and fly to New York where we will wait for three hours and eat our last American meal.  Our last of many flights departs at 7pm and we touch down in Amsterdam at 8:15 AM.  This means we will be "celebrating" the changing of the year in the airplane.  We are very curious as to what that means, where it will be, if it will happen more than once.  Maybe Hopefully we'll be sleeping the whole time...

We have a couple days to get back to the reality of our lives in The Hague.  Tom starts work again on Monday, and Liz and Evie go back to work/creche on Tuesday.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Up to Maine

Today we leave Florida and take our shortest trip yet up to Maine.  We leave at 8:30 AM and land in Portland shortly before 1 PM, with a connection in New York.  This is our last stop before going back to The Netherlands on New Year's Eve.  We are excited to be celebrating Christmas in Maine with Grandma and Grandpa.  We are hoping for a white Christmas and some chances to go sledding and make a snow man.  We are also looking forward to some good ol' Grandma Nan cooking!

The ferry boat heading to Chebeague in the winter.

Weather in Maine:

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Florida so far

We have arrived safely in Florida. When we got to Denver airport Monday we were greeted with the news that there would probably be upwards of 6 hours delay because of fog in Houston. Luckily, we had the nicest ticket agent in the world who quickly called another airline to see if there were three tickets to the direct flight to Orlando leaving an hour later. Lucky for us, there were. So instead of a whole day of travel, we landed down at 4 pm and were by the hotel by five. FABULOUS!

Since being here we have already visited the outlet mall, gone swimming in the pools, gone to the beach, and gone for a gator cruise, but no gator sightings. We've spent lots of time with Thijs and his girlfriend, Christyl. Tonight we will be having dinner with Christyl's entire (extended) family. We don't know yet how many people are coming, but so far there are 19 place settings!

Tomorrow will be our first day of truly tourist activity. We are going to Sea World, baby! We're pretty sure Evie will love it. Thijs and Christyl will be joining us for the day.

No chance to upload picture yet, but hopefully we'll get to put some up tomorrow.

Oh, and the weather here in Orlando? NICE AND WARM!!! Today it reached 80 degrees F. Woohoo!! We're loving it! It's certainly a nice change from the record breaking low temperatures in Denver. When we left it was -5 F, or -23 C!!!! CRAZY COLD!!!

Monday, December 15, 2008

Travel Day

Today we leave Denver and head to sunny Orlando, Florida.  Well, we hope it is sunny there!  Our flight leaves Denver at 11:25 AM, we stop over in Houston, Texas for an hour, and we land down at 7:20 PM in Orlando, for a total of six hours traveling time.  We are very excited to see Uncle Thijs and where he lives and works.  There are also plans for Sea World.  Unfortunately, Evie is still probably too young for Disney World.  We are hoping to have some good summery weather in Floriday.  This time of year the average is around 68ºF or 20ºC.  We will be here for exactly a week.

The Orlando Skyline
This is the hotel we will be staying at!


Weather in Orlando

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Goodbye, Denver

Today was our last day in Denver. We had a goodbye dinner at Chilli's and shared lots of hugs and kisses. We will so miss everyone!! XXX
Uncle Tom, Evie, Uncle Joey, Kanoa

Goodbye Kiss

The Cousins

Kanoa, Aunty Rox, Evie, Aunty Panda, Amaya

Evie, Aunt Biz, Amaya, Kanoa, Aunty Nara

Fun in the Snow

Last night we spent the night in Centennial, Colorado with Aunty Panda and Aunty Rox.
The kids got some presents!

When we awoke in the morning there was a beautiful dusting of snow, so we had to go and play. Unfortunately it was about 9 degrees F (-12 C), so the kids got cold fast. They were probably out there for about ten minutes.



Friday, December 12, 2008

Gingerbread House

This week Evie and Kanoa made a Gingerbread house together. It was the first time for both of them. They had a blast decorating, and barely snuck any bites of candy at all...
Watching as Liz assembles the Gingerbread.

Almost ready to decorate...

Decorating time!


Finished product!

Thursday, December 11, 2008

The Denver Zoo

Today we went to the Denver Zoo. We got there about fifteen minutes after opening, which meant we had pretty much the whole park to ourselves. We saw all the animals, except for the hippo and the lion. Next time, I guess.










Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Miss Evelyn

Crazy Kanoa

The kiddos watching tv in the morning.

Evie's Haircut

Although we didn't capture any "before and after" shots of Evie's new 'do, we do have some pictures of her getting her first Aunty haircut. She now has a cute little bob, but you'll have to see that in the other pictures.


Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Lost in Translation

Kanoa and Evie play so well together, but Evie hasn't quite grasped the concept that Kanoa doesn't speak Dutch. But that's okay, he just plays along.

A Cousin Reunion

Amaya, Kanoa, and Evie have been happily reunited. It is very clear how much they love each other. Evie lights up when Amaya is there, and Evie and Kanoa are almost inseperable. For two nights now, they have gone to bed together in the same bed. No pictures of that... yet.


Sunday, December 7, 2008

Touchdown in America

We have successfuly made our journey to the States. Because of major headwinds, our first flight took an hour longer than scheduled, leaving us a mere half hour to get through immigration, customs, re-check bags, security and get to the next gate. We RAN off the plane, ingoring the fact that the stroller wasn't at the gate yet. We rushed though immigration, once our bags were there we decided to forget about finding the stroller and just make the next flight. But when we went to re-check the bags, we got the dreaded news that we had missed the flight. This was followed by more bad news... that the next flight to Denver was in the morning. So they put us up in a hotel and gave us food vouchers. The hotel room was comfortable, but we are all suffering from jet lag. We finally got to Denver at noon today. But we are here! Here are a few highlights from the journey:
Schiphol
Waiting at Schiphol airport

Neck pillows
Getting comfortable with the neck pillows

iPod in the plane
Evie watched movies on the iPod

Playing in the plane
And she played very well with her toys

Saturday, December 6, 2008

America Bound

Today is the day we start our vacation in America! We depart Amsterdam at 1:20 PM.  Nearly fourteen hours and a connection in New York later, we will be touching down in Denver at 8:00 PM, local time.  We will be staying in Denver until next Monday.  We'll do our best to post when we can.  But just in case, there are some posts scheduled reporting on our traveling plans.  At the very least you will know where we are!  Words cannot describe our excitement for this trip.  We haven't been to Denver since March 2006, and Evie has never been.  We have a long list of things to do, food to eat, and goods to buy!  And of course we will be spending the whole time with family.  What could be better?
This is our favorite view of Denver

The weather in Denver: