the homecoming...

from a land where warmth and daylight reign from 4am til 11pm...



to our homeland, a land of bare branches and beds three-blankets-heavy.



it's good to be home, though a little cold and lonely after living with others for the past few weeks. we also miss the quiet and closeness of the freisian countryside, but we look forward to catching up with our immediate families and friends soon.

take care,
em

the last days...

i'm a little too tired right now to write something witty or insightful about our last days in the netherlands, so i'll just post a bunch of pictures instead...

missy learning to share with husband's cousin's son (whatever numbered cousin that makes him to missy!?!):



missy playing in the grass while meeting my father-in-law's oldest sister and her husband on their farm:



cruising the canals of wommels and bolsward, two towns in fryslan - just after this pic was taken, we sailed down the main street of bolsward, past all the shops:





missy having a splash-fest during the recent heat-wave (it was warm, but it's not quite like melbourne in february):



sailing in the harbour near makkum, on omke's boat:



we fly home tomorrow at lunchtime, so this will be my last post from overseas. hope all is going well with you!

take care,
em

sunday snippets...

note: this post is actually from sunday, while the previous one only says it's from sunday (it's actually from saturday) - i had to edit my saturday post because i horrendously misspelled a fresian word - oh well, at least i'm trying! on to sunday:

the aunt we are currently staying with can do amazing things with a sewing machine, so last night i brought out my single memento from denmark - this pack of fabric pieces:



it's not particularly danish, but i thought it would be a special reminder of our trip to denmark for me to make something for missy out of this pack. husband translated some sewing advice, which was hugely helpful to me, and hugely mind-blowing for him. i might make a start while we're still here, but otherwise, this will be my next fun project when we get home.

we've just gotten back from visiting one of husband's uncles at his farm - what a beautiful spot!



missy got to meet his stunning black horses - who had her clawing omke's shirt whenever they neighed - and was so worn out from all the fresh air and excitement that she fell asleep as soon as we got home, in this position:



take care,
em

fun in the sun...

the weather here has been prachtig - beautiful - these past few days, and we've been enjoying it... at the town party:





well, only husband enjoyed this bit (as in, i didn't go):



and at the pool with husband's cousin, his partner and their little boy:



missy loved the floaty ring at the pool, because it meant she could move around wherever she wanted without assistance. she's trying to be so independent now that she can crawl around - climbing and pulling up on things, prefering to self-feed rather than spoon-feed, etc. a whole new world has opened up to her!

take care,
em

the denmark experience - part 2...

after arriving in roskilde at lunch time on monday, we caught the train into copenhagen and crammed in as many sights as we could in one afternoon, which was actually a fairly stressful way of doing things. then getting back to roskilde proved challenging, because we couldn't figure out which train we needed to catch - a frustrating thing for two stubbornly independent people like husband and i. at least danish people are helpful, and they thought missy was cute, which made them even more happy to help us.

tuesday was a much more pleasant day - here's a pic of husband and missy as we cruised the canals of copenhagen on a tour:



this was a real highlight for me - seeing so many landmarks while enjoying some time out on the water.

tuesday evening was another highlight for us, as we explored roskilde. here's a pic of a random wheat field that we discovered - it turns out the field holds the ruins of buildings from medieval times, and the wheat crop is grown to help keep the field undisturbed. you can see boats on the fjord in the distance:



a real lowlight of our trip is the next photo. i'm tempted to keep this to myself and never speak of it, lest i suffer the wrath of both my mother and husband's mother, but in the interest of being honest, i will share. we stayed in a bed and breakfast type arrangement in roskilde, which turned out to be more like a converted loft in the home of some empty-nesters looking to make some extra cash without having to do very much. anyway... we forgot to ask if there was a baby bed available. and there wasn't. so after racking our brains, we decided the best (i.e. safest) solution was to make a little cage for missy so she could sleep on the floor and not escape. she did not like it all that much. but she got some sleep, as this pic proves:



we're sorry miss! we'll never do this again!

but this last pic, taken at husband's aunt and uncle's dairy farm in germany, where we spend wednesday night, shows that we have not scarred her for life:



(the picture is coloured orange because of the sun shining through the orange curtains in the room we stayed in.)

it was fantastic to meet some more of husband's family - they were exceedingly generous, we felt very welcomed and it was great to see their farm at work. we enjoyed lots of sunshine and strawberries here before heading back to the netherlands to stay with another of husband's aunts and uncles, which is where we are now.

phew. that will do.

i hope all is going well with you, wherever you are.

take care,
em

the denmark experience - part 1...

julia gillard, eh? the things that go on when you're out of the country...

we arrived back in the netherlands from our trip to denmark (via germany) yesterday - and it's certainly good to be back in a country where one of us at least can understand the language!

here is the hire car that we've been travelling around in for the past week:



conspicuous, no? at least we never had any trouble finding it in carparks... we kept getting funny looks from other drivers on the autobarns in germany, which made husband a little concerned about his driving until we realised that people were dumbstruck by our car...

here is a pic of the harbour at fredericia, the danish town we stayed in last sunday night:



the hotel we stayed in didn't deliver on many of the things it promised (i.e. hot water and wireless internet - thank God for mcdonalds for the latter), and the wine we had with dinner ended up costing more than the two mains put together, but the beds were comfy and the breakfast was huge and delicious, so i think our time here was positive overall.

it's a bit hard to show it in a photo (especially a photo taken from a moving vehicle), but this is a pic of the enormous bridge we crossed to get from the second danish island to the one where copenhagen is (can you tell that i know a lot about denmark now?):



the bridge is engineering at its most excellent, but the more husband told me about the way the bridge managed to stay stable, the less i wanted to know (because it was scary, not because it was boring.) clearly i don't trust cables and concrete pillars as much as i could.

we decided to stay in a town called roskilde for monday and tuesday nights, taking the train into copenhagen (35km away), to avoid having to drive and park in the city (a good move.) here's a pic of us eating lunch on monday, having selected things from the menu because we understood 20% of the words in the meal's description:



luckily our surprise lunches proved delicious :)

i will leave this post here and recount the second part of our trip in new post. all this scrolling up and down is making me concerned that i'm about to destroy my work...

take care,
em

the planetarium...

yesterday we went to the eise eisinga planetarium. science is not something i am normally all that interested in, but this place is amazing - it makes me wish i'd paid more attention in maths at school! the image below (which has changed colour for some reason...) shows the scale model of the solar system that a bloke named eise eisinga made on the ceiling of his living room. using only mathematics, he was able to calculate and create a scale model of the solar system as he understood it in 1774 (so no uranus or neptune), where the planets hanging from his ceiling orbit the sun hanging from his ceiling at exactly the same rate as the real planets do. his motivation was to address a theory being promoted at the time that the planets were going to collide, push the earth into the sun and cause the end of the world - his model demonstrates that could not happen. the model also includes a clock, calendar, moon rising and setting times and astrological seasons, and it's been running continuously (aside from repair work) since it was finished in 1781, making it the oldest and longest running planetarium in the world.



tomorrow we are heading off on our road trip to denmark. we'll be back next thursday, and i'm not sure what access i'll have to the internet while we're away, so i may not blog again until after then. hope you're all going well.

take care,
love em

guess who's crawling...?!

when we first arrived here last sunday, out of the blue, missy figured out how to get from her tummy to a sitting position - she'd never done that in australia before. she also attempted a sort of one-step crawling manovere that day - she assumed the position, moved forward once and plopped back down on her stomach. but yesterday afternoon, with no real fanfare, missy again assumed the crawling position and proceeded to move towards a tasty-looking leaf she could see off in the distance. i'm so excited for her, and it's hilarious to watch a little person toddle around on their hands and knees!



take care,
em

cycling in the dutch countryside...

cycling is such a fantastic way to get around in this part of the netherlands. though it can be quite windy (attested to by the many wind turbines that litter the landscape), it's been really refreshing to get out on the fiets (bike) - i am extremely keen to get a baby bike seat for missy when we get home. and here's missy on the bike, near the park where pake used to take husband and his brothers to feed the ducks:



missy has taken to the bike like a fish to water. in fact, she fell asleep while we were riding home on tuesday, she was so relaxed! in the past couple of days, we have cycled to several places that have significance for husband - his pake's old house, his old house, his old school, etc. we also visited pake and beppe's grave, returning a day after this photo was taken to plant a bright yellow flower in the soil:



yesterday we cycled to the seaside town where omke moors his boat, to meet omke and tante as tante arrived back from her holiday. we spent the afternoon on their boat, enjoying the sunshine. here is missy enjoying the bunk bed, where she was supposed to be sleeping:



hope things are going well for you.

take care,
em

from the netherlands...

hello from holland! it's monday morning here, and i'm writing after a great night's sleep, which itself comes after being awake for 41 hours straight (i didn't sleep at all on the flight!) - well, that is, if you don't count the involuntary powernap shane and i had on the couch yesterday evening (omke went to start dinner and came back to two sleeping beauties!) missy slept a reasonable amount on the plane, though we were without bassinet from kl to amsterdam, so her inflight sleep was a bit restless. she is much better today, and here is a pic of the lovely one herself, happily playing in the sunlit patch under the window of her bedroom this very morning. (the dutch really know how to design houses to maximise natural light!)



husband's family have been so wonderful and generous at welcoming us. we are currently staying with husband's aunt and uncle in a gorgeous village - here's the view from our bedroom window:



yesterday arvo we took a walk to pake's old house, in an attempt to stay awake so as to adjust to this time zone, and to just enjoy the beauty and family-relevance of where we are - that's it on the left:



today will be another quiet one, just exploring the local area - perhaps even by bike!

take care,
em