Meanwhile, back in Utah…

 

 

Lexi and Carson stayed in Utah while we went to Europe.  They had great babysitters: Sabrina Racca, Samantha (Frei) Heder, Marin, Sophie, and Auntie Melissa.  They got to do lots of fun things!

 

 Movie night

 

Butterfly museum - twice 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pizza

    

 

Playground

 

Soda Retreat (where Sophie works)

 

McDonalds

 

Sewing an Easter garland

 

Lowe's ("Bounce House")

Walking Willow.  They also spend two nights at Nanny and Poppa's house.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

 

This sign cracked me up.  We found it in many places.  Basically it's "Do Not Enter" but it seems intense with the mouth open and the hand right in your face :-)

 

Day 8 - Amsterdam

• breakfast
• Drove to Amsterdam. Parked in bus parking. 
• Ate at Hard Rock Cafe - server worked at Disney world Italy restaurant
• Loud but yummy food
• Landon lots of salt in salmon
• Walked back to Rijksmuseum
• Audio tour great. So many amazing art pieces
• Couldn’t find Brit. Assumed he was ahead of us. But we couldn’t find the last three objects on the highlight app. I asked a worker as Landon went through the tour. They found him. He had gone ahead but when he was done he waited and even went through the tour two more times and hadn’t found us. He had been looking for about 15 mins. It’s weird because that was the same on our end. More than half way through I had noticed. I walked back several rooms. Anyways, glad we found him. 
• Walked 30 mins from Rijksmuseum to Anne Frank house. 
• Very nice your. Updated
• Uber back to parking. Kids were cold and tired. Our bus parking cost 90 euro! We were in the wrong place indeed 
• Drive to Best Western. Buffet at hotel. 
• Getting ready for bed. 
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Day 9 - Fly home

• Dropped off rental car. Driving in Europe was one of the most stressed times of seeing Landon
• 10 hour direct flight
• Direct is the way to go
• Watched 4-5 movies
• Kids didn’t like airplane food

Rotterdam, Netherlands

Day 7 - Rotterdam (Friday)

• Breakfast at hotel.  Not that good of a breakfast. Cam only had apple juice
• Landon had meetings all day. Had breakfast with boys. Brit stayed in room to do college. 
• Walked with Cam and Ty to Miniworld Rotterdam (cold and windy) but it was closed til noon
• Window shopped in Centraal Station. Warmed us up a little 
• Checked on Brit. He needs another hour. We were early. Went back to our room to write in kids’ journal and do screens for a bit. 
• Walked to Markthal. Ate at TGI Fridays. Mac and cheese was off
• Saw the cube houses
• Saw Erasmus bridge
• It was so cold and windy 
• Stopped into board game store. They had a star dew valley game to check out
• Walked to Miniworld Rotterdam. It was better than I expected. 
• Ate at Subway. Took Ty to grocery store
• Funny how everyone speaks English but they prefer Dutch. You can pretty much talk. 
• I google translated to find skim milk. At the check out the lady are sure I knew it was ‘light’ milk. I did her I did- I had to google translate the carton to find skim milk. She said, “oh, that’s what you call it”. She said British people people call it light milk for their coffee. 
• Walked over 16,000 steps today!
• A couple hours of screen time/ YouTube in the room. Brit needed to finish college. Our legs were tired. 
  
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Kinderdijk Windmills and Castle de Haar - Netherlands

Day 6 - Thursday 

• Kinderdijk windmills
• Really cold little rainy
• Over 10,000 steps today
• Learned the windmills aren’t grinding wheat- they adjust the water levels
• Yummy cafe meal at Kinderdijk- egg salad sandwich, Swedish pancakes, apple pie
• Drove an hour to Castle De Haar
• Baron inherited it. Was in ruins from 12th century. Architect from Rijks museum designed it. Was used only a month every year. 
• Frank - the tour guide and others very friendly. Talked about amazing effect of steam engine created to bring coal out of England mine
• Beautiful grounds. Huge. But starting to rain. Saw snow drop flowers. Wished it was spring or summer to enjoy the gardens
• Drove home. These narrow roads with bikers everywhere are scary
• Uber eats for Indian food. Walked to McDonald’s for kids. They have banana shakes here