Home Sweet Home

Waiting to board the plane in Houston!

Ready for take off!

Walking around in Scherepenzeel, Holland.

Mmmm....lunch.

The beginning of Isaac's love of biking.

Amsterdam

We toured the old Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam.

Kasteel de Haar

The three of us at the castle.

Barcelona, Spain!

The 1992 Olympic Stadium

me and Susan

Sitges, Spain

This is where we went to the beach, it was a beautiful beach, and a cute city.

Photo courtesy of Sergi: a ferris wheel in front of a beautiful church (both on top of a mountain which overlooks Barcelona). Behind/within this church is a church that was built in Biblical times (started by Paul)...that's so unreal to me!

Back in Holland with the famiy, I think Isaac missed his daddy!

Oom Hans retirement party...congratulations!

Boating through the canals.

Soo Jin, me, and my cousin Inge

Biking through Kinderdijk

Cousins

Carson, Isaac, and Colton

Kinderdijk

Isaac and I made it home on Friday, and are finally getting back into the swing of things. We have both slept well and are pretty much back on Houston time, which is good! We have been so impressed by how well Isaac handled the time change, both going to Europe and coming home. He is napping now, so I wanted to take some time to update y'all on the last week of the trip and of course share some pictures.

Our trip was full of fun touristy things, but also some time visiting family. We spent one day with my Uncle and his cousins, boating through the canals in Holland. It was a completely different boating experience than we are used to, but it was so relaxing and the area was beautiful! I have done that once before, but it was Carl's first time to go through the canals, so he really enoyed it. There were drawbridges, locks, a sailboat race (5-7 year olds racing), and many other unique boats and things to see. It was definitely a day we will not forget!

Last Sunday we invited all of the family to come over and visit, it was a busy but fun day! We had visitors from 11 am until 8 pm! It was so good to catch up with family, and of course to let everyone meet Isaac (many had never met him). I don't get to see my extended family often, so this was a really special day. I met my cousins granddaughter, who could honestly be Isaac's twin! She is precious; it was so neat to see the resemblance between the two kids.

Monday we biked through Kinderdijk, which is beautiful! That is where we took all of the pictures of the windmills. It was a fun, but also low key day.

By Tuesday, Isaac was very clingy to me and was getting tired of the car (everytime we went somewhere we had to drive at least an hour), so we took the rest of the week off of traveling. We stayed at the house, biked a lot, and went to town a few times. Isaac became a huge fan of biking, he even learned how to say bike. Any time he heard someone say the word he would run to the window to look at the bike and then proceed to beg to go out. It was so cute!

The flight home was long! We left the house at 5:45 am, and our plane left Schiphol Airport at 10:10 am. Isaac had so much fun running through the airport with his cousins, but then was strapped into his carseat for 10 hours! As I said, it was a long flight, but overall Isaac was great! He became extremely clingy again, which meant that nobody else was allowed to hold him throughout the flight, so I was left to entertain him the entire time! Oh, how I wished Carl was still with us! Thankfully, he was happy, he enjoyed walking the aisle, and he did sleep almost an hour. I wasn't sure we would ever get to Houston, but now looking back I realize that Isaac was a champ! (He didn't even cry once!)

I am so thankful that we had the opportunity to take this trip, it was an incredible experience. It was so special to be there as an entire family, all 10 of us! I took a ton of pictures so I can tell Isaac all about his first trip to Holland.