Road trips and rest stops

On Friday we loaded the family up into the Rav4 (name pending) and headed North for our first family road trip in along time, and the first of this duration. We left at 7am – not bad considering all we had to do on Thursday. After 15 hours on the road and 4 rest stops (Elena, how many times can you run around that tree?), one dinner at Friendly’s, one tank of gas (32 mpg!) we made it to our first destination – Amherst, MA to visit our good friend Chris Elkinton (some may remember, he was a reader in our wedding) and he new wife, Melissa. We had to miss their wedding last fall and have felt bummed ever since. So it was a priority that we make it to their house before they move to Portland, OR in August. And we did. WE had a wonderful time on Saturday visiting with them – checking out the local arts festival, roasting corn for dinner, and Elena initiating both of them in the ‘why?’ phase of children. Chris and Melissa have a great yard and we just enjoyed hanging out catching up. It was so great to finally meet Melissa, she’s a great person (what did you expect?!) and to see Chris again; we’ve really missed living near Chris. In August, they are off to Portland to start jobs with a wind power firm, Melissa to do site analysis and Chris to work on engineering turbines.




And in the morning, we were off for the rest of the drive to Red Camp. Thankfully it was much shorter than the drive to Amherst.

Very Very Busy

As the Sandra Boyton song would say...we are very very busy.

Jake and I have been all over Blacksburg and Christiansburg. Mom leaves tomorrow. We are hoping to head out Friday morning for our first family road trip in years up the coast with a stop off to see our dear friend Chris Elkinton.

Elena had her first visits to school. Yesterday momma, poppa, and Elena went to check out the 'orange room' where she will be. Instead of being the oldest, she is now the youngest and the concentration of children her own age and aggressive young boys was a little shocking to all of us. Elena played matchbox cars and make tape roads with the other kids, then she scooted off to the well equipped play kitchen while I got a tour of the room from little Jordan. Her favorite things were the kid sized (not for gu-dtls - her speak for 'adults') water fountain in the sink and the blue berry pancakes that were served for snack. Jake and Elena went back today to participate in 'recess' - where the even bigger blue room was out on the playground. We are experience reverse culture shock....the gender roles and violent/cartoon play is common, I'm sure, but we've been quite isolated. I suppose we can't keep elena as such forever. Never fear for her safety or situluation - this is one of the top ranked programs in the nation, the teachers all have BS or masters degrees. But I guess the commercialization is hard to combat.

Elena took is all in very well and is of course adapting much more quickly than we anticipate (or than we are?). It's been a great help to have Gram here to know that she is always being very well taken care of (read spoiled rotten - gram arrived with a bag full of presents and distributes several a day). And Jake and I have really enjoyed the support.

As for the lists - the 'spare' room is now carpeted, we have a desk and chair, a car (of course), and are getting our accounts in order (lets play how many check books and accounts in different countries/institutions can Erin and Jake have).

Mean while, of course, Jake is dealing with office rennovations (as am I, but I've got less to say about it) and I've got a proposal. Two weeks on the lake is sounding pretty good. And so does the road trip - we have a handy jack in our Rav4 that plugs the ipod into the stereo and power! - we'll be blasting Bruce the whole way!

'Camping' with gram in the house.


Gram and Elena at the local library (of course!)

Evening in Blacksburg

We took the new car out for it's first family spin this evening. We went to an open air concert in the park (every Friday in the summer). A cajun band from Lynchburg was play (who knew...), they were fun. We sat on a blanket in the nice evening air (about 85 degrees), ate pulled pork sandwhiches and took in our new town. Elena observed the local inhabitants and toward the end of the evening even approached one girl to share her dutch licorish (would have loved to see that face - american kids aren't raised on that kind of stuff, that's for sure) but she turned her town and elena backed off, too shy to play.





One week ago we were having our last dinner in Utrecht at Chez Willy's - tonight pulled pork on the VT lawn....
we live just alittle while, then every thing much change, it might get better, it might get worse...
...it never stays the same....

That's right, Bob, A NEW CAR!!!

It was a tough decision. The final two cars in our showcase showdown where the Subaru Outback and the Rav4 (the Equinox and CRV didn't make the cut after test drives). So, today Jake and I bought our first new car. It was the blind leading the lame, but thanks to copious internet research and our use of an extensive new network (car insurance agents, bank loan officers - all so nice and helpful!) it actually wasn't too bad. It helped that our sales man picked up right away (or never was - we couldn't tell) 'high pressure' or we'd have been headed for the hills. He was very patient and let us test gravel roads - perhaps a no, no from the manager - but eh. Our inability to decided demanded a return 'with the whole family' and we stuck the car seat into both vehicles and made Gram get in the back seat, too. (she was very brave to come on to a car lot with us).

Over lunch at Wendy's (right next to the car dealership, we suspect bugged to the managers office at the dealership next door), we negotiated between ourselves - Jake was behind the Outback, loving the 'driving experience,' I was behind the Rav4 loving the larger passenger compartment. The necessity of car seats (soft of required by law you know, and we do like our kid a lot) won out and we are now the proud owners of a 2007 4 wheel drive Rav4 in 'evergreen' (I quickly nixed black and white options).



Jake is still mourning the outback a bit - I told him we wouldn't be about Pennsylvania in a week. The buying experience was not too bad. It wasn't as 'sleezy' as we expected; got what we felt like was a fair price. And then felt like we were stealing the thing when we saw how low VA taxes, etc are. (guess living in CA and the Netherlands was good for setting your tax bar high -- welcome to rural Virginia! the insurance agent said when we saw how little it would cost to insure our brand new vehicle, almost half as much as the Jeep in Santa Cruz cost).

Frankly, I'm in shock, I can't believe that such a huge thing is marked off our list and that the shiny, detailed, brand new car in the driveway is ours. I think that the arrival of the monthly payments will help!

Cable guys, mass consumerism, and Camp Gram

In no small feat of my own determination to wait on hold at comcast for nearly 5 hours over 24 hours...we now have cable. It's a long story...and it isn't quite over yet (especially my angry call to customer service that is forth coming). We do not have a phone details. Atleast we are doing it all in dutch, eh.

We have frantically been driving from Kmart to Sears to Lowes to Penny's to Target to Home Depot scratching off items from our never ending list. How did we ever survive in Utrecht, we can't leave the house without filling our car up. Of course, Utrecht was a furnished apartment, towels, pillows, sheets, kitchen supplies, it all add up.

Our house is pretty cute (pictures later). At first we were a bit annoyed because it was dirtier than we expected, even though the kitchen is recently remodeled - according to Jake there was a vat of grease under the burners. And the basement 'third bedroom' is well, generously called a bedroom. But the walls are not white, but nice shades of butter, green, yellow, and purple (elena's room). There is a yard filled with fire files. The house is a bit drafty with lots of screens that let bugs in.

Today Jake and I test drove two cars (subaru outback and chevy equinox) while Elena was at 'Camp Gram.' They went to kroger where elena got to 'drive the car' while eating grapes. The other big hit is the play ground.



We are progressing to a civilized life.

From eating on the floor


To eating take out at a table


To eating 'real food at a table. We even made hotdogs for 4th of July.

We Made It!

Our travels were remarkably smooth, just very long. Elena did great. We arrived in Blacksburg around 10pm on Saturday and fell asleep exhausted. Today was spent seeing our rental and throwing money out of our wallets as fast as we can at mattress stores and Target. Have car, must fill with stuff; isn't that the American way? Gram arrives tomorrow. Our lists are long, but we have a map of the area now. Tonight we had burgers and fries for dinner and then walked around the Duck Pond of the Tech campus.

Here are a few photos from the journey - none of Blacksburg yet...but it's green, and beautiful, and there are mountains!

Leaving Utrecht - we were crammed into the taxi, elena was holding her backpack on her lap, as was I, the hanging bag was wedged between us, the stroller was on top of me, Jake had his bag at his feet. But we made it...7 checked bags and 5 carryons, plus jackets and zippy the wonder stroller.


And this wasn't even our checked luggage.


Eventually in Cincinatti (on our 5 hour layover) Elena crashed, fall asleep in the resturant booth at dinner.



Elena is doing great - she's been a real trooper, hasn't even melted down or had a tantrum really. A few things we like so far - everyone is just so friendly, people are really nice, always saying hi, etc. and there are giant glasses of water filled with ice FREE in resturants! And we found local dairy milk in the grocery store. But the mountians and topography are the best!