All good things must come to an end.......so they say...
I always have a little trouble with that one, with the 'must' part that is, but they all seem to do and so did this one.


Anouk baked me a delicious farewell cake, so sweet, she's quite the pastry chef!
Isn't it a beauty?

After all goodbyes were said and done my mam brought me to the airport and following a much, much smoother flight this time around I was reunited with my hubby James once again at Portland International Airport.


Back at the RV I was happily greeted by my 2 furry babies although I doubt they realize I was gone that long; 1 hour or 14 days they're just always happy to see you aren't they!
I sure missed them though!
After some unpacking it was heaven to crash for a little on my very own bed since I felt like a zombie.
They say it takes you a day per hour of time difference to get back into your 'old' rhythm again so in my case it will take me 9 days!
I've learned over the years to just give in to it and take short naps whenever I'm tired during the day but I immediately try to at least pick up my normal bedtime routine even though I might not feel sleepy.

                                                                        

That being said the next day I actually took a complete day off and stayed in bed for most of the time. Well, actually, it was more on bed instead of in, which makes it a little less bad?
I figured since I'm never sick, let's knock on wood, I miss out on all those sick days so I was entitled to some.
Well, I have to say, I loved it. It's probably much nicer doing this without actually being sick so you can actually enjoy it! I read and napped and nibbled on some cookies, had lots of hot tea and read and napped and had some more cookies, etc...etc....
Merlin snuggled up with me, he thought it was a great idea!


On Friday we attended a farewell dinner party for Bethany and Brian who will pack up and take their precious little boy Lincoln and leave us for Washington DC where they're going to live for 6 months after which they will move to Florida for another 3 YEARS!
We all wish them the best and are happy for them to have such a nice opportunity and start of a great future together but we're sure going to miss them!
I bet Doug and Brenda have their next vacation destinations planned already. As for us we might actually pay them a visit in a year or 2 when we arrive in Florida!

At least we will have one baby remaining! Katie brought Leila to the party and both kids were off course handed over to (almost) all women attending. Lots of cooing and smiling and rocking was had by all.
Look at these two snuggle-bugs, aren't they adorable!

One of the things I had to accomplish while I was in Holland was to get a new passport.
I could have done this at an embassy or consulate in the states but since a new dutch policy now requires fingerprints to be taken this cannot be done in every one yet and this meant I would have had to go all the way to San Francisco!
Unfortunately, as a dutch-person-living-abroad the only place you can get one in Holland is in The Hague (and a few cities along the eastern border with Germany), which is about 2 hrs from where I am staying, and you have to both apply and pick up in person.
Both times my Mam and sister, who had taken a week off from work, travelled with me and we took the opportunity after completing the official part of the journey(s) to do some sightseeing.

The first time we went by train since they expected the roads to be icy throughout the country and perhaps even some more snow coming.

In The Hague we visited the 'Binnenhof ', a complex of buildings that houses the House of Representatives, the lower but more important of the dutch democratically elected Houses of parliament. We took a guided tour and also visited the 'Ridderzaal' where the Queen holds her annual speech at Prinsjesdag.

Neither of us had ever seen the inside of these buildings, not even my sister who has seen almost everything noteworthy in Holland, and we all thought it was very interesting.

Three days later I could pick up my passport, yahoo!!

Lotte decided to join us (what a nice surprise that she still wants to hang out with her old and boring aunt) and since we went by car this time we could detour a little easier on the way back. So after having lunch at IKEA, and as usual ending up buying all kinds of stuff we really weren't going to get at all, we visited the little fishing town of Volendam.





Volendam is a popular tourist attraction in the Netherlands, well-known for its old fishing boats and the traditional clothing still worn by some residents; as a matter of fact you can have your picture taken in those clothes but since we're not Japanese we off course didn't do such a silly thing!
This time only my mam and niece had never been here but it's a cute little town worth seeing again so we wandered around for a while until the cold wind forced us back in the car and back home.

Although the snow melted quickly after the wind switched to the West it stayed very cold and very windy for the rest of my stay.
Nothing out of the ordinary for a dutch winter and a perfect time to snuggle up with hot chocolate and some good pastries and work on a big jigsaw puzzle with my mam or visit family and have some
delicious meals together that last all evening while drinking wine and catching up on each others lives.

I especially enjoyed spending time with my nieces Lotte and Babet who all of a sudden have changed from the cute little girls they were into real persons (but still cute off course) with surprising and interesting opinions and both with a wicked dry sense of humor!



                                                   

All of a sudden it was Tuesday and I found myself on a rather rough flight to Amsterdam. Fortunately the plane was only half full and even before the plane was in the air I had abandoned my isle seat and claimed 3 free chairs in the middle row so I could actually lay down and stretch out.
I didn't have the illusion that I might fall asleep because I never can but it's so much nicer to at least lay down instead of sitting up all the time.
The movies 'Money Ball' and 'Jane Eyre' offered some distraction from the horrible turbulence but at times like these I do a lot of praying and bargaining with whomever is in charge up above! Probably pretty useless
since I don't have any credit there but just in case I give it a try.

I made it safely to the other side of the pond and arrived in a very wintry Holland. Coming down in the plane I had a beautiful view of the snow covered fields,  frozen canals and white rooftops of the towns below.
There was even talk of the possibility that Hollands famous 11-city skating tour was going to be held but unfortunately the ice never made it to the 15 cm needed for such an event before it started to thaw again.
Too bad, it would have been fun since the last one was held some 25 years ago and it's a spectacle involving the whole country for days.

On Friday the 10th of February my niece Anouk married her Bert on a freezing cold but beautiful sunny day. The wintry landscape made for the most unique wedding pictures!
She was a beautiful and radiant bride, I don't think she ever stopped smiling and Bert looked adorably nervous and beaming with pride at the same time. I'm so happy for them, they have overcome so much together, I hope they live 'happily ever after'.

There was a great party afterwards!!
                                

                                                                        



The next couple of days I took it easy to recuperate from the flight and the wedding, visiting my sister, drinking a lot of coffee and eating too much pie.
I stayed with my Mam who lives in an apartment on the 3rd floor, right on top of the major shopping area in town so every now and than we went downstairs and checked out the 'sales' and did some grocery shopping. The variety in the dutch supermarkets is incredible, I do miss the delicious dairy and all the 'dutch' stuff, the spices, mixes and pastries and the fantastic breads!
There's a weekly Saturday market that sets up right under her window that is fun to watch from above and also provides wonderful stuff like fresh fish, vegetables and great dutch cheeses.





On Sunday I went skating with my niece Lotte. Unfortunately we only had one pair of skates but we made it work by taking turns an running along while the other was skating.
I had not skated for years and was a little rusty but after a while it came back to me and I managed to go a few rounds without falling on my butt or worse like breaking a leg!






People were skating everywhere in and around town on the canals. This is what a real dutch winter looks like!




                                       

                                                                                


After careful examination of the hazelnut trees I finaly managed to find the female flowers and since it is very difficult to find something 'picture-worthy' these days I'm happy to have at least these tiny little pink fringed buds to show.
On an early morning walk with Sadie we also discovered these little daffodil and tulip 'beginnings'.
As you notice, I'm almost willing it to be spring!



  


We finally made it to the Block House Cafe in Dayton for their famous cinnamon-roll pancakes.
Oh, man, if you evere find yourselves in this area you better not miss them! They're out of this world!

The swirl is just some butter/cinnamon/sugar syrup they squirt in a swirl on the batter in the pan. The batter rises sort of around it so the swirl stays intact. Just before serving another squirt of icing finishes of this 'masterpiece'.

m.....M......M!!!!!

The weather unexpectantly improved a lot over the weekend and with the RV blocking the wind we could even sit outside for a while on Sunday to soak up the sun!

James never sits still for too long so after a glass of wine he worked on making a few steps for Sadie to be able to climb in the truck a little easier .
Since the backseat is a little on the narrow side he also made a wide platform to place on top. Covered by a nice thick pillow she now has a bed fit for royalty and It's also a first class window seat!



                        

                                                     
                                                                                               

         

Look what happened to the filberts when I wasn’t looking! Or rather, when I couldn’t see them because of the torrential rains or impenetrable fog.

They sprouted flowers! Hazelnuts are one of the few trees that bloom and pollinate in the late winter before the leaves emerge. They have both male and female flowers on the same plant. The male flowers on a hazelnut are the long, yellow catkins you see in the pictures I took. The female hazelnut flowers are tiny red, purple flowers that are nearly hidden by the buds which I haven’t detected as of yet but I also couldn’t get too close to them so they might be there, I’ll have to look for them next time!

I must say it’s rather heartening to detect some spring-like signs in this miserable winter weather.

The field behind our rig shows the tiniest sprigs of something, I don’t have a clue what?

They sowed it in late October; maybe it’s just some winter grass to try to keep the soil from eroding. I can fully understand the need for something like that now!

I have only one more week of work ahead of me before I leave for Holland! Wow, time goes so fast. It’s time to go looking for a suitcase. I think we kept one but it might be kind of small for my bulky winter stuff. Since you can only take one suitcase for free these days I might borrow a carry-on from Doug. That should do it, I only go for 2 weeks after all and I don’t think I’m going to bring stuff back with me since it’s expensive for us over there!

James has painstakingly re-organized a couple of cabinets for his computer business. He neatly hang some tools on the inside walls, they're actually velcro'd-on,  and even installed a rope light to be able to see what he’s doing in there.

Our big (and heavy) copier and printer that is located behind the TV is finally going to bite the dust (that should lighten the load some) and in its place come a few shelves to hold client’s computers that are in for repair.

When all cabinets and drawers are closed you should not have the feeling you’re in a work shop, everything will be neatly hidden away.

James is almost done with the BBQ and will move on to pave the pathways and terrace with cobblestones.

I hope for him the rain will let up some!

Heavy rain and wind that slammed into Oregon and Southwest Washington caused a lot of damage and flooding in the Willamette Valley this week.
Some Portland-area roads flooded because of the Yamhill and Hood Rivers overflowing which even caused landslides in some hilly neighborhoods.

At the Park we found out where the low spots were; Sadie and I had to wade through some overnight developed lakes on our walks

During one of the storms one of the clamps we use to keep our awning from flapping broke and one of the Velcro straps got ripped off.

The wind gusts are pretty bad at times but the awning is kept firmly in place so far by the 2 pull straps we attached to the corners which are secured to the ground by heavy duty screw anchors. I know it’s a little risky but I do like it to have a dry ‘porch’ in front of the RV.

Saturday brought us once again to Doug for brunch. This time to celebrate Sarah’s and Bethany’s Birthdays which are both coming up this week.
As usual the food was delicious, leave it to the Hess’s to bring it on big time, and the girls had requested Blueberry Buckle to be the ‘birthday-cake’ afterwards.

We were all pretty much stuffed in the end!

                        

For Sunday we had planned a perfect rainy-day activity.

James is looking into doing some part-time work as a computer repair ‘geek’ so we had to move some stuff around in the RV to make room for him to set up ‘shop’.
We spent the whole day going through several of our cabinets to throw out things we had not touched in a year, scan more papers and throw them away afterwards and we also changed my work area into James’s and his into mine to give him a little more storage space that will put things behind doors and out of sight.

James is looking forward to a nice and dry ‘inside’ job after weeks of Oregon rain and mud.

Since practically everybody has a computer these days and almost everybody seems to run into problems with them on a regular base this seems to be a job with a future!
A local repair guy has agreed to take him under his wing for a while to ‘show him the ropes’ and advise him on what to get and what to read and study.
It looks like you don’t need too much equipment to do the basic repairs so it all will fit in the RV (with some pushing and shoving) and we can probably find clients wherever we go.

We’ll see how it will work out!



Easier said than done...

Yesterday morning we woke up to snow! They had predicted some on the Valley floor, and much more in the hills off course, but hey, they said that before and nothing came from it so I didn’t really believe it would.

Sure enough we had a thin dusting and it even snowed some more off and on over the morning. The temperature rose too though so it all melted pretty fast to a soggy mess.
James quickly tried to snap some pictures only to find out that the battery went dead after making only one! Great! One of these days we’ll get us a second one (if only they weren’t so ridiculously pricy!). Fortunately his Blackberry makes fairly decent ones if you don’t need to zoom in to much; the colors were a little off though.

                 

Merlin slept through all of it.

We forgot to bring the awning in the night before so it started to sag under the weight of the snow! All these things you have to think about! James went out to freeze his butt off by knocking the snow down and bringing the awning in while I made a sunday morning 'grand slam' to warm him up when he came back!

We also got some great news this week.

Since our plan is to go to Alaska this summer we had started to look for a workamping position since after Christmas.
On Monday we got a phone call from a hotel near the Denali Park in Alaska that saw our resume on Workampers.com and wanted to know if we would be interested in helping them over the summer.
In return for 60 hours a month, split however we want between the 2 of us, we get a free sight plus utilities and a $500 bonus if we stay for 3 months!
They need us for the office /front desk, driving a shuttle to the Park entrance and maybe some maintenance work. If we want we can work more for $10/hr but we’re not required to. They’ve hired one more couple.

Well, 60 hrs a month comes to only 7.5 per person per week, the work seems quite easy, the people sounded very nice and claim to be easy and laid back, the hotel is apparently a little away from the hectic of the park in a quiet and rural area and we’re right in the middle of the most beautiful nature in Alaska. Seems like a no brainer to me!

Alaska, here we come! (and yes, we will all sign a carefully detailed contract!)
It’s nice to have a place secured so we don’t have to worry about it anymore. So far we haven’t had any problems getting a job, something we weren’t completely sure about when we started this RV-adventure but it has worked out fine so far.

Now it became a lot more ‘real’ I immediately spent a couple of hours on the web to find out what we should see while we’re up there!

 

I also crossed off another item I had to do off my list this week. I’m on a roll here!

I bought a ticket to Holland for February where I’m going to visit my family and attend the wedding of my oldest niece in the meantime!
I’m excited to go, only a couple of weeks left! I’ll fly out of Portland on the 7^th and will come back on the 22^nd.  I fly with KLM, the Dutch Royal Airlines, which I really like and it is a direct flight so no layovers and hanging around for hours on an airport somewhere.
It’s insanely expensive these days to fly but there’s no alternative so what do you do? At least I earned the money for it myself this time by working for Doug so I feel a little less guilty to spend so much.

James is staying here and will finish the job at his brother and take care of the animals while I’m gone. I wish we both could go but we just cannot afford 2 tickets and still have enough for our drive to Alaska this spring. Oh well, we’ll survive!

Talking about work, he tiled the top of the outside kitchen-counters with help from Doug this Saturday. Very pretty!