Vacation Friday and Saturday (June 5-6): travel

 I was a bit of a nervous wreck leading up to vacation.  Thunderstorms were predicted to roll through the area right around the time that we were going to leave and I'm a bad pre-traveler.  Things were spotty all during the day and eventually we arrived at the airport.  (Besides worry about the weather, leaving in the evening is really nice!  It gave us the whole day to finish up packing and clean the house before leaving.)

Anyway, Ben had noticed that there was an earlier trip to Detroit and managed to get us on that one!  It was slightly delayed, but not by much, and we got out of Grand Rapids easily.  There was a bit of confusion as the gate agent changed our standby seats so that we were still all sitting together, which changed some other peoples' seats that had printed tickets, and it was a bit of a fiasco.  But we got out before the weather and landed in Detroit and my stress level immediately went back to normal.

We got to Detroit with plenty of time, so after a sit down dinner the kids and I rode the tram.  We rode a full loop of one tram.  Then realized that the other tram curved at the central station so we rode a full loop on that tram.  As Isaac then said, "I remember these being more fun."

The plane took a bit to clean, so we were once again delayed.  We were all so tired - it was after 10:30 and it had been a long day.  We eventually got on the plane.  Isaac and I rested right away, but I didn't sleep - my legs kept having issues.  They served a dinner (which Isaac ate some of - everyone else declined) and finally turned off the lights.  I managed to sleep for a bit under four hours, although it was rather interrupted sleep as Isaac and I kept moving around.  Poor Ben didn't sleep at all.

We still got to Amsterdam around the expected time, so we had plenty of time to make it through passport control.  This ended up being a rather good thing, because they are rolling out the new EES system and well, I'm not sure it was working at all.  I did not get fingerprinted.  Also, the line started out moving pretty well, and when we were two back-and-forths away it ground to a halt.  And then moved very, very slowly.  By this time we could see what was going on and there was a combination: several agents left on break, the officers were trying to get the shorter layover people through first, and some general confusion.  At one point the main line had no customs agents looking at our passports - all the agents were either doing the short layover or diplomatic passengers.  This is fine until it isn't - there were several families around us that had been ok on time until that point, but then they were so far ahead in the line that they got ignored...but our line wasn't moving.  I felt rather stressed for them, but we had time.  All in all, it took us 1.5hours to make it through.

Then we found some food!  Isaac and Joshua got what they thought were yogurt parfaits, but it was more of a cheesecake.  Joshua especially found this hilarious that his lunch was cheesecake.  Isaac was in rough shape before eating...I got back to our table after filling the water bottles to find Isaac just sitting there.  He had been on a mission to find spoons.

Amanda: did you find spoons?
Isaac: no. I'm hoping dad will come with some
Amanda: did you talk to Dad?
Isaac: I couldn't find him.

So, in summary, I went to find the spoons because Isaac's brain wasn't working.

We found our gate for our last flight and, surprise surprise, it was delayed too.  Again, not by much, but Ben's curse was active.  Since we had about two hours, Joshua and I went out to explore.  This is one of my favorite things to do with Joshua - he's always up for walking around new places to see what there is to see.  We went to concourse D, which was actually rather interesting.  You had to go up stairs to get to the concourse and there was also sky lounge 25.  If you went up more stairs you found sky lounges 26 and 27, one of which let you go on the roof.  The roof wasn't overly nice - just concrete squares - but there were some picnic tables and an airplane on display.  We also found some nice lounge chairs that we could have used, but they were rather busy.  We went up some other escalators and found a whole additional food court!  On our way back we went down some escalators to use some bathrooms.  They were the standard bathrooms in the airport, but the odd thing was that the door handles looked like that should turn but were really just push/pull type.  I and another woman both bonded over having issues, only to find out that Ben had similar issues at a different bathroom unit.

We finally got to board and we loaded through the back of the plane.  I feel like I've done this once or twice, but it ended up being a very common thing in Europe.

Denmark is flatter and more full of farms than I imagine in my mind.

We got to our hotel around 6:30pm (ish) local time.  Our first hotel had a ramp for luggage, but it was a rather steep ramp and didn't work all that well.

Then we went over to Lalandia, a waterpark thing like Great Wolf Lodge, to just check it out and get dinner.  On the way, we found a playline on the sidewalk!  There were dots all along the edge and sometimes they were close together and sometimes they were farther apart.  Both kids enjoyed jumping/walking on them.

We walked around a bit, looked in the little grocery store, and ordered some pizza.  I also picked up some strawberries from the store and they were delicious.  On our way back we stopped at the outdoor exercise spot near our hotel.  The weather was nice and the kids had a ton of energy to burn.

And that was the end of the day!  Everyone was ready for bed.  Ben fell asleep first around 9pm with Isaac and Joshua close behind.  I took a shower and then fell asleep easily.

Saturday: Cheryl's birthday

After dinner to celebrate Cheryl's birthday, we went home for cake and presents.  That was normal - nice to be with family and almost everyone was there.

Then a few boxes of old papers were brought out.  For Ben, it was mostly boring stuff...some transcripts, some awards, some information for entering Hope.  For Travis, it also included a lot of elementary through high school items.  Isaac couldn't stop laughing over one of the books that he had written:

While this isn't quite the correct words, here they are as best we could remember: "The space ship goes up into space.  And all of a sudden.  / Bullets was shooting at the spaceship.  Everybody died. Nobody was controlling./down down down. All of a sudden.  The spaceship crashed."

Friday: pickleball, eggplant

This morning we played, er, tried-to-play, pickleball with Cheryl this morning.  We're not very good, but we were able to hit the ball back and forth several times.  It was also a beautiful morning, so it was nice to be outside.

Yesterday I got all the laundry cleaned and sorted...five baskets full.  I managed to put all my laundry away and the kids have a bit of leeway.

Today I also got the kitchen cleaned...for about thirty minutes.  I started making strawberry jam after it was clean.  Isaac saw me chopping the strawberries in my 4c measuring cup and it ended up with me saying, "I'm trying to chop them more so that I can get shrink the volume to 4c."  He found that hilarious and the next minute or so was just laughter.  We ended up putting the extra strawberries on some extra donuts and it was delicious.

I didn't actually finish making the jam today because it was time to get dinner started.  One of Joshua's goals for the summer is to get more and different vegetables in our diet, so for tonight he chose eggplant.  We ended up with some baked eggplant discs.  They weren't amazing, but for vegetables they were pretty good - they seemed just like crunchy discs.  However, we then found out that eggplant doesn't have a ton of health benefits so it isn't the best vegetable (but any vegetable is better than no vegetable.)

Tuesday: outdoor rock climbing

Isaac got a gift to go outdoor rock climbing for his birthday.  The weather this week has been beautiful and so we ended up doing a last minute trip on Tuesday.  We went to Grand Ledge, which is about 1.5 hours east of Holland.  There is one ledge maybe .25-.5 miles long available to climb, but it's a great option for something close by.

We started on the nose.  It was an interesting spot because you could go up the middle (flake), the left side, or the right side and they all climb differently.

This was my second climb and I really wanted to use the nice step that my left foot is in...so I did.

I like this one because it looks like I have skills - the foot holds aren't very visible.

Then we moved to the corner just to the right.  This was an interesting one because our guide, Chris, had never climbed it before.  It took me three tries, but Isaac got it on the first try.  Chris also got it on the first try and he just sailed right up it.  You can tell that he has climbed just a bit more than we have.

We took a break for lunch and then Chris set up three different ropes.  I only climbed the first one - I got to the top the first time and stalled out the second time.  Isaac climbed all three and then did the first one again.

Isaac wanted to climb one more place with a crack, so we moved over there for the last climb.  It looked hard and we were running out of time, so I didn't climb it.

Take-aways:
*The setting the anchors took a lot more time than we expected.  Perhaps if we had a plan at the beginning this could have been streamlined a bit since I can also belay, but we were there for several hours and had a bunch of good climbs, but not tons of climbs.  (This can be a bit of a positive thing too, as it could be easy to get too tired.)

*We would absolutely need more training (and gear) before rope climbing by ourselves outside, but now that I know where it is we could probably boulder by ourselves with just a bit of instruction.  That went from feeling overwhelming to possible.

*Isaac said he enjoyed it more than he expected.

*The time flew by - it is a lovely location with quite a bit of shade

Thursday: Sandy Pines

 We visited Uncle Lee and Aunt Susan today.  

We started with mini golf.  The kids were a bit crazy, but not too much.  There was one hole where Isaac said he was going to go over the edge, through the wood chips, and then back on the green.  And then he did it!  It was almost a hole in one too, but he didn't quite get that.

Then we went on the ropes course.  We weren't on it for very long, but it's a fun course!

And we ended with lunch, ice cream, and a short drive around in the golf cart.  It was lovely to catch up with them, as normal.

Wednesday: life

While we're slowing getting over our jet lag, it is taking evey one a while.  I, not having a nap yesterday, went to bed at 9:30pm.

We visited a new playground today.  Joshua does love his playgrounds and it was kind of the only time this week it would work.  We snuck there between rain.  The kids enjoyed it, but the overall rating was just ok.  (I thought it was going to be quite a bit higher.)  It was a mix of natural playground and normal playground elements.

I went to get groceries after nap time.  It was a big trip, but we needed a lot of things.

I still haven't finished unpacking or laundry from the trip.  Well, all the laundry is clean and half has been sorted.  The kitchen is..a mess.  I keep trying to catch up, but it's summer time and there are so many fun things to do!  I did get the groceries put away, so I consider that a win.

Monday: strawberries

After all having eye appointments, we went strawberry picking.  The picking was only ok.  Even the end of the rows had a lot of moldy strawberries, so not only did we need to find strawberries but we also needed to make sure they were it decent condition.  Between the three of us we ended up with two buckets, more than I was expecting, but not as much as I was hoping.