Krista's Family Christmas

Every year my mom's side of the family gets together for a family Christmas... and I'm always amazed at how big our family is!

It was really nice to see everyone, especially since the big snowstorm last year kept us from getting together. Here are a couple of highlights from the day:

The whole family

My Mom and Auntie Kim

My nephews Wyatt and Taj with their new Nerf guns

Brian and Mike

- Krista

Cottage Grove Visit

I can't believe how fast Christmas has zoomed by... it feels like yesterday that I landed in Portland, but today we landed in Amsterdam and are on our way to Berlin tomorrow for New Year's.

I have a million pictures/stories to post, but I figured I'd go chronologically, so I'll start with our visit to Cottage Grove to see Molly & Mike... which was great of course! We had a very relaxing time - were forced to stay inside most of the time because of the rain, but we found ways to entertain ourselves and went into Eugene one night which was fun.

It was nice to see them as always, though we were sad we couldn't see the rest of Brian's family (if only they would invent a teleport machine, traveling would be so much easier!).

Here are a few photos from the visit:

Molly, Mike & Brian on the morning before we left

Brian and I opening presents

Molly, Mike & I on a walk during a rain break

More to come soon! Happy holidays to everyone!

- Krista

Christmas Cookies

One of my favorite things about Christmas is making Christmas cookies with my Mom - we've been making them ever since I was a tiny little kid (I put wayyyy more frosting on them back then).

This year, we went over to my sister's and had some help from my nephews, Braxton and Wyatt. They're pretty cute kids! I couldn't believe they stayed focused frosting cookies for over two hours - I could have never done that as a child.

Here are a few pictures of our day:

The boys and I

Our strange looking gingerbread women

Kena & the boys

- Krista

Cyclocross

I've been in the Portland area for almost a week now, and have thoroughly enjoyed my visit so far (aside from fighting a cold for the first few days... airplanes are such a hub for germs!). Brian doesn't get here until tomorrow, so I've spent my time Christmas shopping, relaxing and spending lots of time with my family. It's been great.

Last Sunday I went with my Dad and brother to a cyclocross race, my first ever. If you've never heard of cyclocross, take a quick look at this Wikipedia page on the subject - it's a pretty cool sport.

Todd's race started at 8:00 am, so we had to get there bright and early - it was also absolutely frigid outside (around 20 degrees), so my Dad and I were all bundled up and trying to stay warm while Todd was on the racing track. It was a lot of fun though, and I'm excited to watch again next year.

(Or maybe next time I could actually race... we'll see.)

Here are a few photos from the morning:

Todd freezing in his bike shorts before the race

Todd racing

- Krista

Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s hard to believe Thanksgiving has already come and gone and now we’re on to the Christmas holidays. Where does the time go between summer and Christmastime?

We had a nice Thanksgiving, though of course we missed being with our friends and family. Last year we got together with some American friends in Amsterdam, but this year no one was doing anything so we decided to make our own dinner.

It was quite a feast, but I kept having this distinct feeling that any non-vegetarians or veggie sympathizers would laugh at us. Our meal consisted of:

• Tofu and asparagus stuffed red peppers (Brian’s creation)
• Brussels sprouts (recipe courtesy of my sister)
• Winter pear salad
• Garlic mashed potatoes (the most traditional thing on our menu)
• Chocolate cake, American style (Brian had been craving this for ages…)

Here are a few photos so you get the idea:

Hope you all had a wonderful, delicious Thanksgiving.

Next up: Christmas in the States!

- Krista

Sinterklaas Day

The start of the holiday season began this weekend in the Netherlands and Sinterklaas, the Dutch version of Santa Claus, made his annual trek through the streets and canals of Amsterdam (more about Sinterklaas and and his helper Zwarte Piet on my side blog).

I don't know how many of you saw the Daily Show this week, but there was a segment about white people dressing up in blackface and how there's just no excuse for it anymore. As the commentator, Larry Willmore said, "here's when blackface is okay: when you have a black face!"

Yet every year, thousands of Dutch children and adults dress up in blackface on the third weekend in November as part of the Sinterklaas holiday. Dutch people claim Zwarte Piet is black because he fell down a chimney and that it's not racist at all - but of course most of the expats don't buy this.

I took a few pictures so you could get some idea of how big of a deal this holiday is to Dutch people. I honestly wish I could have sent these to the Daily Show before their segment (they ran it the week before so of course this wouldn't have been possible), because I'm amazed at how unknown this holiday is throughout the world.

These are all white people:







A bit shocking, right?

- Krista

Museum night #2

It's hard to believe we've been here over a year already, but we actually made it to our second Museumnacht this weekend.

If you don't remember from last year - and trust me, I don't expect you to - Museum night happens one time a year in November and is where over 40 of the city's museums open their doors until 2 a.m. with special exhibits and events. It's a really cool thing, and I'm glad we got to go again even though we missed our friends Andy and Elyse, who we went with last year (see last year's post here).

Even though it was just us, we ended up having a really good time. We went to four museums, the science museum NEMO (the Dutch equivalent to OMSI), a replica of a Dutch East India Company ship from the 14th century (complete with pirates and everything!), the Hortus botanical gardens, and the Hermitage Museum, the newest museum in Amsterdam showing Russian Tsars from the 19th century.

All in all it was a great night, and everything was interesting, but I think my favorites were NEMO (I'm definitely going back - I love science stuff!) and the ship.

Here are a few highlights from the night:

Brian holding some foaming cocktails at the science museum

Brian making a weird robot face in front of Elektra, who is supposedly the largest humanoid robot in Europe

Together on the ship replica

Brian laying on the crew's beds - that guy in the background was surprised to be in the photo!

- Krista

Cousin Nick comes to visit

We had a pleasant surprise this weekend - my cousin Nick took a detour to Amsterdam to see us while visiting his friend in Germany. It was really nice to see him, and Brian and I had a great time showing him around the town for a night.

Plus, it was nice to have our first visitor, even though our house was still filled with boxes! We can't wait to have more people visit soon.

Here's a photo of the cousins:

At the bagel shop before his train left Saturday morning

- Krista

New house pictures x3

Ok, I promised some pictures, and here they are (well, a few rooms at least). I don't really feel like the pictures do the house justice though... maybe I'll post some more once we actually get a sunny day around here!

This is a view of our dining/living room (the kitchen is on the left)

A closeup of our living area


The light is terrible in this picture, but you can see our kitchen on the back right

Our bedroom - it's small, but not as small as it looks here with all the boxes and Rocket's crate in the photo

- Krista

New house pictures x2

One of the things that really sold us on our new place was that it had a private, completely enclosed and reasonably large park. It's absolutely gorgeous out there, and Rocket has been really enjoying our walks and soccer games in it this past week. And the best thing is that there's hardly anyone else out there!

We anticipate spending a lot of time there, especially next summer!

A few photos below:

The grassy area is great for games of fetch and soccer with Rocket

The other side of the park, it goes back for a little bit with nice paths and scattered benches


Rocket found an abandoned football in the bushes today - she was so happy about it!

- Krista

New house pictures x1

I've gotten a few complaints that we haven't put any pictures up of our new house yet, so I'm sorry I've been so slow about it. We've had a few more moving complications than we'd hoped to have, and as a result our place is not yet fully put together, although it's starting to look more and more like a home. We're going to give it a final push this weekend and then I promise I will get more photos up!

For now, here are a few pictures of our tiny little yard:

Rocket loves it out there! We can't wait to get the fence all built and a little doghouse for her so she can spend more time outside.


The yard looks slightly bigger in this photo - once we actually spruce it up a little bit, it's going to be a great spot for summer BBQs!

Fishstick likes to watch us from our bedroom window - sometimes he joins us outside too, though of course it makes me a little nervous since he's always been an indoor cat.

We've been trying hard to build a fence this week to keep Rocket inside - hopefully it will be finished this weekend.

Gardening tips, anyone? I want to make this place nice so we can spend a lot of time outside next summer!

- Krista

Sara the dog

I wanted to take a quick break from European-related activities and pay a quick tribute to my dog Sara, who died last week at almost 13 years old.

I got Sara when I was in third grade and she was a big part of my life. She was also just about the sweetest, most polite dog I've ever met. She will be missed.


- Krista

Rocket and Fishstick's big adventure

We had quite a scare last night - both our cat and our dog escaped out the back door of our new home. While this may not seem like a big deal to most of you with yards and fences, neither of our animals have ever been outside on their own before (Fishstick has never been outside at all, and Rocket has only been out on a leash), so we didn't know if they would know how to get back, especially since we just moved to a new place a few days ago.

Here's what happened:

Fishstick feigned a fake escape out the back door, then during his getaway, Rocket slipped outside. When we realized Rocket was gone after about a half an hour or so, we went to look for her and that's when Fishstick made his real escape. I went to look for Fishstick in the morning and realized he had been outside the entire night, running around the park by our house. I think they were working together, those rascals!

We're just glad they came back - we would have felt terrible if we lost both our animals because we couldn't figure out how to properly shut the doors!

Mischievous cat...

And our funny/curious dog

By the way, I plan on writing a children's book with the title of this blog post someday.

- Krista

Move #4

I honestly can't believe we're now living in our fourth house in Amsterdam.

Yes, we moved this week... again. We've now lived in two temporary places (each for about a month), and two more permanent places.

When we last moved, we had absolutely no intention to move in Amsterdam ever again. But then, things changed. We got a dog, got sick of the five flights of stairs, and wanted to be a little closer to the city. So here we are, in our fourth Amsterdam home.

The move was interesting, to say the least. Unsurprisingly, not everything went as planned, and we had a few hangups with our new place. But, we're here, our old place is almost vacant, our new place only has one corner filled with our landlord's stuff, and so far as I can tell nothing is broken (except for a couple of legs on our TV stand...). Now on to the unpacking...

Here are a couple of photos of the move, more posts/photos/stories to come soon.

Boxes have been a major source of entertainment for the animals during this whole thing

Neither Brian or I understand how we've accumulated so much stuff... (it all had to go out that window!)

The elevator/ladder was 55 feet long, and barely made it to our window

Everything had to go on that little platform. Luckily nothing fell off!

- Krista

Acrophobia

Last weekend Brian convinced me to take a ride on the Ferris Wheel at the constantly reappearing Dam Square carnival. This was the view:
I guess it was pretty high up!

- Krista

The Dutch countryside

While on my way to drop off and pick up Rocket from her new kennel just south of Amsterdam, I walked through an incredibly gorgeous part of the Dutch countryside (I ended up doing a lot of walking on this trip, one of the downsides of not having a car).

Both times ended up being beautiful, slightly crisp, fall days, and it made me wonder what it would be like to live in the Dutch countryside. Everything seemed so luxurious - being able to have a car, a huge yard for our dog, an actual house - what a life!

But I know it's not right for us right now. We love to be able to walk and bike places too much, and even though these places weren't really that far out (it did take me 2 and a half hours to walk home, but it would be a much shorter bike ride), we still like being right in the middle of the city.

I can still visit though!

This bird was just sitting perfectly on an old bike... picturesque maybe?

This house seemed nice...

Rocket loved this long path by the river

- Krista