Wow, was May a month full of joy!  With the season turning to Springtime, we have had loads of fun showing friends around the city & taking adventures to sunny places!  We had an entire week of acting like the tourists that we still are when our friends from Boise & Tahoe came to visit.  They each rented great apartments & bikes so they got into the local scene with us & checked out all the best waffles, belgian beer pubs, restaurants, museums, parks, pancake houses, running circuits, rooftop parties, friendly expats, trains, trams & taxis that this city has to offer.  I think we had just as much fun as they all did & there are hundreds of photos to prove it.  Our kids could not have been more excited to hang out with Jay & Alexandra, chatting about life here vs. at home & even giving them a quick tour of their school & friends at pickup.  Jay even did a drop-in art class with me one day, impressing all the grown-ups with his drawing skills.  Celebrating a lot of birthdays this month also added to the revelry so we had to do double workouts just to keep from exploding!

The last week of the month was a school break so we took a quick flight to Barcelona to soak up the sun & do some exploring.  Sabrina & Kai are friends with two sisters who happen to have very cool parents who were spontaneous & decided to help us celebrate Sabrina's birthday in Barcelona with us at the spur of the moment!! My kind of people!!  We had such a lovely time staying at the W Hotel where everything is fun & relaxed.  The restaurants we tried were fantastic & usually involved tapas, seafood, cured meats & delicious desserts.  There was a honey-dribbled roasted eggplant dish I am still dreaming about!  I should have taken a picture of that so I could try to re-create it...

Well we are coming around to the final weeks here & I always have so many things on my mind that I want to share on the blog.  It will be tough as June & July are going to also be super busy with friends coming here & us going off to a few more places but I shall try & sit down with a few parting thoughts!  If anyone reads the blog & wants to know more in-depth how things have worked out, feel free to message us.  The experience has been one that we will be thinking about & talking about forever, with I'm sure the most important insights yet to be uncovered...

Until next time, enjoy the pictures of Barcelona we just posted!  !Adios!

So April flew by in a flash.  Clearly we made the most of the kids' school break by taking off for Turkey with Bryan's dad & hopefully you have had a peek at some of the photo albums of Istanbul, Ortakoy & Antalya.  What an amazing trip that was.

As soon as we returned from "Spring Break" (otherwise known as three and a half weeks of no school!?!!),  the weather seemed more agreeable here in Holland and, even though it still rains quite often, the chill is mostly out of the air.  We do find gusty winds come & go, but I love not having all my sweater layers, my boots, scarves, gloves & hats on or at least with me every time I leave the house, just in case of a freezing storm.   A scarf is still needed on some days, but I've always been a scarf girl. 😀

Kai made the best observation today.  At first it won't make any sense but I'll fill you in...  he said, "Mom, do you think if we didn't have a hot tub, we wouldn't have come to Amsterdam??"  I'm laughing at the way that sounded but I was able to connect the dots & I knew instantly what he meant. 

The backstory: at our house in Tahoe, I am obsessed with being in the backyard.  Reasons include: (a) I love being outside & staring at the huge trees (b) our house is quite small & our yard is quite big & I suppose I'm a bit claustrophobic (c) the dogs can run around & be with us (d) feeding everyone meals outside keeps my dining room clean (e) sitting around the firepit with a glass of wine means I'm OFF DUTY & will not be answering client calls, creating invoices, fixing meals, doing housework, doing computer or paperwork or driving anyone around...

Yes, there's a lot of miscellaneous reasons why I'm obsessed with the backyard which has the BBQ, hot tub, firepit, our camper (in which the kids love to have mini parties & sleepovers), a little playground that the kids still use and a grassy patch for the dogs & the beanbag toss game.   But the most important reason, the thing I tell my kids when they are always asking me "Mom, why do you always want us to come out back with you??" is that when we are out back, we are all together & we are away from our normal stuff (read: 'SCREENS') and distractions.   I mostly love the hot tub that I literally begged for because it is NOT POSSIBLE to use electronics in a hot tub!!  We are all forced to sit together and TALK.  We have had so many family meetings & awesome discussions in the hot tub & this is what Kai was referring to this morning.  We had many chats about what kind of adventure we were looking for & what it would be like.  It is pretty thrilling to look back at those days & realize our chats were not just talk but the making of a plan.

When Kai asked me about the hot tub, I asked him back, "Well, what about the camper?  We made our final decision to go away while on a camping trip..."  This lead to the discussion of all our little family traditions including the camper, camping, skiing & the hikes we love to do. He & I were both just reminiscing & it got me thinking that this is really why I love being in the backyard.  Sort of like here in Amsterdam, in our little tiny apartment & without a car or lots of other distractions, we are trapped together!!🤭

I have had a few good friends ask me in the past how is it that our family is so close & how do we find time to be together.  I have to attribute it to our mutual love of some of these simple pleasures.  I don't think anyone needs to own certain things like a hot tub or a camper or any material item to make their own family close.  All I think it takes is to find that thing that brings you out of your house where all the other distracting things are.  We surely do fight and of course we realize that these kids are going to slowly drift off to their friends' houses & out on the town more & more as we hit the teen years.  However, I'm lucky I can say that we have been able to have this year here in the tiny apartment, spending ALL our time together without killing each other so far & we all still love each other's company.

Bryan is a saint for making this whole thing happen.  He has beeing bearing the burden of taking care of business, doing all the travelling to & from his family as well as missing us while he is away.  Whenever he is here, it feels so great & we are really looking forward to the final weeks of this life abroad when he is going to be here more than he will be gone.  My appreciation for the hubby & dad that Bryan has been is off the charts.  I sure do hope the kids realize one day the sacrifice he made for them to have this experience!!

So, as I wrap up, I'll say thanks for reading & coming along on this journey with us.  Getting away from our normal life has been key to defining the important things in our family.  I hope we can use the insights brought to light by Kai & some of our other experiences to shape the way we live for years & years to come...

What is significant about March? No idea...  I just needed a headline.  So the accompanying picture shows you that we have both tulips & hail here in March.  We have enjoyed everything from crisp, cold & clear sunrise mornings to gorgeous, hot, sunny afternoons in the park to some really extreme wind & wet evenings biking home from the centrum.  Usually, these many extremes happen in the same day!  Makes getting dressed in the morning a super fun guessing game!!🤪

One would probably assume that since our family was so on-the-ball & got going on every conceivable piece of paperwork & visited every official office we could find as soon as we got here that we might have some official residency card or letter telling us "sure, you can stay!" by now.  Nee.  There have been some more funny "red-tape moments" for sure & I'll try to remember a few to relay here to our loyal blog readers, those who have been with us since the start & know some of the things that went on when we first got here...

Here's one that really made me laugh:

After receiving a letter in Dutch & google-translating it as best as I could, (the translations often do not make a lick of sense) I understood this letter (titled: "Request for Waiver" from: "Tax Authority") to be asking for our income information.  Who was requesting a waiver? Them? Me? Waive what? Huh??  I still have this letter & I should frame it because I have all my handwritten English translations on it & it is completely filled out to the best of my ability.  It even has a date stamp showing it had been received in their offices.  TWICE.  Yep, on January 27 & February 13 they received this letter back from me.  I would send it to them & they would send it back.  I would send it again (once even adding about 25 pages of backup bank statements) and they would send it back.  The two sentence cover letter would state that they do not have enough information.  OMG.  There was always a very serious-looking & imposing deadline as well...so I was on it!

So, around the time that this letter arrived in our mailbox a third time, I started receiving some other tax paperwork (which I will describe later) & I was fortunate enough to meet a tax professional who was willing to help me out (he's the Dutch father of my favorite Dutch server at my favorite cafe of all things!!?!).  He asked to see my bank statements & soon began to laugh!!!  What!?  He said, this is a request for the US equivalent of government assistance... like food stamps!  WHAAA??  I have been playing snail-mail tag for three months with the Dutch Tax Authority requesting financial assistance by proving how much money I have in the bank!!  Seriously, the people on the receiving end must have been having an office pool to see how many times they could get me to respond!!! 

Another interesting red-tape phenomenon occurs in the immigration office.  There seems to be a computer on each desk with a record of us in the system, but, there is apparently some sort of a black hole that drains events & info from their data.  After completing our complicated registration in October, we received letters indicating that we would have residency cards (or not!) by January 20th.  We have had "temporary resident" stickers in our passports that indicate our applications are in process.  Smart husband of mine looked at his sticker the other day & realized they EXPIRE in April... !  We had not heard anything from immigration so we decided that a quick pop-in to the immigration office would be a good idea before we leave the Netherlands in April for a tour of Turkey.  The folks were nice but each of the several I saw over the next couple days stared at their screens at one point or another with a quizzical look & uttered these words: "that's very strange".  I tried to keep calm & quiet, emulating what I've seen Bryan successfully pull off in the government agencies.  I would wait, answer briefly & see what would happen.  One asked if we had ever been in before (!!?) one asked if we had done any of the photos yet (!! UM YES !! )  all asked for my residency card (wait what? do you realize why I'm sitting here??) one wanted to know if I had "filed for an extension" presumably an extension of the residency card that we have not yet received!?!  whoa.  feeling a little Twilight Zone music coming on.  My friend Jordie had what I figure can be the ONLY explanation: they are trying to trip you up in some sort of lie!  I could not see any other reason for them to ask such circular & nonsensical questions.  They seem super bright & nice enough so it must be either the black hole theory or just standard procedure to flush out the weak & nervous.  I stood strong.  I received THREE (Bryan will get his own next week) new stickers in our passports, extending our "temporary" status until September.  Good 'nuff for me.

Lastly, we have received a very curious tax invoice, requesting that we submit a fairly significant sum to the tax authority.  When I met with my friend the tax professional, he was able to discern that The Netherlands finds that we owe sales tax for money we have transferred into our bank account here.  It does not appear to them to be a simple transfer of our own funds from our U.S. account to our Holland account but looks to them like client payments & we therefore must pay sales tax... Oh, this is a fun one to unwind!  We have responded with backup showing the debits on the US side, coinciding with the deposits on the Dutch side, hopefully removing doubt that we have indeed had no clients or customers as of yet here in Amsterdam.  I am going to bet that this is not the last we have heard on this topic!  During my tax appointment, I learned that each & every payment made by the Dutch is documented & annotated so that during analysis you can see what the payment was for.  I have never EVER left a restaurant or store here without being asked if I would like a receipt... & now I know why.  The sheer number of government staff they must have to actually review all the accounting of every individual must be staggering...

I apologize if this was a snooze-fest of a post!  I wanted to write it all down so I can remember it myself...and I have had some people ask me what kind of hoops countries make you jump through when you move abroad.  Most of the expats I've met here were moved to this city through work so these are not issues they are having.  If you decide to just hop a plane for no reason, like us, you might just prepare yourself!

One of the most reliable things about living the expat life in a city full of other expats is the guarantee that you will have a lot of conversations (with yourself, with other expats, with natives of your adopted country, with natives of the other countries you visit, with waiters & shopkeepers, with tourists...) about what you are doing here, how you like it & if you are going to be leaving with a heavy heart at the end of your stay.  It is so interesting to have a constant gut-check regarding your life & the choices you are making for yourselves & your kids.  I cannot say that in my everyday life while living in the U.S. that we were quite so often assessing & reviewing & discussing the things we were up to & the 'why' of it all.  Although it can indeed become rote when you answer the same questions fairly regularly, it never fails to gets you to stop & think for a bit.  Bryan & I  (& also the kids) spend a lot of time amongst ourselves talking through the adventure we are experiencing & the future that we visualize for our family unit.

The question that we most often answer is "How did you end up in Amsterdam?"  Now, I'm pretty sure that last summer we answered this question in almost the same exact way as we do now, & it turns out that it has held true that we selected the absolute PERFECT city for us.  As Bryan often puts it, "Amsterdam was the city that checked all the boxes on our wish list."  These basically included (1) abroad  (2) central to many intriguing places we wanted to visit (3) city living with no need for personal vehicle (4) ease of use with regard to language (5) sunny weather all year round.  (HAHAHA!! I wanted to see if you were paying attention!!  The weather is really quite fine for me & I have not had a single day where I longed for the snow of Tahoe - which is actually quite shocking considering how much I love to ski & snowshoe.  Taking a break from the past almost 20 years of shoveling was a good thing, especially since Tahoe turned out a pretty lousy ski season this year...)

So there really is something about Holland that I often want to describe but have trouble putting my finger on.  It is the... je ne sais quoi...the vibe, the comfortable coziness (I think we have already covered 'gezellig') of being in this place for an extended period of time.  I am not so naive as to think that I'm a local.  Far far from it!  Sure, yes, I can get around on my bike & I can order *some* foods in Dutch (read: beer = bier = "beer") and indeed, I have figured out how to go to the movies here. (beer+movies=great movies!) But, being a local is something that takes GENERATIONS.  It is not like Los Angeles where someone moves from the midwest & then becomes a Californian as soon as they get that driver's license in the mailbox.  Ohhhh noooo.  I love the pride Amsterdammers, Dutchies, Cloggers will take in all things that distinguish them.  The artists, the canals, the civil engineering feat that is the successful bike/tram/car/pedestrian culture.  The outdoor cafes & positively civilized way they conduct themselves in a crowd.  (Example: when the sun emerges, so do all the Dutchies.  Hundreds, thousands, ALL of them come outside & sit facing the sunshine, whether it is on the grass in the park or on a bench or in a cafe or once I saw a woman simply standing between two buildings where the sun was gleaming through just before it set.  Each is so respectful of the one next to them.  You don't see drunks, loud music, fights breaking out, outrageous collections of coolers & chairs & bags of food & trash.  It is so refreshing that each Dutchie has a small, civilized picnic of bread or wine & sits on their jacket, next to their trusty bike on the grass.  They chat & laugh without bothering anyone & pick up their things, bring trash to the bin & move along without incident.) 

The things in which they take pride are well-earned & I do not attempt to bust in on that party.  I do, however, get to enjoy all the things they have created here & I feel like this is a place that I could truly belong.  An expat friend of mine said to me last week: "Janet, it is going to be really hard for you to go back to the states." Why is that? "Because this place is SO YOU."  That was such a huge compliment!  I really do love it here & I know Bryan does too.  The kids also adore this place & all the new independence they have gained.  Sabrina went down to the store & picked up a few necessities for the family the other day & it was so cool.  She also takes pride in conducting small market or food order transactions without the other party knowing she's American.  Our Dutch skills are atrocious but with a lot of nodding & "alstublieft" (please) & "dank u wel" (thank you), we are often under the radar.  I cannot tell you how many times I get asked for directions in a single week!  It is hilarious.  Especially when people think my English is "so good!"

Ok I keep getting off topic.  The indescribable 'Something About Holland' that I often feel, each morning when I awake or each time we land back at the Schiphol Airport from a getaway elsewhere in Europe, seems to stem from the beauty, the relaxed demeanor, the "live & let live" mantra that I think Amsterdammers have perfected.  I have just started reading a book that Bryan has been raving about called "In The City of Bikes" by expat Pete Jordan & he really has a way of reminding the reader of all the things to love here.  He points out that although he has been a cyclist his entire life, he never realized how stressed he had been on his bike until he arrived here & saw an entire society riding with complete relaxed confidence.  He says "...no matter the condition of their bikes, every cyclist appeared happy and satisfied.  They moved with fluidity and sophistication.  They stepped on and off their moving bikes with the gracefulness of ballerinas.  At busy intersections, columns of bikers threaded past one another effortlessly.  Such universal comfort and elegance on such basic, crappy bikes: it seemed the basis of an egalitarian society." (-In The City of Bikes, The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist")

Although I still have a few minor complaints (more on the red tape saga coming up soon!) they seem to pale in comparison to the enchanting way this city greets me each day.  Thanks again for staying with us on this adventure.  Check back soon for more pics from our latest getaway - we traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland last weekend!

...and also my girlfriends!  When the Broncos play in the Super Bowl, there's nothing like a midnight kickoff & some FaceTime with my Colorado girls to feel close to home!!