Road Trip Ramblings

We just spent 8 days driving through Germany, Switzerland and Austria and arrived home in the wee morning hours of Saturday. We had a wonderful family road trip and of course have many great memories, some quite amusing. I will post pictures soon but first just wanted to share a few stories.

Most of our time on the road was spent in Germany on the autobahn which for most areas has no speed limit. We were traveling in our Toyota Corolla that we shipped over here when we moved, so we were quite packed in. Having no speed limit, Jason tried to drive as fast as he felt comfortable going, which in our car was usually around 80 mph. I think he maxed out at 90 mph, at which time he was gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands. The best thing was that when we felt we were going pretty fast, we saw a Smart car fly past us, and that happened more than once. How embarrassing!!!

Spending a lot of the time in the car also meant that Lauren had a lot of time to think, and thinking for her means her imagination goes wild and she loves to create her little fantasy world that she and her stuffed puppies play in. The most repeated phrase of the trip was, "Momma, do you know what?" I think I heard that a minimum of 100 times and after each time I heard a new detail of her fantasy world or her magical powers. In her world she is married to one of her stuffed puppies, Blackie (he is a rottweiler), and they have 4 babies; Annalissa (from Shane), Max (from Will), Bella and Brownie, of course in her imagination they are people, not puppies.

The way she acts we often say she is 5 going on 16, but with the stories she was telling us on the trip she was more like 5 going on 30. One time she told us that her husband turned the music up loud and came to see her when she was busy working in the kitchen and he wanted her to dance with him and she said your crazy I have too much to do. We both started laughing because it sounded all too familar. She also told us that her husband was acting really bad and she told him that he was going to have to go outside and sleep with the dogs if he kept it up. Where does she get this stuff??? I think at one point she talked for 2 hours straight.

I now have such a deeper appreciation for my aunts and the road trips they took us on when I was a kid. I also now understand why it was suggested we play the quiet game and why we were challenged to go 5 minutes without saying what, why, when, where or how. Thank you to my aunts for putting up with us!

Also, can anyone explain this to me. During our trip we saw a lot of Asian tourists and many of them wanted to take pictures with Lauren and Justin and they would take turns posing with them. Why??? Is it the blond hair, fair skin, or just that our kids are so darn cute? I will have to google it.

We had an amazing time and I will post pictures for all to see soon. I hope everyon is having a wonderful autumn!

Spreekt u Engels?

Today I had a very amusing experience at my Mums and Tots group here in the Netherlands. The mums in the group come from all over the world including Australia, Germany, England, Romania, Netherlands, Croatia, Trinidad, Ireland and maybe a few other places. It is quite a diverse group but everyone speaks at least a little English. Today one of the mums brought a snack that had goat cheese on it from Norway. Two of the women from Romania couldn't understand what animal we were talking about, thinking we were talking about sheep. So imagine a room full of women making animal sounds trying to mimic a goat. We meet at Lauren's school in the language room where they have Dutch and French lessons so we finally thought to look at the posters on the wall and found one of the different animals and we were able to find a goat. It is always very interesting to go to Mums and Tots because all the mums are speaking their native language to their own child. It is also very neat to get a glimpse into different cultures but also see how much alike we all are!