Amsterdam day 2

Happy 3rd Birthday!

Fijne Verjaardag Hendryx!

Man, I forgot how much jet lag sucks. It was a rough sleep, but I am happy to report the kids made it until 9am and so some stress was relieved as I kept waiting for them to wake up at 3 or 4am.

How cute!

Not so much...

He's pumped

We weren't really that interested in dragging the kids through a bunch of museums at their ages so we decided to do one of the most Dutch things you could do (while still being fun for kids) and visited the Keukenhof. The Keukenhof is a huge garden with all kinds of floral displays and areas to visit, but we of course were there to see the tulips! This was very exciting for me because I have always wanted to visit Holland to tiptoe through the tulips. This was very exciting for Hendryx because it was his third birthday and really anything makes this kid happy.

Yes I am wearing the same clothes

During busy season (April-May) the gardens organizes buses directly from the airport. So a few public transpo's later and one Kokenhoff bus later we arrived to the gardens. Much to my relief that tulips were still blooming. And how! I have never and will probably will never see this many flowers in one place again. It was quite breathtaking and inspiring when you think about all the work that must go into it. We also lucked out because the day was perfect blue skies
with just a hint of chill in the air.







Now what you have been eagerly waiting for... get ready for some flower porn.

In addition to flowers there was a playground and a petting zoo that was a hit with the kids. Let's just say the playground would  never hold up to American safety (paranoid) standards with a slide at least a floor high and a ropes course equally as high. Both Lucille and I thought it was great. Pearce was less than thrilled. There were some smaller slides etc. that Hendryx also really enjoyed.

There were other fun areas to explore including a giant  wind mill, water features, and lily pad hoping  course. The place is so huge I'm not sure we even saw it all. The kids loved it though and had a great time just running around.



We stayed there until around 4pm and caught the bus back to the airport. We were shuffled on to an already crowded bus and so ended up only having one tiny pull down seat between us. It was hot an stuffy and what was a quick trip on the way over was painfully slow because of traffic. The kids actually handled it surprisingly well and basically played together for most of the trip albeit loudly. The last 10 minutes or so we brought out the ipad. As we got off the bus some old dude muttered loudly that those kids were awful and blamed the parents for not raising them right. Honestly I wondered who he was talking about because our kids could have been sooooo much worse, but Pearce confirmed he was talking about us. We passed them on the way through the airport and he passive aggressively muttered again how we were Bad Parents. Clearly I am not passive aggressive. So I turned around and had some choice words for him and then walked away. It was such a bummer to have this interaction when we had such a good day and the kids were just playing and having fun.


We shook it off in time to go home and celebrate Hendryx's birthday.

His dutch cake

He's got his own jump (cat)!

Loving on Daddy