Dawn's Geocaching Pictures

 

While I was eating ice cream with my family, Dawn went out geocaching with my friend.

 

She made some awesome pictures to share with y'all.

 

They had a great time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Day!!!!

 

Yesterday was the last day of my Dutch family visiting. We celebrated it by going out for ice cream.

 

Today they left around a 10:45am in the morning and will be home tomorrow early morning in the Netherlands. Lucky ducks, they get to be in the air conditioned bus and then in the air conditioned air port.

 

We had a wonderful time and I am sad to see the go, even if it is also going to be nice to just be with our family again. At least, we will be once Sylvia and Erik return from camp tomorrow.

 

 

 

Damian got a bubble gum ice cream. Kasia thought that meant it would have the flavor of bubble gum, she did not realize that it had actual bubble gum in it and that he (and subsequently she) were both covered in the sticky gum.

 

All the pictures in this post were made by Dawn. More of her work on her Photographic Musings blog.

Erik Off to Camp

I took my Dutch visitors to drop off Erik at his camp in Vermont. It was a nice scenice drive, even more scenic on the way back when I told the GPS to take shortest route.

 

This is the first time ever Erik is going to an overnight camp. He is in the Cardinals cabin. Kate told me she was a cardinal at camp last year too (totally different camp, even in a different state). I guess there are only a limited number of New England birds to use for cabin names.

 

Damian enjoyed watching all the camp activities.

 

On the way back we made a stop at our favorite snackbar for a real American hot dog. Damian is used to hot dogs boiled in water instead of grilled, so he looked at it with a funny face and didn't eat much more than one or two bites. Luckily it was accompanied by a big portion of fries, so he didn't quite starve.

 

Kasia has developed an addiction to brownie sundaes, something you apparently cannot get in the Netherlands.

 

Oma and Kasia Visit

Oma and Kasia have been here for more than a week now. We are having a super duper good time, apart from when oma wants to get out of the thrift store NOW.

In between all the house cleaning and staging, we have done fun stuff too. We have gone to the playground, to two farmer's markets, to Vermont, to Erik's camp.

 

Today we saw a turtle cross the road, the first time they got to see a real life wild turtle up so close. Kasia got a picture, I was too late because I had to park the car.

 

They brought many Dutch goodies, we love them very much now.

 

And Kasia will have lots of space for her thrift store finds. Oma found two cute bunnies in the thrift store, glad it was not all negative for her.

 

I am so happy I get to spend all this time with them and that they can accompany me to new houses. We looked at two on Friday, and two more tomorrow. And of course they have been invaluable in helping me with this house. Another showing on Tuesday, keep your fingers crossed!

Dining Room Before and After

A few years ago I bought our dining room table. We have enjoyed it ever since.

 

But now... I have to sell the house and I have to pretend we have formal dinners here.

 

Like this.

 

Unlike this.

 

When I track back another few years, you can see that the dining room not always was used for dining.

 

I had so many little ones, that we used it as a play room. Worked pretty well back then. Wouldn't work so well now.

 

Quite a transformation from that old play room.

 

House Stuff and Some People are Funny about Languages

Today my friend brought over all kinds of staging items to help me sell the house. Next time there is a showing, the dinring room table will be set with table cloth, and four place settings, beautiful china and wine glasses. She also lent me some pictures for the walls, since I had taken down all the family pictures and the kids art and the Chiquita banana stickers which used to be on the wall.

After a wonderful time at the farmer's market we came home to a realtor's email 'Can we do a showing tomorrow and Saturday?' Well, that was easy, that was an 'is the sky blue' type of question. Apart from the fact that the 'formal living room which used to be the television room which used to be the computer room' has been mostly stripped from its furniture and only consisted of a futon, a television, and a router on the floor. Oops. Not very appealing it was.

 

The universe gave me a whole evening to fix that though, so the first thing I did was call my friend 'Remember that you told me I could borrow those wing chairs? Would you mind if I came over tonight to get one? Will it even fit in my car?' and yes, I could borrow them and naturally it would fit in my car because my car is awesome.

They loaded the chairs for me (TWO of them actually fit!). At home we set up the room into a 'Wow, this is not a bad living room at all!' type of configuration and I feel all good about tomorrow's showing, even if there still are 5,000 other things that do not look perfect yet.

 

On another subject, today in the thrift store (did I mention my mother does not approve of long thrift store visits, as in longer than three minutes on a good day) I got into a conversation with an American lady about languages. She stated that everyone in the world should learn the same language, either as a first or a second language, and that that universal language should be English.

I pointed out that more people in the world speak Chinese, so wouldn't it make more sense to use Chinese as an universal language? She absolutely disagreed with that notion. No, all the Chinese speakers could just learn English... I didn't think it was worth my time and energy to try to convince this person that English is not the solution to all the world's problems.

 

Bullet Points

• My mom, my niece and her 4yo son are visiting!!!!! It is awesome!
  
• The new cat has been named Mars and is settling in beautifully;
  
• Our house is on the market!!!
  
• We have survived our first showing;
  
• I haven never seen my house this clutterless and empty;
  
• We have a new toilet (yes, on Sunday, the day before we listed our house...)
  
• I harvested my first cucumbers in the garden;
  

 

• It is a HUGE help to have my overseas family here to help with all the practicalities of listing and cleaning the house;
  
• The new cat discovered that the green stuff on the water surface of our garden pond is NOT grass and will NOT hold you when you pounce on it because you see something move;
  
• Now that the BIG things in the house are done (dump runs, thrift store runs, storage space runs galore) suddenly a myriad of smaller things jump up at me;
  
• Sylvia is off to her very first ever overnight camp;
  
• I wonder what happened to a nice and lazy summer vacation, because this one sure doesn't feel like it, even if I am happy about listing the house;
  
• I stayed up way too late I wish there was any day in the near future I could sleep in. Like till 8am.

Progress

This window is usually filled with plants and little thingies and lots of stuff, it truly never looks this way. I was going to post before and after picture, but couldn't find a good before one, so just showing the after. I can already feel the effect 'The house will look so nice, you won't want to sell' starting to get to me.

 

Not really though, but I am making tons of progress. Yesterday I rented a storage unit so I can get all the packed boxes out of the house and I can pretend we don't own all that clutter. Today is another big cleaning out day and the sun is helping me feel super good about it all.

Strawberry Festival III

 

Eat strawberries, not meat.

 

There was face painting, to the utter delight of Sylvia. At home Dawn had offered to paint her face, but Sylvia politely declined 'No Thank you, I'll have the people at the festival paint my face, they are professionals.' I see... Don't try this at home, eh?

 

A 'portable' or drivable pizza oven. It is wood fired and they drive it around Vermont to fairs and farmer's markets, how cool. We had seen our first one of these at our own farmer's market last week. It is such a cool concept.

 

Kate meditated in a sunflower teepee in the making. It reminded me of when we tried to make a sunflower house in our backyard and the stupid groundhog kept eating the seedlings! I bet the organic farmer might have more effective ways to deal with ground hogs than I did. I have heard that guns do indeed work better than store bought coyote pee...

 

There was a guy on stilts and he never fell over at least not while we watched.

 

 

 

 

When we came home, Jane had baked butter cookies which went very well with the strawberries. Life is good!