4-10 June 2011

This week began our two weeks of company with the arrival of Ginger and Jed on the 4th. So far our guests have been all our kids - she's the first sister to come.

We didn't let them rest before we departed for a quick tour of some small towns north of Amsterdam. This is the weighing house in the little town of Edam, known for Edam cheese. Ging and Jed just kept on walking, trying not to fall asleep. We bought cheese and tasted lots.

Cheese comes from contented cows, and this cow is surely contented. A little trivia. It takes 10 liters of milk to produce one pound of cheese.
We continued with our plan to keep Ginger and Jed awake until bedtime by taking them to the small seaside town of Markam. It's the island of all green and red houses.

As the day wound down, we stopped for dinner at our favorite pannenkoeken house, The White Swan, in Broek in Waterland. We sat outside and had delightful food and conversation.

We traveled to Brugge on Monday and visited an exhibit of Picasso paintings that are in a gallery in an old hospital. The grounds are stunning.

Still on the hospital grounds, the newly cleaned spire of the Church of Our lady is in the background.

We went on a canal ride and the calm movement of the boat was too much. Ginger and Jed both took a little nap. I don' t think they saw much of the canal sites through Brugge.

We visited this spot on the Lake of Love for the first time and found this beautiful view of a chalet across the lake.

This a pretty little house in Brugge.

The next day was Brussels and a visit to a candy shop. Candy, especially chocolate is a big deal in Belgium.

More candy. The Belgians take their chocolate very seriously. There are literally chocolate shops everywhere in Belgium.

Ginger and Jed on the Grand Place in Brussels.

We left Brussels and drove to Kinderdijk on the way back to the Netherlands and home.

On Wednesday evening we joined President and Sister Brubaker in the new Mission Home for a goodbye dinner for four departing missionaries. We spent the day in the office while Ging went to Amsterdam for the day with Jed.

Elders Favero, Garrett, Robinson, Brockbank, Keith and Roberts. It's always with mixed feelings that we say goodbye. We're happy to see them move on to the next phase of their lives, but sad to see our relationship with them change. They've been great friends and examples.

On Thursday Megan, Scott and Becke arrived for their visit to see us and for Scott to revisit his mission. He served in Belgium 18 years ago. Megan is the 8th of our 9 children to come visit us.

While Loel drove Megan and Scott to Ghent, Belgium, (where they spent 3 days visiting people and sites from his mission 18 years ago) Paula accompanied Ginger and Jed
to Amsterdam. We had a blast that day, visiting museums (Van Gogh and Anne Frank), open markets, cafes, riding trams, walking, etc. It was a beautiful, sunny day.

They visited the Van Gogh museum (I took this picture of a replica outside the museum - you can't take pictures in the museum.)

Each Friday an old fashioned cheese market is held in the city of Alkmaar. Loel and I took Ginger; Jed stayed home in our cozy little town of Rijnsburg and enjoyed a down day. We all loved Alkmaar - we had never been before. They had lots of market stalls; my favorite was a man who made little bicycles - I got a pair of bicycle earrings - pretty cool for a Netherlands momento.

It's done just like it was hundreds of years ago with the buyers coming and making bids on the cheese, tasting it first, etc. Very fun.

We loved walking around the town and seeing colorful buildings, many of them dating back to the 1500-1600's.

There were some darling streets with lots of cute little shops that we loved here in Alkmaar.

We stopped for an organ recital in this cool church.

It's been a really fun week with Ginger and Jed. We also took them to meet Anya's family. She made us an absolutely delicious meal, which Ging said was one of the highlights of the trip. We loved seeing them again and seeing how happy they are and how well they are doing.
One night Ging and Jed treated us to a wonderful meal at our favorite Greek restaurant here in Leiden. It was a cool Greek meal with 13 different dishes - very fun - took like about 3 hours, but we loved it.
We had a couple of really nice long walks around our town and all along the canals. They really fell in love with our town.
The morning they flew off to Hungary we took them to Delft and wandered around the open market and the town center and the canals. We all loved Delft.

Next week, our visit with Scott and Megan.