Monday, September 17, 2012

Weekend Recap

Happy Monday! Brent and I had a really nice relaxing weekend.  On Friday he brought me home some flowers. So sweet :)  

Orchids are really popular in Holland.  Every house you walk by has one their window.  Now we fit in! 

I've shown you the pretty and now I am going to show you the gross...

   We think it is spider season here in Holland.  We found this guy right outside our front door the other night... EEEWWW!!  It is zoomed in so it wasn't quite as big as the picture but it was still gross!

On Saturday we went out for Dutch pancakes with some friends we met at an Internations event a few weeks ago.  It is nice to finally be meeting people and we had a great time with Sam and Dan.
The pancake place was about a 20 minute bike ride from our house on some amazing paths.  

 On our way

We passed lots of farms en route to the hidden, yet well know pancake place


This is the only picture we took there, I guess we will have to go back!

The place was so cute, with lots of seats just out on the grass right next to the canal.  Many people canoed or kayaked and would just park their boat right along the side and hop out for some amazing pancakes!

Brent and I decided after biking out there that we need to expand our bike routes a little bit.  We find ourselves going on the same paths and their are so many routes we still need to try.

Have a good week!

Mindy

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Anderson's in Holland

Last week Brent's parents came to visit us.  Prior to coming to Holland they were on an 8 day cruise along the Reine river.  It sounded like a great cruise and they had a wonderful time!  Brent and Chuck spent a few of the days working and Mary and I spent the days drinking coffee, talking(we never ran out of things to talk about :)) and shopping.  It was great to be around family again and it made us even more excited for our trip back to the US in a few weeks!  We didn't get a ton of pictures but we got some good ones!

Mary and I enjoying a beer with our lunch

Beautiful day for shopping in Amsterdam

B and I

Chuck and Mary in the park near our house



Chuck and Mary with their "baby boy" 

Thanks for coming to visit Chuck and Mary!  We loved being able to show you our new home and look forward to seeing you in Minnesota!

Mindy

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Portugal part 2

Our second day in Portugal it was HOT!! So we decided to head to the beach.  Right in Lisbon there are no beaches so you have to take public transport about 20 minutes to the beach.  It was really confusing- a tram ride to a stop, walk to the train station and then hop on a train.  Needless to say 20 minutes to the beach took us over an hour!  But once we got there it was all worth it.  We rented to beach chairs and an umbrella and enjoyed the amazing weather.


So beautiful 

We Minnesotans needed some sun 

Enjoying our surroundings 

Brent diving off the rocks 

 Loving life

Our amazing drinks

Enjoying my mojito


Another pic where we weren't able to get the beautiful background we hoped for

Trying to get one on our own

That night we had an amazing dinner at a restaurant I had researched before we left.  We had a hard time finding the place but enjoyed it a lot once we got there.

We spent Saturday at the Oceanarium and some more sightseeing in the city.







Hard to get a good pic of us

So awkward trying to use the self timer


Fountain outside the Oceanarium

We had an amazing trip and really enjoyed Lisbon.  The food, the people and the sights were all amazing!

Mindy