The month of October....

So it is almost October. I actually in my older age have come to prefer fall. It is cool and colorful and fun things happen in the fall. It's before the crazy "Christmas Rush", it's a good time. My parents or coming up for the month of October. We haven't been able to see each other all year. We talk often, but the last time I saw them was last November after my mom had her stroke. They are so excited to get to come and visit, but mostly they are excited to be with the Princess.

But they are going to miss the "Yamboree" to come and be with us. They are going to miss the parades, the Yam Queen, the hamburgers, turkey legs, funnel cakes, cotton candy, and yam pies. The Yamboree has been going on since 1935, they did take a couple of years off during the war. We loved it as kids because we would get out of school for 2 days, and go hang around the town square riding carnival rides and eating. It was a great time for a kid.

I always made my Dad pecan pies when I went back for the Yamboree. So I will have to make him some pies, I might even make a yam pie. I'm going to try to add a link to a yam pie recipe if I can figure it out. http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_22304,00.html

I did it, I'm getting better at this blog stuff.


In honor of Halloween. I swiped these pictures off of Robins blog. When we were in Amsterdam we went out on the canal boats. When I got my yucky fries & mayonnaise we saw this funny little guy. He was begging everybody for food. I gave him a few fries. But I love the picture below, he looks creepy. He was just trying to look coy, or hypnotize me with his eyes, so I would give him more fries. But I think that is a great picture.

Here he is just normal so you don't think he is super creepy.

Archibald Alec Leach.......

So we have a fun little book group in our ward, when we started it, nobody volunteered to be the group leader. I was nervous about doing it, because I hadn't really been in a book group, but I decided I could do it. Just a small group of us go. But they are all fun ladies and I enjoy their company. My friend Robin is in a book group in California, so I ask her about some of her better meetings. She said they had a great one where everybody read a biography of whom ever they wanted, and then at the book group they all gave a little presentation on that person. She said it was a lot of fun and everybody left knowing a little more about a lot of people. So we are doing that in our book group next week. Well with the trip and every thing this month I hadn't picked a book to read. So finally I decided yesterday what biography to read. You see I have a crush on this man. I love his acting, he is so great. He is very handsome and I think he aged well. In my DI book thing I came across a biography on him. I swiped it up and have been wanting to read it. But I'm nervous about reading it. I am afraid I will find out he was a jerk or something and won't be able to enjoy him.
I'm just 50 pages in to it, I hope I get the book read in time for our group night. So far he is a good guy. He had a weird and sad childhood. You will notice in the picture above that he is very tan. That came about because he rode on a ship from England to New York as a teen and saw Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford on the ship. They were on their honeymoon, he noticed how nice they were to all the fans. He actually ended up near Mr. Fairbanks playing shuffle board and noticed how tan he was. He started telling him what a fan he was and Mr. Fairbanks was very nice to him. So he made a goal to sit in the sun everyday and get tan. They said he did it for the rest of his life. Archibald is his first name, that's to over the top, but I told Erin if she had a boy, Alec would be a good name. How twisted is that, that I try to influence my new grandbabies name, for some old dead actor. I just really enjoy him. If you have never seen one of his movies you should. My favorite movie of his is "My Favorite Wife." It is so funny and entertaining. There was a remake in the 60's with Doris Day, but watch the Carry Grant version. And wish me luck that he stays a decent guy and I will still be able to like him even after I read about his life.

Our last day......

OK, so this is my last day to catch up on. And it happened to be our last day in Amsterdam. I have to start out with the picture below. My high school mascot is a buckeye, weird I know, but it is what it is. While I was going on my tours we came across these messy trees with horse chestnuts all over the ground. I thought they looked so much like buckeyes that I grabbed a couple. When I looked them up they are the cousin to the buckeye. Then Janie was staying in a very "posh" hotel the Okura. they had a great breakfast buffet, and they had all of their cereal jarred. I loved the jar of gourmet cornflakes so much that she gave it to me. I just think it was a cool way to serve cereal. At the Marriott where we stayed it was just in little boxes! Mike wanted to eat at McDonald's, he ate there in Japan, and wanted to try it in the Netherlands. Last year we ate at the Burger King over there, so now he has tried all those fast food burgers over there. It's basically the same.

The ketchup does taste different. And the mayo fry sauce was yellow with little green dots in it. It was also kind of sweet. Yuck!
We went with Bob to the big museum over there. It is being renovated so only part of it is open. Last year we went to the Van Gogh Museum. But Mike really liked the Rijks Museum better, while I loved the paintings, they had some very famous Rembrandts and other great paintings. Mike loved all the physical things chests, swords, clothes, they even have super cool doll houses. The reason they have them is because the wealthy people would have exact replicas made down to the dishes, pots and pans, lamps, pillows, tables, and anything else.

This will gross Robin out, she sees pigeons as flying rats. But this man had pigeons all over him. He was feeding them bread.

There are some very tiny cars over there. This is one of the smallest. We have actually seen little cars like this driving in the bike lane.

All along the canals we would see these big willow trees just hanging there. They were so pretty.
Mike and I took a canal tour. They just drive you through the city and you get to see it from the water. They have night cruises, I think that would be beautiful.

A whole lot of the houses over there were built on wooden posts hundreds of years ago. So they have problems with the houses tipping because they are shifting after all these years. Some people have gone in and fixed there houses, but it is very expensive.
They have so many house boats up and down the canals. You see all kinds of boats tied to the side that people live in. One of the boat houses we passed had a little lady doing her ironing in the window. That night was normal. We ate pizza in the hotel and packed all our stuff. The last night we were just ready to get home. We were right across the hall from a laundry room we could use. So we kept our laundry up while we were there. My favorite thing was on the washers, they had a setting of boil. We didn't boil any of our clothes:-)

Now back to home. I spent the day with the princess. She "helped me pick green tomatoes" out of my garden, while her mother tossed her cookies all day. Let's just hope that these last 5 months go fast for Erin, she is so sick and miserable.

She also did her first wall art, or should I call it door art.

I just had fun with her outside. I told her to let me take her picture as she was walking away. she stopped and turned and jabbered something to me, then smiled. So I suppose she was posing for this picture.

Booth Babes and last day of the show......

So I actually slept until 5:30 this morning. And my stomach was not hungry at 2:00AM, I'm coming back. It was really nice to be back at church, seeing everybody and being back to normal made the trip almost feel like a dream. I was so sad to find out a man in our ward had an emergency surgery to fuse 3 disk in his neck, while we were gone. I only had 1, but he had 3! They said the surgery hasn't alleviated the pain for him. I am wondering if I should go tell him about my chiropractor who does a kind of strange body pressure healing thing. It worked for me, maybe it would help him.

So on to the "booth babes." During these big shows it is customary to hire young attractive women to greet the people at the shows. They are supposed to draw them into the booth, scan their passes and get their information. For those of you who have read my blog for a while, you might remember the "booth babe" in Vegas. So I ask the guys one night if the booth babes at IBC were hot. They said, if you think 6 foot tall, blonde hair, blue eyed women are hot. That cracked me up. So one of Mikes friends took a few shots of him presenting and sent them to us.

A man from a neighboring booth came up to Mike on the last day and gave him some little gadget that they sold. He told Mike, "You win this for best presenter." Mike looked at him a little confused, and the man said in broken english, " you entertained us all week, Thank you." Mike has a gift, he is not shy, and as his dad describes him, he is "bombastic." He can be a big goofball and is very entertaining in the "nerdy" world of broadcast software.
So the guy who took these pictures took us out to dinner one night. He explained the girls in "only t-shirts" where from a booth way in a back corner. They would walk around and take a polaroid with guys, then they would have to go to the booth to pick it up. So I suppose they were remote booth babes. Look at the smile on my husbands face, as he is surrounded by them!:-) His job is soooo hard! Actually the guy told me that one of the girls gave him a look for taking her picture, and she does seem to have an attitude going on there.
At the end of everyday Mike would be wiped out, from performing all day. He told his friends he was so glad I was busy everyday. Because when we got back we were both to tired to do much more than go to dinner. Enough about him let's move on to the fun stuff.


So this was the last day of the show. The program we were doing was over, because a lot of people were leaving that day or the next. But Harriet, Robin, and myself where going to be alone because our husbands still had to work that last day. We went out on an adventure to the little town of Volendam. Robin has traveled around the UK quite a bit, so we hopped on a bus, feeling very capable and visited another town. Here they are on the bus (my apologies to the ladies I only took 1 picture and managed to get both of their eyes closed!). We were actually the only people on the bus. So we had a private commute.

When we were dropped off it was in the city center, at a city museum. This anchor was out front. It threw us off a little because it was so grooved it looked like wood. But we knew it couldn't be wood. So you are looking at a very used and aged anchor!

We passed this cute little dog just sitting in his basket waiting on his master. It was outside of a store, so he looked like he had been chillin' for a while. Across the street was a little bakery, where we stopped for a treat and some hot chocolate. I didn't take a picture but they served the whipped cream on the side in a dish. We were able to scoop it into our chocolate ourselves. Again I can't describe the whipped cream there. It is not like the ready whip light fluffy stuff here in a can. It is heavy and thick, and I acquired quite an appreciation for it!
This little town had lot's of places that you could dress up in the traditional dutch clothes and take your picture. I just love how they spell photograph, that is dutch I can understand!

I can't say much about the locals, this woman just seemed hard and cold. She didn't say a word to me.
This old man was a little more open. He didn't talk to me either he seemed a little weathered and tired.

This is a port town. There were a bunch of cool looking boats all around.


Robin went shoe shopping, but wasn't sure how to get them home. So she passed this time around.

I liked this little window, full of dutch dolls.

Now before you see this next picture just remember Mike and the "booth babes"! We were getting hungry and wanted some lunch. We couldn't read the menus, but most of the little restaurants had boards out front with pictures of their food. Surprise, surprise, right on the water, all of the restaurants served tons of fish. We finally found one that served spaghetti, that sounded good to us. Then we had this very nice "Dutch Boy" as our server. He had a funny little laugh when I ask to take his picture. I'm sure he felt safe, with us older women. And again apologies to Harriet, she doesn't usually take a picture with her glasses on:-) I think they both look great, with him!

This was the view in front of one of the hotels. It really was a pretty little town.




We stopped at this shopping center. It had a florist, a toy store, a clothing store, a few others, and I went to the grocery store in it.

We thought it was fun that these people had decorated for Halloween. You can see inside every bodies houses. They don't cover their windows there. This was a beautifully decorated home on the inside. (On a side note, after seeing this Halloween house we talked about Halloween there in Holland. When we got back to the hotel we sat in the lobby for a few minutes. There was a man sitting at a table registering people for some convention. He got up and brought a bowl of chocolates over to us and said "Ladies would you like a candy? It's Halloween night here in the Netherlands. We were thinking, well we saw that house decorated, that is interesting and took a candy. Then he laughed and said he was just joking. When some other people came in he offered them a candy and laughed that he had been telling the "Americans" is was Halloween there.)





These were just some cute newer looking houses. We loved how they made them still look quaint.

These homes had the smallest front "yards". They were tiny but very pretty.







This picture is for my sister-in-law Kristen. Everywhere we went I saw bails of hay. We would just see them sitting out in the fields either shaped in rectangles or round bails. The difference is every bail I saw was covered in plastic. So if you click on this picture you will see stacks of black plastic covered hay.

Jet lag stomach!

So I have been waking up at 5:00AM since we got home. My stomach is still jet lagged because I wake up at midnight, then at 2:00AM with my stomach rumbling, then again up for good at 5:00AM. I guess my stomach has not figured out what time zone it is in yet. And 5:00AM that is just nuts for me.

I am trying to catch up on the trip. things got so very busy and crazy over there that I couldn't keep my blog up. So this was the last day our our planned tour. They drove us around on a bus, to see the newer parts of Amsterdam. They actually built some islands and call it "New Amsterdam." I thought this crazy stacked table look was a more fun way to have all of your cables come to a junction, than the big wooden poles we have here.

They have ton's of cruises that leave from Amsterdam. So this is the cruise building where they all leave and you will notice it is shaped like a wave.
Of course, you can't get away from the bikes.

And this was a store over there Sissy Boy. I don't know what they sell in it but, wonder if it would do well over here:-)

These are some of the modern homes on the new islands.

Then after our tour we went to a quaint old building and had a tea party. I of course I forgot to charge my camera battery, so I swiped Mikes battery and it was dead. So the last day with all my Amsterdam friends, I had no camera. I had everybody take pictures for me that day. Notice the tea bags on the tray they are triangles made out of fabric they were so pretty. They also served sandwiches, quiche, and cakes. We had a nice last meal together.

We also had a jazz concert. It was nice and relaxing. I had fun talking to a lady from Australia. She sat by me and we chatted while the men were playing. We were all chatting at our table. We had the party table. Plus we had Janie at our table, she is a perfect social club director. She got all of our information e-mail addresses and such and had it all out to us soon after we got home.


That evening we went to eat. There are so many little restaurants out on the streets, all kinds of them. People from the restaurant stand outside at dinner time and ask you to come and eat there. It's like a domino effect, if you get a customer or two, more people will come to that restaurant. I was sad for a Greek restaurant because I noticed 2 nights in a row they had no customers. Any way we ate Italian that night. Mike and Bob and myself.

The police or "politie" rode by while we were eating. We thought it was so funny because on the back of their boots they had direction lights, turn signals and all. It's really hard to see in this picture. The reflective tape in the horses ankles was working very well.
Then we had passed an ice cream shop a million times and it smelled to good we finally stopped. Mike got a waffle sundae. Let me just tel you the whipped cream over there was a thing of beauty. It was heavy and you could just eat the cream alone as it's own dessert. So when it was on hot chocolate, it was heavenly!
This is my "dutch chocolate chip" ice cream, it was yummy!