Photos from Amsterdam, Netherlands

Olli took Lukas and me to Amsterdam for my birthday weekend this past weekend. It was wonderful! Amsterdam is a very pretty place with so many canals running through the city and such quaint houses all over. We took a boat ride one morning and then went to the Van Gogh museum and saw some of his most famous paintings including "Starry, Starry Night" among others. On my actual birthday, we went walking in some beautiful parks and Lukas played on a nearby playground. That afternoon we visited the Anne Frank house and saw the Secret Annex where her family and four other people hid for over two years before being discovered, arrested and sent to concentration camps. It was a wonderful getaway for sure!

Lukas on our bed at the hotel drinking his milk just before getting ready to go to sleep.

Lukas with his Papa.

A view of one of the many canals in Amsterdam.

A closer look at some of the boats that were docked on the sides of the canals.

Lukas and Olli on the boat tour that we took the first morning we were in Amsterdam.

A view of the houses along the canals. The houses are so tall and skinny because the taxes on the land on which each house was built was extremely high. So people tended to build upwards instead of outwards.

However, because the houses are so small and many of them are right on the canal, furniture must be moved into the houses through the windows. This is why there are hooks on the gables at the top of each house as you can see here.

You can see a house leaning a bit forward in the middle of this photo. The house was built like this on purpose to help with the weight of hanging pieces of furniture during moves and it have the added benefit that it sometimes protected the lower part of the house from rain!

The house in the middle of this photo is the house where Anne Frank and her family hid during the part of the war. The front of the house comprised of a warehouse and offices for her dad's business. The Secret Annex is attached to the back of the house and is not visible from the street.

Taxes on cars are extremely high in Amsterdam, which is why there are over 250,000 bicycles in Amsterdam (or so I read)!

Photos from Cairo in April 2009

We've been doing some family traveling lately to places other than Germany or the U.S. in the last couple of months and I wanted to share a few photos to commemorate our trips.

Olli had a business trip in Cairo, Egypt in April and Lukas and I decided to join him. It was a very different cultural experience for us, but we enjoyed our time immensely. One thing that we will always remember is how incredibly friendly the Egyptians were toward Lukas. Strangers were greeting him, kissing him, asking to hold him almost constantly.

This is the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt. The hole you see in the facade is where someone broke in ages ago to still the riches buried in the tomb.

This is the pyramid for the son of the king who was buried in the Great Pyramid. You can still see the flat, polished limestone that used to cover all of the pyramids at the time of ancient Egypt on the top portion of this pyramid.

A photo of us in front of all three pyramids that remain as one of the Ancient 7 Wonders of the World.

The famous mosque of Muhammad Ali at the Citadel in Cairo.

An Eventful Mother's Day!

So my second Mother's Day ever was a very memorable one for sure, but for all the wrong reasons! :-) We spent 3 hours in the E.R. after Lukas had another fall that required stitches.

Lukas was climbing down from his dad's lap after reading some books when he had the "clever" idea to flip over his dad's legs to reach the ground faster rather than continue to scoot down as normal. He definitely met his goal because he did reach the ground with amazing speed and landed on one of his metal cooking pots that was laying on the carpet beneath him. This time the gash was on the right side of his forehead just above his eyebrow.

The wait at the E.R. was 2 hours and 45 minutes and we were in one of the examining rooms for a total of only 15 minutes (five of which were with the actual doctor!). Lukas did great until the nurses held a rag over his eyes and pinned him on the table. The doctor said that he wouldn't give anesthetic for just one stitch so we had to watch Lukas really writhe in pain when the doctor inserted the needle and thread into Lukas' forehead. It was awful for child and parents alike!! Thankfully, it was only one stitch.

Lukas in the waiting room at the E.R. drinking water. There is a plastic bandage over his wound.

A close-up shot of the wound and stitch

At home one day after receiving the stitch. You can see the scar from his previous accident in the middle of his forehead. As you can see, Lukas gave himself another rug burn on his forehead that morning!



Here he is today just after getting the stitch in his forehead removed. Thankfully, he's still smiling!