Marks Birthday weekend

April 9th-10th 2011

One of Mark's favorite things to do is ride bikes.  And one of his most recent "life-long dreams" has been to ride in the Netherlands (I think because it's so flat there that pulling a trailer full of two enormous beasts is easy). Anyway, for his big #3-0 birthday bash we fulfilled his dream with a long weekend vay-cay.  We went to Kinderdijk first for the windmills, then to Amsterdam for the... uh, culture; and finally to Kukenhof for some tulips.  And so our magical journey began...

Kinderdijk

A lovely path that went through the canals and windmills. 

Amsterdam 

Didn't take too many pics in Amsterdam. Not sure what happened but we had a great time walking around the lovely city, checking out what they had to offer. One thing I will remember about Amsterdam is the gigantic bike parking lot. So many bikes one could not believe. Again, don't know why but I didn't get a pic. We loved seeing all the bikes everywhere. We went to a big flea market, Ann Frank house, flower market, cheese shops, ate yummy food, Rembrandt's house, beautiful canals...

We were very excited to tour the Anne Frank house.  At the same time, the girls were very excited to not be strapped in a car seat or bike trailer.  Boy did they have some energy to burn off.  What began as a relaxing stroll through history and Miep Gies office quickly deteriorated into an exercise in damage control and getting the girls out quickly, calmly, and undetected.  But the museum really had an impact on Sadie because she asked us to tell her the Anne Frank story about 50 times on the way home.  She was really fascinated by the whole situation.

Amsterdam has a really big and really neat flower market. 

cheese as far as the eye can see

Kukenhof

We had heard such wonderful stories of the Kukenhof gardens during the tulip season.  We were excited to bike around the surrounding tulip fields for a nice authentic feel.  We think that we just barely missed the peak of tulip madness; we must have been a week early :(   But, still beautiful and very fun...and we'll be back. The girls being the flower-lovers that they are were in heaven to see the rows and rows of tulips.  There were lots of daffodils and some other purple flower going on.  We did a stealthy drive-by daffodil snag (on wild, public grounds) for a special treat for the girls.  It was pretty intense.  Afterward we had a birthday celebration and feasted on chicken salad sandwiches.  In the car.  The girls loved it. (Then cake later at home.)

The whole trip really was a huge success...until the end.  We were about 1.5 hrs from home and our gas light went on.  Uh-oh.  We would have filled up earlier but we wanted to cross the border into Germany for cheaper gas.  We were just sure we would find a station. We found several, but they were all closed and wouldn't accept our American debit cards! Aughhh! Plan B? keep driving.  So we did.  Yep, we really just said a prayer and kept driving further... further... still going... Mark's seat was drenched in sweat from the intensity.  And you must understand we were out in the middle of Belgium or Germany or who knows where.  There was nothing around for miles.  Just some random, shut-down, ghost-town gas stations.  We were all surprised, but we actually made it off of the Autobahn at our exit and were just about 4 km from home when the car died.  Wow.  What a miracle we made it so far! Did we unpack the trunk, load up our bikes, and drive home at 11:00 PM with sleeping girls in a trailer? Nope.  We felt bad, but we called our good friends who were nice enough to come get us and take care of us until the whole thing was resolved.  Thanks, Millers! You truly are the best! How everything turned out really was miraculous and we are very grateful.  And we were reminded of what good people surround us in our lives.