Snowstorm in Amsterdam!

We knew something was in the air yesterday when it hailed twice (for a total of 90 seconds):

But we weren't prepared for the total blizzard that hit the city this morning. Just look at our car! It's going to take us days hours minutes seconds to dig out of that:

Apologies to Rob's parents, who have already had one real blizzard this year and to those of you who can look forward to many more!

Remember

It's Veteran's Day, and since there aren't any sweet old vets selling poppies here, we thought we'd post one here for our dads, granddads, and all of our friends who still serve.  Speaking of which, our friend Duffy is home again.  You should check out the link at the right to see some very happy little girls. Welcome home, Duff!

Last Boat Trip of the Year

Incredibly, we had a beautiful sunny day yesterday and so we jumped at the chance to take one last boat trip before the winter sets in. We bundled up with blankets, (spiked) hot chocolate, (spiked) coffee, and some (unspiked) hot apple cider and tried to capture the quickly fading fall colors. We took turns with the camera, but Erika got most of these:

There's a whole in the world like a great black pit

We hope everybody had a great time this Halloween.  We got together with a some other Americans and crowded into a dutch bar and forced our holiday shenanigans on the bewildered locals.  Can you guess who we are?

If you guessed Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett, you are correct. If not, don't feel too bad.  We had to explain it to a lot of folks- basing your costume on a year-old musical movie is fairly obscure. Still, it was a lot of fun.  Did you notice the meat pie Erika's holding?  Nice, huh?

Jelelelelele! Ajax, Amsterdam!

That is the most prominent chant for the local soccer team (of course we thought it had, you know, words in it, but these are soccer fans we're talking about). Rob went in for season tickets with some friends and we took advantage of a rainy Sunday afternoon to catch the most recent match. The home team won handily, 2-0, and the team is having a pretty good year so far- the team always seems to do 'pretty good.'  They're not the Yankees or the Red Sox, but more like the Cardinals- an old team with a great history and every once in a while they'll take the championship from the better clubs in the country. Just look at all the banners:

 

Rob's still learning the ins and outs of Ajax fandom, but most of the fun is just going to the game.  We 'enjoyed' some lovely stadium food, including a noble, but failed Dutch attempt at a hamburger, and were thrilled to find the belgian waffle stand as we filed out toward the train station after the game.  

The nice thing about a soccer match is that it's 90 minutes of play with about a 10 minute halftime, so we can get there and back in just over two hours (as opposed to a baseball or football game which approach four hours).  Of course, soccer being soccer, that doesn't always mean it's an exciting two hours. Erika said she had a good time, but judge this picture for yourself:  

Wedding Planning, by Donald Rumsfeld

As we start to make plans we've discovered that "we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Thankfully, one thing we know we know is what our song will be. Vicki, start learning the words...

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Ah, Paris!

A few weeks before we moved to Amsterdam, we had dinner in Portland with two other soon-to-be-expat couples, Sara & Aaron and Chris & Casie.  Like us, Sara & Aaron moved to Amsterdam, while Chris & Casie have been enjoying life in London.  Anyway, at that dinner in Portland we had many bottles of wine and decided that we should all meet again for dinner a year later in Paris to celebrate a year abroad... and so we did.  

The weekend weather was incredible and we took advantage of it by mostly staying outdoors. We headed back to Montmartre to find some art and we were happily surprised to find a food and wine festival taking place.  It was a gorgeous day spent sipping wine and tasting various honey, sausage and cheese. After a while, we decided to take in a little art and headed to the Musée Rodin, where we walked through the sculpture garden and Erika took the briefest of naps before we were shooed out at closing time.  Here's Rodin's The Thinker and a stalkerific shot of Erika (taking stalker candid photos of Erika is one of Rob's new hobbies with the new camera. He would have put up more to prove it, but Erika's eating a sandwich in most of them -the same sandwich-Erika doesn't go all around Paris eating sandwiches- and pictures of someone eating aren't always very flattering, or so he's been told).

On Saturday night we had an amazing dinner in a small French restaurant just off of Pont Neuf and then went out for a few more drinks.  

On Sunday we remained outdoors on a nice bike tour of the city, including lunch in the Jardin des Tuileries (the garden in front of the Louvre).  

It was an absolutely lovely weekend (even carpooling with a 10 month old wasn't too bad) and a very cool way to celebrate our first year in Amsterdam.