Hoi Hoogland!

Well, May 8 we landed in the Netherlands and to the final (theoretically!) main stop of the sabbatical adventures! It was a smooth but long day of travel from Rome to Amsterdam, all for a short 2.5h flight but 10 h door-to-door. We're in the little village of Hoogland, which is next to the small town of Amersfoort, and if you need the nearest city, it's Utrecht! It's a great place and the country is already twitching in anticipation of Euro 2012 soccer championships, as you can see from the gnome on the left. First Dutch match is June 9!

We were really fortunate that Elly and Hein managed to find this terrific house for us to rent. We're renting it from Henny and Jan Roeten. It's by FAR the biggest place we've been in our entire trip, 3 floors, a small shed for bikes, and even a small backyard! Jacob especially is enjoying the "life of ease" sofas. There are even three bedrooms, so the boys could actually have their own rooms for the first time in their lives. However, Jacob decided he was lonely, so they decided to share a room instead. Check out the cool sheets set, especially "Wall-E!"

Like I said, it's nice to have a backyard and, if the liquid sunshine ever lets up, to actually enjoy it and eat out back. The decorative tub on the left freaks me out nearly as much as our Darth Vader GPS...

Henny and Jan were even nice enough to stock up the house with some of the Dutch essentials, namely a huge container of chocolate sprinkles, liquorice candy, and chocolates. Also they left us some stroopwaffels, tulips in vases, and the espresso machine! And being Holland, there's cheese everywhere!