Summer holiday 1

At last we were able to make our break. Vacation at last. As we’re learned over time, vacation is not about resting – at least not with two kids and thousands of kilometers of travel. It’s about seeing family and friends, doing lots of fun activities, eating lots of good food but not much relaxation. It’s too bad really, since that’s what you need most when you’ve come off several months of work. Now I realize that when you peruse these blog entries you do see some fun activities during these past several months. And yes, we do some really cool things. But bear in mind that they can provide a rather distorted picture of how I spend my time. Life is a lot more work than it looks here. It’s just normally not blog-worthy.

The Hague

what's not to like about the Netherlands

We began by going to The Hague to visit friends. Amsterdam is a frequent stopover for us on the way to the US. We have several friends in the Netherlands, most of whom we met while working in Burundi. I do love it there. It’s so clean. Everyone rides bikes. It’s organized. I love the food. To be honest I don’t know if I could live there. High population density. People are sort of rule-crazy. And most importantly, no mountains. In fact much of the Netherlands is below sea level. But for visiting, yep, Holland rocks.

oh my...the cheese, the bread, the meats...

Idaho

Then it was on to Idaho. We more or less did the usual drill, we just get a bit better at it each time. We get better organized. We expand what we are prepared to do without borrowing stuff from people or buying each time. It’s complicated but we’re working on it. The added twist this year was backpacking. We normally car camp but this year we wanted to get the girls out to do some real camping. As such it creates additional storage and packing challenges.

The backpack trip was to a place called Blue Lake. It’s a short hike, which is what we wanted for our newbie backpacker daughters. We wanted it to be an enjoyable experience so that they would be keen on doing it again in the future. My sister and brother-in-law joined us. They were the ones that scoped out the destination according to some things we’d discussed a while back. They nailed it. Worked out great. All of us have a taste for doing it next year as well, possibly something slightly more ambitious but not too much.

Afterwards we settled into the car camping thing. I do enjoy that as well, mostly because of the time with family and friends. But real roughing it in the mountains, bonding with nature, is rather special for me. One of the advantages of glam-ping is that you can run into town rather easily to do things like buy food and watch World Cup matches. Which we did.

yep, the numbers get bigger each year; after you get past about ten in the circle, no one feels the warmth of the campfire anymore

off to get firewood

there are worse ways to spend a vacation

In any case, it's about time with family more than it is about bonding with nature.And for that the glam-ping was a success.

with their uncle

After camping we headed to my sister and brother-in-law’s beautiful house/cabin for steaks and showers. Such a great place. Probably bigger and more elaborate than I would ever want but having a cabin in the mountains has been a dream of mine since I was a child.

Then it was off to my brother’s new-ish place not far from my sister’s. He’s living the dream as well. He has a house/cabin in the mountains that he’s fixing up. Feeling a bit left out.

this is where you spend the end of the day...

Then it was off to my parents’ to hang out and have some doctor visits. Healthcare in Nairobi is not bad but it is useful to accomplish what we can while we’re in the US. Plus I enjoy being at my parents’. It’s still easy to get around and you don’t spend excessive amounts of time in the car. And there are lots of activities for the girls.

and, of course, the trip to the dentist

After less than two weeks, we would be off again, first to Minnesota for a couple of days and then on to southern Indiana.