Happy Birthday Emily!!

I can't believe I have a five year old kid.  I love it.  Ages 0 thru 3, in my opinion, are hard.  When Em turned four it was like I got a new kid.  I loved four.  And I think I will love five even more.  She is such a sweet little girl, and acts so grown up.  She's pretty dang easy.  Although her favorite phrase still is, "What are we going to do now Mom?"

Luckily today she didn't have to ask that.  We are currently at Ramstein Air Force Base accompanying Ben while he attends a week long conference.  So, we're staying in a little apartment, and enjoying a little break.  Today was quite nice. 

Em opened some presents at lunch.  She was immediately drawn to the Where's Waldo book from Grandma and Grandpa.

We played her new Dominoes game

And baked her cake.  Cake is Em's favorite thing about birthdays.

She helped with the clean up

And while it baked we did her new Geo Puzzle for Asia.  She now has all the continents.  The girls fought over Nepal like it was WWIII.  Who knew Nepal would be such a sought after prize?

We went to a park right outside our apartment

Caroline didn't want to be within arm's reach of Em

 What can you do?

We had burgers at Johnny Rockets.  Yes, Johnny Rockets in Germany!  The Air Force is spoiled, I tell you what.  This base is something else.

And Em opened the rest of her presents. (She had opted at lunch to save half of her presents to open later in the evening.  What kid does that?) Among her favorite of course, was her Rapunzel doll. 

We had cake

And blew out the candles

And the saddest thing ever was the cake was a mess!  I apparently didn't understand the dials on the German oven...  I thought I had set it to bake, but upon further investigation, it looks like I set it to broil.  So, yeah, I broiled her cake, which was why I thought it turned out so nice.  It was definitely finished on top, but a gooey mess in the middle.  So sad, since in Em's opinion cake takes the cake when it comes to birthdays (haha!).  And I can't put it back in the oven because Ben had already frosted it :(

I'm not blowing up this picture because it's gross enough as it is in the smaller version.

And we got to facetime her little cousins Ricky and Deborah, which is always hilarious.  We get lots of closeups of Deborah's nostrils.    

Happy birthday Em!!

The beautiful sites in Zaanse Schans, just outside Amsterdam

We got to go inside the windmills to see how they worked and what they were used for... this one contained a sawmill.  It was fascinating to see how the wind moved the propellers which in turn moved gigantic suspension saws to cut these big logs...

A charming Dutch house:

A demonstration on how they make the wooden shoes.

And then they try to sell them to you for 30 euro a pair!

We followed the dramatic news back in the States by reading the Dutch newspapers...

Ha!  Not really.  We watched CNN at the apartment.  That was pure craziness, wasn't it?

The next day we went out to the flower fields near Lisse.  I was pleasantly surprised to see so much in bloom since spring has been delayed


Stopping to smell the daffodils

Em was a very enthusiastic photo subject, C not so much.

I just loved the vibrant colors

And had to get the gay guys... 

Unfortunately, Ben wasn't willing to pose like that with me.

We attended the flower parade... the floats were impressive, all made from, you guessed it, flowers. They smelled even better.

They blasted Strawberry Fields Forever as this one went by.

And you get the idea

Then it was off to the Keukenhof... the largest flower garden in the world.  Each year over 7 million bulbs are planted and people come from all over the world to admire God's creations.  What's most amazing is that it's open only 9 weeks out of the year!  We tried to time our visit just right at the peak of the tulip season, but we were a little premature.  Still we were able to find hyacinths, daffodils, and a few tulips in bloom.  Many beds were just green stems and leaves though, they need a couple more weeks.

Some indoor flowers

I believe this was the girls' favorite part.

I took a pic of Ben biking through the countryside and he was totally scowling at the camera (at least I like to think it was the camera)...  I told him to look like a little more jovial and this is what I got.

And our bike ride back to the car after a loooong day.  I loved how tidy the homes and streets were... the backyards along this canal were so immaculate and cute!