Week 15 - Sweet 16!

The big news this week was that the twins turned 16.  For their birthday, we had fondue at home and then headed out to the Utopolis.  Orange, the cell phone company, has a deal with Utopolis for 2 for 1 night at the movies.

The movie theatre is super nice!  Nice big seats a huge screen and great sound system.  We watched the movie Divergent.  The kids are now busy reading the books!

It is really hard to believe the twins are 16.  It is even harder to believe that within a couple years they'll be out of the house and on their own.  Pretty crazy!

We didn't have church this week, due to General Conference, so we headed off to Amsterdam for a long weekend.  Amsterdam is about 4 hours northwest of here.

We got up early Saturday morning and were out of here at 7:00.  At least we thought so...  The landlord asked us to deadbolt the door, but it turns out if you leave a key in the door and shut it, you're locked out.  There literally is only one way in the barn, so we knew we were toast.  We called a locksmith and luckily he answered.  It took him 20 minutes to get here and within 10 seconds he was in the house with a sheet of plastic.  That 20 minute and 10 seconds cost 200 euro.  That put me in a bad mood for the rest of the trip!

4 hours later we were at Keukenhof.  http://www.keukenhof.nl/en/  7 million tulip bulbs on immaculately manicured gardens.  It was very, very beautiful.

Here were some amazing things about the park.  Due to the trees not allowing a lot of light in, the grass is grown new every year.  It is some fast growing grass that comes up in a couple of weeks.  It looks great, but you can't walk on it.  It is not very strong.

It is only open for two months of the year.  They plan all of the bulbs in 2 months.  The purpose is for the bulb growers to show their bulbs to the buyers.  93% of all the world's bulbs are grown in that little area.  The tulips are grown in a little region close to the ocean.  They are not grown all over Holland.

Other Tulip trivia... 

There are over 52,000 acres of bulbs produced there by about 2,700 growers, with about 20,000 employees.  The average bulb farm size is about 20 acres.  Over nine billion bulbs are produced annually, one third of which are tulips. These three billion tulips, if planted four inches apart, would circle the globe at the equator seven times!

The bulbs in the park are all destroyed afterwards.  They don't want their secrets getting out.

The park has a windmill which we were able to walk through and also a very, very cool player organ.  Hopefully the videos will do it justice.

After we walked through the park for several hours, we headed to the beach and to McDonalds.  The food was way cheaper than Luxembourg, but still cost $30 to feed us.  The kids wouldn't talk me up on 10 euros for a pickled herring sandwich.

What is Ashton doing on the beach?

We headed for the hotel and it turned out to the be right next to the airport.  Spencer, Jake and I watched airplanes take off and loved seeing a couple big 747s take off from Schiphol airport.

After a good night's rest we got up early, got croissants and egg mcmuffins at Mcdonalds and headed into Amsterdam.  We went straight to Anne Frank's hiding place during the war.  There was already a line at 8:30.

Jake and Ash chased pigeons while we had a pleasant chat with a couple from Dallas.  Ashton was great until right before we got into the house and then he cried the whole way through the tour.  The tour was really well done.  They've preserved the Annex and the spice building in the front so that you can walk through the whole thing.  The two most impressive things were the book cabinet that hid the door.  It was the original one and we got walk right through the door in to the Annex.  We had watched the 1960's Anne Frank movie this week, so it was pretty impactful.

The second really impressive room was Anne's.  They have preserved the actual photos that she glued to the wall to make the room more interesting.  It was unbelievable to think that they lived in the rooms we walked through and that they were turned in and sent to Auschwitz so close to the end of the war.  It is so sad that they all died except for Mr. Frank.    We saw the original diary and each of their entrance cards to the concentration camp.  It is crazy to think that the war was not all that long ago and that the atrocities occurred right there.

After the tour we headed to down town Amsterdam.  We'd hear rumors about Amsterdam being legal for drugs and prostitution, but we didn't realize how much it would be in your face.  We walked down some streets to go see an old church and got our eyes opened a bit.  The worst was by the old church where there were literally little rooms built into sides of the buildings that housed prostitutes.  The first one we ran into was literally right next to the old church.  The second, I didn't realize I was standing in front of while taking a picture of Kim.  Marijuana was everywhere and lots of scantily glad souvenirs.  Not a great place to take the kids on a Sunday morning so we headed away from that particular area of town.

The other thing that is in your face in Amsterdam are all of the bikes!  Wow, that place is the most bike friendly and "bikey"city I've ever been to.  There are separate bike lanes and most people are riding bikes.

The next stop was the Van Gogh museum.  It was super impressive.  We saw his progression from his early paintings and styles.  Some of the coolest things were seeing his painting palette, brushes and paints.  We also enjoyed seeing a painting that they found recently that is his.  We were a little bummed that Starry Night and the Sunflowers weren't there, but we did see many of his self portraits.  He only really painted for 10 years, but he cranked out a lot of paintings!  Pretty unbelievable that we were able to see them live.

Finally, they don't know how to build straight buildings in Amsterdam.  They literally look like they are going to fall over, but they've been standing for over 400 years!

An uneventful 4 hour drive home and we're back in the barn.  I'll be working tons this week to be able to take the next week off for a mediterranean cruise!  We're pretty excited as we've wanted to take the kids on a cruise, but never found the right time.  This one will kill a few birds with one stone!  We'll see Spain, Italy, Marseille, Palma de Mallorca, Rome and Venice!  Should be an awesome trip!!!!

Click here for this week's pics!  It will probably take us a few days to get them all uploaded as we took a lot of pics and videos this weekend!