4th of July

The Sunday after the 4th of July, we celebrated Independence Day. We put up the flague, fired up the BBQ, invited a bunch of friends and family and had a great day.

Among our guests were some of my friends from college and high school, a rugby buddy and his parents, a friend from Dutch class, some of my family and a bunch of little bitties.

From Iraq, through the USA, to the Netherlands.

Ben's awesome idea for a patriotic cake

The little bitties

Fun with friends and family!

Fun at the amusement park

On our day at the amusement park, Ben and Randall had a row boat race. You can see how well that went below.




What went wrong Randall?!

Photo opp!

Weirdo´s are an international commodity.

Roller Coaster time!

World War II

Randall and Ben visited the World War II cemetary and museum in the south of the country.


Amazing to think of all that happened in this country only half a century ago.



Thousands... and this is just the one in Holland.



The museum had equipment from all major wars, including this swamp transporter from the Vietnam war.

Captain Ben

Our good friend Jochem has a sailboat and when the weather is nice, he loves taking it to water with a bunch of friends. And what do you, the weather was great.

We all loved it and even jumped off the boat in the (freezing, in my opinion) water. Ben had the time of his life steering the boat and has had dreams of sailing the 7 seas ever since this day.

Harrie, Randall, Jochem, Katrien, Annemarie, Marjolein, Captain Ben

Take her to sea Captain

Brrrrrr!

Randall & heights

On his first day in the Netherlands, Ben took Randall straight to the city of Utrecht and up the Dom tower. Poor Randall, he'd just gotten down from the sky and now he had to go back up again. Not the best day for someone who's afraid of heights.

View from the top.



Striking a Ryan-pose

Touring with the Admiral

Ben could hardly contain himself when Randall aka The Admiral came to visit.






Finally somebody to brommer around with!

Ben's first Dutch Birthday

Ben had his first Ducth birthday June 7th of 2007.

We had a nice dinner at the Greek restaurant in Nieuwegein with my parents, sister and grandmother.

And of course there were lots of presents.Even mother nature had a present for Ben. Our first home grown radishes!


The American loot (thanks for the package guys!)


The Dutch loot. Mother nature's loot

Texel attractions

From May 19th to 21st, just before Randall's visit, Marjolein and I went to the island of Texel. We saw a lot of things there and the place was very beautiful, so here are some pics of just a few of the highlights of us there.

To get to the island, we took a Ferry. Only a 20 minute ride, but still very fun.

One of our first activities was a bike ride to the middle of the island and a walk in the dunes. This is a picture at the top of the inner most dike on the island.

EcoMare is one of the two big seal sactuaries of the Netherlands and it's located on the island of Texel. I came to find out that most of the seals there were blind from old age. In addition to that they were big on showing off for the crowd to get treats. This is a pic of that. (Marjolein wants one now)

You gotta love this picture! Well, the Dutch are known for being a very strait forward and often times blunt people. So in that regard... why use alot of words to warn people when a simple picture will do. Also a nice pic of the both of us in the Dunes.

Kijk naar de grote witte gozer. i.e. look at the big white dude.

Well this is very late but hey it should still bring a few smile, may 19-21 we went to the island of texel at the northern part of the country, saw a lot of nice things and I swam in the North sea....again but this time it was definatly not the right weather for it.

At the time there were three other porple in the water all wearing wet suits and trying to surf. It was very invigorating and cold and I also got to try out a new swim suit, look out bond your not the only one with hams in you pants.

A Brown boy never looked so good in Speedo's!

This is directly after I got out and Marjolein had to chase off the groupies as Thom called them. It felt really good afterwards and the an irish coffie never tasted so good!