Amsterdam Day 3 - Ryan

There is an outdoor market on Tuesdays and Fridays. I love it. It makes me so happy. We bought dried mango slices. About 300gm of it. And two things of bread.

I rode side-saddle with my mom on Jac's bike. She rode and I held onto her. I can do it with one hand. It was fun. 

I got a bike today. It is blue and gray. It has gears 1, 2, and 3, triggers and hand breaks and peddle breaks. I love it. 

Love you all. 

Love,

RYAN

Amsterdam Day 2 - Jannica

My thoughts on moving to Amsterdam first two days

The first day for me was not really the best. I thought that it was the longest day in my life (I have some pretty long days too). When we got home I thought well... This is my new home... I had to get everything out of my suitcases from my summer break at my moms house, then I went outside on our upper porch and found a good place to sit. When I sat down I started thinking of everything at my old house and how it would be so great to just not deal with moving and stay there. I started thinking about my friends and how I was doing at school. I just started to bawl. I was just wishing that I could go back home. After a while I got over it and decided I need to stop grieving and just make the best out of living here. It isn't very easy to do that but so far I think I have tried my best to give this place a chance. I just dealt with it and I helped my dad build my wardrobe from my room. We went out to eat at McDonalds which of course was gross but that wasn't the bad thing about it. My family was so tired that we just started getting on each other's nerves. When we got home I wrote in my journal then I just went to bed. 

The next day was a lot better. We all had gotten a lot more sleep. Once everybody was awake we went on a team and my dad and I got bikes. After we got bikes ordered we had a while till they were done so we went to go get some food. 

After we got food we went out to the daily flea market. We just walked through and looked at things. Once we were done with that we went to the Rijk's museum and looked out on the park to see a portrait of Van Gough made with flowers made by the people from his hometown. 

We didn't go inside the museum because we had more planned for the day. After that we split up. My dad and I went to go get our bikes and the others went back home to chill out. The bike ride was a long way back to our house. We finally got home. A while after we got home the guys from our air shipment was taking things into our house. When they left we started unpacking. After we unpacked a little I put things into my wardrobe and I haven't finished that yet. Hopefully by the end of this week it will all be done. So overall I think that this move has been an interesting experience. 

Day 1: Our Adventure Living in Amsterdam

We arrived at the Amsterdam airport after a 10 hour flight from Salt Lake City. The kids slept a good 4 or 5 hours, which you know is going to make for a wonderful day. We excitedly exited the plane to pick up our bags. We had to get three baggage carts to carry the 19 bags, 3 car seats, and 3 pillows. Our plan was to go get a plethora of Ubers in order to take all our luggage.  Jaimee piled into the first one with the three little kids leaving me with Jannica and Ryan, and what felt like 30 bags. Our Uber pulled up not quite knowing what was about to hit him. But he was a good sport and helped pile in all the bags. It turns out that he had been my driver a month ago when Jannica and I came on a business/pleasure trip, business for me, vacation for her.

Once home we staring unloading all the bags, unpacking, and putting all the IKEA furniture together. At this point we hadn't eaten much and we hadn't slept much. We yelled at each other a bit, and whined a lot. At one point, Jannica was even bawling on the rooftop patio because life sucked so much. We went and got some food at a local Dutch restaurant, McDonalds and our spirits were slightly lifted. We finished up the rest of the IKEA furniture and hung out around the house. By the evening, everyone was feeling much better and more importantly the place felt like home.
And just so you know how tired we were, Charlie fell asleep on the hardwood floor next to me while I was pounding away putting the kitchen table together.

We are tired, ornery, and a bit disorganized, but we are happy.