Trip to Holland: Day 14 (December 30)

After our busy last two days, we're spending today relaxing at home. We've been busy updating the blog and uploading more pictures on Facebook. Jan is working on a little paint job, and Kitty is making oliebollen and apple beignets. Oliebollen are deep fried donuts with raisins served hot with powdered sugar and apple beignets are discs of apple deep fried in beer batter. Both are traditional new year's treats. Yum!

Daniel took a trip to the Home Depot-like store with Opa this afternoon and enjoyed looking at lights. He has shown both Oma and Opa what a good little shopper he is. He loves to check out everything. He's just to the stage of pointing, so his little finger is working overtime.

On a sad note, it looks as though our trusty little camera is coming to the end of its days. It's only 2.5 years old, but has been to Curacao, Vermont, Alaska, the Midwest, Virginia and Europe, in addition to documenting the first year of Daniel's life with over a thousand pictures a month. The poor thing looks about ten years old and is slowing waaaay down. We've added it's newer cousin to our 2010 wishlist. Good think we have Opa's camera for the rest of our trip here.

This afternoon when we went to mail our postcards Jen did something she hasn't done in 20 years... She drove a car with a stick. The last time wasn't a big hit in a truck with a very tempermental clutch. This time around (and 20 years of technological clutch advances) she was able to manage just fine. She was able to drive away twice and stop twice and shift gears without a problem. John can be proud of his teachings...