We Do Wall

Last Sunday, Niels surprised me with a roadtrip to Mansfield, Ohio--about 90 minutes away. Our destination? MEIJER!!! The Target Greatland/SuperWalmart-like mecca is based in Grand Rapids and one of our good friends works there. It was founded by a Dutch immigrant in 1934 and the facades of some of the stores feature Dutch architecture. Inside, the international aisle features all sorts of Dutch goodies--hard to find in our neck of the woods. Meijer stores are found throughout the Midwest, but sadly, not in Canton. (Erin, can you work on that?!?) My astute husband sensed I was feeling a little homesick for GR so he decided to take me to the nearest store to us.

One of our recent addictions has been watching HGTV to get ideas for our house. We've decided on colors for each room, and as we have a little money we've been completing different projects. Something I've wanted for a while is a nice shelf for our master bedroom. Our colors are brown, green and white, but our shelf is a carry-over from my condo, a nice pine which will look better in the office/hopefully nursery.

We found a shelf we both liked at Meijer and Niels spend an evening putting it together. He's a talented craftsman...see for yourself!

In the beginning....

Where Jen would have given up...

Hard at work, with his supervisor, Bailey

The final result! The "We Do" letters were on the cake table. Eventaully, we'll put a wedding picture on the shelf as well. (The quilt and rack to the left was a gift from my stepdad and his wife. They made both items themselves, amazingly, without even knowing the colors of our room!)

Happy 39th Birthday, Chris

This handsome guy is my big brother, Chris, who is celebrating his 39th birthday today. Chris was the family usher for our wedding. I believe this was the second time in his life that he wore a tux. He didn't even wear one for his own wedding! When we were making plans, I actually asked his wife first if she thought he would wear one for our big day. She said she'd make sure he would. Then after he picked up his tux, she said to me, "Purple? You can just kill him now!" But he wore it with a smile, and got compliments all night long! Personally, I think he liked it!

Happy Anniversary, Carisa and Andy!

It's another year of wedded bliss for my little sister, Carisa and her uber-cool husband, Andy. Carisa and Andy were in Amsterdam with us last year (almost a year ago!) where we introduced them to the yumminess of stroopwafels!

BIG Day!

Throughout our seven months of marriage, and the ten months of dating before that, most big appointments had to do with me--mostly doctor appointments, it seems. But today was a Niels-driven day, but very important for both of us. USCIS Interview Day!

Penske Logistics brought Niels to the States a few years ago from their Maastrict office in The Netherlands. Before he met me, he made plans to file for Permanent Residency through based on his work Visa (I-140). He can tell you the more official terms (Niels' comment: L1b Visa) but basically he's so stinkin' smart that he passed the Labor Certification step for the work visa with ease and the Labor department said that he was more qualified than an American for his particular job. But then he met me and we decided that he wanted to apply for permanent residency through the family status (I-130), this time on account of being my husband, and we would really rather not be separated by continents at any point in our marriage.

We started the process in November with a TON of paperwork and documentation. In January, Niels had to go to the federal building in Cleveland for his biometrics--fingerprinting, background check, etc. Of course, anyone who knew my dating criteria should not be surprised to learn that he passed with flying colors! Then last month we received the letter informing of us of our mandatory joint interview. Again, we had to compile a long list of documents, including "photographic evidence to substantiate our relationship." If you've seen the movie Green Cardyou'll have an idea of what we had in store for us.

Today was the day of our interview, and it went surprisingly well. It was fun, kind of like our own personal Newlywed Game. Our agent was really nice and seems pretty pleased with our "evidence!"

They'll do one more background check on Niels and then we should expect to get a very important piece of paper in the mail! For more info on it, check out the Wiki-page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Permanent_Resident_Card

UPDATE: tonight at 7.30 we got the message from USCIS that the petition has been approved and the notice had been mailed. We'll await the instructions on the mailing, but we're APPROVED !!!

Snowy, snowy day

Well, yesterday when the snow started we made it home, to the Visellis and back home without major issues. Today it's a different story...

For starters I had to dig out the drive way. We had about 12 to 16 inches (30 to 40 cm) and the snow is still coming down. The 3+ hours of shoveling our 2 lane, 4 car length driveway + turnaround has resulted into snowbanks a couple of feet high all around it. Before the day is over I might have to shovel another 5 inches and by tomorrow another 5 to 7. Yes, we have some snow.

The road in front of our house has been closed since last night 5pm. Before the closure the snowplows came through every 30 minutes to plow and salt, but cars kept slipping and sliding down the hill and slipping going up the hill. For those that don't know, the road in front of our house has a 7% grade and an S-curve in the middle. Good thing they closed it. Today even some 4x4s had issues getting up the hill.

We just got word that RiverTree is closed as well, so we don't have to go out today or tomorrow-morning. Not that we'd be able to go anywhere, even if we wanted to ... ;-)

Once the snow lets up I'll try to get some pictures. Right now the visibility is down to maybe 600 ft / 200 m and with the snowflakes falling the pictures I did take don't really show anything. We have heat, electricity, water and cable as well as food so we'll be fine for the remainder of the storm.

We'll keep you posted from the white city of Green, OH.

UPDATE: we ended up going to bed early on Saturday, exhausted and were happy to see that the night didn't bring as much as forecasted. We ended up with 18 inches and only another dusting on our shoveled drive-way. We were able to go to the Sunday service at the Tree and had to relieve Dave from running both the Video-feed and the lights by running lights since some people scheduled to run the tech-side of the service were still snowed-in. Now we are a week later and all but the snowbanks has melted. We're seeing green grass and after we built our snow(wo)man we are officially looking forward to spring. One more week... ;-)

A trick Bailey can't do...

GR Trip Highlight #1

Going back to Grand Rapids is always a highlight for me (Jen) since I have so many friends and happy memories of my eight years there. While Niels loves my friends and appreciates my memories, I think the real highlight for him is that it's a little like home.

West Michigan has the highest per capita Dutch population of anywhere in the United States, and was the first American city he ever visited (even before I moved there). There are two great Dutch stores, VanderVeen's and deReuze (which means The Giant), both filled with all sorts of Dutch treats and housewares.

Of course, the homegrown "Target"-type store is Meijer, which our Dutch readers will readily recognize as a thoroughly Dutch name. Most groceries stores have an international aisle, and the grocery section of Meijer is no different. What is different, however, is that in addition to the typical Asian, Italian and Mexican sections, Meijer has a generous selection of Dutch foods, as shown above. So even when we don't have time to visit VanderVeen's or deReuze to stock up on stroopwafels, hagelslag, or drop (nasty double salt licorice), we can still stop by the ubiquitous Meijer for our fill.

Just before we took this picture, a woman approached the aisle and expressed surprise at the price of hagelslag. Turns out she is a Dutch citizen, here on vacation, shocked by the imported prices. Niels was able to have a nice conversation with her and her husband. Though I was able to get the general gist of the conversation, I mostly stood by and looked pretty. Still working on my Dutch lessons. Niels says I'm about a five year old now! :-)

Hopefully, we'll be making another trip to GR soon to close on the condo! Tot ziens, Grand Rapids!