Our First Month in Amsterdam, Part 1: The Requisite Make-You-Jealous Post

Goede Middag! (Yep, I'm totally fluent. When saying "good day.")

I know, I know, we've been here a month, and only one post? Right, see, I'm still trying to figure out what in the world it was I just went through/am still going through. Roller coaster is the term I keep using, but to borrow from my idol Tina Fey, “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” is a much better description. Intense, thrilling, terrifying, and also kind of makes you want to vomit at times (the Aerosmith part).

So, I haven't really known where to begin. Though, after a while, I got a few nudges in a particular direction.

Apparently, people want pictures.
Lots and lots of pictures. Amazing pictures of all our adventures.
Perhaps people think that maybe we really moved to Amsterdam, Ohio. Oh, what a fun joke that would be. ("Surprise! What, did you think we meant The Netherlands?!")

Well, I've got proof, and yes, I'm talking about windmills. And we're having adventures all right. You know, like going to the grocery store every day. Though I don't think that's what people had in mind.

I get it, pictures are fun. I can toss "reality," and "the whole story" to the side for a while. We'll get to that next time. For now, time to play the oldest blogging trick in the book: inciting jealousy. I'm game.

(But, when I said amazing pictures, that wasn't really literal, because we all know you'll see none of that stuff here (hello cell phone camera). Though I know that my sophisticated readers would never dream of comparing me to every mommy blogger in existence with a home photography studio and an SLR camera (is that a thing? I don't even know).)

So here you go: Pictures!
To satisfy your ravenous visual appetite.
To prove we live here.
To make you jealous.
Or at least to make you want to come visit us.

We'll start with our street, named after Beethoven.

See that thing that looks like an sidewalk-within-a-sidewalk? It's a bike lane. When you come to visit, do not walk in it. Seriously, they'll just mow you right over. It's where I ride this:

Yes, that's my new car. And in case you're thinking, wow that is the world's dorkiest bike, you are absolutely right. I've never seen wider handlebars. It's the quintessential granny-bike. But this is my absolute favorite thing about Amsterdam: everyone rides bikes just like this, and looks just as dorky. Amsterdam bike riding is one big dork-fest and it's the best. Here's a video of us in all our dorky glory (yes, you've probably seen it on Mark's Facebook page).


This canal is a block away. We'll show you when you come visit.

We can also take you on a canal tour, and you too, can look this bored while cruising the famous canals of historic Amsterdam.

Or this bored:
Or, if you prefer, like this:

The Iamsterdam sign in front of the Rijksmuseum. I'm pretty sure Amsterdam, Ohio doesn't have this (right?).

Sitting on a gigantic letter is super fun, in case you were wondering.
This windmill is a 10 minute bike ride from our apartment, within city limits. I think someone lives there, so it was a little awkward when I peeked in the window.

You want more windmills? For that, you'll have to take the train. Mia will show you proper train-riding gymnastics technique.

We explored this little touristy old-time village. It's like a Dutch Williamsburg. Our kids only said, "that's stupid" a couple of times. So, success!

I didn't think I would find windmills so endearing, but really, what's not to love?

You can barely tell, except for the huge windmill blade that is about to knock us out, but here we are on top of a functioning windmill. They really should turn it into a ride. "The Windmill Death Spiral Zero G Blade of Terror" anyone?

The gears inside were amazing and huge, so of course our kids were totally uninterested. Mark however, was so fascinated, he took not one video, but three. You're welcome for not posting any of them.

Had enough windmills? What about wooden shoes? (Full disclosure: taking this picture involved a lot of empty threats. Their expressions convey how seriously they take us.)

Or maybe just one giant wooden shoe souvenir? (Again, more threats. "You'll stand in that wooden shoe and you'll like it, or we'll come back here every weekend!")

OK, a few more boat pictures because I just love Nate's expression:

And this one too. It's a totally amazing adventure, right Nate?

Not into the touristy stuff? Want something for kids? No problem. We've been exploring all the local parks we can bike to. We've found the one with a zip line:
One with crazy climbing trees:

The best strawberry ice cream we've ever had:

The petting zoo with the weird tiny horses:

The most adorable little cafe where the kids make all the food, and then you pay an adorable fortune for it:
And a park with mini-train rides, or as Nate calls it, Heaven:

Here's what I call heaven: European chocolate. This is my most recent obsession, Tony's Chocolonely. It's fair trade, very dutch, and so yummy.

When you come visit, we'll leave one on your pillow.

So, have you booked your flights yet?

Family of 5 Moves to Amsterdam (With Only Minor Emotional Scarring)

Pre-flight:

Between flights:

In-flight:

Post-flight:

Post-Ikea:

We made it.

No one died. (!)

When my kids look back on our first week in Amsterdam, they will probably remember it as the week that their mom cried a lot, and that time they went to Ikea and thought it was better than Disneyland. (Literally, because when we went to Disneyland last year we were all miserably ill and thought it was the worst place on earth.) When I look back, I'll remember the particularly evil combination of jet lag, stomach flu, and culture shock, and that it's even worse than having rotovirus at Disneyland. Oh, and also that I cried a lot. I'm sure our downstairs neighbor will often laugh at the stupid Americans who moved in above him and locked themselves out of their apartment within a week and had to climb up his balcony to get in through an unlocked window. And I bet the nice lady who helped us set up a bank account will always remember the adorable 3 year old who walked into her office and dropped the F-bomb, thinking he was speaking dutch.

And just think, this is only the beginning!


(Someday I might get around to writing about our move in more detail, but since that's pretty unlikely, I need to thank a few people:
My dear friends in Seattle, without whom we would never have gotten out of our house.
My mom, and 2 sisters, who gave up most of the month of June to take care of our kids, and were still on speaking terms with us by July.
Tina Fey. When I wasn't crying this week, I was laughing at her book. My recommendation: unless you are a miserable person who hates laughter, you should go read her book. Right now!)

Going Dutch

It's after midnight, which of course means that I have no interest in sleeping. Why would I? I only spent all day long wanting to go back to bed. Everyone knows that insomniacs love sleeping, but only at any time except night. So here I am, wide awake and wanting to write. That hasn't been happening much lately for some reason. Looking at my blog archive for the year, four posts in two months is pretty pathetic indeed. Maybe that means I've been sleeping more, but I really don't remember. But since I hear that getting lots of sleep is good for your memory, I'm thinking that's not too likely. And I can tell you that for the next few months there is going to be even less sleep going on, and probably less blogging too. Sorry folks (folk maybe, at this point?).

Perhaps it's because I spend a lot of time with toddlers, but I'm imagining you throwing a big tantrum right now. I'm also imagining that you are inconsolable and it's going to take something crazy to stop your crying already! Well are you ready?


We're moving.

To Amsterdam.



And I didn't misspell any of that, or lie, or even exaggerate. And that's a pretty big deal, for me.

Seriously, we're moving to Amsterdam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you remember a year ago, how we went to Mexico, and I wrote this Message to the Universe, and there was a lot of questioning of our sanity, and then I didn't write anything about it for an entire year because it seemed utterly ridiculous? Well, as it turns out, Oprah is true, and the Universe is an awesome Universe, and Mark's company has finally agreed to transfer him to their office in Amsterdam. Just like that.

I imagine at this point that you have a lot of questions. Let me try to preemptively answer:

1. Yes, we know-- red light district, marijuana, legal. We still want to go.

2. Probably 2 years, maybe longer.

3. Yes, super excited. Thrilled.

4. Extremely terrified. Extremely.

5. Mark has started to learn Dutch already. I can say cheese, which I believe is pronounced "gouda."

5. Our kids are excited, depending on the day. It helps that we tell them that there are no streets and cars there, only canals and boats.

6. We don't know. Sometime in June or early July. There are a lot of relocation details we are still working out.

7. Yes, we will miss you all(!!), and we hope we get lots of visitors!


So in the meantime, if I drop off the face of the blogging world for a few months, I will resurface from Amsterdam and we'll continue where we left off, except with a fake dutch accent and wearing lots of scarves.

Stay tuned for Bardsleyland: Dutch Edition, where I imagine the Universe will teach us a lesson or two.





{yay!}

Thoughts on Robbing a Bank, Among Other Things

I don't know whether to be irritated or amused that Nate, at 2 1/2, walks around all day indiscriminately muttering "what the heck?" He certainly didn't learn it from me. Heck is not my pseudo-swear word of choice, that's for sure. I'm firmly in the what the crap camp. And if they haven't figured that out yet, I have failed as a mother.

One of my favorite moments from This American Life, was a mother describing how she was so mad at her children's bad behavior at the park one day, that she spent the entire walk home flipping them off behind their backs. I was thinking about that just today when Sam and Nate pulled out all the stops at the craft store. The highlight was when they took the shopping cart for a joy ride right into a ladder, knocking the cart over and sending Nate and all of our stuff flying. This was after I found them in a garden display, with Sam sitting on a decorative metal bike and Nate reclining in a lounge chair while petting a ceramic cat. For the rest of the time, Nate ran through the store squealing with seemingly profound glee, while Sam grabbed anything he could and played 100 questions with each item (What's this mom? Is it on sale? Do you have a coupon for it? Is it just for moms? ). The thread aisle was a disaster, figuratively, and also literally, by the time we were done. When we got to the checkout counter, they picked up every kind of candy on display (conveniently located right at their level), and begged can I have this pleeeeeeease? After tiring of that game, they literally ran around and around in circles. I'm positive that every person in that store had taken a vow of celibacy by the time we left, including me.

The bank is another favorite place of theirs, and thanks to drive-up tellers, we almost never go inside. But when we do, those kids can go from perfect calm to complete chaos in 6 seconds flat. I know this because we recently had one of those rare inside-the-bank visits, and I timed it.

I've often thought that if I were to rob a bank, I would definitely take my kids. Not only would they be too busy not paying attention to me to even notice, they would also be the perfect distraction. All I would have to do is kneel down and look them eye right before walking in, and say, "I need you to be on your very best behavior, OK?" They would nod with their big bambi eyes, and then immediately cause such a scene of pandemonium that no one would notice the frumpy mom slipping into the vault/holding up the teller. Except for the security cameras, it's fool-proof.

For the longest time, my kids thought that being a burglar or a bank robber was absolutely the worst kind of evil there was. They couldn't imagine anything worse than just taking something that didn't belong to you-- a testament of their complete abhorrence to sharing. So, when we go into the bank or the craft store and I bribe them plead with them to please, please be good, and then we end up being some one's form of birth control for the day, it makes sense when they indignantly protest, "But we were being good!" After all, according to them, robbing a bank is about as bad as you can get. And they certainly weren't doing that. Just hopping in display windows and taking shopping carts on kamikaze rides. Good, clean, harmless, chaos.

Speed Blog FAIL

I tried so hard to whip out this post in less than 20 minutes, but do you know how impossible it is to get 20 uninterrupted minutes in my house? So this is more of a meandering, 5 minutes here, 12 minutes there, spread over 2 days kind of a non-speed blog. But it's still pretty incoherent and random, so mission accomplished!

• I'm very close to being finished with something I've been planning/thinking about/half-heartedly working on for over 3 years. I hope our All-New Family Chore Chart will be more successful than our First Family Chore Chart, on which I misspelled the word vacuum, and we never, ever used. Maybe because we realized we really don't like to do chores after all. Oh, crap.
• Today at the Dentist office, I found the "yes or no" response options to some of the health questions to be profoundly inadequate. As in, "Have you ever experienced exhaustion or tension? Yes or No." As a parent, I'd like to suggest that "HOLY CRAP, YES or I just come here for the Nitrous Oxide" would be much better answers. I choose all of the above.
• While signing Mia out of school today, should I have been alarmed that someone else signed their kid out and put "heaven" for the destination? Maybe they were going to the dentist, and were thinking of the nitrous too.
• Did I mention that I'm playing in a Women's 30+ Indoor Soccer League? I pretty much suck, but I did manage to knee another girl in the head a few weeks ago and still have a pretty big bruise. So, you know... cool.
• I won my first blog contest! And it was one I really, really actually wanted to win too! So I just have to put in a shameless plug for two wonderful people, Aimee and Scott of PopRocks Design, and their new line of retro/funky mormon decor. If the Deseret Books catalog makes you want to cry, and not in a good way, you are going to love their Etsy shop. And it's not just mormon stuff, so, seriously, check it out!
• Due to the disintegration of his sleeping habits, Nate has officially been stripped of the Favorite Child status. I'm currently accepting applications for a replacement in-house, but it looks like we're going to have to outsource. If you have a child who you think qualifies to be my favorite, feel free to submit their resume. All children who put themselves to bed, make their own meals, and who love chore charts will be considered.
• The other night at dinner, Sam posed an interesting question: "What would you rather be, a frozen pig, or a talking fish bone? You know, instead of being a mom." Tough question, but I'm going to have to go with talking fish bone. And you?

Rite of Passage

Recently, a situation in the locker room at the swim center led to a fun discussion about how sometimes in locker rooms we see some weird, and possibly naked, things and it's not a big deal. And that was when Mia interjected with: Well, congratulations to me on seeing my first old lady scrubbing her bum!

She just turned eight. I swear kids are growing up so much faster these days.

You remember your first old lady bum-scrubbing incident don't you?

Guest Post!

Has it been a while once again? To quell the insatiable public demand, I've brought in some temporary help. Enjoy this guest post by Mia. No, it's not a Christmas recap, but still a very pressing topic:

What Do Teacher's Do at Night and How Can You Tell What There Doing?
By Mia Bardsley

When all the students go home what do the teachers do? Do they have a party? Do they go to sleep? Or do they just eat all the left over candy from the Halloween Party? Does the principle come in and fire you? Well, I will find out. I am super detective M! Here is my plan. When it is time to go home I will hide behind my chair and I will watch what my teacher does. My teacher is writing on a piece of paper, now he is going to his computer. He is writing something on the computer, now the phone is ringing oh no! It's my mom, the teacher is going to look behind my chair. I have to go home now by!

(I take comfort that in her fictional world, her mom was alert enough to notice she didn't come home from school.)