Tough day

This morning was not fun. Pim blew his nose so hard at 6.45 that he woke up the whole house. After waking up three times during the night as well ánd not feeling great, feeling nauseous, I just wanted to stay in bed for the rest of the day.

It was one of those Corona-mornings, as I like to call them. Those mornings that you wake up and think: another day that will look exactly the same as the other days this whole year. Not a great start. Normally a nice walk would help me, especially with this beautiful sun. But the temperature of under 10 Fahrenheit didn’t really appeal to me to have a long walk outside. It is one of those mornings that made me think of the days before having kids. I love my kids to death, but boy, do I wish sometimes I could just go back to those days that you can do WHATEVER you want to do, EAT whatever you want to eat, WATCH whatever you want to watch etc. Back in Holland, after the kids were born, Erik and I still planned weekends away at least 2, but sometimes up to 4 times a year. With the help off grandparents, aunts and uncles and our friends Elke & Rik who then took the kids for that weekend so that we could have some quality time together. On top of that I had at least once a month that I would have a date with a friend, having dinner or even a whole day with a friend, visiting a spa (which does not cost as much as here in Amerika might I say). And the year before moving to Raynham, I even went on vacation with my friend Joyce, a whole week to the sun in an all inclusive hotel, without husbands and without kids. My husband would rather go snowboarding with friends on another occasion. I am pretty sure that Joyce and I would’ve made it an recurring thing if I wouldn’t have moved to Raynham😊. I know that I’m definitely privileged being able to do that kind of stuff, but boy, do I miss it these days. Since we moved here Erik and I barely had any dates together, let alone weekends without the kids. And full disclosure, that is one of the things that we are very much looking forward to moving back to Holland. (We off course hope that the family have missed the kids so much that they want to have lots of sleep overs lol;-)).

I really miss it more these days with Corona. Even though my work as PTO president is a very demanding and busy job, I do realize that it is totally different from having a “real” job. I can pretty much do things in my own time, making it possible to work a lot at night when the kids are in bed and being there for them during the day. I off course also worked a lot when they would be in school. Not having a boss demanding things from me makes it very different too than when I would have one. But Corona has changed that all and there is barely any time left for myself. My Me-time now mainly consists of doing groceries, taking a walk on my ow and sit in my car around the corner for a little bit longer after coming back from groceries etc. Just listening to some music, scrolling through Social Media or calling friends.

This is by the way not a complain post. But I did promised you to take you on my journey, and this is part of that too. Also I think lots of moms (parents) can relate to this blog and the feelings I am penciling down here. Unfortunately, I hear from several people that feel they can’t or shouldn’t complain because they are healthy and haven’t lost anyone (thank goodness). But I don’t agree on that at all! I think everyone is entitled to having those feelings and it can be really helpful to talk about it. It doesn’t mean you are not thankful to be healthy or that you haven’t lost anyone. But it can definitely help to talk about those feelings. This has been a very challenging year (can’t believe it almost has been a year already) and so so many things have changed in our lives. I like to believe that a lot of good has come out of it too, but a lot of pain as well for many people.

I, for one, feel very lucky to be able to spend so much time with my family here. When I said at one point a few months ago that I would be happy that this sucking year would be almost over, Pim responded to me that he didn’t think it was nice to say that, he even almost got a little angry with me saying that. When I asked him to explain to me what he thought, he said that he loved it that we were together so much because of Corona. It is nice to hear different perspectives, especially from those little ones that I think experience things so differently from us adults (both in positive as in negative ways.)

We especially feel very lucky to have decided not to return to Holland last December (what we have considered because the schools would all be open fulltime in Holland despite Corona, and here in Raynham it wasn’t clear what would happen at that point). As we speak Holland is in full Lockdown since half December, since this weekend also having a curview between 9pm and 4:30 am. You can only have one visitor a day etc etc. As everyone in Holland was very used to having the kids in school since August, it is a big change and huge challenge for a lot of people to work from home and help the kids. And then I am not even talking about the parents that have the youngest kids around as well as the daycares are not open either. It really is a challenge to keep all balls in the air (is that even an English saying? I translated from Dutch😊).

If we would’ve moved to Holland I probably wouldn’t have had a job yet, but I would’ve been looking for one for sure. Also, it is frustrating enough not to be able to see your friends and family, but we find it a lot easier not being able to see our Dutch family and friends while still being here. It would be a lot harder to be so close to them after so long and not being able to see them at all. As time is moving on though, we are also wondering how the world would look in 6 months, after we have returned to Holland. Will it be safe enough to hug our family and friends at the airport when we return? By the time we return, we have not seen them all for 2 years and a lot of things have happened this past year. We don’t know, we can’t know. We will take it as it comes and are at least a bit positive with the vaccines being rolled out at this point.

For now I am gonna post this blog, because why not?! Being vulnerable is a scary thing for sure but I have learned in the past that it is also a beautiful thing. A lot of beautiful, open and honest conversations come from it. I have always been an open book, what you see is what you get pretty much. So today is not my best day no. But tomorrow will be a new day! I won’t do as much today, I will have a phonecall with Joyce today, maybe we should chat about where we would like to go on a mommy-vacay after I return and after the whole Corona shitshow allows us again. We don’t know if we can and will, but dreaming and hoping is good and helps us get through tough times. Especially in these challenging times.

For everyone else who is struggling today, tomorrow or whenever. You are not alone! Call me if you want to, having a chat with a friend can help! Hang in there everyone!

Talk soon! XOXO

Holland, Holland and mixed emotions

What a week! The past week was a lot about Holland. Or really, to much was about Holland. We are still here in Raynham, we want to enjoy our time here, but it is unavoidable to also work on our remigration to Holland. Responses from some friends in Holland after writing a blog or a text to them about looking forward to see them again, are often followed by: don’t think about the move to much yet, enjoy your time in America while you still can. And yes, we want to, but moving a household of 4 in general is a big job and Boy…with Corona around the corner all the time, the weather being really really cold (often times to cold to hang out outside with our friends), work for school that goes up and down in how much work it is and therefore so much time on my hand to do things for our move. Should I just sit and only watch Netflix and not think about moving at all for another 3 months? We have friends that had to move in 30 days and they did it! It was a bit stressful and not fun at all, but it’s doable. It is an option. We can just pretend we are not going anywhere and then end of May we step up our game and call a moving agency for a container to ship our stuff and we will just jump into a plane that still has 4 seats left for us (that won’t be an issue probably, that’s goodJ).

Yeah, that won’t happen. For all of you that have known me for a long time (but even for you that have only known me a short time), I don’t do that! I plan, I organize, I anticipate, I work ahead, I make lists…on pretty much everything. I’m good at it, it makes me happy, it gives me clearance in my head and so that’s my thing! It’s funny, because I actually got a lot of criticism before moving to the States 4 years ago on this subject. In a process like this it is unclear until about 2 months before leaving whether everything with the Visa will work out. So you find out very late whether you can go on with your plan or not. But when we started the official paperwork in January 2017 (and had no idea what would come from it), we started cleaning out our house, I started making lists, I planned goodbye parties for our family but also for Pim an Nynke and their friends, I booked an English teacher, read read and read more about moving to Amerika etc. People thought I was overreacting, everything would work out just fine and I was putting way to much thought in it. But then we came to Amerika and our kids did AWESOME, we acclimated pretty fast and all the prepping contributed so much! (Ergo, ALWAYS follow your own gut on what might be good for you and for your family. It doesn’t really matter what others say about things this big. You can listen and take from those feedback moments and advises what you can use and move forward from there. Everyone is different and everyone does things different… and that is OK!)

Ok, getting back to this week! It was cold, like reeeeaaaaaally cold! I must say, I get cold easily, but still….It was cold! (Snowing while I’m writing this blog btw). So this week we mainly stayed home. We have a FunRaiser for school coming up, collecting soft goods like clothes and books, so past weekend was a perfect moment to start purging our closets. The kids have grown so much and Erik and I shrunk quite a bit over the past year. Erik also never goes through his clothes so I started Friday night with my own closets and looked at everything with the question in my mind: Am I gonna want this in Holland? Then I took out all Erik’s clothes, made a shift with the things I like and asked him to go through the rest the next day. And then, as he didn’t need my help with that, on Saturday after Dutch School I started working on Pim’s stuff. After they finished Dutch School and came back from Ice-skating lessons I made Pim try on a bunch of stuff. Done and done….that was an easy one. As soon as I had found the perfect fitting shirt for him I just compared all the other shirts to that. Shorter than that? Thrown out! Pim first went through everything to tell me which ones he wouldn’t wear anyways (he has been picky like that since he was about 2, I’ve stopped convincing him to wear anything long ago)

And then the challenging part came…Nynke’s clothes. Nynke is the one that has changed the most this past year. She is turning into this beautiful young lady and her body is changing so much, I have no idea what would fit and look good on her at this point. Monday morning (we had the day of as it was Martin Luther King day) I started the day with an hour walk outside while chatting with my mom on the phone. After that I wanted to start going through Nynke’s clothes with her. I mentioned already that she is getting so big, and when I arrived home she surprised me as she had already started to try on some of her clothes. We worked hard for 1,5 hours and ended up with 5 30 gallon bags full of clothes for the fundraiser and a whole bag of clothes for some friends that we know loves to wear Nynke’s clothes after Nynke grew out of it. I was in such a flow, and Pim had asked me to switch his furniture around in his room. So I decided to move on, the kids were playing outside with friends and loved to see both their rooms all cleaned up and furniture moved around. Earlier in the week I had worked on our craft and schoolstuff closet (I don’t know exactly how to say it). Cleaned it all out, found so crazy many pencils, crayons, glue sticks, erasers etc etc…Together with all the stuff like it, that I found in their rooms and in other drawers etc, I have a nice donation to Pim’s teacher. It really is insane to just buy everything new at the start of each school year, but when you need it all in September you can’t find anything so we just buy it again.

So far the purging. The other thing I did is reaching out to moving companies. Thanks to a post on facebook I received many names for companies to check out quotes. I have reached out to a bunch of them and just received the first quote. It is good to see that things are less expensive than we thought it would be, that gives some perspective for sure. It would include the moving company to pack it all and to document everything for customs. We could all do it ourselves and safe some money there, but I told Erik that I would rather have it done (if possible money wise) and to be able to have the time that we won’t have to spend on that, to make some last memories with our friends here in Amerika. It looks like that is possible now, which is great!

Another thing that goes on in our house about Holland is talking about the things we are looking forward to. It’s not a daily thing, but it comes up once in a while. During dinner this weekend Pim initiated it this time: “everyone take turns telling what food they want to eat first”, then “everyone take turns about who they would want to pick us up at the airport”. These kind of things are fun to talk about and will get the kids excited about this big step in our life. We take turns in being sad about moving back. As we are so sad leaving everything and everyone here behind, that can come up any time. But talking about these things help us look forward to the positive things of our move back to Holland.

And then the last thing that made us think and talk about our move back to Holland the past week were the two texts and a phone call I received from different friends. All three mentioning to me that their child has been crying about us leaving or just feeling upset about it. And it might sound weird, and when we rationalize it, it off course shouldn’t be the way we feel, but we sometimes feel guilty towards our loved ones. That started before leaving in Holland in 2017. It was a great adventure for us to be moving to Raynham, but we were picking up our kids and dropping them in another country 5.500 km’s away from Holland where they didn’t even speak the language. Taking them away from their grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends. We were doing this to them, the kids and our family and friends! And then now, we have made such wonderful friends here that were just living their lives just fine, and then we show up and start loving them and now we leave them again. It is especially heartbreaking to see those little ones having a hard time with this, even though we also realize how special it is to have these friends that might come visit to see how we live in Holland. The fact that we were able to show so many people here in Raynham how things go in Holland, or Europe, has been wonderful too. And for us it has been so special to be able to learn about another country by really living the life in this country. The thing that helps us with this guilt, is that we have always been straight forward about our stay here being temporary, even though it has felt at times that we felt we wanted to stay here forever. But it is a hard thing to see and experience. We are hoping for warmer weather very soon so we can hang out with our friends again soon!

For now I’m gonna make myself a delicious cappuccino in one of my favorite mugs from one of my dear friends here, that mug will def come to Holland (I'm obsessed with mugs!!!) so I can think of my friends when I have my Dutch coffee! Will be continued!

XOXO Wendy

WOW

Overwhelmed, blown away and loved, those are probably the best words to describe the feelings I have today after receiving so many different, but wonderful responses from many of you. Pressure is rising too, to be honest. Because now I’ve launched this site and so many of you have subscribed, I need to deliver! But THANK YOU all for taking the time to take a look at my blog! I hope you love to see updates coming over the coming months and to follow!!

And WHAT am I gonna write about, that is the big question!? Just life and what is going on! Problem is, there is not a lot going on at this moment because of the shitty Corona virus. But enough to write about I am sure. When we get closer to moving we will be able to write more about the things that come with moving. Everyone of you has probably moved at least one time in your life, most likely when you were an adult at least. So you know what comes with that, and now think about moving to a another country across the pacific 3454 miles away.

Did you know that Boston is probably the closest (big) city in America to Holland, and the easiest and fastest one to fly from and to Amsterdam? That’s what we’ve been telling our friends and family in Holland from the moment we decided to move here. It’s such an easy transfer. Depending on the wind, it can take as little as 6,5 hours on a direct flight! That makes us so happy for the future and for visits, can you imagine if we would’ve lived in Seattle for 4 years, that’s a long trip from Holland. It’s a long trip even from Boston I think.

This morning Erik and I were talking about how hard it is to decide what we all want to bring back to Holland. I didn’t write that before yet, but when we arrived here 3,5 years ago, we came with 10 suitcases and a bunch of boxes came by sea about 10 weeks later. The only big thing that was shipped here from Holland was our BoxSpring, my bed that I had missed for almost 3 months (the container took a bit longer than expected unfortunately). We arrived in a totally empty house here in Raynham and had some impressing shopping sprees those first few weeks. The issue now is, that we still own our house in Holland, it has been rented out furnished. What means that we will return to a house fully furnished, so what to do with our belongings here in Raynham? Don’t worry, this is most likely already taken care of but then we still have so many things that we have to make decisions about.

Back to the question what to write about? I hope you guys can help me with that as well! We found that there were so many things so completely different her in America, and there are some things I wrote about in my Dutch blog that I will def also write about here because it is interesting and in ways fun to put those things next to each other. But I have also learned over the past few years here that a lot of you are very interested in how things work in Holland or at how we look at some “typical” American things (and even life in general). So I would LOVE to hear from you what you want me to write about! So please leave a comment here or text, pm or whats app me with topics or subjects. (ps: I don’t do politics.)

Thanks again so much! Oh and btw….I don’t really have a set day that I will post blogs, I will write as it comes. If you have left your email address, you will receive a notification when I post.

To be continued!

XOXO Wendy