Madson Family Europe Adventure: July 2012

I just realized how long it has been since I last blogged! Whoops, time has just flown by the last couple of months! Since we went back to Portland at the end of May for a busy trip, we've stayed pretty close to home in June and July. It was so nice to be back in our house in Oregon and to see so many family and friends. Troy worked most of the trip and I tried to see as many people as I could, so the kids and I were very busy! Ryan had such a great time seeing some of his friends. Troy was also in Todd and Autumn's wedding, so we had a fun weekend celebrating them! The kids did really well going to Oregon with the time change, but coming home was brutal! For about 5 days Ryan would wake up around 1 am and could not fall back asleep until 3 or 4. Abby did this for a couple of nights as well, but Ryan definitely struggled with this more. I was a bit homesick coming back to Eindhoven, but getting back into the swing of things and seeing friends here really helped.

Todd and Autumn honeymooned in Europe and stayed with us the last couple of nights of their trip in June. They were our first visitors! A friend watched the kids for us, so we could spend the day in Amsterdam. We had a great day with them sight seeing!

Ryan's school is a year round schedule, so he didn't get out of school until June 29th and will start again on August 13th. Only a 6 week break, so I thought we have to make the most of this short summer break!! We've been playing with friends, going to museums, and parks near our house. The problem has been the weather has not been summer weather and has been raining quite a bit until last week. Not having summer weather has been really hard, but am hoping this week of sunshine will stay a bit longer! Our trip for the summer with the kids is Croatia in a few days. I can't wait! We are going with another family, who have kids similar ages to ours, so it is going to be such a fun beach trip together! They have become great friends here.

We took Troy to one of our favorite parks here, the parrot park in Veldhoven last weekend. Abby and Ryan love it and you can feed most of the birds here. Ryan is very serious about feeding the birds and Abby likes to try and talk to them. A few parrots do say hello, which make them laugh.

We also found a dinosaur museum about 15 minutes from our house and this place was a hit with Abby and Ryan as well. They have an indoor area with fossils and some lifelike dinosaurs that moved (which scared Abby). Then their is an outdoor area with dinosaurs and a small playground.

Hope everyone reading this is having a great summer! Troy and I just got back from Tuscany (Siena) and Rome with Dennis and Betsy, so I will be blogging about this trip soon. It was amazing!

Abby cracks me up in this picture. Getting ready for take-off to Portland!