Easter and saying Good-bye

Poor reception in Zwolle.

We borrowed the Poppelmobile once again and followed the Dutch speaking GPS to a Catholic Church an hour and half away, in a town called Zwolle, near Tanja's family (since we were headed there for brunch). The Church was called the Peperbus (which means something like pepper shaker in English) because it looks like a pepper shaker. http://www.peperbus.info/nl/home
Mass was fabulous! The choir and organ were amazing and their beautiful melodies filled up this old church in a way I've never experienced! Claire went to a children's Liturgy of the Word and asked the instructor to please translate for her. (Claire is perfectly comfortable with strangers who speak in other tongues). After mass, the girls lined up for our annual "more bars in more places" photo but, alas, we had poor reception since we were missing a few bars.

 Brunch at the Van der Krabben's in Hattem was very, very tasty! Caroline, the meat lover, went crazy on sausage bread. Paul's quiche struck a chord with me, Jackie was partial to the apple pie and Claire really went wild over the sweet bread. Lee, I believe, enjoyed it all.

Tanja's father, Tanya and her sister took the kids to a local playground. Claire returned proclaiming that her tour of the Netherlands is now complete because she found the best playground in the world! We were inspired by something on our walk from the playground--someone had a trampoline in their front yard but they had recessed it into the ground! Since we have recently purchased a new trampoline, the girls in the family are lobbying to encourage Lee to do this with ours. All we got was a frown and an eye roll. Mr. Van der Krabben seemed to support our position, however, and substantiated to Lee that we had some valid points. We'll see.

After returning to Haarlem and sending the kids off to pack and sleep, Lee and I spent a few late hours chatting with Paul and Tanja. Funny, even though Haarlem is a city of substantial size, at night it sounds like a rainforest. The birds are incredibly loud with varying songs and there always seems to be a meowing or fighting cat.

All told, we had a fabulous time in the Netherlands and return home with many great memories and lots of photos and commentary to fill up our photo albums.

Thanks for following along. We hope you've found our travels and antics entertaining and somewhat informative.

Big, big thanks to Paul, Tanja, Nina and Saskia for withstanding the American invasion and sharing their home with us.