"Do they speak Seattle here?" kohen:)

I'm sitting here in Amsterdam at 7:45 with two sleeping kids and a can of Heineken, man is this different from the last time I was here!

The trip is off to a good start, meaning nobody has puked yet or licked any floors. Yes, I said nobody has licked the floors. Over the summer when we were in New Zealand Brian and I thought it best to keep the kids awake during the day to try and get over the jet lag. Obviously the kids weren't as hip to this idea and in their sleep deprived delirium they ended up licking the floor of the Auckland sky tower. We were somewhat amused by it until the next morning when we were ten minutes into our drive south when Kohen hurled all over the car, only a minute after Brian reminded me about the car rental fines for vomiting in the car. oh karma, you are funny:) Naturally, I was prepared with plastic bags for such an occasion, too bad I left them in the trunk of the car. In my haste I grabbed the cute Elmo bag the nice Quantas flight attendant gave us and poor Elmo was sacrificed to the puking Gods. So like I said, so far here in Amsterdam we're good!

So here I am alone with two kids in Amsterdam while Brian plays a concert in Luxembourg. I'm
officially changing my name to "brave lady" as that is what everyone I meet has decided to call me. If all goes according to plan we will meet Brian at the train station in Hamburg
tomorrow afternoon and then continue on to Denmark together.

It is pretty cold here so we've been inside a bit which is fine, the kids are still a little
jet lagged and appreciate the down time to drive their cars around the hotel room. We went to
the Anne Frank house because I will never go to Amsterdam without saying thanks to the girl
whose words have meant so much to me over the years. Kohen thought it was pretty cool that
there was a secret house behind a bookcase. I'm pretty sure he will be asking Brian to build
one on his bedroom door sometime soon:) Afterwards we went to a Dutch pancake house I heard
about in my kid friendly research on Amsterdam. They advertised things like police pancakes
and pirate pancakes. I thought this meant pancakes in shapes of the described item but
instead, Kohen's police pancake came out covered with toy guns. Not nearly as cool as I had
hoped and since we don't have guns at our house kohen thought it was pretty lame too as he was expecting an awesome police car to show up on his plate. I slapped a little nutella on his
non-police car and he was happy.

Its been fun traveling with these little guys, they really are such amazing travelers. In
spite of getting his finger shut in the hotel door and not being a fan of cold weather Beckett
is holding up:) Kohen was concerned nobody would "speak Seattle" but is now relieved that he
can communicate his love of trains with just about every Dutch person we meet. Tomorrow is a
travel day for us so we got out the notebooks I made for the boys with pictures of the places
we will go on the trip. I printed out pictures of some of the sites we will see and the
hotels we will stay at. It seems to help relieve any anxiety they might have about what's
coming up. After each place on our itinerary are a few empty pages for them to draw pictures
of what they saw and did.

I'm not sure what our Internet status will be for the next week but I'll post when I can.

Side note #1: Lionel Ritchie's music is alive and well in Amsterdam. No, I did not visit any
coffee shops with the boys.

Side note #2: I don't know what they feed the cows here but goddam the butter is delicious

Best words that came out of my mouth today: Beckett, please do not put your head in the potty while Kohen is making pee pee.