Amsterdam

This seriously never happens anymore - but we had a super kid friendly flight crew that welcomed the kids into the cockpit to check it out.  Jonah and Julia were thumbs up certain that they could manage all of the controls without adult supervision.  Although the flight crew were kid friendly, even they had their limits! 

At the airport in Amsterdam, the birds will come and eat right out of your hand if the staff help by stocking you with their favorite seeds.

This is what it looks like if you take a red-eye flight to Europe and then only watch movies the whole flight.  Sleeping in the hotel lobby - no big deal.

Outside the Anne Frank House.  It is important that our kids know about the hard part of our history to avoid standing by while history repeats itself.  This lesson seems to be growing more and more important in our world with every passing year. We're so grateful that our kids could see this part of history with their own eyes.

Holland is of course wooden shoes and windmills.

Give him time, he'll grow into them.

Windmills!

This is actually a functioning windmill that grounds powders to make paints and we got to see in in operation.  

Hand-carving wooden shoes.  Most of them are machine made these days so it was extra cool to see someone do it by hand.

If you blow into a newly hollowed out wooden shoe, you can blow water out of the wood.  It sounds crazy, but the wood they use is so fresh that it's still that wet.

As our great adventure of summer continued, we jumped on a plane and flew to Amsterdam for a few days.  We were going to be getting on a cruise to explore the fjords of Norway, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to explore a little bit of what the Netherlands has to offer.