Mike and Anita James

So, when we first moved here, we bought some bicycles.  It’s not only part of the culture here, it’s kind of a necessity.  Bicycle paths everywhere make it safe, and the price of gasoline makes it more than a necessity.  I got a used bike and thought it was a steal.  I didn’t really know [...]

Things are definitely changing around here.  You can see more and more signs of autumn.  Our time changed last Sunday.  Now, when I take Grace to school, it’s not totally dark.  Unfortunately, it will be before too long since we continue to lose daylight right now.  It also gets dark much earlier.  It makes you [...]

When we got our dog, Boomer, 5 years ago, I was unaware of a subculture here in The Netherlands.  That subculture is dog owners.  I remember walking with our puppy and having strangers come up to us talking about our dog.  Normally, people here don’t do something like that; they’re much more private. We definitely [...]

We often play “What’s Your Favorite” as a family. Generally, one person will ask a question about a favorite thing.  It could be things like what your favorite movie, tv show, song, game, etc is.  Grace often asks what our favorite season is.  Her “favorite” season is: fall (because her birthday falls during that season), [...]

Home is a relative term to many, but it does invoke certain feelings.  I just spent a week in Madrid, Spain getting great training on video editing.  I met some new friends and got to see some old ones. Living in The Netherlands, you’d think that I would love Spain more than anything – especially [...]

This is our second World Cup to experience in The Netherlands.  I can honestly say that there is nothing like it.  I’m so glad that we’re here during this.  First of all, there is orange everywhere!  The royal family is the House of Orange, so if you’ve ever seen the Dutch flag, which is red, [...]

For Grace and me, this was our first white Christmas.  It started snowing on Thursday, 17 December and stayed over a week. It seemed like a lot of snow to us, but on Sunday, we had much more.  Grace was able to play in the snow before we went to church.  She even had a [...]

It’s definitely that time of year again.  Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) is here in The Netherlands.  He comes on a steamboat every year from Spain and stays a few weeks.  Gifts are given on Saint Nicholas’ birthday, December 5.  The next morning, he leaves to go back to Spain. While Sinterklaas is in The Netherlands, children [...]

Earlier this week, both Grace and I were sick.  Fortunately, our fevers only lasted a day or two.  It came at a terrible time though.  I guess there’s never a good time to get sick, but we got sick when we had company coming.  Our friends were sick the week before, so they had no [...]

No, we don’t have major changes in our lives.  It is feeling much more like autumn here though.  Schools here had an autumn break last week, and it was so nice to have a little bit of time to relax as a family.  We were able to go to a few museums.  Here is Grace [...]