THINK PINK

My newest MAE/BFF (Mexican American Expat I love adding letters to BFF taught me some things about pink and being frugal this weekend. If you go to HEMA (the Dutch equivalent of Target) and order any treat you get a free coffee drink! You can have whatever you want, latte, cappuccino, coffee! Sue Stock watch out (for those of you that don’t know about Sue, she writes on being frugal for the Raleigh News and Observer—yes I know I am one of the last 30 somethings to get the newspaper delivered to my house)!! Lisette introduced me to this yummy PINK dessert. It is really 2 graham crackers with decadent heavy whipping cream inside them and the outside is frosted pink. This tasty treat is called tompouce.
Tompouce is my new favorite word! These things are tasty!!

A tompouce + a free cappuccino = a great way to spend a Saturday morning.

PLUS if you sit at HEMA there are these huge windows and you can easily spending an hour watching people come and go.
Later after a day of wandering around in the shops Lisette wanted to introduce me to her favorite girly beer to order in the Netherlands. The beer is called Rose. Notice how it is pink! It is a very tasty fruity beer and quite bubbly! Now I have a new drink that is beautiful to order when out and about.

Package Success

Yesterday I heard the best news, it just MADE my day! Figured I’d share with you (it is funny how the simplest things can make you excited when you are away from home)….Chris got his very 1st package from meJ Finally!! I was starting to get worried…..I’ve arranged for each of my parents to ship something to him once we knew his address (since I would already be gone) and I’ve sent him 3 packages from the Netherlands and he hadn’t gotten anything yet. This was not a good situation for me because some of you will remember last time he was deployed I got the gold medal from the army for being super package girlfriend and this time being away in the NL has really limited my ability to get things mailed to him quickly!! I was about to leave work last night and he popped onto google talk to say the package that I had Dad send showed up today, yippee!! So he spent the day catching up on one of his favorite shows—Scrubs (yeah Chris got to reconnect with Dr. Cox!!) I wanted to say thank you to everyone that has been writing that they want to send Chris a package or a letter, it is appreciated greatly by the both of us, mail while deployed is a real morale booster! We did hear some news about packages and letters though; all of them must be mailed by 12/1/09. Anything mailed later in December will not get delivered to him.
So I figured you would enjoy hearing that yesterday the wife regained herself in her mail capabilities!! HoorayJ GO USPS, hopefully soon I can cheer for TNT (the post office here in NL).

Nature-- enjoying the colors of fall

The other morning I was sitting in my living room and this butterfly landed on my doorway. The poor butterfly seemed stuck, so I picked her up and put her on a tree outside. When I did that she spread her wings out, look at those gorgeous rich colors! They really coordinate with the current season fall!

Mail in Box 21

On Saturday I was driving through the gate at the Park and the owner came out of the reception building to flag me down. She wanted me to stop and swing by the office because I had a letter in my box. Each cottage gets their own box at the front office; however, the front office keeps banker hours- 9a-5p Monday-Friday. I am not around during those times and I’ve kind of forgotten that I can get mail. So after I unloaded my groceries I walked over there to see who sent my first letter! What a fun surprise, a letter all the way from Maui! Shiloh sent a note while away on her honeymoon. Thanks Shiloh for the fun card, loved hearing tales from Maui from you!

Today one of the IT guys brought me a gift. He had seen my screensaver of Mya and Chris and had questions about the mooch. Apparently on the weekends he is a judge for a group in the Netherlands called, “Fly Em High.” Here is a link to check them out http://www.flyemhigh.nl/
It is pretty competitive!! He thought Mya might like competition quality Frisbees. They are better for the dog’s teeth and they are more flexible and harder for dogs to bite through. So Mya has his first gift from the NL and I can only wonder how long it will take Mya to destroy one of the Frisbees, he does like to abuse his toys. I told Patrick that Mya really isn’t a candidate for competing in a Frisbee competition since listening to commands is not one of Mya’s top priorities. Patrick suggested I learn to be more firm with Mya, has Patrick been talking to Chris? Why is it always MY fault that Mya isn’t the best listener!! I promised to send Patrick a little wmv once home of the mooch and me playing with the Frisbee. Well let me rephrase that of Mya and Chris playing catch!

Ode to Chocolate

During the afternoon of my Koln visit we hung out at the Mecca for chocolate…..Schokoladen Museum. WOW! A whole museum dedicated to chocolate and the history of chocolate and this place was PACKED with people. I quickly learned that Chris and I are NOT the only ones out there that LOVE chocolate. The museum is compartmentalized into where chocolate is from, chocolate and what it does to your body (besides make you plump), how chocolate is processed and then a history of chocolate advertising and sales. The funniest part of the museum visit was in the room where chocolate was flowing out of a golden tree, it was a little willi wonkaesque. Then a “Lindt” employee dressed head to toe in white began to dole out little wafer cookies dipped into this flowing river of chocolate. She looked so angry and bothered by all the tourists you just couldn’t help but laugh, you would think flowing chocolate would make her smile. Maybe she didn’t want to have to work on a Sunday or maybe she was sick and tired of all the hands clamoring for the wafers or maybe the odor of chocolate made her feel sick, who knows but watching her angrily hand out the chocolate was just hilarious! The museum made me think a lot about Grandpa Smith and how he was probably smiling down from heaven watching Elizabeth in Koln! There was a whole room dedicated to vintage machines that would plop out chocolate when you put coins in it, Grandpa would have a blast with a roll of pennies in this room! I had to take a few pictures of the ones that he would probably love the most; of course they were the crudest! Figured all the Smith men would get a chuckle and probably would agree with me!

A Sbux Sighting that made me homesick!

As we were walking out of the church I looked down and across the plaza I saw some familiar green writing, immediately my radar went off! My first Starbucks sighting in EU! So we headed over there so I could of course take a picture for Nash and get a little drink, I love the cafes here and haven’t really missed the bux, but then when I saw it I missed it, or rather missed all my coffee time with my friend! While there I bought a big Koln mug. Look at my Koln mug compared to the mugs in my house, now I can have my BIG cup of coffee before work again!! We all know I love a little coffee with my milk – oh and I have skim milk at me house now too, life is good!