9 Months

Living in Luxembourg has shaken my confidence. Tricked me into thinking I can't successfully wash clothes without ruining them. Turned me into a person that avoids going into stores and other public establishments because I worry I won't be able to find or buy something I need or that doesn't exist in Luxembourg and then I won't be able to successfully ask anyone for help. Stripped me of my sureness to make friends for myself and my children, and drained the heart I once felt in conquering anything.

As we drove to Holland last week, Otto started complaining about how hard it was to sit in the car for a long period of time. I gave him a little pep talk about all of the hard things he's already done in his life -- having a sibling 12 months younger than him, moving to Luxembourg, not eating Chick-fil-a, going to preschool in a foreign language, learning to speak a foreign language, going to church in a really weird building and in a different language than the one he's learning at school, flying across the the ocean four times, and more.

And then I realized Luxembourg had done something wonderful.

After this little pep talk, Otto kept whining but I couldn't stop thinking about all of the things I can do and have done. The overseas challenges didn't feel so insurmountable in that moment, and I promised myself to give yours truly the same pep talk the next time I want to say a swear word because I accidentally drove the wrong way on a street downtown.

So, thank you Luxembourg for showing me just how strong me and my family are. Thank you for expanding my world and compassion for others. Thank you for teaching me more patience and understanding for myself and those around me than I ever dreamt of learning. And thank you for the spectacular moments of beauty and wonder in a part of the world I never expected to experience.

Things I want to remember about the past month in Luxembourg: 

Star and Russ Andrews coming over for Indian take away, éclairs, and a tart.

Going over to the Packers to play and eat Becky's pizza.

Eating Yudri's rice pudding.

Spending a weekend in Nancy, France and attending Stake Conference.

Lori White coming over and spending a day with me while Ben was in Dublin.

Otto's teacher asking to use our bathroom and then telling me she's pregnant.

Hosting a bi-monthly play group for ladies and their children from church.

Potty training Aksel.

Daylight savings.

Going to Zig Zag with Star and the Packers.

Introducing the boys to the movie, Monsters, Inc.

Ben taking Nate Packer to Perl, Germany to show him the ropes of stocking up on supplies that are twice as expensive in Luxembourg.

Eating a lot of Kinder eggs.

Buying a membership to the English/French library Il Etai Une Fois.

Lori White bringing back plastic Easter eggs from Utah.

Going to the Airplane Park with the Packers and Star.

An Easter Egg hunt and BBQ with the Packers, the White and the missionaries.

Watching Conference.

Buying watches for Otto and Aksel in a flea market in Amsterdam because Ryan and Bennett got one too.

Going to Jardin de Circulation several times.

Carly giving birth to Bentley.

Otto's teacher, Tess, telling me she can't read or write in Luxembourgish.

Watching How I Met Your Mother on Netflix with Ben.

Walking in the Petrusse Valley.

Play group at the Farm Park.

Buying a plane ticket for Lilly Evans to come spend the summer with us.

Ingrid barking like a dog all of the time.

Eemaischen Market and my new Peckvillchen birds.

Ryan Gilstrap watching the boys and Otto loving him.

Going to the Pirate Ship Park.

Making our own trail mix.

Giving money to pan handlers for Family Home Evening.

Visiting teaching with Marie Kusseling.

Ingrid getting her top and bottom molars.

Getting goldfish from Star.

Taking the kids swimming with Amanda Rodriguez.

Ben and I taking turns going jogging in the evenings.

Celebrating Ryan Packer's birthday, eating Becky's pizza, Otto coveting Ryan's birthday present, and Aksel spending the entire evening hidden upstairs playing with Thomas the Train.

Feeding the missionaries dinner.

Ben riding the bus with a man and his pet fox named Foxy.

Going to Kockelsheuer with 500 Portuguese people to see the animals and play at the park one Sunday afternoon.

Ben landing a new client at work.

Going to Star's house to play with her cats and walking to a new bakery, Cake Box, where we purchased a delicious piece of rainbow cake and almost knocked over a lot of really expensive wedding cakes.

Showing Otto a dead mouse on Star's porch and then asking if Star was going to turn it into a rug.

Going to Bambesch Woods with the Mullins and the Packers.

Meeting the Holdaways in Bastogne, Belgium to go through the Bastogne War Museum and see the Mardasson Memorial.

Russ and Star Andrews coming over for Vappianos take away and a bowl of chocolate chips.

Talking with Kate for an hour and a half.

Ben going to London.

Watching the Mormon Channel video, I am a child of God, a lot.

Changing Aksel's bed into a toddler bed.

Eating a lot of stroopwafels.

Spending five days in The Netherlands with the Packers and the Andrews.

I've lived in Luxembourg for nine months and I feel triumphant.

The Netherlands

We recently spent five days in The Netherlands with our friends, the Packers.

Ben returned from his trip to London on Wednesday and we ate lunch, packed the car, and drove to The Netherlands with a prayer Ingrid would sleep for a long time. She slept for 40 minutes. I presented the boys with their very own Pez dispensers and thought for sure the novelty of this new item would last for 10-15 minutes. It lasted 30 seconds. Then they whined about having more Pez for an hour. Three and a half hours and three Pez refills later, we made it to Duinrell, a holiday and amusement park in Wassenaar, a town in the western part of The Netherlands.

Duinrell looks a lot like the campground next to Lagoon in Utah.

Campers, cabins, tents, and bike campers make up this little gated community complete with restaurants, grocery store, parks, amusement park, and water park. We unloaded our belongings into our three bedroom camper and headed into the small town of Wassenaar in search of dinner and gelato.

We found Lucianos first, so we got everyone a cone and then meandered through the rest of the town looking for dinner. Finding a recommended Turkish restaurant, Ben and I bought kebabs and fed pita bread to the kids.

Once the Packers arrived, we met them at the Duinrell Plaza to buy groceries, let kids play and take care of necessary paperwork for our stay for the next five days.

We tucked everyone in bed and sent Ben over to the Packer's to make a plan for the next day. I tried to lessen the marijuana smell from our bedroom and bathroom and packed snacks, lunches, and other survival items for the next day.

On Thursday, we went to Keukenhof, an incredible garden with more than 7 million bulbs and 800 varieties of tulips. Although only some of the tulips were in bloom, we felt thrilled with all of the flowers, bushes, windmills, stroopwafels, giant wooden shoes, murals made of petals, views, and fields of flowers.

I cried several times as we walked through the garden -- totally overwhelmed at the good fortune of living in Europe and being in Holland for tulip season. I never imagined my life would be this hard, but I never imagined it would be this wonderful and full of moments like seeing the Mona Lisa in person and walking through fields of daffodils and hyacinths in The Netherlands, and having a family to share it all with.

We met up with Lori, Madi, and Kyla White just as our kids started melting down and losing interest in the park, fountains, and endless flowers (we had been walking around nearly five hours). We took lots of pictures, ate our lunches and headed back to the car.

As soon as we loaded everyone up, Aksel and Ingrid passed out, so we made the most of nap time by driving around the countryside looking at fields, exploring The Hague by car, walking around the LDS Temple, and stopping at a gas station to buy drinks we can't find in Luxembourg.

After nap time, we went to the Wassenaar Beach and tolerated the windy conditions for an hour and a half while kids played in the sand, on the slides, dug holes, made sand castles that Aksel destroyed, found crabs, and pet a Fjord horse (Norway's finest steed, comment added by Ben).

When something randomly Norwegian (like a Fjord horse) appears in our lives, Ben is elated and only further convinced that all things Norwegian are superior.

We ended the day like we did the day before - bundling everyone up and heading into Wassenaar for gelato. We mixed it up with a pizza for dinner (after our cones, of course).

After the three little ones had been bathed and put to bed, Nate came over and we made plans for the next day.

On Friday, we discovered there's a lot of traffic in Amsterdam and a lot of bicyclists.

It feels like lots of people nearly died on our drive into the city. For starters, a semi truck changed lanes clipping the back of the BMW directly in front of the Packers, sending it spinning sideways and across three lanes of the autoroute before being able to drive to the shoulder. It was a really close call and we were and are really grateful no one was seriously injured.

After avoiding a potentially horrific accident, we began weaving our way between cyclists, trains, buses, sprinter vans and hoards of pedestrians to find parking in downtown Amsterdam. Then we began walking all over the city with our six children in tow, getting them excited about the canals, boats, pirate ships, golden arches, bikes, statues, and the Anne Frank House.

As we made our way across the city, we were all mesmerized by the idyllic canals, row homes and history of Amsterdam. We immediately purchased several packages of stroopwafels while we waited for our boat tour to arrive, took lots of pictures, let the boys pee in a lot of bushes, canals and grass patches, and eagerly boarded the covered boat for our canal tour. After an hour and a half on the boat, lunch consumed and boredom approaching, we disembarked our boat and headed for Vondelpark, promising our children a glorious spot to run around and play.

As we pushed, carried, and encouraged the children to walk just a few more blocks, I saw a young girl being kicked to the ground by a man who then sent her longboard rolling down the sidewalk past our group. A little unsure of what was happening, I continued to watch as the girl chased her board away from the man, plugged in head phones and attempted to cross the street away from the commotion. I approached her and asked if she was okay and she burst into tears. Then I hugged her and told her I had seen what happened and I wasn't going to let anything else happen to her.

She said her name was Jamie and that she had accidentally bumped the aforementioned man with her longboard. She was on her way to a dentist appointment. I asked her age. She said 13.

I wrapped my arm around her and introduced her to everyone in our group and nodded to Ben and Nate. I assured her they would beat the crap out of him if he touched her again. I meant it. Then I told her we would walk with her to the dentist. We tucked her between our two strollers and kept walking.

Then the man turned around and started back toward us. I pulled her in closer and quickly identified him to Ben.

Let me just say, I feel really proud of myself for marrying Benjamin Oates. Because, dang it, we're not gonna take it. We're not going to take people stealing our iPhones out of our truck and we certainly aren't going to take violence against a 13-year-old girl in downtown Amsterdam.

After a lot of yelling about kicking 13 year old girls and a little fear Ben would be arrested in a foreign country, we continued on to Vondelpark. Jamie pointed us in the direction of a playground and we separated ways.

Yesterday I cried about the tulips. Today I cried about violence. What a trip.

To top it off, Vondelpark's playground was a pile of cement steps and monkey bars. Otto kept asking where the playground was. Luxembourg has really spoiled us. But, we ate a hearty snack, peed in some more bushes and rallied for another boat ride back to our car. The boys played tag as we meandered back through the park, and we lucked out by finding a boat waiting for us at the slip. Twenty minutes later, we divided into two groups with Nate and Ben taking four of the six children back to the cars and Becky and I taking two children in an attempt to buy a few souvenirs before driving back to Duinrell.

We met back up for dinner at Vapianos, let the boys kick a soccer ball, basked in the warmth of the sun and the triumph of surviving eight hours in Amsterdam with six children.

Then we ended the night with gelato at Luciano's back in Wassenaar and crashed by 9:30 pm.

We took advantage of the proximity of an LDS Temple and went with Star and Russ Andrews on Saturday morning while Nate and Becky took care of our kids. We swapped places at lunch time and took the crew to McDonalds and to the theme park at Duinrell. We spent the afternoon jumping on trampolines, riding a ferris wheel, a self-powered monorail, and a Katapult.

And like the previous three days, we happily ended the day with gelato at Luciano's.

After kids were asleep, Star and Becky came to our camper and Nate, Ben, and Russ played cards in the Packer's camper. We stayed up way too late but enjoyed every second.

We ended the trip by visiting one last windmill and attending church in English at newly-formed ward in a newly-built building on Sunday morning. I was so happy I cried again. We took more pictures in front of the church and Temple, changed clothes in the parking lot, peed in more bushes and began our drive home. This time Ingrid slept for more than two hours.

It was a great trip - our most successful family vacation to date. We left feeling satisfied at how much we had been able to see and do and how much fun our children had in the process. The rumors about The Netherlands are true. It's beautiful. And it's full of beautiful, tall people who ride bicycles without helmets.

We will be back.