A New Chapter!

Guess who took his first steps today!?

Jimmer at 14 months!

I thought we could all use a break from our Europe adventures to see what Jimmer has been up to the last little while. I apologize for the lack of punctuation and capitalization. Kasey said I got the "blogging bug". I just started writing and kept thinking of more and more things to write.

Jimbo at 14 months:

gets very hyper, sometimes i think he’s not going to make it. he sucks all the breath out of his lungs and flaps his arms wildly. occasionally, he’ll fall down because he’s so excited.

has started doing his “OHHHHH” face again. He’ll look up at Kasey or I and squint his little eyes, and pucker his face up and say “ohhhhh”

gets into anything he’s not supposed to, like the trash.

hates diaper changing time. he’ll squirm to get away. it is REALLY hard to change him. he’s so good at twisting so that he can get into crawling position.

looooves being chased. as soon as i set him down he’ll take off crawling, then halfway through he’ll turn around to see if I’m following, if i am, them he’ll start laughing like crazy while he’s crawling. it’s hilarious. if he’s laughing too hard usually he just falls over.

LOVES when my hair is in a pony tail so that he can play with it.... and by play with it i mean pull it.

listens when i shake my head and tell him no! it’s incredible! he is an obedient son!!! okay, this works ⅔rds of the time... not bad, though, right?

can go from laughing like crazy (a good hearty laugh) to crying so easily. it’s pretty funny.

LOVES reading. we used to have books in his crib (board books) but he can rip those to shreds so we had to get rid of them. :( i’ll set him on my lap in the rocking chair and i’ll read him the Jane Yolan dinosaur books. Loves them and the pictures. One morning I got him out of bed and we read those for an hour, and if you know just how much jimmer is a moving, you’ll know this is an amazing feat!

he is a slobbery and messy kid. he loves being messy. wet, playing with dirt, smearing food on himself, and of course he is still a big drooler. he wears a bib practically 24/7. I should of had them coordinate with his outfits because you really never see his outfits.

likes to take his pants off. I’ll go and get him from a nap and i’ll always find all of his toys on the floor... with his pants.

took his diaper off one morning in the kitchen, then went to the bathroom, then smeared it everywhere in the kitchen... to clean everything up took an hour. yuck.....

gets in biting moods, where he’ll go in for the kill... and NOTHING can detract him. if he makes up his mind, he will do it. sometimes he thinks it’s a game. he’ll try to bite us, and when we try to pull him away, he’ll laugh and try it again and again. have i told you that he is a pretty determined kid? yep. he is.

loves loves loves babies. he loves laughing and looking at other people’s babies. my nieces and nephews, kids at church, kids at grocery stores. he laughs and tries to reach for them. too bad he has to be the most ungentle kid ever. he loves pulling hair, pushing them down, grabbing their face... he really isn’t a bully. he really just does it because he is excited, but we’ve really been trying to work on being gentle.

haha, every sunday we’ll be sitting in church and he likes it when i’m holding him and he can look over my back to the people who are behind us. he will laugh sometimes, but usually just stare at them... for a REALLY long time. It always makes the people behind us kind of laugh in an uncomfortable sort of way. it was really bad when there was a black man sitting behind us. jimmer couldn’t keep his eyes off of him!

still loves outside. i’m sure every baby does, but jimmer will throw up everything he’s holding into the air as soon as the door opens and he will CHARGE for the door. he smiles, and laughs and really does have a great time. he would be happy outside all day. really. we’ve tried it. it does make it hard anytime kasey leaves for work and anytime i get the mail. he gets so sad to see the door shut! he loves playing with dirt. it really is his favorite. this kid is all boy... oh, except he does love jewelry, make-up, hair, dolls, and the color pink. ahem. moving on...

every time he goes to sleep at night, he’ll be drinking a bottle in my arms, and he’ll start pulling at his eyelashes. he’s pulled some out before. it really bothers me so i usually give him binkies to occupy his hands. he has really long eyelashes so it makes pulling them out pretty easy.

has two more teeth coming in making that a total of 6 teeth - wahoo!

loves baby cheetos. he will eat the whole can in one sitting if i let him.

loves dancing to music. we’ve been going to a lot of BYU baseball games (although, they just ended... so sad!) and any time there is music Kasey will dance with Jimmer and it is hilarious! we had a lady come over to us and say how much she enjoyed watching them dance together. every time they start dancing, jimmer starts laughing. he appreciates how funny Kasey’s moves are. i do, too.

when he’s not dancing with kasey, he’ll bob his little legs up and down any time music comes on. it’s so cute.

when he’s drinking his bottle, he never holds onto it, it’ll just sit there on his chest. so kasey will put things in his hands, and by the time he’s finished with his bottle, he’ll have 4 or 5 things in each hand. he refuses to say no to anything offered to him.

he loves his binky. i’m okay with that. he’s okay without it, too, which is good (well, except for night time... gulp, i don’t want to think about giving that up, yet). if he ever finds one, though, he’ll speed up and stick it in his mouth as fast as he can.

he’s starting to appreciate stuffed animals more. he loves his ostrich and elmo these days. he tries to put them in his mouth to carry them around but they’re huge, so it makes it a little difficult.

jimmer will find his “toy of the day” as I like to call it. He’ll pick a toy that’ll be his favorite that day. usually it’s from the kitchen.

if he’s trying to carry something, he’ll stick it in his mouth so that he can keep it and crawl at the same time.

if i offer him food, he’ll try to grab all the food i offer him at the same time. if he can’t fit it in his chubby little hands, it doesn’t matter, he’ll just keep trying until he gets as many as he can.

likes throwing things. yep.

he has just recently started to bring me things that he wants me to open or give him. it is really really cute. he’ll bring me a bag of snacks when he wants them, or give me his little music player when he wants me to turn on some music. i love it.

motherhood suits me. i love this job. 

Day 6

Kasey- So, I travel a certain way. I really don't want to miss anything, so some days I really pack stuff into the plans. I also like to go to cities just to say I've been there and like to drive off the highway if it means you can get a better feel and appreciation of the place. I still like to relax, though, and I'm usually fine with scrapping some things from the plans. There were a few days in our plans that I knew would be really busy and physically exhausting...this was one of those days. We woke up really early (5:50am) and left from Burgum. We got a tad lost around Leeuwarden trying to find the highway (I didn't have a car most of my mission so that's my excuse as to why we got lost a few times). We really enjoyed driving through the countryside because of how green it was and how pretty it was to see big churches, windmills, canals, flowers, etc.

 We drove to Harlingen which is a city on the sea. We taught some people there in the refugee camp. We drove by there but it's not there anymore. We parked and went up the dike where you can see the water higher up than the land. It's so crazy to stand there and see the ocean on one side of you, and then on the other side a vastly lower land area -- and only a small area that is separating the two!

 

We drove across the Afsluitdijk over to North Holland. After taking a nap a little bit into North Holland we drove up to Den Helder just to see the city (it's at the very top of North Holland). We drove the highway down to Alkmaar and really loved the drive because of all the tulip fields we passed and all the windmills. There are SO many windmills, and big fields of flowers covering the land! We mainly saw yellow and pink. Most of the other flowers hadn't bloomed, yet. 

We then went to Volendam which is closer to Amsterdam and bought some cool matching  Holland jackets. It's funny because we bought the Holland jackets the same place I bought my Amsterdam jacket 6 years ago. We enjoyed the sea walk and going into some shops (it's a pretty touristy place but it's a nice, quaint little town). (Emily: I LOVED Volendam! I know it's a totally touristy place, but everything was so adorable -- the little stores, tulips, little windmills, right next to the water!)

So after Volendam we drove to Haarlem and parked near the station. We walked to the Corrie Ten Boom house and did a tour in Dutch. Emmy just finished the Hiding Place (a very inspiring book) so it was cool for her to see it.

After Haarlem we took the train over to Amsterdam. I never served in A'dam but I like going there because it's older and I think it's pretty with all the canals, it's kind of like Venice.

 
Some of our plans got changed around in A'dam, but we went to a few outdoor markets and Emmy got to try her first stroop waffel (which was delicious!). We ate at a Surinaams restaurant with a Groupon. That was pretty good. We walked around the city and saw the Rijksmuseum, the Dam square, the Anne Frank House, and stopped to see some sights that Ocean's 12 was filmed at, namely the coffee shop and the hotel.

 Our camera wasn't working the second half of the day so we didn't get a ton of pictures. So in Europe the bathrooms aren't free to use. I've never liked that because really they aren't that much cleaner that public bathrooms in the U.S. I can still say that I've never had to pay to use the bathroom. I know it's not that cool, but I went 17 hours on this day without using the bathroom. I could have gone longer but I wanted to go to bed. After Amsterdam, we went back to Haarlem, back to our car and drove down to Den Haag. Gosh I love Den Haag. When I was in Holland, everyone wanted to serve there...I was ecstatic when I heard I was transferred there. It had been a really tiring day thusfar when we got in. We heard about this site- airbnb.com that was a bed and breakfast from normal people who volunteer a room in their house for a good price. We communicated with the people we were staying with a few weeks before our trip and they said we could park at their church. So we parked our car there and left it there for 2 days. It took us about an hour to walk to their place. It was a pretty chilly day so by the end of the day we were both cold and tired...it was so good to sleep in a nice bed! Before we went to sleep we visited with Hans and Karen, the couple we stayed with. They were really cool and had a really nice apartment right in the Centrum of the city. They spoke English very well and they honestly bent over backwards to make sure that we were comfortable and they were just the nicest people. We really enjoyed visiting with them. We finally crashed on the most comfortable bed ever around 11:30. (This picture is the day we left this bed and breakfast so that is why the bed isn't made.)
 

 
*Note: If you see any exclamation points in there, that's where Emmy added comments.

Day 5

Emily - So, we slept in a little, then drove to Heerenveen and parked by Kasey's old apartment building. We walked through the Centrum and some shopping areas and finally rented some bikes around noon. Then we biked to a windmill in the middle of the city and then we rode to Joure.

  The entire day we broke out singing "The Best Two Years". Kasey told a lot of jokes that he heard on his mission and we just kind of enjoyed the scenery. The country side really is so beautiful. We couldn't quite capture it with the camera, but I really just fell in love all over again with Holland on this day. It was kind of a misty and warm day, and just beautiful.

Once we got to Joure we took a little break on a bench next to a ditch, ate some delicious chocolate (pretty much the entire box...) then biked to Herrenveen. We then biked around the south part of the city. Then we went to Oranjewoud, which was a forest area. It was beautiful!!!! (Yes, it really does deserve that many exclamation points.) Even the forest area looks manicured and majestic.

  We then took another break and Kasey read some histories of some of the cities while I read The Hiding Place. I was getting close to finishing it so that the next day when we'd visit the Corrie Ten Boom house, I would know the history behind the house. 

 
We then biked to the station, and then to visit Heltji and her beautiful kids. It was a very nice visit!

 Next was to Jan and Anje's house but they were not home so Kasey left a message for them. Finally, we took the bikes back to the shop. (We also took a picture at the exact place Kasey took his famous bike picture.)
 

 We met up with the missionaries as we were walking back to the car. Kasey was able to encourage them to visit some of the people there, which was really good. Then we drove back Burgum and talked a little bit with Ferrai and then relaxed and read. We finally called it a night around 11:30.

We laughed that this day we biked by the bridge next to Kasey's old apartment 4 times and drove by 4 times. We got to know the city really well. This probably was my very favorite day because we got to bike a TON, and since there are no hills in Holland, it made it very easy.

Day 4

 Kasey- We woke in Arnhem at Zr. Lambooij's around 9:30 and got read to leave. I made breakfast with Zr. Lambooij and some lunch that we ended up forgetting. :( For breakfast we had bread and cheese which is a pretty good traditional Dutch breakfast. So we said good-bye to Zr. Lambooij and her dog, Lijke. We drove through Oosterbeek which is a beautiful little hilly town that has some WWII history. Arnhem is the only city I served in where we actually had some hills. All my other cities were flat as can be. We drove through Daventer and then through the countryside up to the Drenthe Province. We drove around Assen which was my greenie city. I haven't been back to Assen since I was a greenie and I was only there 6 weeks so I didn't remember it too well. We went to my apartment, took a picture, and I showed Emmy this little area next to my apartment that has farm animals. I remember the roosters always crowing in the morning. There were some sheep that started charging up to us, good thing there was a fence. I think they were hungry because they came pretty close to us and pretty fast.

We drove to Friesland through the countryside and went to Leeuwarden. I knew Emmy wouldn't like Leeuwarden as much as my other cities because it has a big city feel, even though it isn't that big. I was really excited to go back there because Friesland meant a lot to me. In the MTC, one of my teachers was telling me about Friesland because he served there. I remember feeling that I was going to serve there. I was in Friesland for about 10 months between 2 cities--Leeuwarden and Heerenveen. The language, Fries, is spoken in a lot of homes, especially out in the country. It's interesting because there is a Friesland in Germany and Denmark as well. Anyway, so after parking we bought a lot of chocolate and walked to the Centrum where we did some tie-shopping. I found a few at the Wibra store. We also bought a cheap watch for Emmy. I forgot to bring the watch I bought from back home for this trip. We also found a store named after Emmy.

We walked to the Church and the train station. In each of the cities I served in I wanted to see the Church, the station, and my apartment because we spent a lot of time at each of those places. So we went to those places, then walked down a canal, and then back to the Centrum where we ate at a Greek restaurant. Groupon is pretty big in Europe so I bought some Groupons that we used over there. It works a little differently, though. They don't let you order from the normal menu usually which kind of bothered me. Our meal at the Greek restaurant was amazing. It was all you can eat so we tried lots of different foods - different yogurt concoctions, salads, lamb, green olives dishes -- lots of good things to try. They put a glass of liquid in front of us. We weren't sure what it was. Emmy tried it out and she had no idea what it was so we joked that Emmy tried wine and that she got a little tipsy from it.

After stuffing ourselves full we walked to my apartment and then to the car. We went and visited an older investigator, Roseanne, and then somebody I found who got baptized later on, Roland. We were actually having a hard time finding his place and then some kids asked if we needed help and they took us to Roland's place. It was pretty late so we just visited a little but it was really good to see Roland and his family. There are some people from my mission I think about a lot and Roland is one of them. He speaks great English which is another reason I wanted Emmy to meet him, because she could actually talk with him.

 After that we drove to Faria's in Burgum, a small town outside of Leeuwarden, and visited for a little bit with him and then went to sleep. Faria is an old investigator we taught, and he is from Angola but speaks really good English and Dutch. It was a very fun and beautiful day.