I Mostly Blame Facebook

I really have been slacking a LOT on the blog, folks. I wish I had a good explanation or even a justifiable reason, but I don't, really. I've been out of the house, developing a sort of pattern to life here, and just have not sat down to write in wayyyy too long. For that, I apologize. But enough of that, let me tell you what I've been up to!


Monday
Mondays are a weird day- a lot of the stores are closed Sunday and half or all day on Monday, so my Mondays usually consist of a run to the grocery store to get things we ran out of on Saturday. We go through coffee-milk and milk like crazy, and we're starting to go through cereal quickly now, too, now that Megan has finally adjusted to the time change and is STARVING when she wakes up every morning. Mondays are also job-posting catch-up days, where I send a dozen or so emails that mostly are unanswered. (Oh, and I got my second "Thanks, but no thanks" email from Canon. Dangit!)

Tuesday
Tuesdays the last few weeks, Shayna has been missing all morning, and this past Tuesday I tagged along with her to the English Speaking Mom's Group of Haarlem. Best move I made all week! It was so exciting to be in a room full of women who have their own nightmare moving stories, kids who are bilingual or more, horror parenting stories, and they all want to hear yours! I was so relaxed and felt so at-home with these strangers in just a matter of hours that I plunked down the dues for the year and joined them. When I filled out the application, I put my "@karinoserphotograpy.com" email address and was asked to photograph the Halloween party in 2 weeks. I sure hope this pans out to lots of business in the area- there sure were a LOT of adorable kids (and for some unexplainable reason I did NOT have my camera with me). So Tuesdays from now on will be Mom's Club meetings in the mornings- wahoo!

Wednesday
Oh, Market Day! This is one of my favorite days, mostly because I get to practice my Dutch for about 2 hours as I shop the different vendors that come to our town. I wish I could take a snapshot of the smell of the market- roasting nuts, the kebab stand, the Stroopwaffle vendor, the rotisserie chickens... if you aren't hungry before you get there, you become extremely so upon getting the first whiff of the rich smell of the marketplace. We eat like kings Wednesdays, too- all the produce is freshest, so we dive right in to berries, carrots, apples, spinach, etc. We've been snarfing down Jonge Kaas, too - it's what you would call Gouda, I think, mild and delicious. Now I'm hungry.

Wednesdays are half-days, so I try to get the market-run completed before I get Megan for lunch so we can run errands or enjoy the weather if it's nice. We went last week to a little park near our neighborhood that backs-up to the oldest house in Heemstede- a fort or something- which is now a tea room and available for rent for weddings and private parties. We are never disappointed when we go exploring around here!

Thursday
Thursdays have been different almost every week so far. It's a full school day for Megan, so I try to cath-up on things that would bore her to death (housework, runs to the store for boring things like mustard or coffeemilk). We've also worked in Library visits Thursday afternoons, and a quick run at the playground before dinner.

Friday
Fridays are fun- Meg only has school until noon, so the day is wide open! Last Friday we went to the woods for a few hours and walked, then went to the kinder-farm and chased goats, pet stinky sheep, watched giant ducks, and marveled at the Belgian Giant Hares. One of them (still a baby) is as big as our dog Andy.

Saturday
Gymastics class for Megan starts at 9:45 every Saturday morning. We found out from Femke's mom, Nina, about the class - the instructors were asking the kids to bring friends to help fill the class, so we visited about 3 weeks ago, and Megan loved it! It's not traditional gymnastics, it's more like a balance and movement class. They will have a theme or idea like "We're at the zoo- what animals are there?" and then they run around being tigers and monkeys and alligators and such. Maya joined up, too, so all three girls get to play together 6 days a week.

Sunday
I don't think we have accomplished a single thing on a Sunday since moving here. I kind of like it that way- sleeping in, maybe putting some laundry away, watching a movie or two, or taking a nice long walk in the woods when the sun is out. Today Megan and I watched Enchanted, twice, then ate lunch, she played in her room while I sorted laundry, and then we watched Cars while eating dinner. We all relax and charge our batteries for the week ahead.

Dusty Canon
I am vowing to myself I will go out and be creative this week, my camera has basically sat on the kitchen table for a week now. I've had some ideas running through my head on shots I want to try, but most are wardrobe-limited (why didn't I pack my wedding dress?) so they'll have to be kept in concept stage for now. I do have my first international client on October 30th, so I am pulling together props from our newly unpacked stuff to take with me. I can't let myself get rusty, though- I'll be doing some practice shoots with Megan in the next week to get some ideas for the client shoot, and hopefully I can use them in my promotional materials, too! I'll let you know how it all goes....