May 2024

A beautiful month full of music, friends, flowers, and sunshine! Early in the month, we went camping for the Ascension Day long weekend and then celebrated Maeve's 8th birthday. 

Pete scored us comp tickets to Kasey Musgraves at Paradiso. An old friend plays in her band. She was playing music from her new album and I thought it was great!

My friend, Loreen, is an artist in the city and runs private workshops. I got a group of friends together for an introduction to watercolors workshop at our house one weekday morning. I must say that we all did pretty well! 

The ISA Percussion groups were invited to play at de Hallen on Liberation Day. A fun excuse to go into the city on the Sunday holiday. They played beautifully and we enjoyed lunch in the food court. 

It was too beautiful to go straight home, so we stopped in Vondelpark for a drink at Melkhuis.

Dakota and I walked to see the rhododendrons in Amstel Park

I met Tobey for lunch at a Korean fried chicken place I'd wanted to try and then we saw the Frans Hals exhibit at the Rijks museum. A very impressive portrait artist! 

We went to the Amsterdam Champagne Fete with friends, including a lot of Frenchies. The kids had a fun time with their friends and playing in the kids' corner. Pete rode all of us in on the bakfiets! 

Jude is on the U-12 baseball team now. Much higher level of play!

The science department hosted a Friday TGIF complete with lots of homebrew.

I volunteered to help with the Ghana Fundraising Concert this year, organizing the donated food at intermission, sending communications advertising the event, and selling tickets. Pete donated a 12-pack of his Amber and Eve beer to the raffle prizes. 

A great concert, which raised over 4,000 euros for the Nunya Academy in Ghana. 

A small mom's night out with drinks at Hilary's followed by food and drinks at Waterkant. We made some friends and went to the Piano Bar before returning to Hilary's until way too late. I think I'm still recovering! 

Roadies in Ikea kid's cups.

Jude at Finn's birthday party

I chaperoned Jude's class trip to the Scheepvaartmuseum (Maritime museum), which tied in nicely with their explorers unit. 

Voluptuous figureheads and colorful language by the tour guide made for a very memorable outing!

A walk to Broersepark with Dakota

And a boat ride with teacher friends to end a great month. We had bought a summer deal voucher for 4 hours of sailing with Sloepdelen last year, but didn't get around to using it. It expired May 31st so we booked the boat for that day and hoped for the best with the weather! The weather held and we had a great time with Captain Robbie complete with a stop at Brouwerij 't IJ while our boat was successfully moored at the dock with the help of a grocery bag!

Koningsdag 2024!

Our 10th King's Day! Unreal. 

King's Day was on a Saturday this year so there was a whole weekend to celebrate. On King's Night, Amy and Cory hosted a kid-friendly party and Jen came prepared with all sorts of activities! 

Lien was kind enough to host another King's Day party even though she was on her own for the weekend. We'd learned from the last few years that we need to be up and at 'em early for optimal flea market selling.  Toys were dropped off in advance, alarms were set, and we were on our way by 9am... just in time for the rain to start! While others scrambled to cover their goods with tarps, we waited out the rain inside. By 11, the rain had cleared, the other friends had arrived and the party could begin! Jude wasn't interested in selling this year, but wanted to bring the keyboard so he could busk. He's been learning Clocks for his upcoming piano recital. He played for about 5 minutes and said he was done. Thankfully, I convinced him to play more later in the day to make it worth our while hauling that thing there!

Maeve had a whole plan to sell lemonade and popcorn along with selling a bazillion toys. She did good!

Once the sun came out, things got busy. The rest of the day was really lovely. The kids were in and out of the house, while the grownups enjoyed the weather. We took turns walking the strip with the kids. There was a very silly game where a hot dog was dropped down a tube and using a large kitchen knife, you had to try to cut it as it came out the other end. Much harder than it looks! 

The Mayor of Amstelveen was out and about and stopped by to chat with a few guests. He visits ISA every year to meet with the 2nd graders for one of their learning units. So when Maeve saw him, she was unfazed: "Oh, I've met him already." 

With multiple families selling together, there is always a good deal of buying from our friends. Pete made out big with this Tom Ford suit from Keeley for only 5 euros! Coordinates perfectly with his King's Day Kermie shirt! 

It has been such a fun tradition to spend the day at Lien and Tareq's and it was really bittersweet knowing that this was the last time. They are moving to the UK and King's Day (and life) won't be the same without our friends.