Quick background on this little odyssey...

Scott, my hard-working, dedicated husband and dad to these two wild animals that we call children, works for AIRINC (http://www.air-inc.com/). AIRINC is a company that essentially collects real, honest data on the cost of living in a bajillion places all over the world. Fortune 100 companies pay AIRINC for this information so that they can figure out how much it would cost to send, for example, an Australian family living in Hong Kong to live temporarily in Paris, France. They are international HR consultants and then some. Complicated, but it gives you a sense of the global travel that's available to one, if one works for AIRINC. And Scott's the Director of Marketing so he gets some extra perks. Like an assignment in Brussels for 6-7 weeks that includes his family. And how we visit the AIRINC Amsterdam office for 3 days. And Paris and whoknowswhereelse. We are a very fortunate family and I am exceedingly thankful for this opportunity. No doubt and high fives all around.

So, we've been away from Boston and Brookline and our friends and family for over a week and today I had a small, wee chance to ponder this whole thing....to think about being a parent of kids in another country and how unbelievably resourceful, creative, fast, intelligent, strong, and nearly-magical one has to be. As a parent. Away from home and all things familiar.

We've had some really great highs and some occasional lows. The weather hasn't been that stellar...Frankly, every single day it's rained. Either a tropical, sporadic shower or a windy, wet, cold, dreadful spit that lasts all day. Today's a dreadful spit. With wind. In the face. And we're in Amsterdam, a new location for us that's been less than easy. Scott had a presentation at the AIRINC Amsterdam office so we tagged along for the three days here. Today, Scott was in the office so me and the kids took a 'scenic tour' or canal bus:



(http://www.canal.nl/ne/theme.php?theme_id=3) to tour Amsterdam under cover, on the water, to see the sights. We enjoyed the ride for the first 20 minutes or so (it always seems to me that 20 minutes is the shelf-life of a temper tantrum, tears, wailing session or the exact opposite: good, easy times, happiness, enlightenment-if you're under 9 years old) and then boredom and antsiness takes over.

Today was truly a low point. Both as a parent and as a kid. The mean, ouchy rain and the mean, ouchy mom-combined. Kids have had a total of 5 time-outs, each. I hit Maia with an umbrella (I can now laugh about it) and told Colby that if he was run over by some highspeed bicyclist or
train I was going to kill him.















I am so ready for a drink.

Total confessional today- without decent pics, although I did truly try to capture with my camera one of the hundreds of times the kids were hitting, punching, picking-on, teasing, pulling, pinching each other. But I'll save that for another one. Tomorrow, it's supposed to be sunny and I think Scott may take them for a while to the park. Where they can run and run and run. And I can have some rejuvinating, very-necassary private time.