Thank you Light Green

Here at 52.23 degrees North of the equator, the winter days get pretty short. Even with daylight savings, it is dark when we wake and start our day and by 430 there is no running the saw outside without lights. With all the business of Will and getting the house ready to sell and preparing for the move, we have begun to lean a lot on setting James up with a video just to make things manageable. I never thought we would stoop to the electronic babysitter, and James really wasn't interested until recently, but now there are pretty regular showings in our house of Cars, Bob the builder (occasionally Bob de Bouwer), and Thomas and his friends. James now even differentiates between "Old Thomas" and "British Thomas". They are all pretty harmless and we have gotten used to hearing the songs and dialogs, and though we try to limit his exposure, it really is the only option after weeks of cold, dark rain (we tell ourselves).

James is a huge fan of Cars, and has even worked 'Kachow!' and 'Light Green change tires!' into his vocabulary. Light Green is what he calls Lightning McQueen. Light green is also what he calls guacamole, which he is also a big fan of. The old Volvo that parks outside our house is now officially the fabulous Hudson Hornet...
It will be really interesting to see how his language changes as we make the transition to the states; he already has some pretty unique Dutch/English phrases that only we can interpret.

We finally bought our tickets to Atlanta, so it has been a week of logistics as we work through the lists of utilities and banks and closing accounts and opening accounts etc. Katharine has started back working which made for an interesting time for Mike and Will and his first bottle. He did great at first but then on the second try was just despondent at the lack of Mom in the equation. I'm sure we will all get used to it eventually. Another challenge is the house; we have a guy who seems pretty interested but he has just begun looking, so we will hear from him in the coming weeks. It is a distinct possibility that some people from the university will rent it while we are gone and a realtor is working on finding a buyer- which means a big logistical shuffling in that the house would need to be furnished. I'm sure it will work out and we are just trying to remain flexible to the last moment and keep positive about it all.
Katharine did find a Mother's morning out program with space for James in January which is a huge relief because the waiting lists at these places can be complete nightmares. We also arranged today to hire a taxi-van to take us, the kids and their car seats and strollers, all our luggage, and the two dogs and their kennels to Schiphol airport in time for a 10am flight. It should be a blast.
We had a great Thanksgiving party with a good group of folks, though as usual we did not get any decent photos. We are hoping that someone got a few good ones though, and we can post them here soon.
Less than two weeks until lift-off!