The perfect Saturday: typical Dutch tourists?

It's Sunday, a little passed noon. My darling husband took the children to the organic store in the city center. So I could have some mommy time. I purchased Bebel Gilberto's Tanto Tempo album. And on her relaxing jazzy tones, I'm looking at the photos we took on our trip yesterday.

First we gathered the whole family and drove about an hour to visit a typical Dutch scenery:

Kidding. A traditional Dutch scenery (we sold our mill a long time ago :). We visited a Dutch town with a bunch of mills, rebuild at an open air museum called "Zaanse Schans". A very touristy, yet a fun attraction with plenty of things to do, see and eat. We enjoyed walking around in the warm August sun. Monkey pretending to play the drums (he was the main attraction, people loved him) and Roo drooled away on her daddy's arm (I swear, that child can fill a swimming pool if you'd collect it all).

After that, we went by Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Monkey LOVES planes. So went up the panorama deck to view them.

To my amazement, I discovered I did not photograph a single plane!

Oh wait, I found one!

By then, it was dinner time, so we had dinner at the restaurant next to the deck. Where they actually offered pretty good food for airport standards.

Driving home, we stranded in traffic (yes, Saturday evening at 8 PM!). But who cares if you look this cute in a car seat?

Reason for the insane amount of cars on their way to The Hague? A fireworks festival at the beach. So standing in traffic, my husband suggested the crazy, delirious, irresponsible idea to stretch the cheerful moods of our two young children a little further passed bedtime and go to the beach and watch the fireworks.

First, we laughed the idea away. INSANE, we said..

But then, 1.5 hours later we found ourselves on the beach. Monkey had seen the sun set and was very impressed that it actually got dark outside. The perfectness of life settled down on our picnic blanket: the street lights went on, the light house shun its light on the water, ships gathered in the harbor and seagulls floated high above us completely unaware of the loud bangs that would come with the fireworks, Monkey gathers sea shelves, and Roo cooed in my arms and my husband tried to capture all that beauty on our digital camera.

It was a moment where I could do nothing but enjoy the scenery and pray and thank for the beautiful family and peaceful life we have.

That pretty much sums up our touristy Saturday.

Bebel stopped singing. The laundry machine is at tumble dry and my husband will soon return with our precious children. I suspect my 'mommy alone time' is almost up. I'm going to prepare lunch. They'll be hungry.