Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Een snelle trip naar het moederland

Bob headed out Monday morning for a 7 day trip to Holland. He went with 2 other guys from work to go visit the Ploeger company over there and try to learn a little bit about the equipment they'll be dealing with up in Alberta this summer.
The first couple days has been a bit rough for him as he basically lost an entire nights sleep due to the flight times. He flew monday afternoon our time but arrived there in time to start the day on Tuesday.
The guys seem to have this idea that Bob is dutch enough that he'll be able to help them out with communication and culture while over there. Little do they know if he actually started using the dutch that he knows it probably wouldn't end well for any of them. They definitely wouldn't be making any new friends!
His first meal over there he ordered some croquets...he said both the guys that are with him decided to be adventurous and follow his lead and were surprised when they ended up actually liking them! But for tonight he's just hoping for a place where he can find some chicken wings and fries. What a shock.
The kids gave him strict instructions to bring the back some gestampte meijers & some chocolate sprinkles. He can leave the klompen at the gift shops as long as he brings them some meijers!
I'm just excited that he's been gone for half the trip already and we've had no break downs here at home! Every time he leaves we end up with a string of breakdowns.
Last time my toilet broke, the fridge died, I lost water supply to the house (a broken pipe next door) and I got pulled over for having expired tabs. The previous 2 week trip my freezer died, my wash machine puked, and I got pulled over for a burnt out headlight. None of these things in and of themselves are really that big of a deal. If Bob were home he would simply tear them apart and fix them. But with him gone, even changing the dumb burnt out headlight took me about 15 minutes of research on google and 20 minutes of dropping screwdrivers & scraping knuckles! not to mention the cracked plastic piece behind the headlight that I haven't yet  told him about. But hey, the light got changed.
Last time when everything was breaking down, I was feeling sorry for myself & I was venting to one of my sisters. In an effort to be positive I commented that, oh well, these were just things that were breaking. My kids were all healthy. A couple days later Tyler ended up in the hospital due to asthma issues. BUT...there was another poor little baby that came in at the same time that was in much worse shape than he was. So I know we are supposed to be content in all situations and not compare our plight to others, but I've come to realize that even when things seem kinda crummy......look around you. There's always somebody way worse off! So instead of counting the problems we'll count the blessings!!

1 comment:

Nancy said...

Way to go Julaine ! Love that attitude !