Our last day

Since it was our last day in the Netherlands, I decided to take my camera with me as I took my morning walk. Here are just a few things that I will miss when I go home. One, being able to walk at 9:00 in the morning down tree covered roads like this. You wouldn't dare venture out to walk at 9:00 in Mesa and you would be lucky to find any shade at all.
I will miss all the corn fields
and the potato fields
and the Christmas tree farm.
I will miss watching the work horse and her colt

and Anita and Rob's house. Here is a view of the front with the car Anita took us over in.
Here you can see where our room was. There is a door on the top of the house on the right, that was our door.
This is a view of it from the backyard.
And here are the stairs I had to learn to navigate in the rain, sun and dark.
We will miss our pink, sunny room,
and the bathroom with the shower that we loved.
One last look at our room.
Anita asked me what I wanted to do the last day and I told her I wanted to go for a bike ride (another thing I wouldn't be doing this time of year in Mesa). So Anita and I headed for the Belgium boarder again and passed this huge field of flowers.

One of our first stops was at the chocolate shop. Everyone knows that Belgium has the best chocolates right? Anita had to get some for Rob and I got some for Garth hoping they wouldn't melt before I got to Mesa the next day.

We did a little shopping then found this bench to try out some of our chocolates. We asked a guy to take our picture and after several tries we let him go. I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Our next solution was to set the timer on the camera and precariously balance it on a garbage can. After a couple of tries we got a pretty good one.
The town we biked to is called Baarle Nassau on the Dutch side and Baarle Hertog on the Belgium side. The boarders of the two countries zig zag through the town. We found this little diorama that displayed where the boarder was. It was crazy because some buildings had the boarder run right through them.
All over the town you could see these marks showing where the boarder was.
Anita said that Rob had some clients whose homes were divided with their front door in Belgium and their back door in the Netherlands. We found a little place to have a drink and do a little people watching.

Later that afternoon Jeske, Wouter and I made caramel apples. Jeske had been wanting to make them and it took Anita and I days of shopping to find caramels that I thought would work. They were thicker than the Kraft caramels we usually use.
So we couldn't really dip the apples in the caramel, we more or less had to spread it on the apples. The thing that mattered most was that they tasted good. Rob was the only one to declare that caramel apples weren't something he would want to eat every day.
After dinner we headed to Goirle to drive some go carts. You can see we got to wear attractive head ware under our helmets; Rob is looking especially styling!
Then everyone belted up and prepared to start. Here are Jip and Rob.
Next up was Wouter, Preston and Jeske. Maxim and I were the last in line.

We had a good time racing around the track and Preston, Jeske and I all got "stuck" for a few minutes that didn't help our lap times. When we finished and checked our times, Jip ended up with the fastest times and Rob was second with Preston in third. Everyone wanted to go one more time, especially Rob - he didn't like loosing to Jip.
After the second go round Jip won again with Preston coming in second and Rob came in third. But everyone had improved their times and had had fun.
When we got home (about 11:30) I made pancakes for everyone. I had told Jeske and Wouter about the "bear" pancakes I made for my kids and Garth had brought over some pancake flour with him when he came. Anita and I had shopped and shopped for some corn syrup to make syrup with but our efforts were in vain. So I just made fresh strawberry syrup which is one of my families favorites anyway.
At about midnight we all sat down for "dessert." Everyone liked them and I told them I would make them more if they came to visit me in the US.
Finally, Preston and I had to go and finish packing and see if we could keep our bags from weighing over 50 pounds. We were so sad to be leaving our room and especially Anita and Rob and their family and the cool weather.

I didn't get to bed until about 1:30 but I figured I had over 15 hours in airplanes the next day to sleep. I just couldn't believe that a month was already over. Vacation time always seem to go fast even if your gone a month. When I looked back on all we had done and everywhere we had gone I realized we had been gone a long time, but time always flies when you are having fun!