ProjectLife

Another one of my New Year's resolutions is to record the everyday stuff in a way that I can print it in a book at the end of the year.  Many many years ago, like before I had kids and scrapbooking was a "thing," I scrapbooked. Then I had kids, and got overwhelmed by the clutter and mess of scrapbooking with small children. Then digital scrapbooking became a thing, and I thought it would be the greatest thing because it solved the clutter-with-small-children issue. But I got busy, and I didn't keep up with that either. I love the idea of digital scrapbooking, though. I have several books that I've done of vacations, etc. I'm just so behind, that it's overwhelming.  Enter ProjectLife app. I heard about this app through social media, and I've decided to give it a try. It's a digital scrapbooking app on my phone. You can actually create pages in the palm of your hand. I love how simple the layouts are. It only takes a few minutes to create a page, and hopefully at the end of the year, I'll have a year's worth of pages already created that I can print into a book. That's the goal. I know doing it this way, a little at a time, rather than trying to do a whole year's worth of pictures at a time, I'll actually remember the little details of the day to day.  And I'll probably have a much more detailed look at what the year looked like, rather than just the highlights. Last night I created my first two pages, and it was so easy!

I'm really hoping my excitement makes me stick with it!

In other news, over Christmas break we became local celebrities! 

Front cover of magazine--picture of the Ollibollen stand at the top of our street

Our article was on the inside of the front cover

One day early in December a lady knocked on my door and asked if she could interview our family for the local magazine. I guess we stick out as one of the only (if not THE only) American families on our street. Plus we have four kids, so that makes us stand out, too, I guess. Turns out this lady lives a few houses down, and our next door neighbor is the editor for this magazine. So she interviewed us, and just wanted to know how we liked Rotterdam, what our experience has been like, what we don't like...all that good stuff. The article is in Dutch, but she sent it to me in English as well. Here's the translation, the grammar is a little bit funny:

Stroepwafels’, trees and bakfietsen

The beautiful Christmas tree in the window at the Heemraadssingel 198 belongs to a family all the way from Utah, US. Trevor and Annie are the parents of four lovely children who all became ‘Rotterdammers’ this summer. Trevor works for Petrobras an energy company that has its international headquarters in Rotterdam. Their children, Grace (13), Holly (10), Kate (7) and James (4) are very fond of Rotterdam. Kate is very pleased with our trees because in Houston the gum trees have very spiky round fruit balls. Holly’s official name is even Holland and she really enjoys the swimming classes at school. James is a fan of the ‘Pannenkoekenboot’, the famous ‘stroepwafels’ and chocolate. The favourite spot of grace is the Euromast.  They all love biking and do as de Dutchmen do; without a helmet. Annie even uses a ‘bakfiets’ to bring the younger girls to the international school. The one thing which is really different for her is that she can’t do all the shopping in one big store and that we are used to go to different shops. So they already have found the Makro.☺ The reason to choose Rotterdam was so work & family life are close and they like the Heemraadssingel for its park, canal ánd swans. Because of the international school and their international social network it is quite easy to settle in. The only thing they do not like is all the litter people leave behind at the street and in the front garden. Funny thing, they appreciate our cold weather and really enjoyed the Dutch autumn. When asked what would they like to change; language (Holly), a good stove (Annie), my turtles (James; looked after by his friend back home), clean roads (Grace). Well Sint has just passed but perhaps Santa still has some magic to sparkle…

Isn't this a hoot? Well, that's what we have been up to!