Happy Anniversary-Eight is Great

Wow! Eight years of this Dutch life. Most years I recap the year and look ahead to the next year. However, I’m not sure what the recap of this year really looks like. It was a good year that flew by pretty fast-probably much like most of your lives.

Our kids are both doing very well. There have been a few of the ups and downs of adolescence but for the most part they continue to be involved in their respective schools and locations, are doing well and are happy. They both also got to travel quite extensively this year in addition to our family travels with one going to Thailand and the other to Peru.

We have continued to keep busy with work and volunteer positions and have explored some hobbies as well which has been fun. We went to some entertaining shows and exhibits, and we also have enjoyed doing some local exploring with a series of “beer walks”, bike rides, and hikes. We have tried some new things like axe throwing and making a flower parade float, and we have spent time with established friends as well as making some new friends. And we continue to really enjoy where we are living now especially the nature we get to enjoy in our yard- hedgehogs, pond creatures and lots of birds.

Overall, I would say the year was just filled with normal life with a sprinkling of special activities and travel to keep it interesting. It feels like we have settled into a level of comfort with life here that might not have fully existed before (though don’t get me wrong, we still always feel a bit on the outside of Dutch life-language barriers and cultural differences are just hard to overcome). But this level of comfort can be difficult. It makes it hard to know what to do next-stay or leave (enjoying your life in one place but still wanting to be closer to family in other places is a difficult tug of war). And the comfort can be deceiving because most of the people in our circle are expats meaning that, at any time, they could decide to go somewhere else and then our life changes with the hole that leaves.

This year will be filled with more of the day in and day out obligations as well as milestones as our youngest finishes high school and decides what comes next. So, my takeaway from reflecting on this year and looking to the next is that life is the same everywhere-just when you get comfortable with the status quo, life moves you forward to the next thing. Decisions will have to be made, a new normal will creep in and the comfort of what to expect from everyday life may be shattered for a while. But for now, we are just celebrating everything we have experienced in these eight years and looking forward to the ninth. Here’s to making the most of what we have, where we are and the time we are given!