Happy Birthday to my son Christopher!

January 16th....

My son Christopher was born 28 years ago on a blustery winter day in St. Paul, Minnesota! Memories of talking with his Dad (who was in the hospital in Minneapolis) on the phone, and Grandma Jane, Nonni and Auntie Kris urging me to go to the hospital are still clear in my mind! His sister Jackie stayed with their cousin Shelly and her Mom (Sheree) while we headed to the hospital. It was quite a drive in the snowstorm from Stillwater to St. Paul. We made it with an hour to spare (Yiiiiikes!)!  He has been such a blessing!

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Sammy and I went for a walk in the woods today and I took a few more pictures. It's a beautiful sunny day and quite warm (luckily the snow is not melting!).

Hair by Carla and Snow in Haarlem!

Yesterday at 1000hrs I had an appointment with "Carla" for a consultation and haircut. She spent a lot of time with me talking about her background and experience and figuring out what I want for my hair. She has lived all over the world (in over 10 countries!), and has clients from 77 different countries! She told me that she has clients that fly in, get their hair done and continue on with their travels!  She made me a nice cup of cappuccino while we talked. I told her about the problems I have with my neck since my accident and she showed me the nice cushion she has at the rinse station. We looked at colors for my hair...she chose some, and then she had me choose some. I decided to just go with what she chose, since I really don't have any experience except with "dye in a box"! First she colored my hair, using 4 different colors of dye, and incorporating my current color, and the gray.  The chair I sat in while she rinsed my hair is a Shiatsu massage chair! Niiiiice!  I decided to have her cut it to try to minimize the curls.....attempting to soften them a bit. In the end though, I just want "wash and go"...a no fuss hairdo.  Soooooooo....these are the before photos:

And after:

I rinsed it out this morning ....I guess I'm not used to straight hair anymore, so it was bothering me!  It's back to curly! I'm very happy with the color and cut. I've decided to grow it out a bit so that I can put it up in the summer.

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This morning we woke up to snow on the ground!  It's soooo pretty! Here are a few pictures I took today!

 "Our" tree on the Houtplein:

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Brandmeester Coffee and Orangerie Elswout

Yesterday morning we met Gary and Louise for coffee at Brandmeester in Haarlem at around 1100hrs:

I had a nice Americano coffee and then later a cup of fresh mint tea. Afterwards we walked around town together a bit. We stopped by the shop where Andrew and I had purchased a couple of beautiful paintings of Haarlem and picked them up from the shopkeeper. I bought a few pot pies (lamb, steak and lentil bean) from a merchant in the Grote Markt. Gary and Louise were shopping for a baking pan, so we went to a couple of shops with them. While we were in the Grote Markt we saw this one-man-band, his name is Jeff Silvertrust...pretty talented guy!

We parted ways around 1400hrs....Andrew and I went home and ate our yummy pot pies!  We are downloading episodes of a series called "Once Upon a Time" and another called "Downton Abbey" that we're getting on ITunes...so we watched one of each!

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Around 1230hrs today Bruce and Linda came by and we rode our bikes to the Orangerie Elswout for lunch. What a beautiful place! 

After lunch we took a walk. It was such a beautiful day....sunny and about 45 degrees!
This is an old icehouse:

 This little "house" from afar......

 Is just a facade!

What a wonderful day! We are truly blessed with good friends.