Highlights of the week
Although is a beautiful day here in Holland, and we are blessed to have all the things we do, the jobs picture in the US does not look to be improving and thus, the title of my blog.
Another week in Wassenaar, this week was special for a few reasons. First and foremost, it was my daughter's 6th birthday, she had a very special day yesterday. She invited 10 friends over and had cake and fun after school. Here's a few pictures
Here's Annelise with her classroom at school at the "Harvest Festival" where they learned all about how vegetables and fruits are planted and harvested. By the way, there is a small farm at the school where they grow tomatoes and other vegetables, anyone can go there and help themselves to the vegetables.
Anither picture of Annelise at school, as you can see the weather can get already cool here in Holland, although today we are having a beautiful warm day, perfect to sit by the patio and drink a very cold beer or a chilled glass of white wine, cheers!
Here's Annelise and some of her friends at the start of the birthday party, gelukkige verjaardag!! (happy birthday in dutch)
Here's Annelise surrounded by all the terats that mommy made for her, yummy!!, and notice that she's actually wearing her glasses, she's turning into a big girl!
Andrew our Soccer (or should I say football) Star!
Andrew worked very hard all week in soccer tryouts to see if he would make the school's team. After a week of tryouts, he found out on friday that he is one of the members of the "American School of the Hague" or ASH Trojans. He is quite excited as he will be playing teams from the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, he will get to go alone to Hamburg, and Waterloo among other places. Congratulations Andrew, and GO Trojans!!
Our Car Finally Made it
Our car finally arrived from the US, I went to pick it up on friday, it is quite nice to have the freedom to move a little bit farther than with our bikes, do not get me wrong, riding our bikes is great, but on the weekends it is nice to be able to make short trips to different places.
Here's Marielle and Gianna with her friend Sarah in front of our car yey! Notice the Texas license plates, we are getting our dutch plates until next week. As you can imagine we stick out like a sore thumb.
This is life in the Netherlands, a good friend of Marci riding her bike after picking up her kids from school, I guess you could consider this the SUV of the bike world!
Happy Labor day Weekend in the US
This weekend is labor day weekend in the United States, and yesterday the new jobs numbers were announced, the numbers do not look encouraging, and if I was to bet, I would say the US is going into a double dip recession. Even though I'm here in Europe, I keep very much up to date with what's going on in the US. I read a number of publications and keep reading books as much as my time and budget allows me to. If you are interested in getting a more sober long term perspective about the US, I would recommend you to read "End Game" or "Aftershock". Both boks are well written and provide a lot of food for thought. For many years the US and other countries in the developed world lived above their means and now is time to pay all we owe. I hope I'm wrong, I really do, but my prediction is that a recession will be announced by the end of this year or beginning of next, and rememebr that on every recession the stock market falls an average of 43%. With that I leave you as the day is beautiful outside and I have a glass of white wine waiting for me!
Cheers!!
