In the beginning there was HEAT ...102 in Seattle... hottest day ever on record

Whew...it is hot...Well we begin our voyage tomorrow at 6am flying on Continental through Houston and landing in Amsterdam at 8am in the morning on Friday ...Our experiment begins on documenting our journey via this blog. We have never done this before...My hope is this blog will be a team effort among the family.

I never get tired of the anticipation of a trip - Travel is my drug of choice I think after my triple shot of ebony courage every morning, and right before wine :). Caffeine and wine seem to predominate given their cost effective nature. But there is no better rush than the rush of discovery ...

I kissed the kids goodnight already. They were running around the house today very excited.. Ah Sim has once again proved to be the organized one ( not a surprise for those who know me ) - she has the kids bags packed and ready to roll two days ago...

We are all excited right now to travel on the train this whole trip once we land - it will allow me to really spend time with the family and not be distracted by the need to find directions and driving to our next destination ...

We are still debating what we will do for our short few hours in Amsterdam before we head south on the train to Antwerp. We will either visit the Van Gogh Museum or the Anne Frank Huis as well as take in a canel ride for dear Nicholas who had never been to Europe before ...

Then later in the afternoon we trek to visit our dear family friends Jozef & Theresa De Maesschalck in Antwerp ..They were my host family when I was an exchange student back in 1983-84...And they have been my Flemish family ever since. It was with them and others I learned to love the strong micro-culture of Vlaanderen (Flanders). I always look forward to having nice long dinners with Jozef and Teresa ...where we drink great wine and talk about everything... It will be fun for Nicholas to see Dad speak his atrophied Dutch ( although it takes me about 24 hours to shake the rust out) ..Tian-Ai learned quite a few words last year. Her favorite was Sinasapplesap ( Orange Juice) ...We will stay in Antwerp for the weekend before we head off to Paris on Monday ...

So as usual it is 9pm and I'm getting started on packing my bag..However, I did get proactive on the underwear this time...