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Passports Not Hallpasses

Family of Four Traveling the World, Exploring New Countries and Learning a Lot Along the Way

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Holiday in Barcelona



As I begin this entry, I realize that the last entry I made was a holiday. To those who don’t know us very well, it may appear that we just jet around and take holidays in various beautiful places. I so wish that was the case… I will admit that we are so lucky to enjoy these experiences. We are all healthy, happy, and fortunate to travel as we are and experience such a different life than we were used to in the US.

Mom and KC made a trip over to visit us all, although their biggest desire was to see the kids. The day after their arrival, we all left for a seven day vacation in Barcelona.
Barcelona is an amazing, busy, historic, giant city. We stayed in a fabulous 4 bedroom apartment a block off of Las Ramblas. The crowds, people and street performers were in full effect throughout the day and night.
Since we were all so busy prior to leaving on the trip, it was one trip that we essentially did not prepare for at all in terms of “what to do’s”. So we basically started walking around. It didn’t matter where we went, we came upon a historic site or a something amazing to see. Some of the favorites were the cable cars overlooking the city and leading up to Castle Montjuic, the Olympic Stadium, Picasso Museum, and generally the beautiful architecture and buildings everywhere. We all loved seeing the GIANT farmers market

Unbelievable and amazing, and there is nothing I can say to fully describe the mammoth size of this structure (Segrada Familia), or the beauty in every detail and every corner. Just as amazing is that it was started under construction in 1882 and is still under construction. I simply cannot imagine how big it will be when it is finally completed. (If you look in the pic below, you will see to the back the Segrada Familia from the far outskirts of town on the hill where the Castle is located.)

Overall the trip was a successful trip for site-seeing, eating, sleeping, and drinking. We all spent some great time together. For anyone considering a holiday in Barcelona, I think that 5 days is a good amount of time to spend there. Seven was a bit long, unless you feel good about hanging close to the house and relaxing for a day or two without feeling guilty about “squandering” your vacation.

Honorable Mentions:

Below – Mom and KC as we walk down the stairs from the top of the Segrada Familia.

Below: Caden and Keali where Keali actually looks taller than Caden (he still has about 2 inches on her…)

Below: Caden at Segrada Familia

Below: Scott and I outside the Picasso Museum.

Below: Our “crew” overlooking Barcelona…



VIDEO:

A Canary Island Holiday


The newest adventure: the Hooper family took our first 7 day family holiday. After I had a very positive meeting in Lanzarote (Canary Islands located off the coast of Africa), the rest of the crew flew down to meet me at the end of my meeting.
We rented a fabulous 3 bedroom villa with our own private pool. The kids loved the pool!

We spent several days on the beautiful beach of Playa Blanca. Suffice it to say that it looked a little different than the Texas beach!

The entire island is volcanoes so we decided to ride camels at the large national park of Timanfaya. The landscape looks like moonscape. It was amazing to see. One of the neatest things we saw at Timanfaya is where they have found a hole (literally) that goes deep into the earth. The heat that comes out is so hot that they have built a restaurant around it. They use the hole to cook the food. Directly over the hole, the temperatures stay around 400 degrees Farenheit. Pretty amazing to see.
Next to that oven hole was several small holes. The nice man there would dump a bucket of water down the holes. After three to four seconds, a bit of gurgling, and then a loud boom, the hole would shoot the water/steam straight up into the air about 20 feet.

Perhaps one of the coolest things we saw was a giant cave made by lava called Cueva de los Verdes. Words and the photos simply can’t do this place justice. It felt like you were walking to the center of the earth… Legend has it that the inhabitants of Lanzarote used to hide in the caves when the pirates cam ashore. Unbelievable place.


The kids were fantastic the entire trip. On our several hour trip back to Amsterdam, Keali slept while Caden sat in his seat and drew pictures and wrote lots of words. As he always does, he struck up a conversation with the person next to him. Just before getting off the plane I heard him ask her if she would like us to walk with her through the airport. So cute!
As we spent our time in Lanzarote, Scott and I both were simply amazed by even being there. Still feeling like a Texas panhandle farm girl, I never expected to have the opportunities that we have had. In just a few short months, we have vacationed in Paris, Belgium, Scotland, Venice, and the Canary Islands. Our kids have seen more in six months than both Scott and me combined. The adventure continues in a few weeks to Barcelona.
Below you will find a few other honorable mentions from our holiday.
The first 1000 piece puzzle I have ever participated in. Teamwork! More to come on the puzzle later…

The beach where we sat in El Golfo to eat a delicious lunch. It doesn’t get any fresher than this. You can see the man who cleans the fish beachside that they serve in the restaurant. It was delicious!

This is how Alex spent seven days:


An example of (non)-stellar parenting:


Just an absolute beautiful place.




Leaving a fantastic 2010…

It is safe to say that 2010 proved to be another great year for the Hooper family! It seems like each year gets better and better, so 2011 has a lot to live up to. Just in 2010, Caden learned how to read, Keali learned how to write many of her letters, the family moved to Europe, Scott had a great work year, and I have the best job imaginable. We are truly very fortunate and we appreciate it each day.

December was a very busy and fun month for us. Just a few highlights:

– Sinterklaas came in from Spain and went back again – without Caden or Keali in a burlap sack!

– We had our first visitor from the States (thanks Ashley!) which gave us an opportunity/excuse to go to the Van Gogh museum AND pick up our Christmas tree in typical Dutch fashion (on a bicycle).

– Caden had his first big play at school where he “performed” as a polar bear (super cute!).

– Scott and I made a quick trip to Houston where we were able to see many of our friends.

– We had our first overseas Christmas in Europe. Fortunately the reindeer food enticed Santa’s reindeer to come all the way over here so Santa could leave gifts for the kids. Skype allowed us to see our family on Christmas day, but we still missed seeing everyone in person.

– I received my annual painted piggy bank from the kids and LOVED it! That combined with my iPad may point to my best Christmas yet!

– Scott cooked up some excellent dinners for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The European portion sizes went out the window for the holidays!

– We took the kids to see the World Circus. It consists of acts from circus’s around the world performing all in one big circus. It was a fantastic show and the kids loved it. I don’t think they have ever sat still for so long…

– We found an awesome indoor swimming pool with slides and wave pools and lots of shallow water for the kids to play in. This may be their highlight of the whole month. Everyday they ask if they can go to the “swimmy place”.

– And lastly, Scott and I went out for New Year’s Eve. We had a delicious dinner at a Michelin rated restaurant and then went out to see the crazies! Trams stop running in A’dam on NYE due to people blowing up firecrackers ON the trams! People were all over the place blowing up fireworks throughout the city, streets, etc. When we came home, the cab couldn’t drive us the last block due to the 30+ people blowing fireworks all the way down our street. Now I fully appreciate why Houston has made it illegal to have fireworks in the city limits!

January 2011 brings lots of fun to the party too. Keali turns 4 this month, and I am scheduled to return to the States for about a week. Scott’s work churns back up this month, and life just generally returns to normal once the kids are back in school.

We are looking forward to a great 2011!

The things to love

We had a great Thanksgiving here in Amsterdam. Scott made some deee-licious food. One of our American friends came over with her family and brought pecan pie and mashed potatoes. It was in fact a proper American Thanksgiving, right in the middle of Holland.

While we were eating, the question was posed, “What do you like about living here?” I have been giving it thought over the last several days. Because the real answer is EVERYTHING, I had to narrow it down to a few favorites. Here’s a short list.

1. The food. Without doubt. The food is fantastic here! Everything is fresh and mostly small farm grown. No corporate farming over here and Sysco does not take all the food to all the restaurants. The results in food tasting different everywhere you go. Yummy. Of course the down side is that not too many items have preservatives in them, so it requires frequent trips to the grocery store. I’ll take that deal every time.

2. The weather. It is really great weather. It is colder than Houston, but Houston is too hot. Since I had become acclimated to the weather in Houston, I had no idea how bad our weather was. Having been here, I appreciate how awfully hot it was in Houston. I may be fussing about the weather on month 6 of winter in the near future, but for now I am LOVING it!

3. The travel. Almost everything is within a 2 hour plane ride or a 3 hour high speed train ride. In a short three months, I have already been to Spain, Italy, France, England, Scotland, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, etc… What a great experience! KLM is my new found friend…

4. My job. What a cool job I have! Some travel is certainly required, but it has been a good trade for the experience for our entire family.

5. Let’s not forget about the vino! We are slowly learning our European wines and branching away from the Californian wines. Delicious!

6. The pedestrian lifestyle. We walk or bike or take the tram (which is great and cheap!) almost everywhere. I think there are more bikes here than people. It’s healthier and there seems to be much less pollution. That’s pretty surprising since this is one of the most populated areas of Europe.

7. My fantastic fam! Scott is finally home from the extensive travels back and forth to the US. The kids are loving it here. They tell us all the time that they never want to go back to Houston (mostly because they say it is too hot). This has already been a wonderful experience and we still have 75% more to go! (This pic is one of them sitting by the river running through Paris by the Louvre.)

We are so lucky to have this opportunity. We appreciate it every day.

Awww… Sweet Vacation

We moved to Amsterdam August 5, 2010. Scott traveled back and forth to the USA for one week on and one week off until mid-October. He then returned for just over four weeks. I stayed in Amsterdam, well, all over Europe considering my work, and did my best to hold down the fort. It made me truly appreciate what single mothers do. I have been so lucky to have a husband who was involved with the kids to such a great extent. His absence confirmed what I already knew, which was it would be extremely difficult to do it all by myself.

We made it. It was tough. Tougher than I expected. But we made it.

He returned, and five days later, Scott and I went on a four day vacation to Venice, Italy. It was fantastic. We were able to experience high tide. We were able to eat, drink, and sleep. We were able to simply hang out with no “to-do” lists hanging over our heads. It was much needed.

Here is a short video of our holiday together. I look forward to returning to Italy!