Polaroid Mondays: June 2016

Monday, June 27, 2016

A Beauteous Bye

Moving away and saying goodbye to our friends is pretty hard.

But a day at the salon takes a bit of the sting away.

We're going to miss you Miss L and Miss I. We await your visit to NYC. ❤️❤️❤️

Monday, June 20, 2016

Nowadays, we don't talk about counting to seven, but of multiples of seven and dividing by seven, which is just one of the many daily reminders telling us how grown up our little boy is becoming.

He's actually not quite seven yet, as his birthday isn't until August. But since he will not yet have had the chance to meet a new batch of friends in New York, we thought it would be a fitting thing to have an early birthday party for RS. It was also his own going-away party of sorts. He was so appreciative, and didn't seem to know how to express his bursting gratitude. So glad we did this.

It was a ton of fun at TUNFUN.

Can You Count to 43?

DS shares a June 14 birthday with my lovely grandmother, who at just over twice his age, turned ninety six days ago.

DS celebrated his birthday solo in NYC this week. BUT, he flew in last weekend for a whirlwind of activities, not the least of which included our going-away party, Reese's (early) 7th birthday party, and some grab-and-go birthday moments of his own.

A private bike tour of Amsterdam has been on my bucket list for a while now, and I really hoped if I found the right tour guide, someone who understood we'd been here for three years and wanted to dive a little deeper, it could be a fun birthday present for DS. So, I gave it a shot.

Turns out, we hit the jackpot with an amazing guide, a late twenty-something named Jasper, who started his own bike company, WE BIKE AMSTERDAM, just for this kind of thing, and we enjoyed a fab afternoon on a reluctant sunny day biking around Amsterdam.

We're standing in front of the 17th-century headquarters of the Dutch West India Company. It's obvious, but the famous Dutch East India Company went east, and the West Indies company went west. One of the latter's famous investors was Mr. Henry Hudson, who gobbled up land where???? New York.

Hello, "Hudson" River.

The statue is Peter Stuyvessant, governor of New York from 1647-1664 (until it was basically ceded to England). Unbelievably, he was the seventh Director-General of New Amsterdam, and he started his new job in 1647. Jeez.

And he was a pretty important dude in the early history of New York, working hard to expand the Dutch settlement beyond the tip of Manhattan Island. He is credited with "Wall Street,' which at the time was an actual wall to protect the city (and from where we get the now totally unrelated name of U.S. stock market), with the canal that became Broad Street, and with Broadway.

I've been wanting to explore examples of the Amsterdam School, an architectural style that emerged between 1910-1930 as a response to the blockish, "harsh" architecture that preceded it. The architects of this school focused on workers housing and government buildings, and the style is characterized by:

"Buildings of the Amsterdam School are characterized by brick construction with complicated masonry with a rounded or organic appearance, relatively traditional massing, and the integration of an elaborate scheme of building elements inside and out: decorative masonry, art glass, wrought ironwork, spires or "ladder" windows (with horizontal bars), and integrated architectural sculpture. The aim was to create a total architectural experience, interior and exterior."

This is a must-see example of the Amsterdam School: Het Schip (The Ship). For the very reason that from a distance it looks like a ship, in addition to many ship-like details.

Always a bit of art deco in the Amsterdam School . . . check out the address numbers.

It was such an awesome day.

We capped it off with Dutch gin at one of the oldest "brown cafes" in Amsterdam, Cafe Papeneiland (Pope Island Cafe), which was a place of secret worship for Catholics when the Protestants pushed the Spanish out and took over the city. There's even a secret tunnel that supposedly went under the canal so people could get to clandestine places of worship (I could go on and on about all of the secret churches in Amsterdam). This bar is literally right out of the Golden Age.

While I'm at it, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to our favorite guy. We love you. We miss you.

Friday, June 17, 2016

Can You Count to 90?!!?

Each year, Flag Day is much more than a celebration of the stars and stripes for us. Special as this is.

It also happens to be my grandmother's and my hubby's birthdays.

This is a big one for my nana, who turned 90 a few days ago. The grand-kids and great grandchildren are spread out right now, but we're planning something special for a fall reunion of sorts to celebrate.

Meanwhile, my mom has been in New Hampshire for weeks helping Nana move from her condo to an assisted living apartment. It's been quite a journey, and a huge reminder of the beauty, aggravations, sadness and joy of aging. Of losing independence and memory--and owning it.

We love you Nana Kay. Happy 90th!

The kids, with their great grandmother in 2014.

Suffragette

I just watched this, and like Hillary or not, it's pretty damn cool that a woman clinched the presidential nomination of a major party, and could become President of the United States. We've come along way in 96 years, since women received the right to vote in the U.S. And, fyi, did you know Switzerland only gave women the right to vote in 1971?

This was a pretty decent story of the suffrage movement in Great Britain, where women got the right to vote in 1928.