Posts Tagged With: Christmas

Third day (Or: Setting up for Christmas)

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Niki

This morning Marco and I woke up early (ish!) as we wanted to call IND before the wait times increased. It is 10 cents per minute, so… But when Marco called at 9AM he heard a recorded message that the IND had technical difficulties and to call back later. Long story short, he was able to get a hold of live person after 11AM or so.

As it was the Christmas holidays, the next available appointment was January 11th at 9AM. A bit longer than we had hoped for, but oh well. Apparently since we live in the Hague we don’t need to visit city hall to register there – it is all combined with the IND appointment.

After breakfast Marco and I met up with Roger outside of the Hema, although we first went to Kruidvat (a store like CVS or Walgreens in America) and Xenos, a high end thrift store. Finally, we made a stop at Hema to pick up the Christmas tree that Marco ordered, as well as some extra Christmas ornaments and hooks.

Afterwards we went back to our place (!) to watch some random tv (wrestling and tv shows). At the end, Marco and I started to put the Christmas tree together. We mostly finished it sometime after Roger left for the night, although Marco wants to wait another night before letting me take a picture since he is a bit of a perfectionist about such things it seems. 😉

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Christmas (Or: Trees around New York City)

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Niki

Continuing the tree theme of the previous post, I also took a few pictures of various decorated trees in New York City.

The first photo was from a distance as I had to get to the consulate. But it is the Macy’s Christmas tree at the main entrance. The “yellow blob” is actually the word “Believe”, which could be seen in the Macy’s parade for Thanksgiving Day.

Macy's Christmas tree in NYC

Taking this picture when I went to the consulate also helped out last Friday, since I popped out of the subway on the other side of this street. But as I saw the Macy’s decorations to the left of me, I knew to go left down to the street to get back to Penn Station.

The second tree was on 39th street and 3rd. There were actually 4 lighted trees, although I was only able to photograph one of them.

winter tree on 3rd avenue in NYC

The morning itself was dreary…as you can tell from the wet roads. Drizzling on and off most of the morning.

Another good tree to see is the one in Bryant Park, with blue lights. But that is another day. And of course the tree in Rockefeller Center…

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Lights (Or: Local Christmas tree at dawn)

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Niki

This picture was actually taken the morning that I went to the Dutch consulate to pick up my MVV sticker. The last time that I had gone, I had taken a slightly later train but found myself running through New York City to get to 3rd avenue in time.

So this time I took the 6:45am train, which meant leaving the house just before 6:30. (The little bit of extra time meant I could mail a few Christmas cards to send out to people.)

But under the cover of darkness, I was able to get a photo of the town’s Christmas tree by the train station.

local Christmas tree at dawn

It was nice to be in the city so early, as it meant I didn’t have to run across the city to get somewhere on time, be it the consulate or the bus terminal to get back to work. My feet definitely thanked me for going for an earlier train this time.

Today is my last day. And it is also the Christmas party at work, which Marco has graciously decided he would attend. (Graciously, since he might get a few dirty looks for stealing me away!)

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Red glitter (Or: Christmas wishes)

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Niki

The first Christmas card of the season has arrived from one of mom’s friends. This particular friend always sends out her Christmas cards the day before Thanksgiving, so that people in the local area (Chicago) get the card two days later on Friday.

Legend goes, she only missed that goal once, when she was down vacationing in Florida and everyone’s card didn’t arrive until Saturday… But otherwise, a perfect record.

red glitter Christmas card

Those specks of light you see should make it clear that the entire front of the card is covered in glitter of the red variety, minus the letters and decorations themselves. It does make me remember my childhood, when I absolutely adored glitter cards. I remember my parents finally got me a card much like this one…

But I am wiser now. I can hear the telltale scraping before I even open it, letting me know that glitter is in our midst, waiting to strike.

It’s a fun card to look at. And the few bits of stray glitter do match my red couch.

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Chicago (Or: Ferris wheel at Navy Pier)

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Niki

I never had the guts to go on this ferris wheel. It’s taller in person than it looks.

Navy Pier ferris wheel in Chicago, December 2011

Height: 150 feet

Seats: 40 gondulas seating up to 6 each

Time: 7 minutes

Navy Pier information (Wikipedia)

 

 

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Chicago (Or: Wrigley Field at Christmas)

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Niki

It’s hard to believe that it has already been 11 months since Marco, Roger and I visited Chicago for Christmas 2011. One of the places we visited was Wrigley Field.

I actually did go to one game back in the day during college (I forget the team the Cubs were playing) although traffic and parking was horrendous enough that we didn’t get into the stadium until the 5th inning.

We also found a pretty decent sporting goods store (Sports World) nearby where Marco and Roger bought some sporting items — one I remember was a Cubs ball cap.

names of Cubs fans carved into the bricks outside of Wrigley Field

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From Marco (Or: Christmas countdowns and Zonderland’s gold)

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Niki

Niki mentioned a few times that for our various trips we’ve had countdown clocks to well..count down to the moment we’d be together again.
When she came over in December 2010 (and only Roger and I knew about her arrival) I decided to mix things up, make an advent type of calendar. Every day a new little ‘treat’, another (lower) number.

It started out as a joke, when it snowed on December 1st, and I drew the number 24 in the snow (24 more days until Christmas in NL)
Then it grew from there and I tried to come up with something new and original every day.
Often the number was either some randomly found digit, a few times I made one myself (like a 17 out of ‘hagelslag’ or a 3 out of jalapenos, or a 24 out of chicken fingers) and I even used a flyer for the pizza place across the street because it had a big seven on it.

The final picture of course, December 24 –one day till Christmas– was taken when Niki was already here (she arrived on the 23rd)
We have only two more countdowns ahead of us. Well, not true. I’m sure we’ll do more.
Counting down until the weekend, counting down to vacations, anniversaries, etcetera etcetera.

Soon of course the final countdown will start (cue the cheesy Europe song) Wooohooo.

In other news; During the Olympics we often get to watch sports we usually don’t see on tv.
Gymnastics is one of them. Today a Dutchie wrote history by winning ‘our’ first ever gymnastics medal, and it’s gold.
OMG. I know little about the high bar, but his routine was so much more spectacular than his fellow competitors.
The aerial moves he did have never been done before (in competition) as he combined 3 difficult moved into one crazy flowing display of awesomeness.

Do yourself a favor, look around for a proper video. And IF you can, watch it with the Dutch commentary.
The man goes nuts, and rightfully so. Amazing. It makes the routine even more spectacular.

[Edited to add by Niki: There’ s a proper video at nos.nl but it’s not viewable if you have an American IP address. Try this YouTube video but it might disappear at any moment.]

Categories: Holidays, Marco&Niki, Sports | Tags: | Leave a comment

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