Easter Eggs and cramped legs

Our funds for adventures are running seriously low and we overspent recently since we had to replace Mr. Liberty’s brakes!

But, we really wanted to go back to Holland.  We loved our last brief visit but, though we saw the Alsmeer Flower market, we didn’t see the world famous tulip fields in bloom.  I mean, we have a 3 day weekend, it is only about 7 hours away – how can we skip doing this?  Once in a lifetime chances.  I did lots of online research and the fields are active between March and May – peak festival time is at the end of April but we definitely don’t want to enter those crowds – plus we have a three day weekend now!  I noticed the tulips in Besancon were blooming and the grocery store was selling bunches for 2 or 3 Euros so, surely, we would see lots of amazing blooms.

Our brilliant plan to save money was, get this, to sleep in the car.  That’s right, we were going to try to make Mr. Liberty into a camping car.  We’d leave Friday after work and drive until we got to Holland.  Then Callie and Zander would crawl in the trunk, André and I would lean back our chairs and Griffin would lie on the back seat.  We’d pack super light and bring all our meals in the cooler.  We’d see the tulips in the morning, Amsterdam in the afternoon and head back towards home on Saturday night. Of course, we’d sleep in the car again on the way home and maybe even check out Nancy and Metz.  Then we will have all of Monday to recover if we are totally knackered.  It will be brilliant and, if it works out, visions of other super cheap trips already dance in our heads.  It is only 7 hours to Venice, to Pisa and to Vienna and about 12 hours to Madrid….  If not a Greek cruise, then why not the rest of Europe??

We would never jump into such a mad experiment lightly and so, naturally, we tried it out before hand.  I was a little nervous about how the kids would react to the whole… ‘you are going to have to sleep in the trunk’ thing but they were thrilled!  I don’t mean just a bit thrilled, incredibly, over-the-top, thrilled!    They told everyone they knew about the upcoming adventure.

Well, one good thing about a 17 year old car is that it knows how to travel.  The front seats lie back flat and the trunk is roomy. We used Callie and Zander’s carseats for foot rests – inspired!  We even could fit our cooler in there and there was sufficient room for Griffin.  Here you see us thrilled to test our most recent wacky idea….

Often people wonder why we didn’t wait until the kids were older.  Well, there is no way three teenagers could make this work!  Enough said…..

So, since we were going to be traveling over Easter, we knew we had to dye our eggs ahead of time.  So, on Wednesday, in-between therapy and theatre, we dyed eggs.  I think I was a bit overscheduled on this particular day since, while running in to grab some bread I forgot to set the parking brake.  The kids (left defenseless in their carseats) rolled right into moving traffic!  No one was hurt but it was definitely a low point in both my driving and parenting life!  Now every time I park Zander says: “Mom, did you set the brake?….. “Are you sure?”   Jiminy Cricket has got competition.   

But, back to eggs.  I love dying eggs,  we can be so creative!   Every year we try a new technique (see last year) and this year we went for a natural look by imprinting the eggs with leaves picked from our own little back yard.   We tied them in with gauze and the results were, as you can see, fabulous!

 

Our eggs are ready, our car is transformable.  Watch out Holland, here we come!