Happy New Year!

Ok, so I know it's January 17th, but I have to share with you about our first New Year's Eve in Eindhoven. We arrived back in the Netherlands on December 30th so that we would have the weekend to recover from our trip, do laundry, unpack, etc. We got home from the airport on Friday afternoon and we immediately noticed all the fireworks going off . . . we couldn't see anything at the time, but we definitely heard nonstop booms and cracks and pops. Apparently fireworks are illegal here -- except for the 24 hours leading up to New Years. That means that people were so excited to kick off 2012 that they started WAY in advance . . . there was literally not even one minute that went by that we did not hear fireworks during the two days leading up to New Year's Eve. It made naps and night-time sleeping rather difficult for Liam those first two nights back because I am dead serious when I say there were fireworks every. single. minute. for. 48. hours.

So Saturday night arrived and people were amping up their fireworks. Keith made us a delicious dinner and we hung out and watched all the fireworks from our living room windows. We have one wall that is basically one big sliding window from end to end, so it was perfect for our personal firework show that evening. As midnight approached Liam was waking up (because he definitely wasn't back to his normal schedule -- and besides, who could sleep during the noise??), so we got him out of his crib and let him watch fireworks with us. We stood in his bedroom window for a good half hour watching . . . there were fireworks as far as the eye could see, to the left and right and directly in front, all different ones put off by different folks, and they were EVERYWHERE. Liam was enthralled with the whole thing and just stared and stared at the beautiful lights. Back home the "big" fireworks shows are usually at Lenox Mall or Stone Mountain or the like, but to be honest this night blew those out of the water. I literally had tears in my eyes because it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. We tried to capture the scene in pictures, but it obviously doesn't do them justice . . .

~Jessi