The Graduate

After four years of mostly hard work, Grant graduated from High School.  He took a winding path to get there.  He attended five school systems during his first seven years of school, then finished his last six years at ASH.  Next fall he leaves the lowlands of Holland for the mountains surrounding the Colorado School of Mines.   He's a great kid and we're all very proud of him.

But before sharing more graduation news, let's broaden our view to his last weeks of High School.  This includes finishing his third year on the baseball team.  There were seven seniors on his team that have all played together for 3-4 years.  They were all good kids who had fun playing together.  Unfortunately, two additional seniors didn't play -- one moved back to the US and one injured his knee in basketball season.

Notice the attire of the fans.  Winter coast, gloves and hats.  

Grant's stylish head gear.  

The international school league isn't very cut-throat.  After the game they all do a cheer together.  Then the visiting team kids stay overnight with the ASH families.  It's kind of tough to get mad at the opposing team kids when you'll be serving them dinner in two hours.  

Big win for ASH

The seven seniors

Senior recognition day.  They each got a ball signed by the team members.  

There were also several voice concerts with his school choir.  And the senior recognition ceremony where they each received a Delft mug.  

And now back to baseball, this time in London for the conference tournament.  Saying this was a cold season would be an understatement.  I wore long underwear to every one of his games.  And was still cold sometimes.  Surprisingly that all changed in London, a city not usually known for it's great weather.  But great weather we had.  Temperatures in the 80's and bright sunshine.  So bright that I got sunburned.  

Seniors

Grant finds a new way to stress his parents.

Is Lori trying to pull off his beard?

Tough guy. 

For graduation week, Grant had several visitors.  Kate used some of her precious vacation to fly over.  Later in the week, Carol and Ray arrived with their granddaughter, Kira.  While Grant attended several graduation practice sessions, we all went sightseeing.  First stop, the flower auction.

The electronic auction clock

The buyers

It's amazing how efficiently they move all the flowers around.  Although it looks chaotic, they never crash the carts.  

No they didn't really get to go on the auction floor.  

The green screen photo's from the Flower Auction.  It gives you flowers year round.  

We also visited Muiderslot, a castle built in the 1300's near Amsterdam.  Although it's small; it's just what you think a castle should look like.

The castle had a great vegetable garden.  Does everyone recognize this one?  

Th world's largest rhubarb plant.  

Grape iris....just like at the farm. 

Graduation prep time.  Danielle had to help everyone had to get beautiful.  Of course Mark was a lost cause so he just took pictures.

Notice the beard has disappeared.  This would not be the first time Grant has fallen asleep while Danielle cuts his hair.  

And finally, the time for the graduation ceremony arrived.  Two hours.  117 kids.  The choir sang.  The band played.  One principal speech.  One student speech.  Photo's of the graduates as babies.  A humorous video from the teachers.  Plus it was live-streamed so his high-tech grandparents could watch it live.   

Would you go to this doctor? 

Grant enters with his friend, John.  

Grant, the High School Principal and special guest, Dumbledore.  

Grant and Philip

Vishal visited from the US.  

Grant, Arnold and Claude

Grant's friend is David Bromley.  I've never heard anyone call him David.  It's always Bromley.  Just Bromley.  He's also the baseball player who wore the bright green shoes.  

Grant's voice teacher of five years, Liat.  What a saint. 

I had the camera out when this gull came to visit.  

Everyone always wants their picture taken with Graber.  

Holiday Season

It's holiday season in The Netherlands.  No, not the Christmas Holiday season.  This is the time of year when The Netherlands has all of their bank holidays in the span of about four weeks.  We start with King's Day on April 27 where we celebrate King Willem-Alexander's birthday.  Other than providing a day off of work the most notable thing about King's Day this year was that the temperature was colder than it was at Christmas.  

The next week was a two-for-one situation.  The official bank holiday was Ascension Day.  But this year it coincided with Rememberance Day, when we honor those who lost their life during the Nazi occupation.  

This War Memorial in Wassenaar.  

Just outside of Den Haag is a memorial honoring over 250 members of the Dutch resistance who were executed and buried there.

The bell is rung for three hours during the Rememberance Day Service.  

The pictures above and below this text don't have anything to do with holidays except that they are from my bike ride to Den Haag to visit the memorial.  The photo above is the bike path in Wassenaar.  The shot below is an area known as the Dunes, a park that runs along the Dutch coast that is loaded with trails, bike paths and beaches.  It's a great recreation area with very little commercial activity.

In keeping with the WWII theme, Grant and his friend, David, and I went the Overloon WWII Museum in eastern Holland.  The museum is situated at the site of the largest tank battle fought on Dutch soil.  The Allieds were trying to move north to Arnhem.  The Nazis wanted to stop them.  The battle lasted several days and the end result was that the village was leveled.  Completely.  It took them 10 years after the war to rebuild it.

David and Grant can tell you the name of this (and every other) tank in the museum.  

This is the vehicle that spirited the Queen and her family away to safety when the Nazi's invaded.  They left the palace in Den Haag, drove three hours to a waiting British destroyer and sailed to England.

This may look like a lot of shells.  There were 8 more display cases just like this one.  All from one man's collection.  

Near this plane was a large red push button.  No signage.  No instructions.  So after several minutes of debate by the three of us, I pushed it.  It activated a sound track of planes dropping bombs, machine gun fire and other war noises.  All at fairly high volume.  It was great.

The English War Cemetery outside of town.  

This week it's back to work for a full five days.  Then next week we enjoy our final holiday -- Whit Monday, or Pentecost.  Then that's it.  No more holidays until Christmas.