packing

The children are happily playing at the neighbors (thank you, Tessa!) while I'm busy washing and packing for our trip to North Carolina. Traveling certainly has become much more complex and cumbersome these days; a suitcase for the parent's clothes, a suitcase for the children's clothes, a suitcase for toys/diapers/milk bottles/etc, two strollers, two car seats, one camping cod ... ufff ...

It's a bit stressy to fly to the States with the kids for just one week, but we're really looking forward to seeing our dear friend Sunde again!

There are no direct flights from Amsterdam to RDU, so we'll have to gather up our sleepy children in Philadelphia, collect all the luggage, join the long queue for immigrations, get thump printed & computer scanned, check the luggage back in, and race to the departure gate for the onward flight.

Unfortunately, there won't be any time to meet up with my cousin Xandra, which is a real shame. I guess we'll just have to wave from the airplane as we fly over Princeton.

The weather forecast for North Carolina sounds like a very nice change from the miserable cold & wet autumn in NL (luckily so far no hurricanes in sight, though possibly some exciting thunder storms in the middle of the week). Certainly rather uplifting to be packing sandals and T-shirts, instead of boots and winter jackets :-D