Spring Break road trip.....

I and three of my friends ventured off with our kids during Spring Break to tour the Keukenhoff Gardens in Holland during Spring Break this year. We caught the bus at a ridiculous hour....3:30AM to be exact which is way to early for me since I am not a morning person. Seems like it will be fine until the alarm is going off, but we did make it on time and were actually a few minutes early....gasp!

I had never heard of Keukenhoff Gardens before, but it seems to be a well known place to Europeans. The Gardens are only open for 2 months each year. They have a variety of flowers in bloom during this window of time.....absolutely beautiful! The big draw are the tulips, but our trip was just a little too soon to see them all in bloom. We are going to go back at the end of the season next year to hopefully see those tulips in bloom...I LOVE tulips!!!!

The trees were just beginning to bud.

Beautiful tulips indoors....

festive music and singing.....

The kids had fun at the petting zoo....

Just after this picture was taken Lauren put her hand smack dab into a fresh puddle of lamb pee!

It was almost time to head back to the bus when my friend Andrea and I headed over to a place called Swan Lake because we thought this was where we were supposed to meet.....well it wasn't, but we are so glad we found this place! There was a wooden stepping stone path in the lake that was full of swans. The kids had a great time feeding the swans. Sarah did manage to fall and drop one of her legs into the water as she was hopping from stone to stone...not surprised!

Peaceful.....


Jacque smiling....pre funny faces stage:)

We headed back to the tour bus....we made it back on time even though we were sidetracked by the swans! Everyone was there except one person and she ended up being a 1/2 hour late. She finally arrived and we headed to our next tour spot. We LOVED this next place a lot. So much so that we went back on our last day in the Netherlands. My husband didn't get to go the first time so we didn't want him to miss out.

We rarely ever take tours and this trip just confirmed to me why we usually choose to discover things on our own. The same lady who was late caused us another delay. We stopped at a McDonalds to have dinner because we had a long drive home (about another 5 hours) so we were going to make it "quick." Well EVERYONE went to McDonalds except this one lady who decided to walk to a sit down restaurant that was close by. Needless to say, an hour later the bus driver went walked to the restaurant to get her! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to keep kids calm while sitting on a bus waiting. I just thought this was terribly inconsiderate and proof to me why groups are difficult. I would have probably went after her at about the 10 minute mark.

The trip was wonderful even with the delays and I'm sooo glad we went!

More to come on the next stop from our most recent trip there....still love this place!