This year Christmas fell on a Wednesday and it was Greta’s and Nick’s year to come home for Christmas. Since Greta wanted to stay for 2 weeks so she could attend Jamie’s mother, Deb’s, memorial/celebration of life service she decided to drive from Denver. She and Nick left Denver Saturday morning and arrived Sunday evening around 9 PM. Esther and I had tickets to the botanical garden wonderlight show that evening at 5:30 but were home by 7PM plenty of time to cook a pork tenderloin for pork sliders for a late night dinner.

Monday night Esther and I hosted Greta and Nick for dinner at Esther’s house we all cooked.

Tuesday, Christmas Eve, Robin and Andrea were going to drive up after work but had to cancel at the last minute because Robin rolled his foot and had to go to the ER for X-rays because it hurt so bad he thought it was broken. I had made a cod chowder for Christmas evening thing it was a good dish for when Robin and Andrea arrived

Wednesday, Christmas Day, we decided to drive to Macon, the day after Christmas, amnd dop our stocking with Robin and Andrea. Esther could go because she had a scheduled Pilates appointment and eye doctor appointment. She had just had cataract surgery on Friday Dec 20th and was anxious to have it looked at because she didn’t feel like her sight in the eye was getting better – but all was good. We had a grass fed, 4 rib roast, from Earth Fare for dinner with brussel sprouts, green beans and a salad for dinner.

Thursday, trip to Robin and Andrea house in Macon. We all, Greta, Nick, me and Isla, left around 8:30 in the morning. We brought all of the stockings, some prime rib and the Dutch cheese Esther and I brought back from the Netherlands. We did our stocking, snacked on cheese and crackers and ate so delicious cinnamon rolls that Andrea had made. We left around 2:30PM because we had invited Andy and Jen’s family over that night for a small Christmas get together. We got home about 5PM and Esther was already there and had taken the girls out to pee. Then, with everyone’s help we got ready for our party with: Andy, Jen, Carrie, Ewen, Rae, Sammie, Pete(Jen’s brother) and Sue(Jen’s sister) and it was a very fun evening with lots of conversations and laughs.

Day 1 – Sunday December 1
I flew out of the Atlanta airport at 8PM Sunday night on a Delta flight to Amsterdam. It was an 8-1/2 hour flight and Amsterdam is 6 hours ahead of our EST.

Day 2 – Monday December 2
I landed at 10:30AM local Amsterdam time. Esther took the short bus ride from her father place in Aalsmeer to meet at the airport. Once we connected Gerard, Esther’s father, came and picked us up from the airport. It was almost noon by the time we got to Gerard condominium and the weather was cold and rainy. The parking garage for the residents was gated and located under the building so we didn’t have to get out into the weather. Gerard had a wonderful lunch for us of: fresh wholewheat bread, paper thin sliced ham, rookvleer and fresh, delicious cheeses. The weather cleared up for a little while in the afternoon so Esther was able to show me around the town of Alsmeer.

Day 3 – Tuesday December 3
A trip to Wageningen University so Esther could meet with Dr. Arnaud Bovy about her sabbatical next year. Esther also gave a hour lecture about her research that was well attended with several questions afterwards from the students – it was my first time attending one of her talks. We all had lunch together along with Dr Yury Tikunov, a colleague of Arnaud originally from Russia – some very interesting conversations. It was close to 5PM after we had a tour of the lab and were ready to leave to meet Annemieke, a college roommate for dinner.

Day 4 – Wednesday December 4 – The Brothers

Menno Van der Knaap – oldest brother
Menno owns and operates a large cut flower business that sells orchids. He has several large green houses located in Almere. The orchids are grown, cut, packaged and boxed from the green houses and trucked to a nearby auction house. Menno was in the process of changing out his heat source for the greenhouses from gas to wood burning. The Netherlands get their gas from Russia and are trying to become gas independant. Orchids also have to be watered with rainwater so Menno has a big rainwater collection system.

Maurice Van der Knaap – middle brother
Maurice and his partners have system of using dry hydroponics to grow a wide variety of crops. Their company is working to bring this system, of producing fresh produce, to food desert areas of the US, starting with Pennsylvania. They hope to have the first dry hydroponic greenhouse up and running within the next two years,

Gerben Van der Knaap – youngest brother
Gerben has refurbished some old greenhouses and built individual storage boxes inside and rents them individually. He hopes to have all the units built out by the end of 2025. There are several different sizes of boxes with rental prices dependent on square footage.