Keeping Sane With the Holland Weather

Yesterday the kids and I had fun walking around in the mall. It's one of those days where you take advantage of the sunshine and go out even though it was a very windy day. Albeit cold, the kids and I enjoyed our few hours under the sun. We all came home red-cheeked and their little hands so cold (the kids just couldn't keep their mittens on). The weather was so good that Katie was happy to see the grass by the soccer field. She even remarked that the ground was not "glad", no she didn't mean it as glad as happy, but "glad" as the dutch word for smooth or slippery.

This morning we woke up to roads and fields all decked in snow. The wind blowing incessantly and the branches swaying madly! So much for sunshine! Katie was still impressed with the snow though. She would go by the windowsill and watch the snow falling. But that's just that, watching. I dare not go out with them. They have just recovered from their bouts of coughs and colds that I just preferred to let them stay in the house where its snug and warm.

But its this type of weather that bugs me the most. One minute everything seems to be going so well that you're finally able to come out and then BAM! Next thing you know you're holed up again. It's not that we cannot go out because of too much snow like in other places where it's few inches of snowfall (and thank God we don't have that and I feel bad for those who are experiencing the snow storms in the US) But it's just something I would refrain from doing especially not with the kids in tow.

An expat teacher once told me this while I was working in Indonesia and upon hearing that I would be moving here "you better be prepared with the weather in Holland, it can be so treacherous". Looking at the window and seeing the dainty snow flakes falling down oh so slowly, I would say I definitely agree!


"Winter season, where I live,
seems oh so very long.
Spring, summer and autumn come
but in a wink they're gone.
One day the daffodils are gold,
then comes the summer rose,
gem colored leaves that fall to quick,
then comes the winter snows
and the world is gowned in white,
Ice crystals bobble every bough.
If it's not the wind howling,
it's the grumbling of the plow
growling as it pushes snow
to the sides of every street;
next you know comes freezing rain
and hail and icy sleet.
Cars chug and bump and slip and slid
along the village streets
and all the sidewalks glare with ice
are slippery under feet;
then one day the sky turns blue,
Earth shimmers in dazzling glow
til evening comes and clouds roll in
and again it snows and snows."...

---excepts taken from the poem Seasonal Thoughts by Annette Bromley