Seeing kids grow up

While we are waiting to build our family through open adoption, it has been wonderful to be included in lives of two small friends that are the children of good friends. Hanging out with Aidan and Alexandra (both 2 now!) and their parents is wonderful. It is great to see them develop into toddlers and learn new things every week. And it is just so much fun to hang out and play together! Spending time with Alexandra and Aidan makes us a little bit sad because it makes us realize what we're missing in our own family. But overwhelmingly, it makes us so happy to be a part of their life and have the opportunity to get to know them so well. We know that a birthmother, birthfather, or birthfamily will find us and we will get the opportunity to share our lives with a little one.

Cooking with sous-chef Aidan

Aunty Anna helps to get Aidan ready for bed

 

Watering the plants with Aidan

Thijs gives Alexandra her bottle before going to bed

Our sweet cat Troela

Thijs and Troela share a cuddle

We adopted our sweet cat Troela about 8 years ago. When we moved into an apartment 8 years ago she was hanging around in our small yard and our neighbors told us: Yeah, she comes with the apartment, didn't the previous tenant tell you? Well... No! But we'd love to have a cat! We called her Troela, which is a sweet nickname for a fussy woman in Dutch. Troela is a small cat and she misses her tail. We don't know what happened to her tail, she has a little stump, but she doesn't seem bothered by it. At first Troela was very scared of humans, but liked to hang out at about 20 ft distance when we were outside. Then, the 20 ft became 10, and then 3, and after about 2 years she let us pet her. We were very happy and proud Troela was becoming so much friendlier.

When we moved to Half Moon Bay we took Troela with us, which was a bit risky because as an outside cat we didn't know if she would stick around our new house. So we also took her favorite Y
uca tree so she could lay in her favorite spot. And our neighbor made her a special cat house in the shape of a Dutch windmill. And Troela liked her new back yard! And she became friendlier still. At some point I put her on my lap while I was sitting on the ground. And you could see her think:"This is so nice! Why didn't I figure this out years ago!" Now, whenever we sit outside, Troela comes for cuddles and sit on our laps. Our friends reserve some "Troela time" when they come and stay to hang out with her. She is now also friendly with kids, which took a little while because kids make more sudden movements. But she now knows that kids' cuddles are also really nice. We feel like proud parents to see what a sweet and funny cat she has become since we met her!

Whales at the beach!

Grey whales at the beach at the end of our street

“Whales at Francis Beach” says the text from my friend, so I drop everything and jump on my bicycle to join her and her daughter to go and watch them. Three gray whales are hanging out close to the coast and we see their spouts, tails, and backs. Together with other people on the beach we cheer for every spout and encourage them to show off their tails. They seem to be rubbing themselves on a sand bank close to the beach, so we have a lot of time to see these amazing animals. It is grey whale migration season and this year we have seen so many of them. The California coast is such an amazing place to admire everything that lives in the ocean and it seems most people around us are happier people because we live so near to the ocean. We feel so lucky to live here!

Our extended families

When we came to California, almost 10 years ago, we became part of a group of friends who met every Thursday night after work in a bar to hang out. We would chat about stuff and make plans to go on hikes on the weekends, or go camping together. This group was very international, with Americans, Australians, Germans, Dutch, Austrians, English, Irish, Indians, Greeks, Taiwanese, Finnish, Scottish, Japanese, a Canadian, and probably a few more nationalities. It was great to interact with so many different people and hear different perspectives to things that were happening and share our good and bad things. And because most of us were far away from our biological family, we became like family to each other.

Now, fast forward 10 years, about half of these people have moved away, some went back to their homelands, others to other places in the US. This gives us great opportunities for visits & weddings, with places to stay in different parts of the world. With email and Facebook, it is really easy to share important things in each others lives and see pictures of their kids (US-Japanese, Scottish-Finnish, German-French, etc).

The other half of our friends have stayed local and most of us have our families and jobs, so we don't go to the bar every week anymore. But we still hang out and share our lives. We now have known each other for so long and we have met most of each others parents and other family that came to visit that it feels even more like family. Including accepting each others funny ways.

Neighbors and friends at the coffee shop

Thijs meets Sierra, the youngest member of the coffee crew

Now that Thijs and I settled down on the coast, we are building a new extended family of mostly Californians in our town. These neighbors and friends are super positive & diverse and we have so much fun hanging out together. We meet a couple of times per week in the local coffee shop, and if something happens, we are there for each other. So now we have two sets of extended families, in addition to our biological families in the Netherlands. And whenever these extended families meet, they like each other, and are interested to chat to each other and hear different perspectives. Every now and then, we think about this and can't believe how rich we are to love and be loved by so many people around us that will step in when any one needs it. We have found a great home in California and can't wait to add an extended birth parent family in the mix.