"De laatste loodjes wegen het zwaarst"

It took the movers 3 days to pack all of our stuff. What a sad view to see our home full of cardboard boxes!
Anyway, we finally got the house clean today.
What a relief that the cars and appliances are sold, although only for a charity price.

But there is still no end to our to-do list.

I see how naif it was to think we will spare some time for more trips.


Luckily we managed at least to visit our favorite pumpkin patch and Maarten had even more pumpkin fun at school. By the way, his school is one of the things we are going to miss badly. I may come back to this later...

Among of all those sad good byes it seems I finally came to terms with the local police...since Maarten became a Junior Officer of the San Ramon Police yesterday morning!

I've already brought up my concerns about Maarten's adjusting to the changes but actually it's me who is going to have difficulties with that.
Only the fact that we are staying in a hotel only one mile away from 'our home' gives me a stomach ache. Suddenly everything 'American', seems to me just wonderful, even the Applebee's !
As for Maarten, he really has a blast. He can use the hotel elevator several times a day and instead of oatmeal he gets the colorful cheerios every morning!
What more one can wish for?!


To spare this post any further wailing I should mention our Angel Island outing we did a week ago.
We took the ferry from Tiburon and climbed Mt. Livermore, the highest spot of the island.
Here you get incredible 360-degree views of the stunning San Francisco Bay Area nearly the entire trip.

We couldn't wish for a better good bye to this absolutely marvelous area.