I know, that expression is way overused and can be filed away along with 'You reap what you sow' and 'Good things come to those who wait', but there must be some ounce of truth to them or they wouldn't be said so often.  That's all fine and dandy, but why am I talking about this?

Backstory - we had a great house lined up in Holland that was close to our family, an amazing price, and much bigger than we could've even hoped for.  I was in communication with the owner and when I went to confirm I was told that it had just been rented to someone else.  I was quite disappointed, but my husband said that it must be because there is an even better place for us and now we just have to find it.  Quite the optimist and you can't knock the attitude, but I knew by 'we' it was really 'me' that would look for it and I felt like I'd already scoured everything in the area.  But, I plodded on and continued the search even though it felt like I was looking at the same places over and over again.  One night as we were watching tv I had my laptop on and was idly scrolling away, not even trying very hard.  Voila - a mirage appeared before me that was so perfect it couldn't be true!  It was more money than the other place but the location was even better, and it had a garage and a sauna to boot!  Okay, so he was right.  (Hear that honey? I'm telling the entire world that you were right!)

So now we have our plane tickets and both our Paris and Holland accommodations booked.  It feels quite strange because usually there is so much planning to be done with these European trips, but this year we are only going to two places so there is a lot less to organize.  Less places, less trains, less cars...  We still need to rent a car for our two weeks in Holland but I first have to locate a parking ticket that we need to pay from last summer.  It took Europcar 5 months to send us a parking ticket from Italy, but seeing as we usually rent from them we should probably pay it before attempting to rent a car from them again.  Lastly, we need to book the Yotel for our stopover in Amsterdam on the way to Paris.  The Yotel is right in the airport and it was a total lifesaver last year.  Now that we understand the system a bit better we've actually planned a long stopover (7 hours) in Amsterdam so that we can grab a few hours sleep before catching our connecting flight.  None of us slept a wink on the plane last year (we arrived at 8 am Amsterdam time, but midnight Calgary time) so getting a bit of sleep in the hotel was really nice.  We only had about 2.5 hours last time so this year we're hoping for a bit more by having a longer stopover.  It appears that you can't book more than 6 months in advance so I'll try again in a few weeks.

So that's about it for now.  With pretty much everything done there isn't any excuse for me to not tackle that pile of laundry, is there?