{"id":566,"date":"2006-11-27T12:53:53","date_gmt":"2006-11-27T10:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/566"},"modified":"2006-11-27T12:53:54","modified_gmt":"2006-11-27T10:53:54","slug":"i-3-autumn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/archives\/566","title":{"rendered":"I &lt;3 Autumn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s that time of year again when I start gushing over how much I love the fall.&nbsp; I did it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/137\">last year<\/a>&#8230; and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/382\">year before<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/373\">twice even<\/a>!&nbsp; So why should this year be any different? <\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Xander and the group\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/\/307557205\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"right\" alt=\"Xander and the group\" hspace=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/static.flickr.com\/118\/307557205_caa8f24deb_m.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/a>This weekend we went to a big Thanksgiving dinner for an expat group I belong to for expat women in Holland.&nbsp; One of the girls from the list turned her livingroom into a giant table for all of us.&nbsp; There was somewhere between 30-40 people there from all over&#8230; Dutch, American, Canadian, British, Portuguese and others as well.&nbsp; So it was a pretty mixed group.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>I have to admit it was kind of funny being a Canadian attending an American Thanksgiving dinner at the house of a Portuguese woman and her Dutch husband!&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>As you can see from the photo, Xander was less than impressed in the beginning, although he assured me that he&#8217;d forgive me within a week.&nbsp;&nbsp;He generally hates crowds and since I am new to the group and didn&#8217;t know many people yet I really sucked at the small talk thing.&nbsp; So a portion of the beginning of the evening was spent with Xander and I standing around like morons.<\/p>\n<p>Once a few people we knew showed up and everyone sat it got much better.&nbsp;&nbsp; We had a huge laugh with the people sitting around us and everything became much more relaxed. The food was great, the company was great and we both had an awesome time.<\/p>\n<p>For the first time in almost 6 months I had a desert.&nbsp;&nbsp; I figured since it was a special occasion and we don&#8217;t go to something like that often that I should treat myself.&nbsp;&nbsp; I haven&#8217;t eaten any sweets so long I almost felt like I was falling off the wagon.&nbsp; I took the thinnest sliver of pumpkin pie I was able to cut and half a chocolate chip cookie.&nbsp; It was heavenly.&nbsp; Just enough to taste but not enough to make me feel&nbsp; guilty about &#8216;cheating&#8217; on my diet.&nbsp; (Not past the 29 lb loss mark yet, when I hit 30 ya&#8217;s will know it)<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Fall Canal\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/\/307536494\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Fall Canal\" hspace=\"5\" src=\"http:\/\/static.flickr.com\/104\/307536494_0fdcab1b74_m.jpg\" align=\"left\" vspace=\"5\" border=\"0\"><\/a>The drive to the dinner was lovely.&nbsp; It was about an hour away from here in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tilburg\" target=\"_blank\">Tilburg<\/a>&nbsp;which is a beautiful area.<\/p>\n<p>As we were driving along it was quite windy and there were leaves blowing everywhere in the air.&nbsp; It was such a nice fall day and I loved riding along in the car seeing parts of the country I hadn&#8217;t seen before.<\/p>\n<p>It got me to thinking once again about how much I love this time of year.&nbsp;&nbsp; I love the chill in the air, being able to wear&nbsp;warm and cozy sweaters again, getting out the scarves and gloves and of course&#8230; the hint of the holidays in the air.&nbsp; Everything about this season makes you want to curl up on the sofa&nbsp;with a cup of hot tea.<\/p>\n<p>I also noticed how different the colors are here in the fall.&nbsp; Back in Canada the trees turn every different shade of red, yellow and orange.&nbsp; They are bright and colorful.&nbsp; Here in the Netherlands, they turn various shades of copper and rust, but never really reach the bright colors of back home.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s no less beautiful though.&nbsp; No better, no worse, just different.&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s that time of year again when I start gushing over how much I love the fall.&nbsp; I did it last year&#8230; and the year before, twice even!&nbsp; So why should this year be any different? This weekend we went to a big Thanksgiving dinner for an expat group I belong to for expat women &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-life-in-nl","category-weightloss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}