This honest, open and respectful mentality makes The Netherlands to an inspiring and friendly environment to raise kids.

Our city is one of the oldest in The Netherlands with over a thousand monuments. History is tangible in the medieval streets and the many picturesque inner harbours. At the same time it's a modern city with all the facilities that go with it. The city is situated in a rural setting with one of the biggest national parks just ten minutes away. Also, the world famous Unesco monument Kinderdijk (with all the windmills) is at just a few minutes driving from our home.

Our home is in a modern, low traffic, child-friendly neighbourhood only 5 minutes away from the medieval town heart. And child friendly means lots of playgrounds, schools and children's farms in the direct vicinity. Despite the short distance to the city centre our house is in a rural setting. Our backyard overlooks a wonderful apple orchid and some pastures with sheep, donkeys and horses. The abundance of water attracts a variety of water and sea birds, varying from ducks, swans, moorhens and grebes to gulls, herons, terns and cormorants. A sparrow hawk family guards the apple orchid, partridges and feasants settle on the pastures, while red robbins, titmice, blackbirds, jackdaws, thrushes, sparrows and even the rare jays flock together in our garden. It's a wonderful place to raise kids in a friendly, peaceful environment. Where unspoilt nature is at such close hand, and at the same time with all the facilities of a city nearby.

Our Jobs

Jos is a successful self-employed psychotherapist. His practice is on the ground floor of our three story house. We live on the two floors above. Before starting his own practice a couple of years ago, Jos had been working as a social worker for the Child Protection and as a social worker in the largest child hospital in The Netherlands. With his practice in the same building as our home Jos will always be a stay-at-home dad. When we have welcomed our child in our home, Jos will reschedule his working hours in such a way that he will be able to be with our child for two days during the week.

Jarko will start working parttime and become the stay-at-home dad for the rest of the week. He is working as a communication consultant to the city board. His office is 10 minutes by bike from our house. Jarko is responsible for his own working schedule and is very flexible.

Our Interests

We preferably spend as much time as possible together. 'A day not together is a lost day' is about our credo. As long as we're together it's not that important to us where we are. So we always show up together for diner with friends, family reunions or other activities. We love to go to concerts, museums and to the theatre, but we also very much enjoy a quiet evening with a romantic movie, an exciting thriller or some episodes of Friends, where we can snuggle up on the couch. Often with our dog and full member of the family Tox on top of either one's head or feet. When we have welcomed a child in our home, family life will be even more our top priority. It's the most important thing to us and we will always aim at spending as much time as possible together.

Music
There is always music in our home. Jos has a very extensive CD-collection with anything varying from world music to classical music, rock to jazz, gospel to opera, country to French chansons, Portuguese fado to genuine Dutch torch songs. So, very ecclectic, and thus we always have a tune that fits the mood. In addition to that, Jarko loves to drop in a note from time to time.

With us traveling all over the world, it really helps that Jarko is some kind of a 'language miracle'. He is affluent in as many as six languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Flemish. Apart from that, he's currently learning Modern Greek, while Italian and Portuguese are on his list. Jos doesn't do bad either, with his speaking 'only' four languages.

As a result from growing up in Europe, our child will definitely speak several languages. We think speaking several languages is a virtue that brings people closer together and that enables you to get a larger scope on what is going on in the world.

Reading
Jos is an avid reader. He's constantly studying in his professional field of psychology and psychotherapy. But also books on spirituality, Dutch literature and poetry, and thriller novels have his interest.

Artist
Jarko is a creative self-educated artist, specializing in etchings and paintings. He has a figurative style where animal figures have the leading part, always experiencing some very recognizable human emotion. His inspiration comes from poems, songs, wise words from Jos or just a kid who says something that touches him and never leaves his mind.

His first exhibition last year was a great success where he sold several of his works. Jarko has also designed and painted the animal figures in our nursery room and has made the illustrations for the birth announcement.

His next project is a colour plate book with illustrations of children playing in the historic sites of our city. Also, he will exhibit 30 paintings and etchings in the City Hall of our city at the end of this year, during the month of December.

Sports
We are what you could call 'nice weather athletes'. As soon as temperature goes up we start doing all kinds of outdoors sports such as running, and especially skating. Also we love to take out our bikes and make long distance tours in the outdoors. We also like water sports very much: swimming, surfing and snorkling.

Animals
We have a great respect for life on this planet. In all it's variety. Respect for nature is definitely something we will teach our child. Our love of animals and their habitat forms a great part of our environmental awareness.

Jarko has always had an innate 'thing' for animals. As a child you would always find him rescuing fish from fishermen's nets, chasing the crows away from young ducklings, saving birds that were splashed by water fountains, burying animals that were overrun by cars, whether it be cats or caterpillars, giving stray dogs and cats a bit of affection by petting them on the head or something to eat... and to be honest... he still does all that stuff today. Our dog Tox was actually a wonderful rescue story. As a stray dog he was strolling the Spanish beaches when all of a sudden he saw us from a distance, came running straight to us, jumped on our beach towel and just never left. We immediately fell in love with this sweet spontaneous puppy and promptly decided to take care of him for the rest of our lives. That was 8 years ago and if you see this wonderful, sweet golden dog today you can't imagine the idea of him once having to beg for his food. We feel so fortunate that we are able to provide a happy home for Tox. And meanwhile he has become a full member of our family.

Our belief

When we got married three years ago, on the day we had been together for exactly 12 years, our marriage was blessed by our pastor and friend, Reverend Jan Wagenvoort that very same day, in the presence of all our family, friends, neighbours and colleagues. It was one of the most meaningful and emotional moments in our life. We are faithful Christians. Our church is an important national monument. Dating back from before the 11th century, it is one of the oldest church buildings in The Netherlands. Our church community is a wonderful and friendly group of people that reflects the diversity of the Dutch society. They too look very much forward to us becoming parents and to welcoming our child in their hearts.

If you would like more information about our family or would like to visit further, please call us anytime at: Michael Goldstein's Office, 1-800-582-3678, or use this link to send us email.