Tomorrow it’ll be June. Today however, summer arrived!
Gorgeous, right?
The garden is an amazing place at the moment – we have flowers in all colours.
Today the temperatures went up to around 23 degrees Celsius.
Tomorrow is supposed to be even better…
And my first peony is in bloom!
Days like this are definitely meant to be spent in the garden!
Enjoy your extra day off tomorrow (Whit Monday) – we will! 
Our Saturday was pretty relaxed. Except of course for the fact that I decided to make a clown costume for Frida, so that she too could go dressed properly for Fastelavn on Sunday. I’ll show you that later on.
We went for a walk in the afternoon. Frida’s cold has been better these past few days, so we just had to get outside. It was drizzling, and Ronja brought her umbrella.
The walk made sure that we all got back home with a set of really cold fingers, however that was fixed with a cup of hot tea. The evening I spent sewing – to get a little clown ready for Sunday!
We said our goodbyes to the Christmas tree yesterday evening, as we lit the candles and enjoyed the tree once more.
This afternoon, I packed the decorations in boxes, put them away, and moved the tree outside. We were so worried as to how we would keep Frida away from the tree with decorations and all, but actually it has been no problem at all. She did manage to rip one Christmas heart today, though – but still, that’s not too bad.
We had a very nice Christmas – my family arrived on the 23rd of December, and in the evening we had the traditional rice porridge. Afterwards we just kind of hung out – decorated the Christmas tree, made some new Christmas ornaments, woven Christmas hearts among others (you can see some cool ones here), talked, and had a really cosy evening.
The 24th was all about getting everything ready for the evening, which is when we celebrate Christmas in Denmark. Mads’ mother and sister arrived just before we all walked to the church to attend the 3 o’clock service, and after that we returned home to have Christmas dinner. The girls had something to eat, and afterwards – well, see for yourself…
It’s hard for a 4-year old like Ronja to find the patience for Christmas Eve – having to go through a looong dinner before we get to the – in her view – fun part. Knowing that we will be dancing around the Christmas tree and opening presents later on makes the wait terribly hard. We did get to it, and Frida stayed awake for the whole thing - which I would never have expected. Dancing around the Christmas tree in our family, is something we enjoy a lot - this year however, we did have to sing less carols than usually, because Ronja was impatient, and Frida was showing signs of being overtired. Still, Christmas just makes more sense, when you have children around.
Everything went well. Ronja loved her presents (which is important), and I believe everyone else was happy as well. Mads and I went to bed at 2 a.m. after a long, but wonderful Christmas Eve, spent in good company.
Sea, sand, and beautiful weather.
This past weekend was spent at a summer cottage in Vejers Strand by the North Sea, meeting up with a part of Mads’ family that we don’t get to see very often. The North Sea is where my family used to go to the beach when I was a child, and I’m ever amazed by the beauty of it.
I know - I’m not that fast, but we’re here! We got home very late Tuesday night – or perhaps I should say Wednesday morning. We did have a very nice trip to Greece – although it wasn’t one without challenges.
The place was beautiful, and the beach was perfect and great for the children. We met lots of nice people, and had some wonderful food. However, Ronja came down with a high fever after a couple of days, and though it dropped a bit, it lasted for the rest of the vacation. She was amazingly brave and tried so hard to pretend that she was doing fine, when at the same time she wasn’t. It’s not much fun to be sick, when you’re on vacation.
Besides this, we lived in a campsite, and the ground consisted of dirt and spruce needles from the pine trees. As you know, Frida just started crawling, and she’s drooling a lot because of her new teeth. It was very hot, and most of the time she only wore a diaper, which meant that because of the drooling and the crawling, we really mostly saw a tiny mudball, racing around covered in needles. I think she had lots of fun there, and she definitely enjoyed the sea.
We did lots of bathing in the wonderful clear water, and we did relax – as much as the above conditions allowed. You can check out all the pictures from our vacation here. By the way, Ronja is fine now – the fever is completely gone, the light is back in her eyes, and I think it did her good to return to our small yellow house.
And now for something totally fantastic:
My brother Jakob’s wife Jolanda gave birth to a beautiful baby girl yesterday. We’re going to Amsterdam to visit them next week, and we can’t wait! I think Ronja is pretty excited to see her little cousin Marlinde.
Last week was a true family-week, Mads had the week off, and we enjoyed some beautiful weather once again. The first anemone japonica came out – this is it right here – it’s one of the highlights of my summer, one of the flowers in the garden, that I really look forward to enjoying each year.
We decided that there was no work on the house that really needed to be done, so we could all relax and do things together – this was a really good decision! The week was spent at home, with a few outings to BonBon-Land, Amager Beach Park (where Mads went diving with our good friend Martin), the beach north of Køge, as well as a birthday combined with a graduation party in the family.
BonBon-Land was lots of fun for Ronja – I must admit I’m not crazy about the park itself, but there’s definitely lots to do for children of any age. The food is lousy, so do remember to bring your own! I have always been a big fan of Legoland, which is pretty and clean with great service everywhere and good, healthy food – even for the children. And honestly, not many amusement parks do well in comparison – that’s just the way it is. One thing that I really do like about BonBon-Land, though, is that there are lots of green spaces all over the park with enough benches and tables. Ronja wanted the rides to be as wild as possible, and since Mads isn’t much into that, I didn’t have competition going for the rides with Ronja (I love that!). For many of the rides you need to have a minimum height of 110 cm – Ronja is no more than 100, so we’ll have to go again in a few years to try the really funny stuff!
