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!

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!

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.

More pictures here – or on my Flickr.

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:

I’m an AUNT!

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.

BIIIG congratulations to the new parents!

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!

Adults and children form circles around the bonfires to look into the fire, celebrate Midsummer, and enjoy the evening. The children stay up [way too] late, and so do their parents. I have always thought that the bonfire should be on a beach by the sea, but now that I’m becoming a part of this local community, I think we ought to support the local initatives. And even though the bonfire by the woods, behind the church didn’t last that long, the event had the perfect atmosphere – bringing together people from around the area. Before going, we had invited Rikke (from the mothers group) and Martin for strawberries from the garden, and later – after the bonfire – we sat talking at their place until it was rather late, and we went back to our place to put the girls to bed. Perfect evening in good company. It is so nice to have made new friends – and when they live 150 m away it just makes everything easier!

Picture borrowed from Danish Wikipedia

Yesterday Frida and I went to psalm singing for mothers and babies at Køge Church for the first time. I wasn’t quite clear about this in my last post on the topic, so if you want a bit of details, see my answer for Sarah in this post. The priest is a young woman who is clearly very enthusiastic about making something good, so I was positively surprised. The acoustics at the church are perfect for singing children’s songs, and the church was warm and great for the purpose. We finished in a house adjacent to the church, feeding the babies and having a cup of coffee. I’m definitely looking forward to next time, and I think Frida enjoyed it as well!

This past weekend was spent at some good friends’ wedding in Funen – which is also the reason why I haven’t posted anything in a few days. They were married Saturday, and it was a beautiful wedding. While Ronja stayed at Mads’ mother’s place, Frida came along for the wedding, and she was such a well-behaved baby. Still, I think Frida as well as Ronja need a few days with a little less action, returning to more normal bedtimes. Below you see a picture of the couple and the very nice Jaguar that transported the newlyweds from the church.

Well except for the fact that we still need to paint the footings of the house and install the new downpipe at the front and the new front door. And except for the fact, that we would really like a new roof, and, and, and…. No truly, we’re so happy with the way it looks now, it’s excactly the way we wanted it from the beginning. But we won’t be finished for a while – there are still lots of projects – big and small – to throw ourselves at. It just looks a lot more finished. Check out the little bathing nymph by the picket fence. 

Yesterday was a great day! We had Mads’ grandmother, mother, and sister down for celebrating his birthday, and the weather was just awesome. We brought out Ronja’s pool, and she spent very close to the entire day in there… I also think Frida enjoyed watching her! (By the way, Frida is wearing this little apron – I just love it!) The first thing Ronja said this morning when getting up was “Where’s my swim suit?” – and right now she’s jumping around in the water.

The rest of us were benefitting from the good company with drinks, fruit, rolls, and cake. After the guests were gone, Mads and I sat in the garden, just relaxing and enjoying! Ronja was singing and splashing in the pool, Frida was taking a nap, the house was white washed all over, and the garden was just a perfect little oasis with no sounds except for the singing Ronja. Total bliss!

Right now Mads is out biking with the cycling club, but he will be back a bit later, and we’re going to have a quiet day together doing nothing except what we feel like. MMmmmmmm…….

♥ Happy Birthday, Mads! ♥

The girls and I woke up Mads at around 6:30 singing birthday song and bringing his present. He has gone off to work now, but we had breakfast together and we’ll continue celebrating him, when he gets home. He has been a really good boy – there’s not a single cloud in the sky, and the weather forecast for today says dry and sunny.

This evening we’re just going to relax together, barbecueing in the garden – no reason to go anywhere when our garden is the best place to be!

So happy birthday Mads – hugs and kisses from your girls! 

I made the “China grass” dress from the latest issue of Ottobre for Ronja. I wanted it to be a bit more relaxed than the version in the magazine which is very dressy. I used plain linen combined with Amy Butler’s “Lotus Wall Flower” in the apricot colour. The dress came together nicely and the only thing that did give me some trouble was the zipper. This is the first time I apply a zipper, and it’s a hidden one. I found it a bit hard to align it, but after undoing the stiches and trying again it ended up looking just fine.

I’m quite happy with the dress – if there’s something to notice about this pattern, it would be the fact that the bodice is rather wide and I should probably have gone down a size in the bodice for Ronja, even though she is usually a size 104. I’ll post a modeled picture when I get around to it – then you can see for yourself.

Ronja did a drawing this weekend portraying our family. I love the fact that the sun wouldn’t fit on the drawing, so it had to go on the back – what an observation! The weather has been so amazing that we have been barbecueing each evening this weekend, and the garden has been the extension to the house that we love during summer.