It has been a rainy day.  We have all been at home – taking it easy and not doing anything unnecessary. Ronja’s good friend from the kindergarten, Emma, has been visiting, and with those two girls, no entertainment from grown-ups is required – they have so much fun, and all they need us to do is leave them to it – brilliant! Just before dinnertime, I took Emma home, and Ronja was inconsolable – she missed Emma even before she had left the house, and just wanted to go with her. Well, well – we’ll just have to make another appointment with her parents… 

For the first time today, I succeeded in persuading Frida to eat dark bread with liver paté (my bet is, this word doesn’t quite cover the Danish ‘leverpostej’, but I have to translate), and she seemed to like it a lot! With her cleft palate, the bread is a bigger challenge than it usually is for babies her age, so I was just cheering on the sideline – it’s quite a leap for her!

After we finished dinner, Ronja was dancing on the sofa singing the Alicia Keys song “No One”. She has only heard it a few times on the radio, but she sings the lyrics of the chorus quite well – in spite of it being in a language that she doesn’t yet understand, much less speak… I thought she should hear it “for real”, so I found the song on YouTube, and we all watched the music video – ehm – 4 times! Ronja loves it!

After the girls had been put to bed, I went out in the garden to weed under the hedge. It has been somewhat neglected for a while, and now that we had so much rain today, I thought that it would be easier – at the same time, I really wanted the hedge to benefit from the rain – not the weeds. I was soaked when I stopped a bit later. It wasn’t raining anymore, so it was merely a result of having had my head in the hedge for well over an hour…

Otherwise, the weather doesn’t really encourage you to spend much time in the garden at the moment, even though I do love the smell of  newly fallen summer rain! Below are the abandoned oil lamps between the puddles on the garden table.

Nevertheless, this has been a mighty fine day. Tomorrow, I think I want to find some nice fabric in my stash to transform into something for Frida…

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…….