Sea creatures and land lubbers

Friday afternoon Claire and I braved the freezing cold weather with the babies to visit Danmarks Akvarium in Charlottenlund (north of the city). It wasn't quite as wonderful as their snappy website led me to believe, but it was okay. Really, I think that the kids enjoyed it as much as they would have the Shedd Aquarium... though I think that parents get a bigger kick out of the bigger aquariums. This one did have several tanks with tropical fish, which Ruby really likes, and a large area with a crocodile, sea turtle, and some other large critters. The funniest thing about the trip was Ruby's fasciniation with the eels. There were probably 4 or 5 varieties, some very large, and for some reason they would just make her giggle and giggle. I had been considering an annual pass, but found that I get a discount anyway with my zoo annual pass, so we would have to go at least 4 times a year to make it worthwhile... not likely!

Yesterday (Saturday) Jared finally got his new bike. There had been some kind of clerical error in getting paid this month, so the bicycle he thought he would be buying at the beginning of the week didn't get to come home until yesterday. I think that he will really enjoy using it and hopefully it will hold up well in the elements.

I finally got around to entering all those reciepts I'd been saving into Excel and found that we've been spending more than $150/month on clip-cards for public transportation. That is probably close to twice what we were spending in Moscow on our cars, including insurance! So, we decided to try getting monthly passes this month to see how that goes. We decided to buy three zones for 405kr/ea (about $65/ea), but will still have to pay extra to go to the mall, etc. (which is outside of those three zones). We may go back to the clip cards in January, but we'll see.

We also found that our heating isn't working. We have radiators in the house, but for some reason the water in the pipes is cold, even though we have hot water for showers, dishes, etc. So, we're not really sure what the problem is, but suspect a broken pump. We're going to have to attempt to get in touch with our landlord about it, because the heat from the wood stove doesn't reach Ruby's room and it's getting pretty chilly in there. We also have our computer in Ru's room, so my fingers are slowly turning into icicles as I type! More incentive to learn how to type faster I suppose!

Well, I better run! We have to find something to put around the woodstove because Ruby's is trying to crawl today. Crawl today, walk tomorrow... the time sure is flying.