Wonderful visit

We have had such a great time with my sisters the past two weeks, that I haven't even had time to think about posting! I really can't believe how fast the time flew by. Unfortunately the weather has been quite chilly here and not very comfortable for too much sight-seeing, but we did manage to do a little bit. The first weekend we went out to Hillerød where we saw the Frederiksborg Castle. The castle was purchased by the Carlsberg Foundation and extensively restored to the Museum of National History that it is today. The castle was quite beautiful and the treasures inside were worth the trip. We also saw many of the shields that have been created to honor Danes of note throughout history. Each person has a crest created for them and painted on a shield along with their name and the date. There were hundreds there stretching back hundreds of years up to present day.

Ruby felt extremely comfortable with my sisters from the moment she saw them which was a HUGE help for me! Alyssa and Christina played with Ruby a lot and got to see her develop into a professional crawler/troublemaker over their stay! I'm not quite sure how I'm going to keep up with her now that I'm on my own again...

Last Friday night, Alyssa and Christina babysat for Ruby and sent Jared and I out for a night on the town. We ended up going out to dinner and to see Memoirs of a Geisha. I had read the book back in college, but didn't really remember the details of the story. It was really a great movie! The theater that we went to is one of the largest in Scandanavia with well over 1000 seats. It's so strange here how you have to buy your tickets in advance and choose a seat. The ticket prices even vary depending on where you sit. In a way it is nice because you know exactly where you'll be sitting and don't have to rush to your seat, but it's also a bit weird to be sitting right next to everyone since in the US we like to have that seat or two buffer between each group! Anyway, it was great to get out and Ruby (of course) did wonderfully while we were away.

The second week Ruby came down with a fever and then a horrible cold, which we all eventually ended up getting. Much of the week was spent watching "Alias" (my favorite show), as I got Season 3 & 4 for Christmas this year-- yippee!! We did manage to get out to visit the Domkirke in Roskilde, which is a large cathedral where all of the Danish royalty are buried. Interestingly enough, this is also the church that Jared's boss was married in, so his family had us all over for a traditional Danish lunch before showing us around the church. I'm shocked to report that we all really liked the herring! I can't believe it! Jared said that the stuff we had was very high quality and it wasn't "fishy" tasting at all. They also had the ever present liver pate, but I couldn't force myself to try any. Anyhow, we really had a great time!

On their last full day in Denmark we visited the Build a Bear Workshop to make a gift for our other sister, Heidi. (It's her birthday this week!) We decided to try to get Ruby to help pick out the animal and the heart and help to stuff it, etc. She was really pretty oblivious, but she did give the heart a big sloppy kiss before we stuffed it inside!

Well, now I'm back to being on my own during the day, but I think it will be okay. I've already had my neighbor over for coffee and cake and have a party to go to this weekend. We are also having Jared's research group over next weekend, so I'm sure I'll be cooking and cleaning up a storm for that. I'm really enjoying getting to try out new recipes all the time here. It's nice to do everything from scratch and I'm finding that I really don't miss as many things from the US as I thought I would.

Anyway, if you have a hankering to try a new recipe, several that I would suggest are: Simple Whole Roasted Chicken, Coffee Date Bread (sounds weird, but tastes really great), and Beer Cheese Soup.