Summer Lovin'

We have really been enjoying our summer weather the last few weeks! Believe it or not, we actually topped 30C (86F) a few days...that's a serious heat wave for Denmark. This picture was taken out at Frederiksberg Park where Ruby and I had a picnic with Carter and Claire under some shade trees. We didn't have much competition for the shady spots as is seems every Dane is dead set on getting a suntan this week. The sunbathing has been something we've had to get used to as they seem to just strip down to thier underwear if they don't happen to have a swimsuit. Of course, tops are not required for women here either, so some women just lay out topless. I'm glad our little munchkins are too young to notice!

Ruby has been having a real kick with her outdoor toys, especially this tunnel. She'll go back and forth through it for ages, especially if Mommy watches and cheers her on! She likes to slide down the little hill on her tummy--too cute! She also has a little wagon/truck that we call her "pick-up". Her favorite thing to do is pick up all the laundry pins when I'm hanging laundry and stick them in her pick-up. If there aren't any pins, any old thing will do--leaves, grass, dirt, etc. Lately, she loves going on her trike! There is a nice long handle attached so that we can push her around without breaking our backs.


Okay, it's actually July 17th now! I saved this entry a month ago and we've been so busy it just hasn't gotten posted. I'm going to just post a bunch of pictures now and hopefully get caught up!

I call this picture, "The Little Dipper". Ruby started dipping thing at the end of May and LOVES ketchup!

Here are two more pictures of Ruby at the beginning of June.

Legoland billund: Part Two

Here we are! Back again (finally!) for the second installment of our Legoland trip. As you may have guessed, the weather is quite delightful here now and is keeping us out and about as much as possible. When we are home, I'm usually madly cleaning or cooking for some company we're about to have. Our garden is just full of flowers all the time and we've got lots of outdoor furniture which is great for cookouts. It's been busy, but very nice and fun! But, I'll get to all that later. For now, I better stick to Legoland or I'll never be done!

Ruby's favorite part of the park was this big lego pit. The lego bricks in here were at least the size of real bricks used in construction, and maybe a bit larger. The bricks were all a bit wet from all the rainy weather we'd been having, but she still sat on the edge and r-e-a-c-h-e-d all the way down in to get a brick and then launched it out onto the ground. I tried to get her interested in taking the bricks apart, but then she just took them apart and launched them out onto the ground (of course!). They had lots of these stations both indoors and out with all of the different types of legos depending on what "land" we were in. Jared really wanted to build one those little motorized cars, but since he was the only guy in our group, he didn't get too. Our course was pretty much dictated by the two moms with 4-year olds, but that was okay. Soon enough we'll be in their shoes.

They really have all kinds of things built from legos (I'm sorry, I just can't keep with the whole "lego bricks" lingo...it's annoying, so back to legos!) including a snoring old man! The man was really pretty funny, complete with black socks and snoring audio, but even more funny to me were these two ladies just munching on ice cream cones like this is the kind of thing they see every day. Even though the guy is made of legos, I still wouldn't want to sit by him when he's asleep! I know, it sounds silly, but that's just me!

Here's another shot from Miniland. This is of Nyhavn, down in Copenhagen. There are canals throughout this area and the royal winter palace, Amalienborg, is only a few blocks away. It's a really neat area of Copenhagen and the model was pretty cool too. My favorite part was the little boats, including the big flat canal tour boats that actually cruised along the canals. The also had a model of Amalienborg and various other sights around Denmark, but really, I think that pictures of the real things are a bit more exciting!

We did get to enjoy several fun rides at the park, including this rather tame Pirates of the Caribbean ride. This is apparently a pretty old one since one of the girls remembered going on it when she was about 10 and it looked exactly the same back then. It's pretty easy to tell which parts of the park are oldest just by looking at the legos. It seems that the old rides they used mostly big legos so everything (including the shark and pirate on the island) look very 'pixelated'. For the newer things they seem to use smaller and smaller legos, so that it actually looks a lot more realistic.

All in all, it was really a great trip. I wish that Luke and Tyler could have come with us because the whole time we just kept thinking about how much they would have liked it... maybe next time! Legos, rides, and junk food, what more could a boy want?