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?

Ruby Swings!

Legoland Billund: Part One

Last Friday, the train line that runs all around Denmark had a special deal for travel anywhere in Denmark for about $15 each/one-way (with a seat). Jared got to talking with his friends at work and they decided we should all go to Legoland in Billund. I must admit I was very apprehensive since our long train ride a few weeks ago was very hard on Ruby (and us!). But, we decided to go for it and we were all glad that we did...

For those that don't already know, LEGO bricks (they don't like the term "legos" apparently) and all the accessories were invented in Denmark. According to Wikipedia:

The Lego Group had humble beginnings in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a poor carpenter from Billund, Denmark. Ole Kirk started creating wooden toys in 1932, but it wasn't until 1949 that the famous plastic Lego brick was created. The company name Lego was coined by Christiansen from the Danish phrase leg godt, meaning "play well".

Having played with LEGO bricks my whole life (well, practically) I didn't have a clue that they were invented in Denmark. Apparently there are also four different Legolands--the original and largest in Billund, Denmark, then three others in USA, Germany, and England.

So, after waking up at 5am, a 2 1/2 hour train ride and two bus trips totally about 1 1/4 hours, we made it to Legoland Billund. The trip there was great since there were two four year olds along with us that Ruby was very interested in. They weren't getting along that great, but even listening and watching the arguing and rough-housing was better than listening to Ruby scream by a long shot. Once we got there we had a rather ironic experience... Julie (Jared's co-worker) decided that we should all buy our tickets in advance so that we wouldn't have to wait in a long line to purchase tickets. Apparently everyone else had the same idea and while there were about 6 or 8 booths to buy tickets and at least that many aisles to enter the park through, there was only ONE guy that had to scan every one of the tickets we had printed out at home! The line was HUGE and pretty time-consuming, but once we got in everything was peachy.

There are seven different "worlds" inside Legoland Billund: DUPLO Country, Imagination Zone, LEGOREDO Town, Adventure Country, Miniland, Pirate Country and Knights Kingdom. The first picture in this post is a LEGO model of the docks area in Copenhagen featuring lots of Maersk machines and containers in Miniland. The next one of my head inside the lions mouth was just around the park... I'm not sure which "world", but I had just bonked my head really hard on some protruding LEGO bricks, which is why I have the funny look on my face. The third one is of Ruby and Jared sitting with H.C. Andersen. Then, this one is in LEGOREDO Town where we panned for gold and then they melted it down into a medal... kind of cool actually. Jared was totally captivated by the process and took about a zillion pictures... I'll just leave you with one!

This final picture is of a LEGO modle of the Billund airport. The little planes actually taxied around and the planes with propellers would spin, etc. The whole Miniland was really awesome. They had models of scenes from all over the world. I noticed that in these pictures it's really hard to tell that everything is made from LEGO bricks, but it is. They said that you could make everything they have at home with the commercially available bricks... of course they didn't say how much it would cost you to collect enough of the right bricks to do it!

Our Little May Flower: Ruby Rae