Photo Challenge Week #17 - Pet

I guess I'm cheating a little with this picture since it wasn't taken by me or taken during the week of the challenge, but oh well.  We left our dog, Nena behind and we all miss her so much.  I wish that we had been able to bring her with us, but we know my parents are taking good care of her.  Miss you Nena!

Bregentved Castle

On a Saturday, we decided to go and explore the south-west corner of Sjælland, the island we live on in Denmark.  We had no real destination in mind, we just set the gps for a city in that general direction and headed that way.  When we got there, we had a hard time finding a place to stop to each our lunch, but ended up finding a pretty church with a picnic table.

 It was really cold, so it was a super fast lunch.  Then we started looking at the local attractions on the gps.  There were a couple of castles that we had never heard of, so we punched those in.  The first one we came to we couldn't even drive past and it looked like a big modern manor house.  Nothing exciting.  The same with another one we tried to find.  But the last one was awesome!  It was Bregentved Castle.  The estate dates back to 1319, but the castle itself is a bit more modern, with parts of it dating from 1746 and 1891.  The castle is still a part of a large estate used for forestry and agriculture.  It's not open to the public, the but the gardens and grounds, dating from 1760 and 1835 can be walked through.  It was very beautiful.  We had a great time walking through the gardens and taking pictures of the gardens and castle.  It was so fun to find something like this, off the beaten path

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Chads' Birthday

We celebrated Chad's birthday with a pretty low-key day.  He had to work, so we didn't get to do much during the day.  But, the kids love birthdays.  They decided he needed a themed birthday.  Myra was originally wanting a King Triton birthday for Chad, but we decided to change it to mushrooms.  We made a mushroom banner, cooked steaks and mushrooms and had a mushroom-decorated cake.  The kids all picked out silly presents for him, including a wind-up mouse.  It was a fun day.  Happy Birthday Chad!

Photo Challenge Week #16 - Play Ground

Denmark has a ton of awesome playgrounds.  I could walk to over 10 playgrounds just within 5 minutes of our house.  And the playgrounds have a lot of fun things you rarely see in the States now - teeter-totters, wheel-go-rounds, zip lines...
We call this playground the Harry Potter playground.  We don't go here too often, because it's not as fun as most of the other playgrounds nearby, but it is definitely one of the coolest looking.  We are so excited for warm weather, so we can frequent some of the playgrounds nearby.

The beginnings of Spring

With the arrival of April, we finally found our days getting a little longer and the sun coming out more and more.  We still wore our heavy coats most of the month, but seeing the sun was heavenly.  And towards the end of the month we even had some jacket days.  It was great!  We tried every chance we could to get out of the house, which meant a lot of bike riding.  One of our first trips was to one of the "hills" nearby.  It was a pretty chilly day, but we enjoyed the ride nonetheless.  We had a fun time climbing the hill and seeing the view all around the area.  We could see all the way into Copenhagen.  And a special treat was watching a couple of guys go paragliding.  It looked like a lot of work to hike up the hill with their big packs and get everything set up to run off the side of the hill, but I have to think the view is just amazing. 

We have a lot of fun parks nearby, so a favorite excursion is riding our bikes to a park, playing for a while, then heading out and finding another park.  These trips took on a whole new meaning as Lexi learned to ride her bike. What better excuse for a trip to the park, than to practice bike riding?

Another favorite bike ride was to Kongholmsparken.  It's where the kids had their Children's Festival last year and it's surprising that we don't go there more often.  It's a large park, no playgrounds, but just a really nice green space.  This was the longest bike ride we've taken with Lexi and besides inexplicably swerving off the path and into a bush at the beginning of the ride, she did really well.  We took lunch with us and after eating, entertained ourselves with racing along the boulders in the park.  Great fun!  We also climbed up the hill, which is the kid's favorite part.  The best part of the day was, NO COATS!  Such a nice, sunny day with just jackets or long-sleeve shirts.  Such a fun way to enjoy a Saturday. 

See Myra's shoe flipping off.

I'm sure you can guess who "won." 

Big steps.

We found a bunch of owl "pellets".  It was pretty cool to see the little pieces of bones, but probably not the most sanitary thing. =)

That same night, I went to a big Scrapbooking Event in Roskilde with my friend Alaina.  After walking around and looking at all the scrapbooking stuff, we walked around Roskilde Cathedral.  It's such a beautiful building and the city it one of my favorites.  The best part was just having some adult conversation.  It's so nice to have good friends!