Thursday, April 29, 2010

Last Night in Denmark

Wow ...

Its crazy to think that this is my last night in Denmark.

That tomorrow night we will be back in the US.

That we have an 8 1/2 hour flight with 2 little kids.

And that life will change alot in the next day.

We have been BUSY the last few weeks. Of course we were packing, packing, packing. And Brad was gone all last week in Germany for work. They had to drive to Munich because of the volcano ash problem, but he was lucky enough to get a flight home. While he was gone I was trying to get the house as ready as I could to move. Of course the problem with moving is that some of the stuff you can't do until the last day or two ... like kitchen things, bedding, clothes.
And Anika didn't make it easy to get things done. She loved to climb into whatever suitcase or box I was working on and pull everything out. She thought she was so funny. =)

We did get everything packed up thanks to help from some good friends and tuesday morning we got the container packed in only a couple hours.
Brad was able to recruit some good friends from work to help us out. Thank you guys!

One last picture in front of our house. It was an emotional week, so many lasts, so many goodbyes, so many tears ... and so little sleep.

Our flight left for Copenhagen tuesday evening and we were EXHAUSTED!!! I haven't been this tired in a long time, but I think for the last couple weeks, I've been going, going, going and when we finally got it all done, my body crashed. So we slept good last night. And the hotel we are staying at gave us an extra room for the kids ... SO nice!

Today is Brad's birthday. 2 years ago on his birthday we were in Denmark for the first time and he moved here in June. Now we are celebrating our last day here on his birthday. Happy Birthday babe!!! We hope you had a great day. It was nice to have a day between shipping the container and making the trek home to catch our breath and catch up on sleep.

We had a relaxing day and visited Kronborg Castle north of Copenhagen. This is the castle from Hamlet, if any of you have read the book (probably way back in high school).


We had a simple dinner at an American restaurant near our hotel ... hey -we have to get back in the American mode, right?
Overall, this has been a great experience and we have made memories that we will never forget and have made friendships that will last a lifetime. We have learned a lot about ourselves and have definitely grown - having to get out of your comfort zone does that to you.

We will miss Denmark a lot and miss the people a ton, but as I sit here in our hotel room, I'm excited to come home. I'm excited to see everyone again, get settled into our new house, and start new again.

We are excited to see family and especially for the kids to be by cousins and grandparents. I am excited to be somewhere where everyone speaks English all the time. Brad is excited for more space ... you know everything is bigger in America! (I think he's mostly excited for bigger parking spaces for his car.)

I have tons of pictures and stories from the last few weeks, but I needed to keep this fairly breif. I need to get to bed so I'm rested for tomorrow. Pray for the kiddos on the flight ... in particular Anika. She's not known to be a fan of sitting still.

And next time you hear from me, we'll be stateside .... so look out, because here we come!

Sunday, April 11, 2010

What we've been up to ...

This is what we've been busy doing ...
Only 2.5 weeks until we are residents of the US once more. I can't believe how fast it is. We are busy these last few weeks, but so many people we want to see, and SO much we need to get done.

One last holiday

Over Easter, we took one last holiday before we leave Europe. We took a flight to London and headed west to a great holiday center called Centerparc at Longleat Forest. It was a really great place with tons to do with the children. On the way, we passed Stonehenge, so of course we had to stop there.

The resort is like its own little village. Cars aren't allowed in there, so we had to walk or ride bikes everywhere we went. The kids loved riding behind the bikes and it was nice not having to worry about traffic and it gave us good exercise ... you would not believe the hills. Ouch!

I didn't get many pictures when we were there, too busy riding bikes and playing with the kiddos.
There were kid's clubs for the kids. Broderick loved it.
They had an Easter egg hunt also. Broderick was thrilled with the Easter bunny, and ran up to hold his hand when he saw him.
There were several different good restaurants within the village.
But when I order a fish, I prefer to not have the skin, head and eyeballs still attached. I wasn't even sure how to eat it. I had to cover up the eyeball, I couldn't handle that.
We visited Longleat Palace nearby our resort.

After we left Longleat, we had one day until our flight went back to Denmark. (There's only 2 flights perweek.) We stayed at a charming bed and breakfast. They had sheep there and Broderick loved chasing after them.
Our last day, we visited Salisbury Cathedral. It houses one of the original Magna Cartas, but you're not allowed ot take pictures. of it.
It also has the oldest working clock in the world, from the 1300s. It doesn't actually tell time, but chimes every hour. Brad the engineer was quite enthralled with figuring out how it worked.
And here's Broderick burning some energy before the trek back to the airport.
We love England. Its beautiful countryside, people are friendly, and they speak English. Can I just say I love the way they talk? Love it, can't always understand what they're saying (even though its English), but I love it!