Trip to Aalborg

Last weekend, we left for a trip to Aalborg, Denmark, where Andreas is from. We went up to visit his parents. It's about 4 hours away. It was nice and relaxing! Ingegerd and Johannes live in a small little village outside of Aalborg. It's very quiet and surrounded by farmland. It's nice to go up there sometimes to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city.


Marianne (Andreas' sister) had dropped off her kids with Grandma for a romantic trip to Berlin with her husband Søren. So we were there with her three daughters. We had fun with them. We took them to an aquatic center and to McDonalds afterwards one of the days. Here's a picture of Andreas with Karoline and Sofie.



The girls aren't allowed to play too much computer at home, so they had a ball playing all of our different computer games and our Wii. Here's little Matilde knocking Andreas out in boxing. She was really cute and so proud of herself.



One day while we were there, Andreas and I took a trip alone up to the coast. Andreas got permission to take the car, in which he was thrilled. He has a drivers license now, but has no means of using it now! We bike everywhere. But he has the car bug. He can't stop looking at the BMW website.


We drove up to the beach and took some pictures. It was cold, so I didn't really want to walk down the beach. So Andreas ran out on the beach to get his wiggles out (check out his jumping jacks below). But then he talked me into walking down the beach after all.

Check out the old German bunkers behind me left from WWII.

All in all it was a nice trip!

Proclaiming the Gospel

Most of you know that I often dream out loud - the crazy narco that I am. Anyway, Andreas said that I had a very articulate dream last night about missionary work. Apparently I had born testimony for someone and they didn't believe it. I got very upset. And then I said "Why don't you believe what I'm saying? Why don't you believe my testimony? You get down on your knees right now and start praying and then the Holy Spirit will tell it to your mind and in your body that what I'm saying is the truth!!!!" (directly quoted from Andreas)

The theme of the meeting yesterday was missionary work, so I'm guessing it stemmed from that. Pretty funny though, huh?

Musica Ficta

I've been lucky to have become a member of Musica Ficta shortly after I arrived in Denmark. It's one of the few professional vocal ensembles in Denmark. We've done all sorts of concerts together in which I've been able to see many parts of Denmark. Andreas says that I've seen more of Denmark than he has. For example, we were down in a town called Tønder which is near the German border. Noone ever goes there. But we did! I've also been involved in a video which was filmed in the basement of a castle here in Copenhagen. It's pretty cool all the things I've been able to do here through Musica Ficta.

One of the biggest projects we've had throughout the last couple of years is called "Nuns of Notre Dame". It's all music that was written or performed by nuns. We've also made a cd, which is on it's way out to the market now. It took a while to get all the rights to the music.

Wii

The other night, Andreas' parents and Mikael were over for a visit. We ate dinner and then ended up playing Wii together. Johannes really likes tennis and golf. Here's some pictures of us boxing.

Not bad for 72, Johannes!

Oh yeah, lookin' good!

Heart Attack!

Last night after our ward temple night, we came home to a heart attack! The girls upstairs had decorated our door with lots of hearts and candy (most of the candy is gone now...). It's probably no surprise that both girls served missions at Temple Square, (i.e. Utah). Anyway, it was really sweet and fun! It's nice to have good tenants!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Our Apartment

Per request, I've taken some pictures of our apartment so you all can see where we live! I tried to make a video, but I couldn't figure out how to upload it.


























It's not a big apartment, but It's in a nice part of town, in which we're really happy about. And for those of you that don't know, we have purchased the apartment directly above us, in which we plan to make into one big apartment with the one we live in now. In the meantime, we have rented the one upstairs to two young single adult girls. We're hoping that until we really need the extra space, i.e. children, that we can continue to rent out the upstairs. The problem is, that we have to build a staircase this summer. So we'll have to figure out how to make both floors private. And as a requirement of the county, we will have to build a nice big bathroom where our kitchen and bathroom (toilet) are. Then later, when we have the whole apartment to ourselves, we will open up the kitchen upstairs into an open kitchen and dining room. But in the meantime, after we will have made the bathroom downstairs, we will have to live without a kitchen. We will probably just set up a microwave and hot plate on our dining room table or something. It will be worth it for a year or so to save on rent. Because it's not cheap to own both of these apartments. But it is a huge investment opportunity for us, if we can just manage to figure out how to pay the bills for a couple years. Hopefully Andreas will get a really good job when he's done with his Phd.

Fastelavn

Fastelavn is a tradition in Denmark that is similar to that of Carnival. It means literally the night before the fast. It was people's last chance to really have a good time before the fast started. In Denmark and Holland there was also a tradition where they would take a barrel with a cat inside and hit and kill the cat. The cat apparently represented evil.

Nowadays Fastelavn is a holiday for kids. They dress up in fun costumes and hit the barrell which is filled with candy. Afterwards they eat special Fastelavn donuts. Here's a picture of our junior primary trying to get the candy out. It was freezing cold and the barrell is very hard. I think we stood outside for over a half hour waiting for the kids to get it open.

Here's a picture of my friend Emma. She's from Scotland and is also married to a Dane. She dressed up as the tooth-fairy. She was on the activities committe and had to help with the event. It reminded of how Laura Gable and I were in charge of the party my first year in Denmark, and how we didn't know what the heck we were supposed to do. Fun memories.