My new ride!!

We decided to invest in a Danish cargo - or "Christiania"- bike - take a look! Recall we don't have a car...so this has made life SO much easier, from grocery shopping, going places on weekends and taking the kids to and from school.

 

It's been great - it is a lot of work though - as the bike+kids+stuff = a lot of weight to pedal - but I have gotten used to it and am glad I got one with a lot of gears to work with!

 

There is a bench in there with 2 seats and seat belts and plenty of floor space leftover for everything else. It's our Danish mini-van!

 

We have actually had this for 2 months now and it has been a great asset as the temperatures drop and the light rain is more common - the kids at least stay warmer and dry (there is a cover that is not in this photo that is on all the time now). The only reason for the delay in posting this is because I wanted a photo of me and the kids in the bike...but I keep forgetting, so here is the bike! I will update with a photo when I happen to remember to have Ron take one!

 

 

Fall and Halloween

We soon discovered that Halloween is celebrated over here. Not quite the same, but we were able to make enough of an event out of it that we weren't too homesick!

Here are the kids on the day we got out all of our Halloween decorations.

 

 

Pumpkins are very common here, displayed outside home and many people do carve them right before Halloween. Here is the front of our house decorated a bit. A Dane came by and complimented me on our "American Halloween decorations". ...I guess they don't do skeletons and Keep Away signs!

 Here we are getting carving our pumpkins. Both kids were very excited about this this year, clearly.

 

Tivoli Gardens opens up for 2 weeks at Halloween so we took the kids with some friends there for an afternoon (well, actually Ron was there with Raegan riding roller coasters for 8 hours!). The park looked great - very festive. The kids were skeletons for this event.

 I made my usual Halloween cookies again this year - they take so long I had to take a photo of them drying.

We were invited to a friend's Halloween party on Halloween night - it was very good fun. During the party we took the kids trick-or-treating on their street. Apparently its becoming more and more common to do this in Denmark, which we were pleasantly surprised by! However, I will say the candy selection is not at all the same. The selection of individually wrapped candy at the stores here is pretty much non-existent so it was quite the free for all as to what the kids got in their baskets - random gummy candies, marshmallows, licorice (of course here!), peanuts, and Yes, one of the girls in our group came back from a house with a disgusted look on her face and said " I just got an apple!!". haha (there are lots of apple trees here). We did not have the issue this year of our candy stash lasting into the New Year!

Here are the kids ready for the party - Raegan the Mermaid and Wyatt is Tow-Mater (from Disney's Cars).

 

Guess Who??!!

 All the ladies thought alike for the party (i.e, what is an easy costume? Yes, a witches hat!)

While we missed our old Halloween traditions in Austin, we were able to make a fun, festive Halloween this year in Denmark - good fun!

Fall break in Switzerland

We headed over to Switzerland for Raegan's school Fall break. What a beautiful place! We were so lucky to have our friends and old Austin neighbor's, the Shopps, host us for the first half of the trip at their beautiful home in Vevey, a town on Lake Geneva about 45 min from Geneva (in the French part of Switzerland).

I don't think I would ever tire of the view from their backyard (below, and a back view of their house followed by Raegan and Travis playing in the backyard).

 The Shopps were fantastic hosts and kept us busy exploring their area. The kids picked up right where they left off in July when they saw each other last in Copenhagen, including the appearance of the beast we call "Ravis" which sometimes exists when Raegan and Travis are together (when they team up against the adults and talk about how rough they have it "Why do the babies get everything?!" :-)  Actually, we didn't see too much of that ...they were all really good.

 On weekends there is a vendor market that opens up in their town of Vevey, a quick walk down the hill towards the lake. We enjoyed the walk through town and eating a picnic lunch outside at a nearby playground.

This is my Saturday "uniform" right now. Gig 'em!...

We quickly discovered that even though we get frustrated by the inability to read Danish here in Copenhagen,  most people speak English so you can get by without ever learning the language - (google translate is a lifesaver!). However, where the Shopps are, everyone speaks French, it is not common for them to know English so just trying to buy something from the market or ordering at a restaurant is difficult. My hats off to them for working diligently at learning the language - the whole family will know French by the time they move back to the US!

 We took the kids to a place called Labyrinth Adventure in a nearby valley. The kids played while we enjoyed mountain views.

 

The kids dressed up and we went to a Halloween event at Chateau de Chillion, an island castle on Lake Geneva that dates back to the 1100s. It was a really interesting place and very spooky all decorated for Halloween.  



 

 

 

  

We were lucky and were in town the one weekend the Knie Circus came to town. It was really well done; we all enjoyed it. Quite a step up from the mom and pop one we saw in Copenhagen back in May!

 



Cotton candy was a highlight of course!

 

 

We let the kids go on the double decker merry-go-round by the lake afterwards (Raegan and Travis are up on the 2nd level, hard to see)

 

The walk back up the hill to the house - they all got to ride on our shoulders



 

 We also took a 2 hour boat ride around Lake Geneva later in the afternoon - it was relaxing and a very nice way to see the area.

The Castle we went to for the Halloween event

 

 We went out in the Swiss countryside to Gruyères for a traditional cheese fondue meal. It was so funny, Wyatt actually started crying "Mom, it's too stinky in here!! I want to go back outside!" Ha! It was VERY stinky, but you got used to it. And the fondue was great, although the kids would not eat it - I guess they need a milder cheese.

 

The village was very nice, with cobblestone streets and a castle. The surrounding countryside was very pretty.

 

 

 

 

We finished with a visit to the Cailler (Nestle) chocolate for a tour and tastings. Yum!

 After a great time at the Shopps, we boarded a train for a 3 hour ride to the mountain town of Zermatt, home of the famous Matterhorn. It was gorgeous and the town itself was very nice. We stayed at a traditional chateau with a view of the Matterhorn out our window. Beautiful!

One day we took the mountain train about 10,000 feet up to Gornergrat. We enjoyed the views and the kids played in the snow.

Wyatt spotted these igloos first from the train ride up



We wore out Wyatt, he was actually snoring here!

 

Another day we took the cable cars up to Trogner Steg, which turns out to be a base for skiers. This ride was not nearly as relaxing as the train was, they packed you in like sardines. People were actually skiing already and watching the skiers actually jazzed the kids up to want to learn to ski! We enjoyed playing in the snow and the views from this mountain as well.

Raegan really enjoyed the cable car, but Wyatt did not. Here he is sitting on the floor of the cable car that has standing room only, just trying to get through it. Poor guy...

Below is the town of Zermatt

 

 



 We even got our picture taken with a St Bernard for fun. Wyatt is actually straddling him like he's riding the dog. The photographer would take a deli sandwich out of his pocket to get the dog to look at the camera. A very sweet dog!

 

 Switzerland was absolutely gorgeous, we had a great time and could have spent a lot longer there!