Our first visitors!!

We were excited to have our old Austin neighbors and family friends the Shopps, who now live in Switzerland, come visit us for a long weekend. It is amazing how kids can pick up right where they left off 5 months ago when they said their goodbyes. Raegan and Travis were inseparable (now they are referred to as 'Ravis') and we are pretty certain even Wyatt and Savannah really remembered each other and got along great.

 We had great weather all weekend so the kids had fun in the backyard (amazingly no serious injuries!)

We strapped all the kids in 3 different jogging strollers and walked down to the beach in Charlottenlund

 

A beer for the road home...

 We took the train downtown to do a canal cruise - a first for us and definitely something we will do with visitors again

We also walked over to where the Copenhagen Jazz festival was going on

waiting in the train station at the end of a long day...

 

We also went to Tivoli Gardens for the first time - this is second oldest amusement park - we all had a great time. There were a lot of rides for the bigger kids so Raegan had a blast on those with Ron. Unfortunately we took Wyatt on one he wasn't ready for first thing, so he didn't want to do anything remotely "scary" after that...

 

Here are Kristin and Savannah on the ride that scared Wyatt...Savannah is clearly enjoying it!! 





 

 

 

We wore out the little ones with a long day... 

 

At the Charlottenlund train station waiting for the train - they love their graffiti here!  Raegan told us that she is going to marry Travis :-)

 

At Rosenborg Castle

And on to Bakken Amusement park...we were very busy!

 

Ron found the worst ride at Bakken...he is actually having to pedal to get the swan to go around the track

 

We all had such a great time with our fiends - we can't wait to visit them in Switzerland!

 



Fourth of July in Copenhagen

Well, Fourth of July in Copenhagen is not quite the same as what we look forward to every year in Texas - going to our families lake houses - boating, a big BBQ, and setting off fireworks...

But, we did get our BBQ grill working just in time to grill burgers and sausages and have a couple friends over. We pulled out all the flags we could find and put up some red, white and blue balloons - and made an American flag cake. They do not sell real fireworks except seasonally here, but fortunately it is strangely common to have sparklers at children's birthday parties so we were able to find those.

Patriotic Ron!!

 

Raegan loved helping with the cake (she's even got her 4th of July t-shirt thanks to Meemaw and Pop)

the sparklers...

 

you are not mistaken if you think it looks like Wyatt is trying to get Ron with the sparklers...we're going to have to un-teach that one next time we get out sparklers...

 Happy July 4th!! We miss our family and friends!!

 

Copenhagen day trips - Safari park and the Danish Riviera

We had a car for the weekend so we decided to make the most of it. We got very lucky with fantastic weather - sunny and highs in the 70s both days.

One day we went 2 hours south to the Safari Park at Knuthenborg. It was done really well. With the exception of the tigers and the wolves, all the animals were loose and just hanging around and you could drive around in your car and see groups of buffalo, camels, ostriches, elephants, giraffes, zebras, etc. Shockingly you had to stay in your car when you went to see the tigers and the wolves. They gave out a program that said if a tiger or wolf starts to come towards your car that you should keep driving away. Ha!

 

 

 

 

 

below we are riding in a trailer pulled by a tractor - Wyatt's favorite - and you put food out on this tray for the  monkeys to come up and get it and they hang from the trailer the whole time. This one in particular had a newborn monkey attached to her belly feeding the whole time. It was pretty cool.

 

the wolves below feeding

 

They also claim to have the largest playground in Denmark - and I don't doubt it - it was quite large and hard to make the kids leave at the end of the day.

 Wyatt immediately found the jeep

 

The following day we drove 30 minutes north of our house to an area called the Danish Riviera, specifically to the nice little beach town of Hornbaek. We stopped and let the kids play in the soft white sand and had a picnic. I think the kids expectations were that they would also swim in the ocean and Ron took them to it but it was definitely too cold for them!

 

 

...I will leave it to your imagination all the pictures that Ron took with incredulity, which I will of course not post here...

 

We then drove over to Helsingor to a beautiful castle - Kronborg Slot - that is right on the beach.