Wednesday, September 18, 2013

School starts and end of summer fun

We have been quite busy and I've been behind on keeping up the blog on all we've been doing, so this one will have a lot in it!
 

School Starts!!

Raegan's summer vacation is a lot shorter here - she went back in mid August to Year 1 (i.e. American Kindergarten) at Rygaard's after just 6 weeks off for the summer. She was very excited to be back at school with her friends and make new ones. Here she is in front of her new locker and then sitting in her class with friends.

 Raegan also started her new ballet class - here she in the changing area ready to go into the classroom (and Wyatt is there, also excited to be at ballet :-) ).

Wyatt also started going to school 3 days a week - he is going to a Danish Bornehave which is a Danish speaking school that has kids from age 2.5 to 6 (the Danes start their kids in formal schooling at age 6). However, at this bornehave there are a lot of international kids so they do speak English to him as well (but we hope he will eventually teach us some Danish!). He was quite excited to start school and constantly, proudly tells me he is now a 'big boy'.

Here he is in front of his school and then inside. He's with his 'best friend' Conor - an English speaking boy we know from our weekly playgroup (so cute in their backpacks that are so big on them). Wyatt has done great transitioning - no crying! He seems to really love school.


 ...I have to add this one photo where Wyatt is in his summer jammies and he and Raegan are playing school with his new backpack (before school started)
 
As a whole, our summer weather was absolutely fantastic. So, we were sure to take advantage of every sunny warm day we could before school started...
 

BonBon Land
 
We took a day and went a couple hours south to BonBon Land, the #4 Weirdest Theme park as ranked by Time Magazine (http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2106937_2106938_2106942,00.html)


It was definitely interesting! In terms of the rides themselves, they were not really abnormal. It was the themes for each ride that were just weird.



  In this ride a boat just takes you down a river with different country themed areas. You cannot see in this photo the 'USA' sign, but this is in fact the USA theme portion for this ride... 
 ...just another giggling baby hippo? All the animals in this ride were in diapers.
 this was actually a good one, perfect for Wyatt - it's a mechanical horse ride that actually takes you around a track

 the typical splash pad you find at all parks here
 this ride was a bit much for me! Of course Raegan just said it was fun and wanted to do it again
not sure if you noticed but this dog here below that Wyatt is sitting on is in the position to be going #2. There were about 10 other animals in this play area doing the same thing. Strange!!


 here we are again with the dog going #2...


Roskilde
 
We also took a morning and drove out to Roskilde - about 45 min away - (home of the famous Roskilde Music festival (http://roskilde-festival.dk/, although we didn't go for this festival).

We went to the Viking Museum - it was really interesting - it's the home of the 5 Skuldelev ships, which are Viking ships they found in the Roskilde fjord from the 11th century and have put back together into life size Viking ship exhibits. Turns out we didn't get any good photos inside in the museum portion, but this is an active boat yard with a restaurant and cafĂ© as well. We walked around and saw all the boats. We also happened to go on a day when there was some little music festival so it was lively and the kids also made crafts (Wyatt a shield and Raegan a necklace). We were hoping to take a ride on a Viking ship but Wyatt was too small.




Raegan the Viking in the dress up area inside the museum...
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Soccer Camp
 
Raegan also got to attend a 3 day soccer camp organized by our commune. Her and her friend Nora were the youngest ones there by far. I think they played around a little more than they played any soccer...
 
 Going to and from soccer camp, we passed by this little play area in a square that we called Letter Park (for obvious reasons!), we stopped here daily during Raegan's camp


 
The new Copenhagen Aquarium (The Blue Planet) 
 
I took the kids down to the new Aquarium that opened last Spring. It was nice, but not as big as I would have thought it was. I didn't take any photos inside, but the building itself is really nice and right on the water. The kids enjoyed ice cream while we watched a kids presentation (we quickly were bored since it was in Danish and didn't make it through the whole thing!).
 


 
 Beaches
 We cycled to the 2 beaches right by our house frequently on nice, sunny days (you did not catch Ron or I in the water!)
 





 
 
 
 
 


 
 


Sunday, September 8, 2013

Grandparents arrive!

We were all so excited to have my parents make the long journey over and visit us - it has been 7 long months since we have seen any family and we miss everyone.

We had a great time showing them our new home and new Danish lifestyle (sans car, etc). They were definitely troopers, hanging in there with all the walking (even more than we normally do since biking was not an option) to and from the train stations, riding busses, etc. No taxis for us!! :-)

The day of arrival - they made it, cheers! (the kids are distracted by the gifts...)

We started the visit by walking the 1.5 mile each way trek to the Charlottenlund beach, we went through the Charlottenlund slot property
 Dad's first $7 cup of Danish coffee
 

Then we picked up Raegan from school and headed downtown for the canal cruise tour out of Nyhavn, followed by dinner at a pub down there

on the train
 A drink at Nyhavn before the canal cruise


 the opera house
 the (underwhelming) little mermaid
 there are about 11 of the super low bridges that you actually have to duck for on the canal cruise

 the sand sculpture festival

We also went down to see the Rosenborg Castle and Kings Gardens, they were amazed by the double decker bike parking at the Norrebro train station
 
Wyatt and I hung out on the lawn since it's not worth the price of admission to take Wyatt in just to shush him the whole time. He did enjoy lining up his trucks though
 



 Ron met up with us after work at the Norrebro Bryghus - it was really great, definitely something to try again!
 Enjoying the walk to the train station to get home
 More of the ever-present European graffiti...
 ...and unique and interesting billboard art
 This is the Charlottenlund train station, the one nearest to us- quite pretty
 Not really sure what to say about this ad below - we unfortunately/fortunately did not attend any of this festival that our commune put on (this translates to Denmark's street theater festival)...wonder what that might have been like!!
 
Over the weekend we took a day trip on the train to Malmo, Sweden. We happened to go on the most eventful weekend there for their big music festival. There was a big carnival, stages for music, and tents set up in several areas for this festival.

 
St. Peter's Cathedral
King's Park



The Turning Torso
Oresund Bridge to Copenhagen







We found the beer garden at the festival
 We also took a trip up to Helsingor to see Hamlet's Castle.


The train station in Helsingor
Kronborg Castle


 



Wyatt was doing his "circus tricks"










Raegan started her English speaking horse riding lessons later that afternoon. She did really well!






We finished out Gramma and Grampa's visit to Copenhagen by showing them Osterbro - where our apartment was - and taking them to Bakken Amusement park.





Then we were off to the second portion of their visit - a week in Costa Brava Spain (Blanes)! ...will be a separate post...