Premature birthday

Today we celebrated Axel's birthday. I know it's a wee premature but this was the only date we could find which worked with Axel's friend Rasmus with whom we had the party. We had rented a shed in the forrest and two weeks ago we were certain to have fine og warm weather. Well, without exaggeration I can tell the promised showers were a bit heavy. But we had fun nonetheless.

We had planned an untraditional treasure hunt where we went geocaching. Axel enjoyed searching for treasures with the GPS.

I know, I should have posted a photo of Axel with his cake, but I really liked this picture of the kids on the treasure hunt in the rain.

8 years

Rita is 8. It's hard to believe. I just can't imagine life without her. We celebrated birthday together with one of Rita's best friends, Maja, who turns 8 tomorrow. We had a lot of fun. Two birthday cakes, small pizzas and pigs in a blanket. And then we went on a fun and long treasure hunt.

Bowling birthday

Rita really wanted to go out bowling for her birthday. So Friday we had invited my parents, Merete and the girls for bowling and pizza. We had a lot of fun. And Rita was so thrilled when she realised we had ordered 8 pizzas. And we ate them all.

41

Happy birthday, Ellen. Typical Danish early birthday breakfast with morning hair and all :-)

41st Birthday

Yeah I know it doesn't lokke like it, but yesterday I turned 41. Ellen took this nice picture of me trying on this nice sweater I got from Mary and Gary. Thanks.

I always try to take the family out to eat at a well recommended restaurant. I think it's important for the kids to get a taste of a different cusine and better quality - and then not the least I love to do it for myself :-) This year we ended up at Cofoco. We had an excellent dinner of scallops, veal with grilled thymus (there must be a less clinical name but that's what google translator came up with - it was good) and creme brulee. Rita had fish and I had cheese for dessert. It was all very good.

Axel 11 years old

We had brought all Axel's gifts with us to Sweden. He was excited about it all. He couldn't wait to have his remote controlled car charged. The warhammer figures Erik brought with him from the US also had to wait to be assembled and painted until we got back home to Denmark. Quite a test of patience.

But we had planned a trip to Sweden's largest amusement park. We spent all day in the park. It was a thrill. Axel rode all the rides even the old wooden roller coaster "Balder" and enjoyed it. I believe he surprised both us and himself.

A swimming birthday

Today, we celebrated Axel's 11th birthday with 8 of his friends. The birthday party took place in the local swimming pool. It was a lot of fun all 3 hours.

Axel really enjoyed himself and was very happy especially with the cake. "It's mom who's made it, so it is good".

Roethlisberger burger

Last week Erik celebrated his birthday with a couple of friends. Erik had been very adamant that he wanted a big burger with 300 g (2/3 a pound) of beef for his birthday meal. We ended up making Roethlisberger burgers named after Pittsburgh Steelers QB. Of course the burger was so big Erik couldn't finish it all off. But he was happy. Afterwards the boys went to the movies and saw Superhero movie. They really enjoyed themselves!

Erik's birthday

It's amazing. In a year Erik has grown 13 cm or 5,1 inches. That's as much as he's grown in the 3 previous years altogether. On his 14th birthday Erik is, a you can see, certifiably 167,5 cm or 5 foot 6 inches. He has become quite a young man.

Erik also made sure that we this year once again were the first in the neighborhood to fire up the old Weber grill as his request for birthday dinner was hot dogs with bratwurst and baked beans and brownies and ice cream for dessert.

Happy Birthday Rita

Can you believe it. 7 years old. Rita had a full birthday package. The day started with fresh baked rolls. The we had all the girls from Rita's kindergarten class for a great birthday bash and ended up with have Farmor, Baba, Merete, Edith, Felicia and the Zuletas for dinner.

Ellen had a usual been creative. This time she had created a Dalmatian. That is - it was meant to be a dalmatian, but once the white icing had come on the cake we couldn't figure out a good way of adding the black dots. So it ended up being a white dog!

40

Happy birthday, Ellen!

I believe Ellen had a great birthday. In the morning we exchanged gifts. The kids gave Ellen a gold necklace to match the pendant Mary and Gary gave her in Prague. I had among other things found a gift pack of jelly beans with a collection of 40 flavors.

In the evening we went to a fondue restaurant and then to the opera to watch the Danish opera Maskerade. It was the first time we had the children to the opera and they really seemed to enjoy it. They all stayed awake all the way to the end around 11 PM.

Birthday party

Saturday we celebrated our 40th birthday. We had a lot of fun. As is customary at Danish parties we had personal songs. I had made one for Ellen and my parents had made one for both of us. The children also had a fun song in several "languages" - fx. consisted the Russian verse mostly of Danish words added a "ski" in the end (you can hear part of the song in the video). The song accentuated the global company - we were all together 5 different nationalities from 2 continents.

We had found a caterer who made a wonderful menu:
First course: Potato cake with cod, bacon and red beet, shrimp saslik with aioli, bread and tapenade
Main: Veal tenderloin with pineapple/chili relish, potato gratin with parsnip and carrots and a onion pie.
Dessert: Crepes with custard and rich chocolate mousse.

We had had fun picking a French Gewurztraminer for the first course, an Italian red for the main course and a Spanish muscat for dessert.

It was very good.

Erik, Axel and Rita was of great help. They helped serve and clear off the table.

After dinner we danced and talked. The children managed to get most of our guests to join a game of musical chairs.

As gifts we got 3 electric tea kettles and a toaster. As our friend Laurent said, now we are ready to open a bed and breakfast.

40

I had a great birthday yesterday. We celebrated it with my parents, Merete and the girls. Ellen and the kids had made brunch with lots of bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs, fresh baked rolls, cheese and you name it. It was very good!

David sent 40 e-mails with birthday wishes. It took some time to answer each mail.

Now we are looking forward to the big birthday party in January.