life springs up

i found out this evening that my sweet aunt helen died.  it wasn't sudden.  it was a matter of when she (or her body) would let go.  i cannot picture her without a smile on her face or a laugh, a silly play on words, helen, helen, watermelon, or a story of how she challenged my uncle, on their first date, to a race on their college campus, not knowing he was on the track team.  how my father always turned into her little brother whenever they were around each other-- she (like his children, like his grandchildren) his reason to be like a kid again.  i have a picture of her in my head, young, on her wedding day, as well as one of her and my (maternal) grandmother arm-wrestling at the cottage up north, and i think that a lot of good energy must have scattered all about around noon today.  this family will miss you aunt helen.

...

yesterday morning we packed up our things, borrowed a car, and headed into the danish countryside for a hyttetur.  william, who has been asking for awhile to help with the blog, will now (well, to be honest, he did this hours ago) describe to you what a hyttetur is: 

a hyttetur is a trip that is like camping but you stay up a lot later. your whole class comes with you, and you get candy in the night, at half past nine. you also sleep in a cabin or a tent.

it's all true.  'hytte' means cottage.  so... you have hytteost, which is cottage cheese, and you have a hyttetur, which is a "cottage" trip.  they're a big thing with the classes at his school, and while i can't say that having the parents of william's classmates see me in my pajamas is something i was necessarily looking forward to, i knew that if i let my uncomfortableness be the reason for not going, i would regret not pushing myself a little bit, and i knew i'd end up being happy i went, which i was.

after leaving this morning, and since we had the car, we drove over to william's favorite place on earth-- stevns klint, which you can read about here.

so, without further ado, some pictures of our weekend...  (most of the hyttetur pics are of henry because william was running around with his friends)

hyttetur:

there's a moth in this picture

stevns klint...

a bazillion fossils are in this picture

life springs up

william's museum finds