happy birthday to you

happy, happy birthday greg!

and happy, happy half birthday william!

the icing on the cake

bringing family to the table via skype

no no. 3 at the grocery store

today was another beautiful, warm (sweatshirt weather if you're me), sunny day.  greg will tell you this day is always the perfect day of the year, every year, and i guess he would know.  it was certainly true for this day.  

islands from mist

this morning from greg's perspective... the mist making forest islands in the distance... 

and this morning from my perspective...

where i was fortunate enough to catch a look at the baby calf... who was looking cold and a little tired and maybe unsure of what exactly to do.

and...

what i saw my oldest guy doing today in his after-school program...

and what i saw my youngest guy doing in his preschool...

later, we ate dinner on the porch.  it was perhaps in the low fifties (fahrenheit of course), but we figured there are not going to be many more opportunities to sit out there before long, and, at six o'clock, there was still plenty of light, which also won't last much longer around here.

william says winter is his favorite season, so we know one of us won't mind the coming change.

new with the old

the old with the new.  today was new in so many regards, but first, a little of what we already know...

that if the sky is blue, it is bound to be a beautiful day... 

and henry will climb a very tall tree...

but otherwise, a bit of new.  a friend of mine, someone i've recently reconnected with from language school, convinced me (or maybe we convinced each other) to join a gym.  today we had our first workout. on the way out, i went to unlock my bike and realized i didn't have the key because of a mix-up in who was going to the grocery store with what lock over the weekend.  fortunately, my friend had driven her car because her own bike had broken recently, so she drove me home.  i picked up the bike key and then i walked to my next obligation of the day, which was meeting a with a brother and a sister, the former of whom i'll be helping to practice his english while he prepares for an exam to get into a university here. (i'm pretty sure the way i structured that last sentence should pretty well disqualify me from helping anyone with english... but, at least it's free help, so...)

afterwards i walked back to the workout center and got my bike and picked up the boys (and there you have the henry-in-the-tree photo).  we ate at the common house for dinner and while there, one of our neighbors asked if we would want their old patio furniture as they'd just gotten a new set.  so suddenly, after dinner, we had patio furniture!

william was super into it, wanting to sit out in pajamas and read (and thinking ahead to wintertime... "wouldn't it be so nice to sit out here in coats...")...

a happy addition to our porch, indeed!

sky meets earth

because, inevitably, late fall is going to do away with these blue skies (not to mention temperatures that can simultaneously accommodate henry barefooted and in shorts and my sweatshirt-wearing tendencies), i might as well splash more of denmark's best color palette across the blog while i can.

heading down to the stream... 

henry gets down the hill before us and waits...

you've seen this picture before...

from another perspective...

we're all in this picture (minus greg, who was cleaning up after a run, plus a neighbor friend who, twenty minutes after this picture was taken, would lose his balance while standing on a stone in the middle of the stream and get totally soaked.  20 seconds before i saw him fall into the water, i thought, 'no, no... i'm not going to hover.  just let them do what they will. let them be kids.')

and yet another perspective...

two littles...

a beautiful weekend.
truly, some of the nicest days can happen in autumn.

holding hands while riding bikes and humming circus music

bear with me as i post a lot of pictures of, what i thought was, a most beautiful bike ride today.  we rode out to greg's lab to meet one of his co-workers and his family.  his co-worker had to go into work and they were bringing their little daughter out to see the cows (because don't all science campuses have grazing cows and a bird sanctuary and apple trees?) so we decided to go out there too, because the day was so lovely and because there is a machine that provides multiple varieties of warm drinks.  (henry, upon being offered the choice of hot chocolate with or without milk: "no, i only like tea.")   

on the way... 

we passed many a photo worthy scene until i finally made everyone pull over so i could get a few pictures.

at work...

henry throwing a rock...

h. and his "collection"...

william and i doing our one circus trick...

holding hands while riding bikes and humming circus music...

the cows... somewhat interested in us...

the way home...

the field that touches the sky...

danish clouds are special.

dubs...

(my solo trip home from the grocery store after we got back to our neck of the woods)

may your saturday be filled with so much fresh fall air too.

happy friday

 (i guess we are waiting for an apparently benign creature to emerge from the round pod on the back of this leaf... i say nervously...)

the newest find from william's tape... ah-ah/o-no, héctor lavoe & willie colón...

socks and suitcases

i was in town early (well, relatively early) this morning for an appointment.  they're redoing the square on the walking street (and supposedly will have a large christmas market here in the wintertime!).  that is the domkirke (roskilde's cathedral) in the background... 

i say early, because it was before 10 a.m. and so the shops are all closed and the pedestrian street fairly bereft of pedestrians...

after my appointment and before i was slated to meet up with a friend, i stopped in at a new store in town called 'normal', which i discovered is basically like a walgreens laid out like some of the dollar stores here-- in a twisty, turny manner so that you have no choice but to see all the products.  clever eh?  (sort of like ikea or a line at disney world.)

near the beginning of the twisty turns, i found this...

now... we've been bringing hot sauce back in our suitcases, stuffed in new socks we're simultaneously bringing back, secured in zip locks bags we've pinched from the kitchen drawers of our parents (not to mention convincing them to take similar risks with their own socks and suitcases), and so this is what you would call a major find (except that we have a huge unopened bottle in our cupboard as we finish up the bottle we gave to our neighbors to safeguard while we were in the u.s. for three months because we couldn't bear to toss it-- "it" being tapatio, not cholula, but either/all work(s) for us).  (so i didn't actually buy any today.)  but i'm all for letting 'normal' do the importing.  (20 kroner, by the way, is 3 bucks right now (tax included)-- not bad!!)

okay, i could tell you about the rest of my day, but i'm going to end on the high hot sauce note.  for all those who are scared of socialist countries-- they've got hot sauce now!  fear not!