Trip to the Aquarium

Last weekend, we took Max to Kattegat Center, an aquarium built right on the harbor of a town about an hour from here, Grenaa. All the tanks are filled with all sorts of fun species you can find in the waters off the coast of Denmark. They also have touch pools with flounders, crabs, small rays and sharks and a really great shark-tunnel. The sharks were definitely the absolute favorite, as were "the Diapers" - which is Max for "the Divers" that swim around in the main tank feeding the fish. Needless to say, Max is nuts about things that swim these days - especially "SARKS and DIAPERS!"

The aquarium is just as cool outside as it is inside. Here is a video of Max playing outside with all the cool sea creatures and the water mazes. Around the corner from where we were was where the seals live and just behind us is the Kattegat; the rough water inlet off the east coast that empties out into both the North Sea and what the Danes call the East Sea.

Sorry about the wind in the camera.... it's Denmark.

Leah's Birthday

Yep, I'm 34. That number just seems to keep going up and up. How come birthdays after 30 seem more frightening than fun? The jump from 9 to 10 was exhilerating, and from 15 to 16 was a change of life. Now, I just sort of want to ignore them more than anything....

But I was so glad that my family didn't. Anni and Jens came over that afternoon for coffee and cake. I/Max opened presents (got some absolutely gorgeous boots and all sorts of yummy smelly-goody girl stuff! Thanks family!) and then Anni and Jens watched Max for the evening so that Morten and I could get out of the house and eat ourselves sick with Mexican food. If ya gotta turn 34 anyway, that's the way to do it!

And here's a bit of footage displaying how our little man is learning the fine art of sneaking. We put him down at around 8, and went about our usual business of dishes, reading, showers, making lunches... all that fun stuff. Don't ask me how we didn't hear this, but our son was up for about an hour, playing cars, coloring, reading.... all that fun stuff. Here he is, finally caught in the act.

Max also got a cool little sticker book from Grandma and Grandpa America, filled with stickers of all sorts of trucks, tractors and things with wheels. The stickers were transferred from page to page for hours, until they had lost their sticky. Here's a video of the next life stage of the stickers, after they no longer "stuck" in the book.

Late Summer Trip to Tivoli

We've had a wonderful summer, with lots of time to be a little family of 3 for a few more months. We took advantage of the late summer sun and took one more outing to Tivoli, probably one of Max's favorite places, the weekend before school started up again.

Here's a picture of Max steering the train, and another of my cottoncandy eating husband. We thought Max would love "candy floss", as the Danes call it, but I think he thought we were feeding him, well, yeah.... cotton. He didn't like the texture at all. Wish we would have had some footage of that face the first time he tried it...

We did manage to get a bit of footage of Max first driving lesson. He has to figure out that the car actually goes, that it is actually him driving it, and that he actually needs to steer. I think I thought it was more fun than Max or Morten. Daddy got a bit of excercise to be sure.

The other bit is on the ferris wheel. Max keeps commenting about how he wants to get down, while both me and Morten are focusing on how frighteningly little is keeping Max from doing just that.