Nichole the Sloth

Michael is just a few short hours form landing back in Denmark. I think he is going to be quite the sleepy bear when he stumbles out from getting his luggage. This is the first time I will actually go to the airport to "pick him up". It sounds sweet, but I have a hidden agenda. STARBUCKS! The only Starbucks in Denmark is located in the airport right in the entrance hall and just opened right before our trip to Istanbul. We haven't taken advantage of it yet, because we would rather just go through security and get our free drinks in the lounge. Can you blame us? But today, I'm going to go get my steamy cup of coffee and sit and wait for "Hubsters" to come on out. He had asked me to get him something too so when he gets to me, he will have some coffee to waken his sleepy eyes.

The 3 days he was gone went fast. I honestly didn't do much, but it was great. I hit the gym in the morning rather then the evenings which was a nice change, then spent the rest of the days doing a little important stuff, but for the most part turned into a sloth.

Wednesday my friend Sarah came over for dinner. We ate, chatted, drank tea and had a nice time.

Yesterday, I marched myself over to IKEA to get some "Halloween Supplies". We are hosting a Halloween party for some TI'ers and their families, but I needed a few more things. Now, unfortunately, I have to wait a month-ish till its Halloween time. *sigh*

I think our weekend will consist of Michael recuperating from his whirlwind trip to Japan. Then Sunday we are having the two new students (Daniel and Jason) over for a pancake/waffle breakfast. I don't I have had a pancake OR waffle in over a year, so I think my waffle iron will be happy to get to cook again.

Delicious Food

Thank you everyone for your happy birthday's both on and off my blog! I had a great birthday! My wonderful fantastic hubby decided this year to wait on me hand and foot! I had no complaints about that. He made me a delightful birthday dinner of baked gold potato's, a very green salad and a juicy mouthwatering steak. It was, by far the best steak he had ever made. He had recently read an article about making a cheaper steak taste like a pricey steak. We were both pretty shocked as they turned out tasting like something you would get at a really good steak restaurant!

Michael Getting Dinner Ready

Our Yummy Food, Wine and Port

Then, there was the b-day cake!! OMG, the birthday cake. I mentioned yesterday that Michael asked me to pick any recipe and he would make me the cake. Might I add, this cake was to be from scratch.... I finally picked a chocolate almond torte. We unfortunately didn't have any circular trays as the recipe called for, so Michael had to improvise. He insists it is the ugliest cake ever made... I think its cute, but my goodness, it tasted better then my taste buds could have even imagined!!

YUMMMMMMMMMMM!!!

Me at 28!
edited to add: I am putting a piece of goats cheese on a cracker!

Michael is in the air right now probably somewhere over my wonderful and beautiful Russia on his way to Japan. He was very much not looking forward to this quick trip as he senses he will be nothing but tired, tired and more tired for the 3 days he is on the ground before he heads back up here...to be jet lagged some more. Poor guy! :) Now, I am left with the task of finishing the rest of that cake.... and I am up for the challenge!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Happy Birthday to me!
Happy Birthday to Viggo!
Happy Birrrrtttthdaaaay deeeaar Viggo and Meeeee!!!
Happy Birthday to us!!!

Those who know me well, will probably be shocked to see that I am not only admitting that someone else was born on September 23rd, but that I am openly sharing my birthday with another person! haha. Last year, I was sooo excited to hear that my friend Marianne had given birth to her sweet son Viggo on September 23rd. So now, adorable little Danish Viggo and I are birthday buddy's and I can't think of a cuter little kiddo the share my day with!

My Birthday Buddy
Tillykke med fødselsdagen Viggo!!

Picture stolen from Marianne

Finally...the big 2-8!! This is very strange, and people have made fun of me for this, but for as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be 28. It seemed like the perfect age. Still quite young, yet old enough to be taken seriously and have a semi-defined life. I hope my 28th year goes nice and slow in a very fun and exciting kind of way.

Since my birthday falls on a Sunday this year, I got the very rare, but very fun "Birthday Weekend" This only works for us if our birthdays fall on a Sunday, because it usually feels funny to still be celebrating on the day after.

Yesterday we spent the day in Copenhagen. I've been craving a Guinness (from tap not a can) since we got back from Ireland, so we went to one of the many Irish pubs in the city and got a delicious pint of Guinness. From there we went to Tivoli for lunch. We have a year card so we get free entrance. It closes this weekend until Halloween so we thought we would use it one last time for the summer season. From there we walked around Copenhagen and went to a few places we hadn't been since we left in 2003.

Ørstads Parken

Copenhagen Botanical Gardens

Botanical Gardens

Today has been great so far. We got up, had some breakfast, went to the gym, ate some lunch with a half bottle of champagne and now Michael has locked himself away in the kitchen making me a cake! Every year he usually orders me a cheesecake from the cheesecake factory to be delivered to me on my birthday. Not so easy to do from here, so he told me to find a recipe for anything and he would make it.... I will be sure to post pictures of it tomorrow!

Also I need to say a happy one day late birthday to my wonderful and beautiful niece Alex! I still remember going to the hospital to meet her after she was born and now she is 14!!!!!!!! She is one of the very few people that continually make me feel REALLLLLY old, only because she is getting so grown up herself.

Alex and I on Thanksgiving 2006

Jeg Elsker Efteråret

(I Love Autumn)

For the past couple weeks the air outside feels and smells like fall. This makes me very happy. I love winter. I love spring. Sometimes I even love summer. But I am always so incredibly excited when fall rolls around. We have already turned on our heaters and are noticing that the sun is starting to set earlier and earlier with every passing day. This means the start of weekends with a pot of chili on the stove, soups stewing, days of baking and warm feet on our heated bathroom floor. Too bad the Llano wine festival, Tech football games and NASCAR (I still can't believe we had so much fun at NASCAR and I REALLY can't believe I had so much fun, that I'll admit it) aren't in Copenhagen. That would make me one very happy, very spoiled person!

Lazy Pate's

We have been nothing but lazy(besides the gym of course) the past couple weekends. Which is a nice change from our regularly scheduled busy weekends. Saturday after the gym there was "Health Day" in Lyngby,and I am sure no one shocked that we went and checked it out. We walked around for a bit to see what there was to see, nothing terribly exciting, but a cool concept. It was really windy so we didn't feel like staying outside longer then we had to (we have obviously been away from Lubbock far to long) Then came back home opened a bottle of wine and did absolutely nothing the rest of the day. it was great.

Sunday turned out to be quite a nice day. A little breezy but the sun was out and shining, so we went for a walk in the forest. This picture really isn't all that great, but it'll have to do. We walked around here. It was a nice pleasant 2 hour stroll. (in case you didn't get the hints from Mary, Jason and Myra, we like to walk!)


Then again, came home opened a bottle of wine and did nothing!

Perhaps soon, I'll have more to report from this end of the earth.

To År (Two Years)

It is official! We have spent two years of our lives in Denmark!! Two whole years....what a hell of an experience. I sometimes get sad (and I told this to Mary, Jason and Myra while they were here) when I watch our guests faces of excitement and interest of things we are showing them, because I miss that things here are no longer "new" to me. I miss falling in love with the differences that Denmark has shown us and given us. That all being said, I wouldn't trade where my heart is now for the world. How incredibly lucky are we both, that in a mere 2 years Denmark has become such a comfortable and familiar place. While I gripe that I am sad that I don't get that "new" feeling anymore, I LOVE LOVE LOVE that we have embedded ourselves in a culture as far as we have. And you know what the best part of it is? That Michael and I have gotten the opportunity do it together. Not only live abroad together, but learn the culture together, make new friends together, travel the country together, and even learn the language together. We certainly don't take any of it for granted. Though, I could do without the high taxes and the lack of sun in the winter!! ;o)

Things are getting back to normal here, well at least for a bit. Michael is heading back to Japan the day after my birthday. Only for a short 3 days. We had tossed around the idea of me meeting him there, but in the end decided to send him for a short trip, rather then stretch it out. After all, Tokyo is soooo 2006! Been there Done that. Kidding Kidding. One of these trips I'm sure I'll make it back with him.

Guests are Gone

Kevin left this morning to head up to Stockholm for a few days. He started to try to book a hostel while he was here but was having a problem finding a vacant place. Finally one person told him it was the weekend of the Denmark/Sweden Soccer Game in Stockholm. Yikes! He did finally find one place and I am sure he will have a great time up there. It's a huge game so I know the Danes and Swedes will be crazy. ;)

It was great to have both Myra and Kevin here for several days. Gave us a chance to hang out around Copenhagen and the surrounding areas before the weather starts getting super cold, though it is already pretty cold here. I had to turn on our heaters last week. Yesterday and today the sun is out and as long as its not behind a cloud it feels quite nice, but once it hides, it gets really cold.

Yesterday Kevin and I went to the Viking ship museum in Roskilde. It was just as good the second time as it was the first for me. Michael still has not been, but I need to drag him over there. He has been to the town before, just not the museum.

Wednesday at the Carlsberg Brewery

Kevin's First Windmill

Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen

Roskilde Cathedral

View towards Roskilde Fjord

Tau Beta Sigma/Kappa Kappa Psi Siblings :)

Soooooooo??? Who's next? :)

A Few More Myra Pictures

A few more pictures from Myras Visit. Day one we spent in Copenhagen. Myra LOVED the Danish furniture and design, but who wouldn't, It's so modern and chic. She must have taken 300 pictures of furniture alone! I kid I kid...maybe just 150 pictures.

Check out this talent. Testing the furniture, while taking pictures!

This thing is beautiful. It is in a chocolate shop in Copenhagen, a lovely mouthwatering chocolate fountain.

Chocolates at the chocolate shop

I know you've seen billions of pictures of Nyhavn, but I haven't really talked much about it. Hans Christian Anderson, the fairy tale writer lived at two different apartments in Nyhavn. This is one of the buildings he lived in (the red one).

Myra in a square in Copenhagen

On day two I took her to Hillerød to see Fredricksborg Slot. It was her first castle to lay eyes on and I think it was the perfect one. Again, I know I have posted lots of pictures from here, but never from the back side. Behind the castle is a lake and a beautiful garden. The weather was not so good the day we went but set a nice atmosphere.

And finally, and Action Shot of us reading a map.
Is it just me or do I look super duper short in the picture next to Michael?

Today, Kevin and I off to Copenhagen. It's a good thing I love the city so much!!! :)

The Coldest Drink Ever!

Our friend Myra has been visiting us here since Wednesday night and left this morning. She is an American living in Rome which makes a 5 day trip to Denmark quite easy. We hadn't seen her since we left Lubbock in August of 2005 so it was great to have so much time to catch up and laugh. We met at Texas Tech Library and in 2002 she went to Paris while we were living in Denmark so we flew down there to visit with her a few days in Paris. So now, the three of us have been in France, Denmark and Sweden together....and by next March we hopefully will be adding Italy to that list!

I'm going to start with Saturday because it was a extra special fun day and I'll get to the rest in the next couple days. Saturday we all went over to Sweden for the afternoon for some food, drink, and walking. Micahel and I hadn't been to Malmö since October of 2002, and we were excited to go back again.

Myra in front of Malmö Central Train Station

The Turning Torso (The tall building)
Us!

Myra and Me and the Beautiful Park

Cool Windmill

My View from Lunch

Myra at the Wine/Tapas Resturant

Tapas and Wine.
Good way to spend a Saturday!

We left Sweden and made a stopover in Central Copenhagen and went to the coolest (in every sense of the word) bar EVER. I had seen that at the beginning of the summer Copenhagen opened an Absolut Icebar in one of the hotels. We hadn't been yet, and had talked about going a few times, but never went out of our way to actually get there. Thanks to Myra showing great interest we finally made it and so glad we did. After paying to get in they threw our giant warm parkas over our head and took us to the bar where we all got our drinks in our "ice" glasses. It was a nice change as the longer your drink sat, the colder it got!

The bottom of that sign says:
"Entrance to the world of -5 C"
Thats freakin' cold!

Waiting at the Bar for our Drinks

The Bar. All that ice stacked is a bunch of glasses made of ice.
The bar was all made of ice as well.

Our beautiful, tasty and VERY cold drinks.

My Drink and Me

Myra and Michael Having a Good Time
Notice the ice table and ice walls.

Say "Cheese", I mean "Freeze"

After we warmed up in the funky courtyard we went for a nice relaxing dinner at another wine bar and enjoyed people watching.

Funky Cool Courtyard
It was probably only about 60 degrees out and it was a little chilly, but after we got out of the ice bar it felt like summer!

Surprisingly these were some of the most comfortable chairs I've ever sat in.
Myra and Anders, one of the bartenders who was nice enough to take a picture with Myra. I think she would have packed him to take home if she could have.
Cute Restaurant for Dinner.
We sat outside.
My View from Dinner

Wow that was a lot of pictures! :o)
Tomorrow our friend Kevin is stopping through for a couple days. He is backpacking through Europe right now, and we are lucky enough to be on his stop. Kevin and I were in the marching band and band fraternity/sorority together. This last week has been a very fun way to end the summer!

Oh...and Happy Labor Day!

In Dublin's Fair City, Where Girls are so Pretty...

That was the fastest trip ever. We aren't use to only going somewhere for 2 nights, but it was a lot of fun, we never got bored and we stayed busy...that is, if you can call drinking, keeping you busy. When in Rome right? :)

We flew business class over to Dublin so were spoiled from the start with the SAS lounge and the nice seats, food and drinks on the plane. We got in about 6:00pm and went straight to the hotel. We did something a little different on this trip than we usually do. We stayed close to the airport at the SAS Radisson on a package deal. We had 2 days of free transportation to and around Dublin, a one day pass per person on a hop on hop off bus, a free meal in their nice restaurant, free breakfasts, and a business class room. Since it was pretty last minute we decided to give it a try and it worked out great. The first night we got in and at dinner at "Potters" I had a fantastic slab of thick, juicy beef with wonderful potatoes and Michael had a huge piece of grilled salmon with vegetables. He tends to order fish in a restaurant that he thinks will have good fish since he never gets any at home. :) After that we watched some TV and went to bed.

Saturday we got up early, ate breakfast and headed into Dublin. We got on the hop on hop off bus. We have always kinda made fun of the hop on hop off buses, but it was free and we didn't have many days in Dublin so seemed like the easiest way to get from point A to point B and see lots of stuff. It wasn't so bad after all. The guide was really funny, we saw a lot of places from the bus we might not have seen, and since it was a 24 hour pass that took us to all the top tourist spots it worked out great. We got on and rode for about 30 minutes as we knew our first stop we would get off at was the Guinness Brewery. I had reserved our tickets before arriving in Dublin and I am so glad we did. It was only about 10AM but the line for the tickets was pretty long already. Since I had reserved ours we went straight to the Customer Service Desk where there was no one got our tickets and started the tour (which was self guided). This was our third brewery tour so we didn't spend much time on the beginning of the tour where you learn about how beer is made. You can only learn about it so many times before it gets kinda boring. The rest of the tour was interesting and really well done, but we rushed through the entire thing. We spend a little time in the room with the history of the advertising and about the actual Guinness Company and finally made it to the Gravity Bar to claim our free Pints of Guinness. We were both a little nervous about this as the only other time we had had Guinness we weren't fans at all. To our delight, it was heavenly! The stuff we had before was the Guinness Extra Stout and was really hard to get down. The regular Guinness Draught, was by far 10000000 times better :)

After the brewery we got back on the bus and drove around for about another 40 minutes until we got to the Jameson Distillery. We grabbed lunch at a pub before going to that tour.

This tour was great. It was a guided tour, the tour guide was funny and I was one of 6 people that she got to do a Whiskey Tasting of 5 types of whiskeys. Everyone else only got one glass. After it was all done, I got a little certificate saying I am a "Certified Whiskey Taster". Michael is a whiskey man and I'm now a certified whiskey taster so we couldn't leave without a bottle. We went for some pretty good stuff. The bottle had some "pomp" to it, because it was one of their better and rare bottles that they make. Our bottle got registered by its number in a big fancy book. So if you go here, we will tell you our bottle number and you can go see our name. It gets put in the book by a calligrapher, so it will look pretty.



From there we hopped back on the bus and got off by the river front and wondered to an area called "Temple Bar" It is a cute area of nothing but restaurants and pubs. We ate dinner at a place called "Mexico to Rome", took our classic picture we always take, walked back to the bus to take us back to the hotel and headed back up that way. We dropped all our stuff off in the room then went downstairs to the hotel pub for another smooth wonderful pint of the black stuff. Mmmm Guinness. (We are big fans now)

Our Classic Picture

Sunday we spent walking around Dublin for about 6 hours. We had thought about going to the coast to a little fishing town, but decided that we weren't sure how much time it would take so opted to head back to Dublin. We didn't really do anything but walk and walk and walk. We found Dublin to be a pretty small city as it didn't take very long to walk from here to there and back again. We stumbled upon a few cool things, had some coffee, ate some lunch and went back to the hotel to grab our stuff and head to the airport to come home.

Gulliver made of Sand

The Tart with a Cart as she is known by the Irish. AKA Miss Molly Malone

Tourist Center

Me with a Church connected to the Dublin Castle. (which really looked more like a palace or big mansion)

Michael in front of a Pub

Cool Yellow Door

Michael acting like an orangutan

A Church

In short, Dublin to me, is a city of pubs and colored doors. It was fun to have a short weekend trip for just 2 nights even if it meant sacrificing knowing the city as well as we know many others. My tip for Dublin, Don't miss the Brewery or the Distillery. They were by far the highlight of the trip!

All of our pictures are in this album below.

Dublin August 2007