Schools out for Summer!

What's been going on with us? Well 2 weekends ago we had a family reunion with the Madsen family. Søren's dad has 5 siblings so it was a huge get together with all the kids and grandkids too! We were up on the north east side of Jutland close to the ocean where we had rented a big cabin. The place was huge and we had lots of room to eat and play games etc. We also had beautiful weather so we could be outside playing soccer or hide and seek! We don't get to see that side of the family so often so it was fun to spend time with them again!

Then just this past week I had the pleasure of participating in my first ever Saint Hans party! What is this? Well it is an old tradition in Denmark and maybe other parts of Europe to celebrate the summer equinox. Every year for this celebration people get together all over Denmark to grill out with friends or family and have a HUGE bonfire!! The special thing about this HUGE bonfire is that it is tradition to have a witch on top of the bonfire. When the bonfire is lit everyone sings a songs and watches as the huge bonfire begins to engulf the homemade witch! In the old days they actually did burn witches as a symbol of burning away the evil! But luckily now-a-days it is just made of wood and such! (see below)

Saint Hans Bonfire!


Other than that we been busy finishing school for the year. Søren had his final exam last Wednesday and it went well so he is officially on summer vacation and is done studying math forever! I am also done with school after a long week of teacher meetings, cleaning with the students and goodbye parties. Thursday I was at work from 8 am - 3 am! Crazy huh? But the day was filled with fun things. After cleaning during the day we had just enough time to get ready for the Galla Party. All the teachers and students get dressed up all fancy and eat amazing food.

My family group and I at the Galla Party

The evening continues with some funny skits and songs put on by the students and teachers. Then around 10pm we go into the nearest town for an end of the year Worship Service which is always powerful and such a special way to end the year. Finally around 12am we are back at school for some more food, hanging out and sports! This year it was a volleyball tournament and our teacher team was undefeated!!! Then on Friday we have a little party for the students and parents and say goodbye to all the students with tearfilled eyes! It is all emotional but at the end of the day we were happy for summer vacation now!

But yeah other than that not much else is new except that we just got finished making a Worship CD with our band at church. It was fun to be a part of the project and to now hear the final result!

Show Choir

Well we've been back at it with the Show Choir since January and this time we have just taken it nice and easy singing a few songs and learning a few dances for our next bigger show. Anyway, we worked up enough songs to sing that we figured we should give a small and cosy concert for our friends and family. We sung a lot of different types of songs from old Danish classics to Gospel. The concert went well and now we are on summer vacation with the choir until August!

Golfing

Søren and I had our first golfing experience with just the two of us this past Tuesday. It is a smaller course and only 7km from our house. Søren has been there many times but it was my first time playing golf in Denmark. We had been talking about going after Søren got his new golf clubs, and I had borrowed Søren's mom's clubs awhile back so now it was just time to get out there and do it! I warned Søren that he needed to be patient with me because I thought that golf was difficult and well not exactly enjoyable, cause I kinda stink at it! But to both of our suprises, I had the game of my life!! I was hitting almost every shot in the air, straight and quite far! I actually impressed myself, and well, I'm going to admit it, I HAD FUN!!! (Mom and Dad, maybe golf isn't just a waste of a perfectly good walk after all!)

The highlight however was getting the first par of my entire life already on hole 2! It was a par three, I was on in two and sank the put for par! I actually jumped up and down and screamed a little bit I was so excited! And actually later I got another par on hole 17 as well! We had a lot of fun together and Søren was very patient and supportive, always a plus to the fun-ness! Makes me want to go again soon! Lets hope it wasn't just "getting into the SWING again" luck! :)

A bit of this and that...

I must say that for all the times I have said that we have been busy, now is not one of those times. Søren and I have had a lot of free days and freetime these past weeks, and ironically we haven't found time to write here, hmm.

The first bout of freedays we have had were about 2 weeks back where we had a 4 day weekend because of Ascension day. Together with our bible study group, we thought we would celebrate this special day in the church by taking a little day-trip together with everyone and their familes. We went to a mini-zoo by the beach here in our area of Denmark. We all had a picnic lunch and spent most of the afternoon looking at animals. The highlight for me was holding a baby goat, he/she was so cute! Then we had some cake a coffee before heading off to one of the other members' house where we had a grill night. We had a lot of fun, just relaxing, chatting and enjoying a day off with friends.

Picnic
Ida trying to pet my little goat!

After this day-trip we still had three days left of the weekend where we spent much of the time with our past Watermarkers and their wives and kid. It was a reunion type weekend where we were at our house grilling friday night and went to a wedding on Saturday. It was so fun to be 5 out of 7 together again and laugh about old times and make some new fun memories.

We also had a long weekend this past weekend because of Pentecost and we spent the day with Søren's mom, Inger in Esbjerg. It was a beautiful day and we spent it outside where we ate both lunch and dinner on Inger's patio (Mom, you have also eaten there!) and we went mini-golfing where we were able to play two rounds and recieve the 2nd free. It was fun and Søren won the first, but I won the second!

We have also spent some of our days off enjoying the beautiful weather and nature in Denmark. We had our first visit to the ocean where we just walked the shores eating ice-cream and talking. The sky and water were so blue and the wind just as still so it was warm and pleasant. We also enjoyed the weather today working in our yard. As said before the previous owners have not done so much in the past many years, so there is a lot to do, but we are just taking it one step at a time and enjoying seeing all the changes.



Our front yard after some hard work!


Lastly, last night we spent the evening exploring and eating at an island off the west coast called Fanø. Our school had invited all of the workers to have a kind of thanks for a good school year party (even though we still have 3 weeks left). It was fun, we had to take a ferry over to the island where we then met an older lady who showed us around the island on a bus tour telling us about the history and how old some of the buildings are! It was a beautiful afternoon and it was interesting to hear about how people live and lived on this island. One of the weirdest things we did was take the bus on the beach. The shores of the ocean are actually used by buses and part of their bus routes. It was humorous to see the bus stop signs right on the beach.

Only 26 days now until we are in the USA! We can't wait!