In the wild

Yesterday we had another fab day here in Copenhagen. We are really lucky with the weather here, it's been beautiful days, so nice!
We spent most of yesterday at the Copenhagen Zoo, with some Swedish friends we know from our time in Horsham. It was a long overdue reunion, we hadn't seen one of the families for years!



It was so nice to see them! The kids had such a good day together, it's so cool with friends they have known since they were babies.
Karin & Jens normally live in Berlin, but are home in Sweden for the summer, so it was good timing that we could now manage to meet up here in Denmark.





For some reason, Linnea was really in to the elephants. We spent a long time at their new elephant enclosure (really nice by the way!), just watching them.





Then I got Linnea painted up as a little elephant (her wish), she sat absolutetly still:



And this is when she saw herself in the mirror:



She was very cute!
We had a good look around the ZOO, even though there was a lot of people, it was good value for money as there is so much to see, and it's a very nice ZOO.
Later we took a stroll around town and had some ice cream.

In the evening we went for one of Nathan's favourites, stegt flaesk & persillesovs (fried pork and parsely sauce) at a restaurant who does "all you can eat-pork" every Wednesday night. The last times we have been here in CPH, we have never managed to hit a Wednesday, so it was happy day!

Dejlige Danmark

Yesterday we spent an absolutely stunning day in central Copenhagen. The weather was gorgeous, the company was lovely and the kids were as happy as. Here is Lucas, having a pölse (=hot dog).



We followed the tourist route a bit, starting out with a bit of shopping along Köbmagergade and Ströget, having lunch in Nyhavn...







...(yes, I got my salad!), some more shopping and then we finished off with a short visit to Tivoli.



We had a big ice cream and went for a few rides. The merry-go-round and the Veteranbiler, of course...





We even met Santa yesterday!! Actually, a whole bunch of them, as it was the yearly Santa Convention at Bakken this week and they went parading in Ströget.



Lucas was asleep unfortunately, but Linnea was in front row and got loads of candy, a balloon and even got to shake Santas hand!



After that full on day, we went home to our friends place for a BBQ down in their garden.





Fab meal, good wine and totally relaxed as the kids could just run around and play as they pleased. This day could hardly have been any better - just perfect!

Copenhagen

We left the UK this morning and flew over to Denmark. A quick little flight compared to what we normally sit through.
We are staying at an apartment we have all to ourselves. It's my friend Kamilla's, but she is not here at the moment. Very nice, we can spread out - and wont disturb anyone when we get up at 05 in the mornings (yes, the jet lag is still there a bit...)

Just like in the UK, we are totally booked up while we are here. Tonight we went out for dinner with some friends, and we are going to meet up with them again tomorrow and have lunch in Nyhavn (at Nyhavnscaféen - I have to have their salad!) and go to Tivoli. We are also invited over to their place for dinner tomorrow, so the kids can have a play together and the grown-ups hopefully some time to talk.

Wednesday we are going to the ZOO with some friends who are coming over from Sweden. It's going to be super to see them, cause they normally live in Berlin, and we haven't seen them for years! Really excited about that!

Thursday I hope there will be time for some shopping, and Friday we will continue our trip and leave for Jylland. It's hard work being on tour!

Some visitors

Today we had some visitors here at the cottage, Nathans old friend (from NZ) Andrew and his two boys. It was really nice, and the kids managed to play nicely without too many tiffs - outside, cause the weather was sunny and nice for a while.
Here are the kids having lunch, Lucas & James:



Linnea & Wataru:



Linnea & Thomas sharing snacks:



The big boys had a bit of a play too. It's so nice to be able to just hang outside, without breaking sweat instantly.





Even I managed to get caught by the camera today, with Kia the dog:

Freaky deaky

It's a bit weird to be back in Horsham, cause it's all feels so normal, but at the same time it feels like it was in a different life we lived here. So much has happened to us, we have done so much and changed quite a bit since we lived here. Mixed feelings.

It's fun to walk around in Jason & Maki's house, because they bought and took over so many of our things when we left - so it almost feels like home! We keep making the same joke every time we spot any of our old things "Hey, we used to have one of those!" and it's been said more than once here the past few days! (Well, even at the other friends houses we have been!)

To add to these weird feelings, the past few weeks we have realized the world is a very small place. Listen to this:
The captain that flew me down when the kids and I moved to Brunei (and the plane broke down) is a good friend of Jason & Maki's. Jason used to fly in RBA, and he did his last flight there together with Charlie. They have been good friends ever since. Both of them are now moving to Singapore, and are starting on the same course together for SQ, in September!
Not only that, but Charlie lives in the house opposite us in Brunei at the moment (it's their things I have bought and will take over when they leave for SIN) - AND, the house we are living in used to be Jason & Maki's old house! Isn't it funny?

Lucas right now

Today Lucas is 4 1/2, here are a few facts about him at the moment:

Favorite movie: He likes his superheroes, so anything Batman or Spiderman on tv, is great. Otherwise it's the good old favorites, like Cars or Monsters Inc.

Favorite food: Not much... he is really fuzzy with food. Nothing green, or red, or strange in any way. Basically just chicken (nuggets) and chips, always a hit. Ah - and of course, beans on toast!

Favorite clothes: It's easier to say what he doesn't like - anything with buttons and or a collar. He is most comfortable in just a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, or his jeans, that he rarely gets to wear.

Favorite drink: Apple juice! Getting competition currently from Coca-Cola though.

Favorite book: I didn't know really, so I asked him, and the answer was a bit surprisingly "Pippi Långstrump".

Favorite song: AC/DC "Thunderstruck"

Favorite friend: Malthe and Gil - and Linnea of course.

Likes: Running around being silly, playing superheroes, watching TV, playing Wii and PSP. Being at home, he is a real house-mouse, just like me. One thing he does all the time at the moment, is playing the copying-game, it's really getting on my nerves, and Linnea's...

Dislikes: Getting dressed and undressed. Getting told what to do. When it's time to go home from a play date.

Favorite colour: Green

He can... write his name and recognize most letters and numbers. He can swim and put his head under the water. He can ride a bike. He can unbuckle himself from his car seat.

Horsham Day 2

We had quite a good night our first night, the kids slept until 05 this morning. Considering we have a 7 hour time difference in our bodies, the jet lag is not too bad. Travelling westbound is actually quite easy, which is lucky - we don't loose too many days of our vacations coming "home".

Today we have been visiting two families. First we went home to Lucas' old nursery best-friend Griffin. He had got a little brother a couple of months ago, Hugo, that got very admired and cuddled - mostly by Linnea:



Lucas and Griffin fell right back into their old friendship, and had an absolute blast together. They were so happy to see each other again; had a big jump on the trampoline, some big wrestles on the grass and even managed to lock themselves in the toilet together, which spurred a minor rescue action... (Even though Lucas' suggestion to Griffin from inside the toilet was for them to become super heroes and "bash" their way out...)



Then we went to town to do some quick errands, and to have lunch, at PizzaExpress. Lucas and Wataru were playing peek-a-boo:



I had a gorgeous salad, and some wine with that, because I could!



This afternoon, we visited the Keys, and mostly admired their newly renovated house. Cameron wasn't too keen on waking up from his nap at first, but then he got going and they kids had a good play. He has grown so big this past year. (Well, apparently so has Linnea!) From toddler to little dude!

Horsham

We are now in the UK with our friends Jason & Maki. The trip went really, really well - with all of us getting some decent sleeps.
Yesterday we went into Horsham and did some shopping, had a yum lunch and just strolled around. Weather is not very good, but there you go, that's UK for you. Lucas is happy because all he wants to do is wear his jeans!

We bumped in to two of Lucas old friends from our old Babygroup, Eleanor and Eliza:



We have the weekend here, and have lots of plans for the next few days; then we are off to the next stop on our Europe tour, Copenhagen, on Monday. Hoping for a bit more sunshine though before then. UK is chilly, brrr!

See you!

It's almost a bit sad to leave our new house already, we haven't even been in it a week (and Linnea has already used half a bottle of hand soap, 1 1/2 roll of toilet paper and managed to clog her toilet...) and now we are going away for a while.

It's time for a nice holiday, first the UK, then Copenhagen, Jylland (Legoland!) and last Sweden. Looking forward to meeting all our friends and family and have a good time.

See you!

A few more photos

Here is our main entrance. It looks a little bit bare at the moment, but it will get better. I have bought all their plants off my neighbours who are leaving and I will get them end of August; as well as their 8-seat outdoor furniture!
Then we just need some outdoor blinds, to cut off the view a bit from the other houses; and I will pimp this space up with some nice lamps and decorations too.
Just today, the amah has cleaned up the flower bed. It had got really overgrown since the previous tenants, and I'm not very keen on any low bushy plants - that's where snakes like to hide... (hey, we do live in the jungle!) So from now on, there will only be stones, and high plants in those flower beds. (If you are wondering about that white frame-thing, it's something I will be using in my scrapbooking.)



Close up photo of the entrance:



Here is the garage:



You can see the other entrance to the right in the shot. It goes to the amah's room, and to the laundry (and then into the house). This is actually the entrance we use the most ourselves, easiest to go straight inside here from the car. The main entrance is just for guests!

And finally, another shot of Linnea's room. I put up their names on their doors yesterday, Lucas got very excited about that when he saw it after waking up this morning:

New Scandinavian Cooking

I have been stumbling over a lovely program a few times while zapping around the otherwise quite boring tv-channels, it's called "New Scandinavian Cooking". Well, I might be slightly bias, cause it's with my favourite Swedish TV-chef, Tina Nordström.



I just love watching this show (which is in English), not only for the mouth watering food she prepares, but also because she is visiting different sites of Sweden in each show, and tells little stories about Swedish history etc. It's actually a show that gives Sweden a lot of fantastic PR! The views are magnificent! (Tonight for example, she was cooking smoked eel at Ale Stenar.)

That her "skånish" (=from southern Sweden) accent shines through while she speaks English, is just a fun bonus, she sounds totally charming!

You can find the recipes and check out more about this show and Tina Nordström here.

Five things

Five good things with this house:

- It's huge! We have so much space, living space and storage space, outdoor space, just space! Lovely!

- It's got flow. Which means that you can walk (or run...) around, from the kitchen to the hall to the dining area into the kitchen again. The kids love it! (And I have always had a weakness for houses with flow, since I was a kid myself.)

- It has nice wooden floors upstairs.

- It has neighbours around, that we can spy on! ;)

- I love it!

Five not so good things:

- All the toilets take so much time to flush, and they make noise forever.

- There is only one electrical socket in each room (some have two.)

- There are too many big windows downstairs, slightly scary when you are home alone at night.

- It's so big we loose each other and spend half our time walking around calling out after each other! ;)

- The thunderstorms are worse up this end of town. I've never been scared of thunderstorms, but I'm not too keen on the big ones, when I'm home alone.

Happy Birthday Sultan B!

So, today is the Sultan's birthday, it's a public holiday and lots of things are happening here in Brunei. The parade and fireworks isn't on until very late tonight, after the big banquet held at the Istana. So I wont be seeing any. But you can follow the celebrations online, check this link out:

http://royalbirthday.org.bn/index.php

Some photos

Ok, so here are a few photos from the last couple of days, finally. Starting out with Lucas and Linnea, supervising the load-up of the truck:



Almost done, bye-bye Rimba:



On the way:



The livingroom part of downstairs:



It's all one big room, but we have painted the different parts in different colours (as seen in previous post) to try and separate it up a bit. Of course, we are still missing a few things here and there, like a rug here in this part, and the tv-unit that we are having especially made (so all the ugly cables will be hidden away). And, all the ugly curtains will be changed as soon as we get back. I have bought next-door's curtains, they are leaving at the end of August.
Here is the upstairs landing, the playroom. The right hand side:



The left hand side:



We had this tv-unit specially made, and we are very happy with it. All the kids movies are up here, and this is their corner.
We will put a sofa here too eventually, and a rug. And of course, all those cables will be hidden away too when we get around to it.
Photo taken from the window over to the stairs, our bedroom and the office seen to the left:



Lucas' room. We had these beds and bedside tables made as well, and bought some mattresses at the "IKEA-shop" so now the kids sleep like royalty!





In Linnea's room. We had her bookshelf mounted on the wall on that little wall between the entrance door and bathroom door. Looks really nice!



Our Venture picture has finally come up on the wall:

Missing cable

I would love to show you some more pictures from the house, now that we have got some order here; but I can't find the cable for the card reader so that I can upload the photos from my camera so it will have to wait until tomorrow...

We are in!

I'm surfing on some open network at the moment, so I don't know how much time I have, but I thought I would post a quick one telling you about our move. (Pictures will follow when our own internet is up and running.)

We had a very good day yesterday, very hectic but efficient! At 09.30 four guys with a big truck started loading up our house, and it only took them 45 minutes. It took slightly longer on the other end, cause of course they were putting all the boxes in the right rooms. I just stood there and pointed them in the right directions..! :)

The amah unpacked most of the kitchen, and we did the rest. Upstairs is pretty much all in place already - the kids got their new beds, that we had a carpenter make for us. They are absolutely gorgeous, and the kids seemed to have slept really well in them. Linnea was mostly happy about having her own bathroom, she must have washed her hands about 25 times yesterday!

We got new bedside tables too, and a tv-cabinet for under the tv in the playroom. Most of the toys got unpacked yesterday too (with a lot of help from the little angels...) so the playroom looks really nice.

It's slightly more empty downstairs, cause we are still expecting some more furniture to arrive when we get back from Europe. But we got a console table and a coffee table yesterday.
We had a guy to come and connect our Astro, we had the rubbish guys here to set up a subscription (for them to come and collect our rubbish), the landlord had sent a gardener to tidy up the garden, and a guy came and mounted both TVs and most of our paintings and other things on the walls. It already looks really "homely"!

This is a super house, and we are so pleased! It's fantastic with all this space, and I'm sure we will be really happy here! Yay, it feels so good to have finally moved!

YAY!!

Somehow I never dared to believe this day would come - but it did, YAAAAYYYYYY!
Today... I got the keys to our new house! Finally!



We have been living in the same, temporary accomodation for almost a year now, ever since we got here. It's been ok, but we have seriously outgrown it and I have been longing to get some outdoor space, yes, just space over all!
When my friend told me back then it could take a while to find a good house, I just shrugged and thought "yeah, yeah, can't be that hard!". They had waited 11 months, before they could move into their house. A wait that had paid off though, since they got a fab house. But I thought "jeez... 11 months, that's crazy!".

Here we are 11 1/2 months later. I dare say, that our wait paid off too - our house is almost as perfect as it could be, for us! We are so pleased!

We must have seen (and I'm not exaggerating) over 100 houses on our hunt for the perfect house. For every house we saw, and for every month that passed, it got harder and harder to find something, because we got more and more criteria to be filled. Finally, back in April, we heard that some people were moving out of a simpang (=road) we had had our eyes on, and we acted as fast as we could. Luckily, we had the perfect timing this time (some other houses had slipped by us), and no one else had posted any interest. The house was ours. I have been describing the house before here.
We just had to wait until the current tenants were going to move.

They left the house last Saturday, and since then it has been sprused up, painted and fixed - and today, I got the keys. What a lovely feeling!
Nathan unfortunately is in Singapore until tonight, so we will not be moving until tomorrow. Everything is organized and ready to go though: a truck, some workers to do all the carrying; five different deliveries with furniture and a guy to come and mount our TVs. It will be a hectic day - actually, a hectic couple of days, since we are off on vacation next week.

But gosh, I can't wait!

I tried to take some pics today, to show you the colours we had chosen, but the photos don't really show much unfortunately. It was a bit of a gamble, because we had carefully chosen some colours we liked - only to discover they didn't have those colours at the paint shop... So on Monday, I had to zoom down to the paint shop to choose some new colours. Although I tried to find shades close to the ones I had originally picked, it was all a bit rushed and I have been worrying a bit if it would now turn out alright.

Here is the entrance. It comes into one big room with the hall, living room and dining room all in one. So we have painted some of those walls in "Soft Sands", to break it all up a bit. The wall to the right is beige, the one to the left white:



I would have liked to have gone a shade or two darker actually, something along the lines of "Baileys" or "Latte" but Nathan stopped me. Now it's just about noticeable, very, very subtle. Which is what he likes, but I'm not quite happy... Ah well.
Here is Linnea's room, painted in "Pink Snow", nice and soft:



And Lucas' room, painted in "Lime". This I was not very sure about at all, I was after a more "asparagus-type" colour. But it turned out great! He is so pleased, cause as you know, he loves green:



The office. Slightly darker than I had expected, but nice, I'm pleased. The colour is called "Mist Blue":



The kids in the kitchen: