In Denmark Father’s Day is always on the 5th of June. This year the kids surprised Shawn with pancakes and creative greeting cards crafted by themselves.
shawn
Happy Birthday Shawn
Homemade birthday cake, greeting cards, and presents. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
A birthday cake for daddy
Elliot prepared a delicious birthday cake for Shawn’s birthday this year, complete with 42 candles in it.
Ireland
For Shawn’s 40th birthday I played a trick on him and gave him a surprise trip to Ireland. He had no idea it was coming at all as I had arranged everything without his knowledge including a week off of work. He went to work that morning as usual and I had pre-arranged for my mom to come to our house to take care of the kids. The tricky thing was getting Shawn to the airport without him getting suspicious. I got his friend Oliver to pretend like he was flying in to Copenhagen on a business trip but only for a quick layover so he could just meet him there for lunch. When Shawn saw me with a suitcase instead of Oliver at the airport he was in a huge state of shock, which more or less lasted for the rest of the day. We flew to Dublin where we continued to Monart (a very nice luxury spa we had visited 5 years earlier). After a couple of relaxing days we took a road trip along parts of the Atlantic way (a network of coastal roads along the western coast) and saw some really great scenery including old Viking castles, medieval castles, and some very scenic nature. We ended back in Dublin and did some exploring there before heading back to Copenhagen.
Celebrating Shawn’s birthday
For Shawn’s birthday this year we went back to Tivoli to enjoy the Halloween decorations some more. We had a really good dinner at a burger restaurant inside the park and the kids got to get a couple hours of rides in. I snapped the pictures on my phone which explains the bad quality.
Father’s day
These days I am constantly in London for a work project so it is more difficult than ever to keep up the blog. I just posted a birthday greeting to Tessa which was all prepared and ready to go for 5 June, but due to some technical issues unfortunately it got slightly delayed. In this post I am attaching the greeting that Sienna and Elliot prepared for Father’s day, which – in Denmark – is also on the 5th of June. When Shawn was in Italy with his work the kids and I went to the beach to gather rocks. We then glued them together and Sienna drew the pictures of her and Elliot. We colored them in the computer and printed them out and finally, I cut them out and glued them to the rocks. I think the little people ended up looking amazing – cool and cute at the same time, just like the real life versions – and needless to say, Shawn was very happy about the kids’ surprising him with this greeting.
Happy 4th Birthday Sienna
I have a ton of pictures waiting to be posted, but I am completely and utterly beat after running around preparing for Sienna’s two birthday parties since Saturday. So I am posting just this one picture of a very proud and excited 4-year old, and then the rest will follow soon. I also just want to quickly add that Sienna was very happy with all the presents from Canada. I believe she now has the entire collection of Dora, Diego and Curious George. The letter machine was also taken into use immediately, and she is practicing to write “farmor”. The interest in the Strawberry Shortcake doll increased dramatically when Sienna got her out of the wrapping and realized that she had a sweet, strawberry smell to her. She is cuddling up with her in bed as we speak. So thanks a lot to everybody who sent her stuff. She loved it all.
Happy Birthday, Daddy/Shawn
October 28th is Shawn’s birthday and this year he was turning 35. Sienna and Elliot had arranged for a big bouquet of birthday balloons for their daddy and I picked up cupcakes from the cutest little store down the road. We spent all afternoon and the evening at our friends’ house – Steve and Daisy, and their son, Bryant. Jen and Seb, and Adam and Ethan also joined us and everybody had a really good time. Thanks again to Daisy and Steve for a spectacular dinner and a big load of delicious snacks and thanks to everybody for all the nice gifts for Shawn and the kids.
November 7, 2002
On November 7, 2002 I realized who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I wrote it in an email to a dear friend… “I still think he has a funny shuffly walk and that he dresses like a nerd, but I don’t care anymore”… 645 days later we got married and tomorrow we have our 5 year anniversary. I love him more than ever and I just have to look at our kids to be reminded that we are a match made in heaven. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to produce two such perfect children.
We are taking the kids on a little trip to Oslo, Norway to celebrate. Firstly, we are going to the Museum of National History to look at some dinosaurs (like Curious George) and then we are having lunch in a nice park called Vigelandsparken. When I was living in Norway (in 1996) I used to go to this park all the time. It would be minus 25 degrees Celsius and everything was covered in snow. I would sit there for hours listening to Toni Braxton and fantasizing about how my life would be when I hooked up with the man of my dreams. Hence it is a very appropriate place to be celebrating our anniversary.
