Such lovely children and husband

A few photos of my lovely family. I don't really have much to say...

Riding on the train, looking somewhat grumpy. 

And Iluka and Seb being acrobats. I tried it too with her, but I dropped her and she hurt herself so we had to go home... bad idea. 

Iluka would wear a princess / fairy / my little pony outfit 24 hours a day if we let her. Frankly, I'm getting over the pink phase, though I am sure that I'll have to endure it for several more years *deep sigh*

Grand parents came to visit for Ella's first birthday. Here Ella is having a blast learning to walk with Miza. She's not quite there, though she does move around on two feet when she can hang onto something.

She's starting daycare in May, which is very soon!

Lovelidays

Seb here! I think this is only the second time in the long history of that blog that I am writing something. That's pretty poor but then again it is Ditte's blog  :-).

The week-end before last, we went with our friends Thibaut and Emilie to Trysil, one of the biggest ski resorts in Norway. I am pleased to announce that it was a very successful short holiday! We stayed in a nice and cosy chalet with lots of pillows, bunk beds and sofas for Iluka, Jeanne and Oscar to climb, jump and play on.

Here they are, having a short break before more sofa jumping.

Ella also had a good time: she thoroughly enjoyed her spa treatment (A rejuvenating lego bath) at the local deli...

... and regular in-sledge siestas behind Mom on skis!

And a close-up of sleeping beauty on another ski trip at the beginning of last week in Oslo. This was just after we had a beautiful 15cm snow fall that, unfortunately, has now all but disappeared with the Spring tempreatures (12 degrees in the shade today!) .

We also put Iluka on skis for the first time and she seemed to enjoy it, even though going downhill was an entirely different kettle of fish!

Apart from that, Ella has celebrated her last "moisiversaire" (One gets monthly birthday during the first year!). She is now standing up by herself and enjoys a lot being able to reach previously inaccessible objects !

Her newly found mobility enables her to do all sorts of cool tricks such as quickly climbing from her chair to the top of the table while Mum is turning her back to her for five seconds.

The evening bath of the girls in front of the fireplace. And yes, Ella is a bit squashed in her bucket but still enoys it a lot. She'll get a new bathtub soon, promise.

And last but not least, my first attempt ever at making croissants and pains au chocolat, which was rather successful but... will not happen again since:

1. It was a hell of a lot of work
2. I am on a diet before Summer and the butter content of these pretty things is quite scandalous!

More from our holidays

I just wanted to add a few more photos from our trip to La Gomera. When I think about the holidays now, I have practically forgotten everything that went wrong and I have some really nice memories :o)


Iluka having fun at the pool.


Here we went on a small trip to a really windblown place at the north of the island and we felt really cold.


I'm having a lovely nap in the garden of the first place we stayed.


And we are having freshly pressed juice made from oranges from the garden. Yum!


And Iluka is enjoying the beach on our first day there. It was pretty cold, but she really wanted to go!

Hellidays

So we have returned from our holidays, which Seb, partly for fun, named our Hellidays. Phew, we need some time off now!

I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with our illnesses:

We were naive enough to think that we could drink the tap water on La Gomera (one of the less touristy of the Canary Islands). Big. Bloody. Mistake. Diarrhea followed for Seb, Ella and I, and Ella also started vomiting and she continued to do so for nearly a week. So Ella lost all her energy and was unwell for pretty much the whole time. We went to the doctor twice, because she was rather concerned about Ella being dehydrated and she started talking about hospitalisation if things didn't improve. Ella whouldn't eat or drink anything. She wouldn't breastfeed. Which leads me to our next ailment: I got mastitis. Sigh. But our doctor, who was German, taught me some new tricks to battle this infection and it cleared after a couple of days. It is the fifth time that I get mastitis...

Anyway, Seb was pretty good after we switched to bottled water and he had enough energy to entertain Iluka who was soooo happy to be somewhere warm enough for bare feet and t-shirt! Lots of pool and beach for them, which gave him a cold. He's still sniffy now, but better. After all, the weather wasn't THAT warm, but it sure didn't deter Iluka from spending as much time as possible in or around water.

And she was completely fine the whole time! Our cool little trooper!

We had booked a little house in the village of Alojera for all of the 10 days of our stay, but we quickly decided that it was too isolated, and thankfully we moved to a less isolated place before we needed doctors and pharmacies etc. We stayed the remaining 6 days in Valle Gran Rey - a small piece of Germany. It was crazy, everything was in Spanish and German, and sometimes in English. My doctor, the receptioinist and the baker, to name but a few, were all German.

Now to pictures.

This is on our way there on the ferry from Tenerife to La Gomera, this is Tenerife during a beautiful sunset.


Here we are in Alojera as Ella was getting poorly. We're on the front porch, which had an amazing view and a lovely garden.


Iluka at our table in the garden. There were orange, lemon, clementine and grape fruit trees, papaya and banana plants and fruit trees that I am unsure of. We had freshly squeezed juice every morning. Yum!


This is Valle Gran Rey. We stayed right at the beach just behind the mountain on the right. La Gomera is such an amazing island! I wish we'd had more time and energy to see more of it...


Valle Gran Rey from another view point.



Here's Ella in one of her moments of feeling energetic and happy.


And Iluka playing in the black sand (with Seb while Ella and I are resting at the flat)


and at the playground with dad again...



Getting better towards the end of our stay, saying hi to Iluka and Seb at the pool.


And the penultimate day there, going for a little walk.


So all in all it was a nice holiday, but next time around I'd like to have a liiiiiiittle less sickness, please.

Happy New Year!

So another year has begun and winter seems to have properly arrived here. All through November and December we had snow which melted and then it snowed again and melted, so there is a thick layer of ice in our driveway. This has now been covered by a layer of snow, and I am hopeful that this will remain till spring arrives.

We went to Denmark for Christmas, which was lovely! Here's a picture of us on Christmas Eve, which is when we celebrate in Denmark



I don't know how much this news has travelled the world, but Norway ran out of butter right before Christmas. It was impossible to get butter in any shops in the whole country (something to do with lower production of milk because it was such a wet summer, and a higher demand because people want low carb high fat diets, as well as some other influencing factors), so needless to say Christmas was practically ruined. You could buy butter on the black market at something like EUR100 per kilo at one point!

We had Seb's parents bring some when they visited in early December, and then I decided to make my own! It's really not that hard. You just whip whipping cream like mad till it splits into butter and butter milk. Then you rinse it in water till the water runs clear and then you salt it, et voila! You have homemade butter.

Here's the butter and butter milk when the whipping is done. You remove the milk and keep it for making pancakes. Yum!


And here is the finished butter.


Ella has started to be mobile. At this stage she primarily bum scoots around but she also manages to move forward on her belly. It won't be long before she crawls.

Here she has made it to Iluka's bath and she got herself completely soaked before we managed to stop her!


The only rational thing to do afterwards was this:


And a photo of our lovely Iluka


Other than that there's not much news. We have a Danish/English friend from university visiting from Jerusalem, where he currently lives. It's always nice to have guests!

And I only have to sleep 24 times before we head off to La Gomera, Canary Islands for holidays. (Weather forecast: sun, sun, sun, sun, daytime 24 degrees, nighttime 17 degrees.) BRING. IT. ON!

Developing Personality

Firstly, thanks for your encouraging comments on my previous post. It made me feel better about blogging again.

Today's video is Ella, who is developing quite a personality by now! We're trying to encourage her to start eating more solids, she is after all 8 months old now. But she is not really interested and all we can get her to eat is rice crackers... She's cute about it, though. (Check out how she masters the advanceed on/off crying technique!)



Seb has just started papapermisjon, which means that he now works 60% and gets the remaining 40% paid by the government. Sweet! He's at home 4 days a week until June, which is great for him, Ella, Iluka and for me! Yay. Norway is nice for that!

We also had Seb's parents visit, which was lovely. We even had a couple of pretty days with snow.

Miza and Iluka in the snow


Our lovely daughter enjoying winter time


And the two sisters playing together, looking somewhat serious :o)

Mixed Goodies

Things are plodding along here as usual. Bad nights, crappy weather. It is unseasonably warm at around 5 plus degrees, so it's wet, dark and dreary. Last year in November / December it was -15 - -20 and there was snow everywhere so it really is much warmer and darker.

Here I am cooking with Ella in the onbuhimo baby carrier, a Japanese style carrier that I made myself.


Ella enjoying a bath and Seb a shower in front of the fire place.


The neighbour girls are visiting and Ella and Iluka both love it!


I am wearing a Hello Kitty hat that I made for Halloween :o)


And this is from one of our day trips to a little farm about 5 minutes from where we live. It's very pretty.


I don't feel much like blogging anymore.