Haderslev Fjord

On Saturday Jensine was ready to get back in the water, and we had invited Esben's dad and his wife AnneMarie to join us in sailing back to Haderslev.

Newly painted and ready for another season

On board with farfar

Runa hates the life jacket, but she has to wear one - so of course her mom must wear one too.

"Take this stupid thing off of me!"

We decided that Runa was protesting because she was tired, so she was put to sleep while the rest of us enjoyed the trip through the fjord.

Yesterday's lunch is still just fine

Last week the trees had no leaves, and the eagle's nest was easy to spot...

And then there was of course also some cake left from yesterday

Painting

As is the case every year, Jensine was taken on land during easter, and people travelled to Årøsund to paint and do other repairs.

I painted the green stripes...

...while Laura was taking care of the black background

We would like to have more members in the association, so Bodil made an exhibition to inform the many people talking walks on the harbor about Jensine.

Wondering why so many people spend their Easter hard at work

Discussing when the next game of cards shall take place

Lunch break for the nurses

Did Ingeborg fall asleep?

Skippers adjusting the 'pyntenetstok'

And by the way, I did look up the word pyntenetstok to see if I spelled it correctly, and the first hit on google was this: http://www.jensine.dk/ordbog/rig/forgrej.htm

Holiday

Esben and I had planned to make a trip to Amsterdam during Easter, but ended up not going anyways. So today Runa was taken to her Tagesmutter and we had the day off. We took the car and went to Bremen for the first time, and it turned out that it was a wonderful city with lovely parks, beautiful buildings - and shops that sell all the things we can't get in Bremerhaven.

The old town hall of Bremen, build in 1405

We started out the day with a coffee and second breakfast in the sun outside the old town hall. We were sitting in a square surrounded by the beautiful buildings, and actually really enjoyed for once to eat without having an impatient little girl waiting for us to move on.

The cafes across from the town hall

We also went to Bremen's oldest quarter, Schnoor, where the houses and the streets are tiny and very pitoresque.

A quiet street in the Schnoor quarter

We spend the day just walking around wherever we felt like, and the accomplishment of the day was when Esben got a new pair of shoes - on sale.

The start of a sunny easter

One of the other phd-students from AWI, Ozgur, had invited us all for a barbecue on Saturday afternoon, and when Esben, Runa and I arrived it turned out that he had prepared a large Turkish buffet.
While some of the guys went to the supermarket, we started the barbecue up along with Claudia and Stefan.

Claudia and Stefan keeping an eye on the grill

We didn't know our way around the house, so we walked to basement and ended up crawling out a window to get to the garden because we didn't have a key for the door - but as it turned out there was actually a door directly from the flat to the garden. We felt a little bit stupid...

Runa prefers meat and tomatoes

Ozgur is sharing the flat with 5 others, and a couple of floors above him there is one more flat with AWI-people living in it, and it was really nice for us, since we are still fairly new in Bremerhaven, to meet some new people. But unfortunately we had to leave early because Runa was getting tired - even though Claudia had made Runa's favourite dessert, youghurt, which by the way was much appreciated by her.

To the left, Ozgur and Xuezhu from the climate group, and to the right Tim from Biogeo.

When we drove (on the bikes of course) to Ozgur's place we had noticed a large playground in a park close to where he lives, so on Sunday we took advantage of the sunny weather, packed a picnic bag and went up there.

Runa got a new sun hat for the weekend

Esben is a firm believer in the necessity of training his balance so he won't be so sea sick when we go sailing, so he took Runa and went to the carousel (she of course will benefit from the training too).

Runa wants it to be faster and Esben wants to get off...

The weekend ended up with a walk to the festival in the Fischereihafen where we got crepes with chocolate inside and walked around and looked at all of the things happening there.

Runa is getting a ride on one of the seals after her parents refused to let her try the real carousel

Birthday!

After a weekend that left me with sunburned stripes on the neck where I had forgotten to apply sunblock, I woke up to my birthday hearing the rain hitting the window and the winds howling around the house. I guess it's time I take my behavior up to revision...

The view from my work

But I was woken up with Esben and running singing for me and with many kisses from both of them, so it wasn't so bad after all.
And later in the day Esben came to my work place with cake and we took a nice coffee break with some of the many wonderful people we have already met after living in Bremerhaven in such a short time.
During the day I got an sms from my sister Anne, who asked if we had time for a visit from her and Kent, so they arrived just in time for dinner, and we went to a Turkish restaurant where the adults ate sjiskebab and drank beer - and Runa had a chocolate easter bunny for dinner...

Anne is nice, she brings chocolate

 Anne insisted on making me a birthday cake, and it was somehow really tasty even when all of us insisted that there was no way that we could eat even a little bit.

The guys are waiting for the cake

A Jensine weekend

This past Thursday we packed the car and headed north to Haderslev to attend a weekend of working on getting Jensine ready for the summer and to practice steering her a bit.

Our most important family members in the car

Runa spent Saturday hanging out with her grandparents, feeding the sheep, driving the tractor and playing with sand, while Laura, Esben and I went to Haderslev to spend the day in the sun.

Laura is keeping the ropes in order

while Esben is holding on

And Agnete is making sure not to get black paint all over her clothes

Esben and Agnete were hard at work in the bow, and as we pointed out how much we would laugh if they fell in, Esben pointed out that no one will remember that they spent the whole day doing this work - but if he fell in it would be remembered for a very long time. He still chose to stay dry though.

"NO, I think it's the other way around!..."

Brian had crafted a wagon that could transport the booms from the cottage where they are stored to Jensine, and we made sure to take a picture of it because it eliminated the most dreaded task of the day.

Lunch by the newly painted shed

Brian is also happy ...

... because he is only supporting the boom

There's things to do for all ages

Many people were helping out the whole day, and we managed to get a lot of work done so that Jensine was ready to sail the next day with a group of wannabe-skippers navigating her to and from the quay.
Two of the skippers, Tommy and Anders, had come to make a small course about Jensine and Laura and I took part in listening and try out a bit for ourselves.

 

Anders explains how to use the water pump

Concentration

Spring

On the first day of spring we decided to try out a new playground, so we got out Runa's new bike that she got for her birthday and walked out in the sunshine.

So far Runa can steer, but not use her legs on the bike

Since we don't really have a garden, we are looking for places where we can go and barbecue in the summer, and this place seems like it's made for it; a place to play and grass where we can sit.

Runa's favourite place

Christmas 2010

Driving to Denmark for Christmas was a bit of a challenge with the roads covered in snow. We arrived in Vejle at Esben's father's place early in the morning after driving through the night. Here we celebrated Christmas early with Runa's cousin Julia.

Granddad has got his hands full

Esben is giving the girls a ride

On Christmas Eve we visited Esben's mother, and we spent the evening with her and Esben's grandmother, his aunt and two cousins.

The Christmas tree is really pretty

It doesn't take long to learn what a present is

For new years eve we borrowed my parent's house, and of course Laura stayed home long enough to say hi to Runa.

Runa is wearing the teddy's bow for her hair

We celebrated new year's eve with Clea, Janus, Anemone, Esben and Line, and the two girls were dressed like little princesses:

Notice how Anemone is holding Curious George - he's not often allowed to be held by other kids

We were having arabic inspired food

Line was the best at writing with a sparkler

November 2010

On Monday morning we all got up at 4 to drive Esben to the airport, and then Runa and I were the only ones left in our new city. But we have had lots of things to do this first week, starting with a meeting at the office for daycare in Bremerhaven. We have been really worried about not getting a place for Runa, considering how it went in Göteborg, so we very happy when we were told that they had found a "Tagesmutter" for Runa only 1 km away from where we live.
We started visiting Sanne already the first week we lived in Bremerhaven, so that Runa could slowly get to know the place she would spend her days. But luckily she just loves Sanne, and I got a couple of days off each day to take care of the paperwork that is necessary in to do in Germany.
At home we continued to get things into place, Runa got her own room, and we started out making that room nice.

Piglet is hungry too

When Esben was back in the weekend we went out and got the many little, and big, things we suddenly desperately needed, and then the place became a lot nicer.

Runa is reading a book in her private corner