Engagement Pictures!

We finally took the pictures yesterday! To see the rest of them click here. I've also added it in the picture links to your left.

Surprise! Valbyparken

The weather has still been excellent so yesterday we decided to ride out to the beach. We took a (beautiful) bike path down to what had looked like a beach on the map. Morten thought it would be fun to take a little detour road up a steep hill into the trees (I thought it was a driveway at first, I guess that's what comes of spending too much time in Arkansas). At the top we found a great little spot full of big steep hills with benches on top of each one, looking out over the sea on one side and cute houses on the other. No I didn't bring my camera...I will go another day and take pictures. It was a nice surprise.

However there still wasn't a sandy conventional beach, it was all rocks still, so we decided to ride down another path along the beach looking for one where we could dip our feet in the water. Taking a few random turns, we unexpectedly ended up in a huge park. Though it was only a 10-15 minute bike ride from the apartment, neither of us had known it was there. I have since looked it up and found that its name is "Valbyparken" and it's the largest public park in Copenhagen. Convenient huh? It's full of "circular gardens" with flowers and herbs, gazebos, huge trees, a cafe, flowers, very unique playgrounds and exhibits and walking paths. It reminded me of the Dallas Arboretum with one major difference: it's free! So I think I will spend plenty of time down there this summer when I am jobless.

Summing it all up: a very pleasant surprise. I'll take pictures next time.

Middlemarch in May

Denmark has a lot of holidays in the spring. You get the "winter break" along with basically a whole nuther week for Easter, then there are tons of little 3 or 4 day weekends along the way into May. Like this last weekend. Have a billion fun with my sweetheart, yay!

I've also noticed that whereas it is a particularly vile country weatherwise in the wintertime, the spring (and presumably the summer) is a particularly nice time to be in Denmark. There has been a delightful amount of sun and it puts me in a perpetual good mood. And flowers! And green stuff. Everywhere.

Might I also comment on the felicity of bike riding? Though cruising on the freeway with good friends with the windows down and singing energetically to loud music most definitely has its joys, riding a bike also has its own particular joys. It's very satisfying to arrive at your destination knowing that barely more than your own leg power got you there. And then there's the endorphins. All in all, even though I can't have a car, this really is pretty nice. Just more work. But I guess things that are more work are generally better anyway.

If I'm writing a little funny today it's because I've been reading Middlemarch. It's taken me a while to get into it (especially because apparently one of the main characters hasn't even made his appearance yet), but I'm pretty into it now. So...I'm gonna read. MMM-K bye.

No More Excedrin!

I learned something interesting the other day. I've been having a lot of migraines since the tooth thing, mostly because I just got off balance I think. I was getting sick of taking pills every time my head started hurting, which was almost every day last week, so I decided to see if there was anything else I could do instead. I found this website: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/medicine/migraine/natural-cures/ with all sorts of useful information, some of which actually helped me almost painlessly through a 48 hour migraine without taking medicine. So I wanted to pass on the wisdom for anyone who might want to know.

I'm just sitting around listening to the beatles on a saturday morning. Trying to pluck up the courage to clean a bit. Man, you shoulda seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe. Nuff said.

ok, SO...

I started this blog a long time ago when I first came to Denmark and ended up forgetting about it a few months later. BUT as you may know, I am soon getting married and staying here in Denmark. After that it will be a while before I have a work permit, so I figure I will probably have a lot of time on my hands and will be glad for something to do again as soon as life slows down! It will also come in handy when we get kids. So I have done some revampage and now I'm going to try this again. Baby steps, bob.

So, basically, now I am almost done with the au pair job and going back to Texas in exactly 28 days to prepare for the wedding. Yay! Until then it feels like life is moving in slow motion. I long for the day when I will see my corpulent nephews again. July 5th (the wedding) also can't come fast enough. But I'm doing my best to keep myself occupied and enjoying life until then.

Meanwhile, here's how I've been doing:

That's enough for now. Hej hej!

Recent Dental Disasters

Here's a copy of what I wrote on facebook about my, well...the title speaks for itself.



My swollen face in this picture is the aftermath of a very traumatic dental emergency last week. I could give you all the gorily unpleasant details, but that wouldn't be conducive to my vow to forget them. So, in answer to various inquiries on the subject, you people get the short version.

Saturday during general conference I started getting severe pain under an old root canal. I didn't think much of it at first and figured it might "go away" in a few days. Ha. Instead, over the course of 3 more days, it got to the point of unbearable - and when I say unbearable it's because I didn't know it was possible to hurt so much without passing out or something.

Tuesday was the worst point. I hadn't slept at all monday night, also had barely eaten anything since saturday, and food made me sick even when I managed to get it past my teeth (because it was all yogurt) and none of the meds were working (there were a lot the dentist told me to take, for pain and infection). So, Morten was calling everywhere again on tuesday, even the hospital but they wouldn't take me (because it's dental), and then he got ahold of the dentist (a member of the church by the way) who said bring me in immediately. We showed up there and he could see how bad it was so he decided to just operate on me right then and there, even though it was in between other patients. Basically, he drilled a hole all the way to the infection, which then relieved my suffering (though I still have to go back every few days for a while now).

But like I said, I'm trying to forget a lot of that. What I'm not trying to forget though is how very blessed I feel that it was over so quickly, that I had such wonderful people around to take care of me and feel my pain, and for the priesthood. I'm also glad I don't live in the middle ages before modern dentistry!


I couldn't have done it without this handsome fellow.

A Slideshow From the CES Christmas Party

Here is a slideshow made by one of the CES Senior missionaries of pictures from the Christmas party.