Copenhagen

Last night I took an Ambien, a hot shower and slept for 11 hours. Yahoo. This morning I started my day with a yummy breakfast at the hotel. They have a buffet here so I had french bread with strawberry jam and some with nutella, a bowl of frosted flakes, then I had some french bread with brie, cornishons, and some salami (doesn't sound like breakfast .... but it reminded me of France so I had some anyways).

Then someone from Nu Skin met me at the main metro station in Copenhagen (I made it there via metro all on my own...so proud). He took me everywhere and I learned a lot about Danish history in the process (although he is Sweedish not Danish). After spending all day walking around Copenhagen I went to the mall over by my hotel to find some fun things to bring home....but there was nothing cool (I found a shirt with NYC on it...but nothing about Denmark or Copenhagen or ever Europe).

When I walked out of my hotel I saw this very frightening poster. It's a phone company and I have no idea why they would put that man on there without a shirt on.

One of my favorites things about Copenhagen was all the bikes. They were everywhere and people riding on every street I saw. It was so cool and made me want a cruiser with a basket to ride all around town.

The Little Mermaid.
This is one of the most famous sites in Copenhagen and apparently she was on vacation in China until very recently so I was lucky that I got to see her.

The Queens Palace.
I was actually here during the changing of the guard (but didn't take a picture)

Nyhavn.
I love the boats, canal and colorful houses on this street.

Walking up to the top of the Round Tower.
(This is looking back down)

At the top of the Round Tower.

View from the top of the Round Tower

This was one of the main squares downtown -
and of course it had a huge McDonalds sign at the top.

Tivoli.
This is one of the oldest amusement parks in Europe (if not the oldest).

This church had statues of Christ and all 12 Apostles.

When Todd has the camera

After every family event I like to look through the crazy picture Todd has taken. I was sorting my pictures and was cracking up from the pictures from Luke's b-day party a few months ago.

Here is a typical sampling of what you'll find: the cake close up (for wii puzzles of course), a close up of Luke (he's so photogenic), shadow, random pictures of me doing nothing (I found like 18 of me from Luke's b-day party) including one of my back side while putting Sophie to bed, close up's of people doing crazy things, a picture of Heidi's chest and one of her walking away pulling up her pants, always creative shots of things like the clock while Todd plays with the flash or focus on the camera, and a few cute ones not to mention all the awesome pictures that I usually use when talking about the party.

Food

Last night I had some very yummy veal with boiled new potatoes and onions at the hotel restaurant. The whole time I was eating I kept thinking how much my dad would have loved the meal I was having. It made a little homesick. The food in Europe as a whole has been absolutely delicious. I have missed being able to drink anytime I want. Honestly, you can't get refills on anything here including water. It's crazy. No-one has diet coke on tap and I would LOVE a fountain drink more than anything else. Besides my family I think I miss drinks the most :)

Brussels

Tonight after work I quickly checked into my hotel, changed out of my work clothes and we headed for downtown Brussels. We walked around the cobblestone streets and window shopped. Went to the center of the city to walk around. I saw the opera a very old beautiful church (pictured below), the statue of the boy peeing (pictured below), the statue of the girl peeing (rather disturbing actually), the museums and main buildings in the square, walked down the main shopping street (one of the first high end malls), and went to dinner. I ate traditional Belgian food - beef stew with frites and topped it off with ice cream with the most amazing chocolate sauce ever. It was fun to hang out with the office staff outside of work and they took very good care of me. I have part of the day here again tomorrow so we might get to see a little more. The city is absolutely beautiful and the food was absolutely amazing. Too bad I don't get to spend more time here.

6th Annual Pumpkin Carving

Once again we had a great night of eating and carving pumpkins. Finding a day this year was quite a challenge since there wasn't a single night everyone could come and we had to go without mom and dad but I got a HUGE surprise when Todd came home early since he managed to catch an early flight.

We decided to have Navajo tacos for dinner with Steve's homemade chili and they were delicious and Kami brought her super yummy pumpkin bars as usual and they did not disappoint.

Don't they look excited for pumpkin carving?

Half the people carved while the others ate

Claire was running a fever so she had to stay
in our room watching the new Tinkerbell movie

Josephine helping Heidi carve her pumpkin

Tayson wanted 2 stick figures with one pushing
the other one off the house so Todd designed and carved this one

The final products

Happy Halloween

The youngest child

My poor sweet baby girl....she is so the youngest in our family. Always dirty, always running wild and free, always wearing hand me downs and always happy.

I do love my sweet baby girl!

Basketball

Basketball was better and worst this year. Better because Tayson played better and seemed to have more fun. Worse because for the majority of the games Todd was traveling so I had to go by myself with all 4 kids and Sophie was crazy. At the last game Claire started to get sick with a fever and actually fell asleep on my lap while Sophie ran wild and I had to keep chasing her while holding Claire and at one point she had a wallet next to me and pulled out all the cash before I realized that she had found it (it ended up being the guy sitting 2 rows behind me on the bleachers).

In his game last week Tayson even grabbed a rebound, dribbled it all the way to the other side and then made a basket. It was awesome!

Tayson practicing shooting a basket

Playing instead of paying attention