What bush is this?

The 'red' bush has beautiful flowers, any idea what bush it is?

More garden surprises!

Our garden is continuing to surprise and please us. Here are some of the latest discoveries...



Unknown bush w/red flowers;
Rhubarb is coming up in one of the herb beds;


Unknown blue flowers;
The Forsythia bush in full bloom;

Beautiful Daffodils.

Gulab jamons + bye Helene welcome Deborah

Grandma Kathleen visited last weekend, and made a wonderful Indian meal Saturday night. Anika loved the gulab jamons we had for dessert...












The dinner was also a 'goodbye Helene, welcome Deborah' dinner, as au pair Helene was flying back to Paris the next day and new au pair Deborah (also French) would start working on Monday.



From left: Anika, Deborah, Helene.

More pics from JAX

Here are our hosts + their house/pool. The water was too cold for a swim, but Anika had a good time splashing with her feet and throwing things in the water (no worries, only pool toys were thrown in!).

Quick Florida visit

We haven't seen Sami and Jammie in almost a year (!), so we decided to take a long weekend Fri-Mon and visit them in Jacksonville, Florida this past weekend. It was a looong drive, 11 hrs each way, but we made it and had a good two days at their house althought Layla and Jammie were a little bit under the weather.

We went on a daytrip on Saturday to a local beach + St. Augustine, the oldest "european" city in the U.S. At night it was time to watch March Madness basketball and play some poker...




On Sunday we just hang out at the house, their pool and their relative's house and played pool. Laazy Sunday!

Yumyum

Mamma's chocolate cake doug is the best!

Spring is here!

It feels so nice having the sun warm your face on the first real Spring day of the year. We finally got that Spring feeling in the past few days with temperatures well into the 70s(Fahrenheit; or 20+degrees Celcius)... We have seen an explosion of flower buds coming out of the ground and crocuses blooming all over our yard. It is like Christmas every day now, we discover new flowers on the ground and on bushes and trees and wonder what they will look like when their buds open up. Can't wait for Summer when our garden will be full of herb plants, blooming flowers and roses!

Get-together for Steve

We finally had the courage to invite people over to our new house for a small get-together on Saturday March 11. I used Steve's birthday (on the same Saturday) to persuade him, because to him the house is not even close to being showed off. But people came by, and he survived. I think we were happy about the response, we were able to show people why we bought the house/what we fell in love with - the big windows/good light inside, and the big yard with the herb garden outside. The good company continued into the midnight hours with music and drinks downstairs, and we even ended up with guests sleeping over. That's what we love - nothing's better than a Sunday breakfast at home with good friends.

Remember the upstairs living room before we removed the carpet, refinished the wood floors, and painted the walls? This is what it looks like now with our cool little sofa.

Demanding little girl

So when Anika wakes up in the morning, we take her into our bed hoping that she will snooze with us for another 30 minutes or so. Usually we are terribly wrong. She grabs our hands and says: "Opp opp.. Akka yum yum pancakes and juice! This way!" which basically means that it is time to get up, i want pancakes and juice, NOW! Sometimes she demands a diaper change first. What a hard life it is demanding your parents around like this. Were we like this at age (almost) 2?

Other words she is saying as of late: animals, door, pats=pants, Akka=Anika, pia=pizza, yellow bus, pappa bike=pappa is biking. Many times these words are accompagnied by "Hvor er"=where is, "there is"

Soon she will demand her own chef and credit card for shopping, right?