The Cullingfords: August 2008

Sunday, 24 August 2008

apart from that...

... most of our summer has been taken up trying to get things done around the house and garden...

Erin took this picture of me stripping her walls

and this one of Quentin sanding her bed ready for me to paint it. I can't wait for some of the rooms to finally be finished (do rooms ever get finished??) so I'll be able to post pictures of them looking a bit nicer!

Joshua digging for worms for one of his many home-made wormeries...

Quentin cleaning out the gutters.

Wednesday, 20 August 2008

Copenhagen

We went to Copenhagen for a week during the summer holidays and did the whole sightseeing-thing.

Eating traditional icecreams (scoops of different flavours with whipped cream, jam and other lovely things on top yum!) on Langelinie (The harbour in Copenhagen), watching the big cruise liners.

Runde Tårn (Round Tower), the oldest working observatorium in Europe. Built by Christian the fourth in 1642:

On the Canal busses:

My rather gorgeous hubby:-)

The new opera house.

I like this rather surreal picture from McDonald's. The children got the ugly sunglasses in their happy meals and wore them until they one day just vanished...

The Copenhagen temple
The canals in Copenhagen

The Copenhagen Zoo:
Erin was crazy about stroking the snakes and the last child to get fed up abnd leave... None of you better tell her that they can be kept as pets!!!

They just built a new elephant enclosure and integrated it into the surrounding park area, so you can watch the elephants without going to the zoo. It seemed like a lovely idea.

One of my favourite pictures. A tired Joshua at the end of the day and the old zoo tower from 1905 in the background.

Our day in Bon-Bon Land

We'd promised the children a day in Bon-Bon Land, which used to be a reasonably priced themepark on the way to Copenhagen... However, we realised too late that it had been taken over by some British Guy and he'd doubled all the prices (those Brits!! ;-D) We still had a fun day though and the weather was gorgeous.

These next pictures are of course Quentin's favourites and I am purely adding them on here, so that I can add funny ones of him without the least twinge of guilt! They show very plainly my wimpishness when it comes to having water splashed at me (I have to add I was the one to suggest we "go again" afterwards, even if it was only to try to get Quentin equally soaked...)

There really honestly was a child next to me on this ride, no really!

Joshua loves these "Moon carts". They had them in his old preschool and he goes incredibly fast yet still manages to maneuver them perfectly. I'm usually a nearvous wreck after watching him on them for a while though.

our little Handy Andy

Joshua still loves coming up with his own little projects, which he can then spend hours on. This time he came and asked me for some glue. He'd put this piece of wood (which a lovely elderly guy down at our local diy store had given him) into the grid in front of our front door and wanted to stick leaves to it. He spent ages on it and it was still drying the next morning, when our paper got wet because the post woman didn't brave going round the "project" and left

the paper on the bottom step...!

Sunday, 17 August 2008

danismer...

Erin skulle sige til Quentin at hun ikke troede på ham og sagde: "I don't think on you."

Friday, 15 August 2008

silly sausages

Last Sunday Erin had her friend from church over and for a while they borrowed Quentin's camera phone. These are some of the pictures we found on it afterwards.... They both thought they were pretty hillarious...

daddy-daughter-date

This evening Erin and Quentin went to a "soda-pop disco" across the road and had great fun together. She told me, when they got home, that Quentin is really good at dancing. Obviously we quickly made her sign a statement saying th

at, which will be dragged out when she's fourteen and he crashes her birthday party...

Erin's first day of school...

Well it's been so long that I have a bunch of photos I want to put on here from our holidays, but I think I'll just post the ones from this week now, or I'll never catch up...

This week Erin started school and so far she loves it! She says the only bad thing is the school day ends too early (they finish at noon most days.) And of course she adores her teacher, Kirsten.

She and Clara had planned everything from what to wear and how their hair was going to look to their bags etc for absolute ages.

Welcome to our blog

Well, we've been in Sønderborg for a year now and time has really flown by!

We've bought a house in Augustenborg, which is a village 8 km from Sønderborg. It is also right near the water and is on the island of Als. We can't wait to move in on May the 15th.

Joshua will be starting preschool in Augustenborg when we move and for the first time he'll be going without his big sister to look out for him. He clings to her quite a bit, so we're happy that there's a little boy he knows from church starting at the same time. Hopefully he'll settle in well and make friends of his own quickly.

Erin will be starting school after the summer holidays and all the children starting this year, will be spending the summer at the school (in what's usually the after schoolclub -SFO) so that they have a bit of time to get used to each other and the school. It's very good timing for us as they start there in May, -right when we move anyway. It saves Erin a move or us driving her from Augustenborg to Dybbøl every morning.

The kids are growing so fast it seems at them moment and they are really looking forward to spending some time with nana and grandad this spring (we're looking forward to them brushing up on their English too...) and to going on holiday to mormor and morfar's on their own this summer.

Quentin is still enjoying working as a physio and still travels to Aabenraa every morning. He is also the branch mission leader and the nursery leader. The primary president loves him and thinks he is brilliant in that calling... He is incredibly creative in the way he teaches the children and they all love him and their lessons. He says he loves teaching a class where the students' vocabulary doesn't exceed his own:-)

I am the primary president and am still enjoying that very much. I have an amazing councillor who makes my calling a breeze and the children are (mostly) just lovely.
I am working night shifts at the old people's home, which I do enjoy, but I keep looking for other, more creative work and would love to do something else.

Apart from that, there's not much going on in our lives and we quite think it's plenty, really...

We are looking forward to you all coming to visit us in our new house when we've settled in.

2007

As you may know we moved to Sønderborg, Denmark earlier this year. February to be exact.
Quentin had just finished his MSC in physiotherapy in Southampton and with it being so hard to get jobs in England because of all the NHS cutbaks, he also applied to one here in Denmark. We'd always thought it would be fun to move here for a while and thought there'd be no better time than now while the children are still small. It was still a hard decision though and one which involved lots of praying.
We are so happy to be here though. We had originally said we'd "give it at least two years", but Quentin keeps extending that lol. I think that must mean he's happy here:-)
He's working hard at a private clinic and is doing really well there. I am so happy that he is able to do the job he has always wanted to do.

He also takes Danish classes twice a week in the evening and we are all impressed with how quickly he is learning. I'm sure it has a lot to do with his perseverance in speaking Danish even to people he knows speak English very well.
Apart from that he is the branch mission leader (okay, the meetings with the elders are in English for the moment being...)

The branch here is tiny (when we first walked into the sacrament meeting Erin thought it was Primary) and we were a bit worried about that, having always belonged to big wards. It is a very different experience and we have to give lots of talks etc, but we actually really love it. The branch is made up mainly of young families and a few elderly people. The children have made some great friends at church and so have we.

I have been working part-time as a home help, but stopped a couple of weeks ago. I would really like to do something creative and somehow utilise my education, but for the moment I am just enjoying being at home with the children and having the time to do the things I want to. I do start working as a substitute next week, but that means I can choose my own shifts and with the shift hours I still pick the children up between one and two. I am also the Primary president at church. We have about 12 children who come regularly and they are so good to each other. The older ones always play with and look out for the little ones, so being the Primary president is a pleasure.

Erin and Joshua go to the same preschool (børnehave) and love it. Joshua likes having his big sister with him and mainly play with all the "big girls". They also go to gymnastics, which seems to be something everyone does around this area, so we see all the children from preschool there every Monday night as well. They really enjoy that too. Erin chose an all pink and shiny gym outfit, which happened to be the same one half the girls had chosen too, so they all run around as chubby flashes of pink and think they're ballerinas. Joshua keeps telling me how fast he runs at gymnastics and loves going so much. They both think Mondays are the best because there's preschool, gymnastics and then Family Home Evening.

The Cullingfords