Lund Blog

DEAR FRIENDS. (Du kan skifte sprog ved at trykke paa flagene til hoegre)

 

 

It is already December 7^th and times to write the Christmas letter to our friends all over the world. Yesterday we decorated the house, got the Christmas tree and all the lights up, so the house looks nice and cosy especially in the dark evenings.

 

What has happened in our family during 2011? 

The most important thing was the birth in August of our third grandchild Helena Jane a beautiful little girl of course. Kristien turned 5 in June and is now in year one at school and is doing well. He is creative as always, can spell and write most words now, and is good at math so he has been lucky to get into such a good school. Mikkel turned 3 in August and he is going to Montessori four half days a week and spend Mondays in our house.

We often goes to the forest with Claus and the children Saturday mornings and then he and the children come for breakfast every Sunday, so we are lucky having the family so close buy. Tima is very busy partly with her job as teacher and partly with all her dogs. She has had two litters of puppies this year, one Alsatian and one Cocker Spaniel and she managed to sell them all very quickly, but it is a big job to look after all the puppies. Our lovely dog Yoda got cancer so we had to put him to sleep. It was a difficult decision but the best thing for Yoda. We were sitting in the empty house crying all day but then Tima turned up with her beautiful, black Alsatian in the evening and Masai has stayed in our house since that day. He is only two years old and will properly outlive us, I hope.

 

Socially it has been a good year too where we have been together with Anita & Jim to a lot of the events. In March it was to the Royal Chapel inWindsorGreatPark for a talk about “Queen Mary’s Dolls House” followed by drinks & snacks in the park. Next event was “The Kings Speech” one of the best films I have seen for a long time.

 

In April it was the Rolls-Royce & Bentley Enthusiasts parade of 102 old cars through Windsorin celebration of Prince Philips 90^th birthday. What a show to see all these beautiful cars where the oldest was a Silver Ghost from 1907. Then the whole country celebrated Kate & Williams wedding in beautiful sunshine, but we watched it in front of the TV nicely dressed and drinking champagne all day;;; Anita & I went to hear “ The Marriage of Figaro” at Eton college while the men enjoyed a quiet evening home.

 

 

 

In May we all went to the Royal Windsor Horse Show during the day and finished it off with a Windsor Castle Royal Tattoo where the English and French combined forces to create a spectacular display at the tattoo.

 

 

 

 

Then John took a short trip to Denmark to visit family and friends but he returned two days before my 75 birthday in June I celebrated the day with a family dinner, got a new camera which I tried out two days later at Windsor Castle. Jim & Anita had invited me to join them at the most noble order of the Garter show at Windsor Castle, where we spend the most of the day in warm sunshine enjoying the show of all the royals, the Garters, the music corps and I managed to get some good pictures of the Queen, Prince Philip, Kate Middleton, Camilla and Sophie plus all the ladies in hats. Yes, I am pleased with my new camera. Then Lolita came from Odense to visit us for some days and we had a great time together in the nice weather and the boys loved her as she brought lots of presents.

 

TRAVEL.

 

In stead of having a big party for our 75^th birthdays, we took a 20 day trip to China. We flew to Beijing for three days and celebrated John’s birthday the 12^th on top of The Great Wall with Champagne and Moon cakes. It was a hard climb but well worth the effort. Back to Beijing for dinner at an amazing Beijing Duck restaurant and last stop for the day was a visit to The Chinese Opera. What more could he have wanted for on his 75^th birthday? We continued to Xian then Chongging and a three days cruise onYangtze River to Yichang. We continued to Shanghai, Guilin and then a half days cruise to Yangshore and the last stop on the journey was Hong Kong for a couple of days. I was disappointed with the way Hong Kong had changed since our last visit, but we spend a lovely day in the botanic garden and Zoo, the best thing in the town and in celebrating of our 56 anniversary we had dinner on a boat inAberdeen harbour. It was a great holiday but the long flights are just too much for me now. On the other hand “: There are no short cuts to any place worth going to” so I did it.

 

We missed  the Windsor Festival in September but managed the last performance in St. George Chapel were Melvin Bragg talked about King James Bible which was first published 400 years ago and it was an interesting talk. We then spend a good day out with Anita & Jim going to The Scandinavian Show 2011 in Earls Court, London with lots of good food and drinks, but the highlight of the show was meeting the cast from “The Killing” and hear them tell about how they made the series.

 

I was not going to travel any more this year, but when we got invited to a book launch in Copenhagen 28^th November of Klaus Winkel’s book about “Danes in Africa” as John had help him with the chapter about Bonde Nielsen,s project in Kenya, we decided to take a long weekend trip to Copenhagen.. it was nice to have time to visit our old friends, going to the book launch and not least have time to see Tivoli’s Russian Christmas exhibition

and going down Stroeget to look at all the Christmas shop windows, Illum’s Bolighus, Bing & Groendal’s Christmas tables and to eat “Aebleskiver with Gloegg wine” together with Lone & Soeren then I was in the Christmas mood..

 

Nice to be back to see the children again, going to the forest and look for dragons, drawing maps to find our way and then finish off in the big play ground for an hour, that is a nice beginning to the weekend. Now it is time to bake all our Danish Christmas cookies and on Saturday Tima is coming to help with the “Vanillie kranse” as we must have the baking over before her birthday December 16^th.

 

We wish you all a very Happy Christmas and all the best for a prosperous New Year and we hope to see as many of you as possible in 2012.

Lots of love and best wishes from ULLA & JOHN.

 

If you want to read more about our trip to China then go to: http://www.lunduk.com/china