Goodbye to 2014 and hello to a New Year

Marianne:
The time before Christmas did not at all turn out as expected. Michael´s mom passed away on December 19th - Michael´s birthday. This was an absolute shock for everyone, since Hilda was in good health and only 69 years old. She had a stroke. The funeral service was on December 23rd.

This of course highly influenced our Christmas. We decided to spend Christmas Eve in the summerhouse together with Max. We had a very nice and quiet evening. We were supposed to celebrate Christmas with Michael´s mom Hilda and Max, so we didn´t have a christmas tree. We did our best and made a fun decoration with candles - close to the real thing. Christmas dinner was made to honor my mother in law. We had duck, pork roast with the skin on and everything else that is needed for this very special and traditional meal.

On the 26th, Michael and I went for a long walk by the beach. I know that I have previously published pictures from the area around the summerhouse - and that is probably going to continue. We simply love this heavenly place on earth! This day we went in the afternoon - and everything simply looked pretty.

We drove back home to Zealand on the 30th. so that we were able to step into the New Year together with Lone and Peter. We stayed at their house with 2 other couples and had a very nice evening. It was wonderful to be among friends on this last night of the year. We ended up staying the night, since it was impossible to get a taxi.

After less that two weeks, we went back to FriisBo - our summerhouse. We arrived Friday the 9th in the evening. We decided to make this a very easy trip, since it was very short, so we were traveling light and without a lot of supplies. That´s why we bought take-away ”shooting stars”. It is a classic kind of open sandwich with deep fried fish, smoked salmon, shrimp and other nice things. Yummi!!!

Saturday morning we realized that the lot was VERY wet. Actually I had to wear wellis when I went to get wood for the fire place. All of a sudden we had a small pond in front of the woodshed. Later that day, Michael was going to the traditional ”basement lunch” with the scuba diving fraternity at Dan´s. I spent the day together with Ulla, Trine and Bjørn - it was a very nice, relaxing day. We went for a long walk, talked, had tons of coffee, wonderful food and Ulla treated my sore shoulders with acupuncture.

This was a crazy weekend, because we had two storms (twin storms) hitting the west coast of Denmark. They were called Dagmar and Egon. Egon caught us the night between Saturday and Sunday, so this was a pretty interesting night. We have this solar panel on the roof and it came loose, which made a lot of noise. The combo of this and the fear of it falling down, totally ruined my sleep. Sunday morning Michael had to crawl up on the roof and he tried to tie the panel so that it would´t fall down. Apparently he was successful, since it was still there, when the handymen came to fix it on Monday. By that time, we were back home in Farum. The picture is from the newspaper and shows ”our” stairway to the beach. It is VERY seldom that the water is so close. We had a wonderful breakfast with my parents - as always it was very nice to visit with them. We went to Max´s house to see how he was coping. And he seemed to be okay, which was a huge relief.