Christmas is approaching fast. The Christmas tree is up and Kim is busy shopping for presents for the various people.

The other night I managed to slot in 10 minutes for the first set of Christmas photos of Aiden and Lucas.




I was shooting these with a 50mm f1.4 lens to get the nice blurry Christmas tree lights. This also meant that I didn't have much room to play with when it came to focus...almost impossible with two moving kids whily trying to get the right mood with facial expressions, tantrums etc. Aiden couldn't sit still and Lucas refused to wear his hat. What do they say...never photograph wild animals and children!

The other day it was Aiden and Lucas Christmas concert with their daycare centre.

This year they were supposed to dress up in some country's national clothes.

We borrowed some Chinese clothes from KC and they looked very cute in it.






The concert went very well. We were especially impressed how well Aiden was able to follow the instructions and the moves to the various dances.








It was especially funny when they were singing this song with Konitchiwa...Namaste....BULA!!!!




Lucas was also in the first part of the concert sitting down the front with one of the carers.

Aiden is still playing soccer once a week. Last week he insisted on wearing my shoes instead of his own.



Maybe he was hinting that his old shoes are getting too small.

We have had a lot of rain lately. On one of the days I was showing Aiden and Lucas how to make a pair of funny glasses out of an egg crate and a piece of string.

They got to paint the glasses afterwards.

The other day I picked up Aiden and Lucas pretty late from daycare.

They were in the process of cleaning and Aiden was eagerly waiting for them to turn on the vacuum cleaner so he could play with it.

I have already gone out too far. I cannot return and jump over the stream because it is growing inside of me and is becoming a roaring river.
What are these strange thoughts I am having?
Were these free farmers in the hills above Varde Aaa more free at year 900 than they were in year 1100?
The only difference was christianity.

Off to the library
The landowner at Noerholm
The Herredfoged.
The Bishop in Ribe
It is all written here

I start thinking about hunting
A good hunter makes sure that they keep a healthy game on the property. He will feed the game during tough winters and make sure that the the overall health is there and have to most productive game survive.
No, it is not right to have these thoughts here in the library when it is the farmers I need to find information on.

Queen Margaret..
Make a claim on Noerholm..
Maybe there is something here..

Wasn't it the landowner of Noerholm that owned Noerholm?
Has he just built up Noerholm and then put his filthy hand on every surrounding piece of land and property?
Which the church was claiming that it should own?
Or was it the Bishop in Ribe?

This was not what I was supposed to find here at the library. It was the farmer - farmers!

Hunting...

What rubbish was that. I must get rid of these thoughts, this has nothing to do with hunting.

It wouldn't have been the lord who was out there beginning to move large boulders.

And not the bishop -

Christianity had just been introduced but building that many churches required a lot of workforce.

My thoughts are diverted.

Has this big change in faith based activity created communities, something in common because surely it was the farmers who built the churches.
This introduction was it something that made the existence easier for the farmers, my old roots.
It must have been, a lot of other things to believe in has been forgotten and the church is now a gathering place.

You should never start researching your ancestry.
You encounter one surprise after another and will never finish. There is always more.
There is changes in ones beliefs for every new discovery.

Of cause it was the farmers who built the churches. Who else would have?
They probably started with the words; "On the day of honour I am with you".

My thoughts are again left astray.

Russia build the aswan dam in Egypt.

Yes, I saw it myself with my own eyes. I drove in my car along the large canals they were digging.

How was it that they explained it to me?
This canal was to be dug 5 metres deep, 100 metres wide and should extend 800km out into the desert.

There were thousands of workers, it all looked like a large ants nests.
Men with baskets full of soil on their heads.

There was not a single Russian in this ants nest.

- Who actually built the Aswan Dam? -

Farmers

My grandads memoirs.

-

My Memoirs.

-

But there has to be something before us.

Our family of farmers from Kongeaaen at Toboel to Lyngbakkerne across Varde Aa - Mejls - Hornelund - Sig.

How did they live in the last 1000 years?

I rush to the library but it feels like hitting a miss in the lottery.

Have my ancestors, the farmers, not accomplished anything that made it worthy for a couple of pages in the danish history?

Yes, they have of cause not walked about killing each other to get hold of their neighbors possessions. Rather the opposite, from the looks of it, it was the farmers that were killed.

And for this the killers deserved a rather prominent mentioning in the history.

Yes, there was built a number of churches in the 1100's, but my relatives, the farmers are not mentioned.

I start to think.

- Who actually built these churches? -.

..as a couple of cows and a bull out on the feeding grounds. Something that can work and reproduce.

There is an old say like this - The devil looks after his own.
Let me immediately point out that the Devil didn't look after the farmers in the area around Varde and it was obvious that it was the met in power that were looked after by the Devil.

Here I would like to jump forward to 1300-1400 in the Danish history (Queen Margaret I). It is like my ancestors roots here start sprouting quickly. It is not quite clear who owns then, the church or the landowner at Noerholm.
Queen Margaret interfere in the argument and this gives the farmers a bit of breathing space.
A few farmers become more established and become independent (owns their land).
How should all these farmers see all the trouble ahead? Yes, even the Danish history has forgotten them.
It is only all the bad evil, power hungry people that are written about.
The more bloodthirsty the more pages they get in the book.

How mush is described about the farmers fight for independence against Kristian the 3rd?

The farmers at Varde invaded the river fortres at Varde and destroyed it but then had to retreat north with Captain Clement pursued by Johan Rantzau the kings right hand.
The farmers were at last defeated at Aalborg so that they would not appear in the history books. Not even crying and mourning by women and children behinds the hills at Varde river.

Honour becomes he who should be honoured.

I am stuck.

There is something peculiar about this study.

Why do I still return to - in a time of hunting?

Right! I remember, there is a book by that name.

I tell myself to think about something else - And he thoughts saw wide views.
And the neighbours wife said to her mum - That decease looks just like...

No, this is enough...

Were the farmers the hunted game or not?
Were the king, the lords, the church, the bishop the hunters?

Were the farmers the game and the hunting so good that the hunters couldn't agree on splitting the game?
Was it like that all over Denmark? Of cause it was. the Varde area was no exception.

It is something strange you are getting involved in when you study your ancestors.
The farmers had to live, otherwise there was nothing to hunt, but when the land owner was about to loose his hunting rights then the hunting escalated to the point where the game was about to go extinct.
The hunters would then loose interest and start hunting elsewhere.

Here we can mention the war against Sweden with its following plague as well as Napoleon with his Spanish troops in Denmark.

The farmers always recovered, because they were the lifeline for Denmark.
Children are born and new generations grow up between the marshes and hills without knowing whether they in years to come will be valuable as game and hence again be hunted to extinction.

It is the owners of the hunting grounds, their mentality and actions that is written into the Danish history. They have been lifted onto the podium for their dishonest behaviour.

On the contrary is just mentioned as an afterthought...

Last weekend it was pretty warm here in Sydney and the lawn needed watering.

I turned on the sprinkler and we let the boys have some water play.

It is Friday, so time for a little photoshop fun.

Lucas gets really scared whenever Aiden roars like a dinosaur/dragon. When we went to the forest last weekend he again got scared and I snapped this photo and decided to insert a dragon into it.

This weekend when we went to Luna Park I took this panorama I took this panorama from the top of the ferris wheel.

It is a series of 5 photos stitched together. The large one if amazing. You can clearly see individuals at Sydney Opera house and you can tell the colour of their clothes.

It was just taken handheld with my D800 and 50mm lens.

This weekend we went Luna Park to celebrate Sammi's birthday.



The kids (especially Aiden and Sammi) had loads of fun on the different rides.

Last weekend we made another excursion to Centennial. This time to a different and more open area (Kim wanted to have picnic on the manicured lawn, but I convinced her to move into the trees so the kids could play).
















They also wanted to go and play/climb on the rocks.

Here are a lot of individual photos of the kids that I haven't had a chance to post because they didn't really justify a post or not of the best quality.

First one is one of Lucas with face paint from daycare.


And he throws the biggest tantrums once in a while. Here is one on the street.


Here Aiden and Lucas are being silly and trying to balance on one leg.




And here is Aiden think he is stuck under the sofa (he is not).



Here he is very proud of his colouring in from daycare.


They both have the same bathrobes.


As a reward we took Aiden to the movies to watch 'How to train your dragon 2'.


We are still trying to teach Aiden how to ride a bicycle.



A scary hand.


They love their chocolate and ice cream.





Chilling out.


Selfies.







Breakfast.






A beautiful sunset.

Last weekend kim was away for a girls weekend.

While she was away I decided to go to the little forested area of Centennial park and let the boys play amongst the trees.

They had a lot of fun just making up their own games.

Aiden and Lucas are doing a lot of painting and drawing at daycare.

Here is some of their better work.

This one I call 'The water dragon' by Lucas


This is 'The night owl' by Aiden (Aiden calls it 'Wave')

Here is a couple of photos from Lucas' 2 year birthday with the family.

This is without a doubt my favourite photo of the day (and it was also one of the first I took).

There is something very serene and dream like about this photo that I really like, and the dreamy look or the model fits well.




Set & Lights: Studio 1A Sydney
Model: Jacqueline S (IKON)
HMUA: Donna Kalasho
Photo: Rene Pallesen

Lucas and Aiden got themselves a surfing lesson. Aiden was too scared to go, but Lucas had a great time.