Dear friends,

We want to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Last year we postponed the Christmas letter to a new year letter and then to an Easter letter, a summer letter and finally we didn't write any. This year we want to do it better so you get the letter already for Christmas.

As we don't think that you have enough patience to read our entire diary for the two last years and as we're not quite sure that we can remember everything that has happened (our memory is not like it used to be) we will just mention some few highlights.

The doing and being of our children is always a highlight for us.

• Kirstine (5 years) has lost her first 2 teeth. She likes to play with dolls, dress up and listen to uncle Carl (our neighbour) when he reads fairytales for her. Furthermore she thinks that kissing is disgusting.
• Mathias (8 years) likes to play computer games and to read Donald Duck. He likes to be smart so he has bought himself a black rubber-jacket (almost leather) that he wears all the time.
• Thomas (10 years) has now got his own room, he has started to learn English in school and to create his own home-page (www.ahle.dk chose the Thomas link).

Per has got the same job with ecological farmers as always and the same trips to Bruxelles. He has got a new minister, Ritt Bjerregaard, that used to be a commisioneer for environment in the European Union and who is very interested in organic farming and asks a lot of questions all the time giving Per a lot of work.

Susanne is still in the directorate of finances under the ministry of Finance, now mostly working with the home-page of the directorate ( www.finansstyrelsen.dk). Furthermore she's trying to write a manual about how to work on projects.

About holidays we can mention that we still go on IAAS-canoe-trips during whit-sun you can see some old photos on our home page (www.ahle.dk). This year Ana from Portugal with her Norwegian boyfriend and Brazuca from Brazil joined us. Las year Ana and Bo from Sweden participated.

This summer, Susanne spent 3 days in rain in a scout camp with all the kids now Susanne hates rain!!!

We spent one week in Sweden in a house in the forest together with our friends Lene & Mads with children, Brazuca and Alexander & Susanne (from Germany) with children. We had a lot of beer, camp-fire and rain. One day the 3 heroic men went out in a boat from 4 pm to 10 pm in pouring rain to come back with 5 of the smallest fish you can imagine but of course those fish were the best fish we have ever caught.

In September we went to Portugal to visit Ana and to see Brazucas family (her father is from Portugal). We had a very nice trip a 2500 km drive around Portugal in 10 days. After visiting a lot of Brazuca's family, Thomas said he was very happy that only half of Brazucas aunts live in Portugal. Well, to say the truth we also had some very nice days at a swimming pool and at the beach.

Now I guess that we have written enough to make everyone fall asleep.

Something new: This year we didn't send any IAAS-Christmas -lunch-letters !!!! We prefer to send e-mails and we didn't feel like writing e-mails during the Christmas-lunch.

So once again Merry Christmas and a happy new year

From the Dybdahl Ahle family

Susanne and Per

E-mail: dybdahl@ahle.dk