and the winner is...

Hamburg, Germany!!!

Yes, the next country on our list is officially Hamburg, Germany.

Not for visiting... for living. :)

This was never our intent when we arrived in Denmark, 25 months ago. We had definite plans on going right back to the United States. We even left a huge container of our things in storage thinking this was just a little two year "excursion".

Things don't always go as planned though and we are shipping our storage container to Germany now. :) I want my stuff... Plus the thought of filling a shipping container full of American things... knowing what I have learned over the past two years!!! Wow, talk about a HUGE treat! Who wants a crock pot or musical instrument?? :) My dear husband thinks he is putting a dirt bike in it. :) I will fill it full of canned food... cream of everything, spaghetti o's, pumpkin pie!! Oh, the heavy things we will pack!!!!

So Hamburg it is. We already have the work permit and the work contract so the paperwork is all in order, all we need is a house for six! That's the hard part I'm afraid. Either way, house or no house... within the next three months I think we will have left our beloved Denmark.

Truth be told, I will miss Denmark. I just recently found out how to buy roast beef. I know where to get butternut squash and cottage cheese. Just the thought of "un-enrolling" Scotty from his school makes me sad. Scotty finally successfully said "Vil du lie" to a friend and the friend said YES! This was really exciting for Scotty. (Do you want to play?) I have made such great friends and so have the girls ...and this is the only house Andrea has lived in, she likes it. :(

We will make Germany work. It will be fun. In Germany I will have to learn German, we all will. ...as in, take classes and really learn it! I will have to figure out grocery stores and, again, moo at people in the meat aisle to confirm I'm buying beef. I'll have to find activities for the kids. I'll have to figure out how to ride buses and trains... I'm excited though. Having moved to a totally new country before I know what to do and what NOT to do. It's just three hours south so we can see all our friends still... that makes it less sad for us to leave. It will just be another adventure... a German one!!

Good job Happy on being smart and important and supporting your little family of six... :)

**40** years of Happy

My husband is 40. I am not. Just for the record, I am 32. :)

Paul turned 40 on Friday and we had a big party for him on Saturday. On his real Friday birthday we had great plans to go into town, look at all the lights, walk around, then have dinner somewhere. We even canceled our babysitter to have this great evening of family fun... BUT It was too cold, -4 degrees and snowing, the kids were not feeling well, I was too busy preparing things for his party... We stayed home while Happy went to McDonalds and got some take out fast food. Super exciting day! Turns out the kids are the ones who get to go to nicer restaurants for their birthdays! (We have a raincheck for the babysitter though...)

However, Saturday was his birthday party day! That's when all the excitement happened!! :) We had ~20 other people come over and it was a lot of fun. I'm almost getting used to inviting lots of people over!! Of course this time I planned on feeding them all dinner and that was a little scary. We just had "big" appetizers and it all worked out. :) Everyone ate lots, the kids had lots of fun, and all the adults played cranium later in the night... can't remember whether or not the men or women won. Oh yah, we gave the men so many "pity points" that they won. :)

Our kids went to bed at midnight. :)

Paul's cake worked out pretty well too. :) I made him three. One boring lemon cake, one set of pink cupcakes, and one FORTY LAYER CAKE!

Here is how to make a forty layer cake.
- Start with a pre-made loaf cake and premade frosting... building the cake is enough work.
- Pile the layers on top of each other.
- Hold it still as it begins to slide.
- Support it with wooden skewers.
- Support it with yarn.
- Add more skewers and yarn as necessary.
...and Whoaalla. A 40 layer cake. :) It stayed standing all night although more yarn was added as it began to slip off to the side.

So that's that. My husband is 40. I am not.
I didn't take lots of pictures so if you came to our party email me some pictures!! My new years resolution will be to take more pictures! :) HA, Happy just told me I have 46,000 pictures on the computer. :)

SNOW!
This is the craziest thing on earth. You should see all the snow here!! Here are some pictures so you can!! :)It was fun the first day when I was the only mom in Denmark who kept her kids home to play in the snow... Today I thought I should be a bit more responsible and send the kids to their last day of school before winter break so I drove through the blizzard to get them there. Yuck... 45 minutes later we arrived! It was not a fun drive. Several times I thought that there was NO way I was going to make it up the hill or around the corner or through the slushy roundabout... I am super cool though, I passed many weenies who got stuck. Not I! :) I shouldn't talk yet... it's supposed to snow for the rest of the week! I could be in a snow bank before I know it!Oh, snow tires? No, we don't have those... the guy at the snow tire store laughed at me when I called to ask for an appointment today. On December 23rd I can get snow tires... :) Snow is more fun when you don't have to drive in it. I can't imagine having to live like this every day... I thought it would be fun, but it's day two and I'm annoyed. Again, it's fine if I'm at home playing in it but things like grocery shopping, getting gas, going to the dump, driving kids to school... these are not fun things to do in the snow.

Today I had to unfreeze a grocery cart and try to shove my coin into the frozen slot and then drag the dumb thing through the iced over snowy bumpy parking lot... don't forget the freezing cold wind and blowing snow... and the poor little Andrea was involved... she isn't sure of all this cold white stuff. Of course, she does now that she likes to eat it. :) Today she was crying in the car and I had another 20 minutes... so I rolled down the window, took a chunk of ice off the car, and passed it to the backseat... instant happiness!Us going to school... :)It was cute to see Scotty's bornehaven's playground... covered in snow. The kids all brought sleds and went sledding all day. Scotty loved it!At least white snow everywhere makes it look brighter outside. I am getting tired of the blah gray sky. I did see some light blue sky today though... just for a minute

Super Tree, Gifts, & Pink Eye!

The less I write, the busier I am. I blame it all on Andrea. She is a little poozling monster.

GIFTS!
The past few weeks we have gotten SIX packages from North America! It's been so awesome you don't even know... really though unless you have lived overseas and can't get things like Fruit Pebbles you can't possibly understand how important they become. I can't believe how happy I am to get pumpkin pie mix and chocolate chips! It's almost sad!! Thanks Lisa and Erica and mUm and Mom... you all spent WAY too much on shipping! :)

I heard that next year we will only get to import one checked bag per person! True? If so, it makes the recent packages I've received even more valuable!

CHRISTMAS TREE!
We got our Christmas tree! We froze for two hours doing a scavenger hunt with Danish clues as part of a "company party" through Paul's work. :) It was all written in Danish... nothing translated... Michaela and I read what we could and found another confused American to tag along with.

After the scavenger hunt, we searched through the forest and found the perfect tree! It's huge and all the kids helped cut it down. It was fun and we like our tree. :) I've never cut down my own Christmas tree before... at least not that I can remember? Dad, did you ever cut down a tree for us?

Scotty loved to decorate it the most. He piles on as many ornaments on a branch as he can and then finds another branch. ...and when our big tall tree fell over he was happy because he got to put the ornaments back on. :) Andrea isn't too concerned with the tree. There are a few decorations that she likes and they have turned into her toys that she poozles about with.

COOKIES!
A while back we made cookies with Erin and her kids before they moved back to the states. They turned out much better than the cookies I tried to make yesterday with six other kids from school, in which I forgot the sugar and they turned out to be scones that we topped with butter instead of frosting. :)


We all miss Erin and their family... they moved back to the States a couple weeks ago. Friends leaving is no fun and it's a part of this lifestyle we now have. It's hard on the kids too. However with Erin and her family we don't really think we "lost" them because they currently live in Southern California, a 6 hour drive from my parents)... but they will be moving to Philadelphia, an 8 hour drive from Paul's parents... so we are confident we will see them again! Either way though, we all still miss them. :( :) Yes, there is a cookie under all that frosting... Scotty loves frosting.

PINK EYE!
My poor little Poozle has two pink eyes where her cute little blue ones used to be. :( So sad... but the drops I made the doctor give me seem to be making her less "gooey". The drops aren't drops though... they are like a gel and IMPOSSIBLE to get into her eye. I've learned that if a 15 month old does not want to open their eye, there is nothing you can do about it!

GAZILLION POINTS for DENMARK

I woke up really sick on Monday at 3:00AM. I had terrible stomach pains, and by 7:00am I thought I was in full labor. It hurt so bad. I was not a happy little American.

I decided something was wrong so I called the Emergency Room to see if I could go in. They said, "No, call the after hours doctor." So I called the after hours doctor...

I explained to the after hours doctor that I have had children before and this was the same kind of pain. I couldn't stand up. I couldn't talk. It was exactly like having contractions! :( At first the doctor told me to wait and go to my regular doctor when he opened in an hour. If I would have said okay and hung up I would have hated Denmark with every inch of my body... but I didn't because I've been here long enough to know that what you want won't happen unless you push for it. I said I can't wait, please help me. The lady said she would call me back in five minutes.

HA. Yah, right she would call me back. It wasn't looking good for me. BUT.... She did call me back!! She told me a doctor was on the way. I questioned her for three minutes... maybe there was a translation issue. A doctor was really coming to my house???

Sure enough, 15 minutes later a doctor is in my bedroom giving me a shot of some wonderful drugs and I felt instantly better and went to sleep. Seriously... 15 minutes later and a doctor was making a HOUSE CALL! How super cool is that??!!! I loved that doctor. I loved his little black bag full of various drugs... I loved Denmark! I thought Dr. Quinn was the only one who made house calls... they don't really do that anymore... ahhh, but I guess they do!

Of course he did diagnose me wrong... and so did the next doctor I saw later that day. :) It wasn't kidney stones or a bladder infection or appendicitis. It was a yucky stomach bug that has now gone away on it's own. (PS - A pregnancy test confirmed I wasn't pregnant. I just got to have the pains one more time...)

I'm happy to be healthy again ...and so is my family. Michaela had to stay home from school on Monday to help with Andrea. Paul is really busy at work and had to leave for Germany Tuesday night... but the girls saved the day again. Michaela made canned soup for dinner for all of us and they both helped with the little ones.

The house, and family, are finally recovering from mommy being off duty for two days. :)

Scotty's Class!

Looks so sweet and innocent huh?

I love that the bikes are included in the photograph. Every bornehaven here has a fleet of bikes, scooters, and moon cars. It's Scott's favorite thing to do.

She came back!

Three days later... BEAR RETURNED! :)

Scotty and Andrea were the happiest to see her. They missed her so much! It was cute to see that they really did miss her. Andrea immediately wanted Sierra to hold her and Scotty just rambled on about with everything he had to wanted to tell her in the last few days.

Sierra, of course... had a wonderful time. The first things she tells me about is how she went on the star flyer a big swing at Tivoli and it broke and got stuck at the top for 20 minutes!! AHHH.... And I wasn't there to save her! I'm happy she was sitting next to her teacher though so she didn't panic. But I guess her teacher is the only reason she knew it was broken because they told everyone in Danish... :) She thought the long pause was part of the ride.

She told me about all the candy she ate and about how she spent 200 kroner in an estimated five minutes. :) They had a great train ride and hotel stay... She wasn't impressed with the dinners and wanted me to make something yummy for dinner. :) I'm so glad she went. She had a great time. I'm happy to have her back home.

It's funny how missing one person from your family can totally make every day feel weird and not quite right. I love my little Bear!

Here are some of her pictures. :)