Christmas Day

Santa still found us... even in Denmark! And the little Nisse elfs didn't play any tricks on us, instead they left us Chocolate Euros!

I can't even list the plethra of presents we all recieved. Sierra was most happy with her heeleys and Michaela was thrilled to have new Wii games to play. ...and little Scotty, well all he cared about was his big train table. Scott still has unopened gifts! I finally took some back to save for his birthday! He was more than content to open one at a time and play a while before being coaxed into opening another present.

It was a fun day and everyone was happy. Now it's time to clean up the mess and finish putting together the house I guess. That should entertain me for a while!

...and despite my last little note saying we were eating Goose on Christmas Eve, we didn't. We had steak. :) It was yummy. We did end up having rice pudding. Not so yummy.

tara

It's Christmas Eve Eve

(picture is from Oregon and unrelated to Christmas, but it's cute)

In Denmark the Danes all celebrate Christmas on the 24th and open their presents that night and then stay up all night playing with them. Santa visits Denmark that night to drop off gifts for any Americans that may be living here so that's why we are waiting until the 25th. This also explains how Santa can make it to all the houses all over the world in one night; he gets to skip some countries.

However Sierra was a bit concerned we didn't have a chimney for Santa to come down, but after a long discussion with our Danish friend about what exactly a "chimney" translates to in Danish, he explained that when he built this house he put a skylight in the roof for Santa instead of a chimney since he always though Chimneys were dirty and small. Good thing Santa doesn't have to fit in the radiator like I thought.. that did seem a bit impossible!

So Santa will be here soon, our tree is up and FULLY decorated. I'll take lots of pictures... Tomorrow we'll cook our goose and make some chocolate pudding for Nisse, who is a little tricky elf that visits on Christmas Eve - but pudding makes him nice and happy... and he may even leave a gift! I'll make plenty of pudding for us too and I'm supposed to hide an Almond in it so whoever gets the Almond gets the "Almond Present"! : )

(I do hope chocolate pudding is okay with Nisse because we don't like rice pudding). and the stores are all closed for the next four days! No day-after-Christmas shopping for me!

I went to the store today and nearly emptied the grocery store of 1.5% milk. :) I almost felt bad since I nearly took it all... Hey every American for themelves. :) I guess there was the expensive milk left... you know the milk that costs $10.00 a gallon instead of $7.00. What a bargin! I'm just glad I did my Christmas shopping in the States.

night night,
tara

Happy's Birthday

Happy is old-ER.

It was a fairly uneventful day. We ended up eating dinner at McDonalds and visiting with another family for a little bit that night. We then ate the wonderful cake I made (from my stash of American cake mixes). I did try to make my own frosting but I couldn't remember how... sorry mUm, I know you showed me last summer but my frosting ended up tasting like butter. I had to use my one and only American frosting container... so I better figure out frosting before the next cake comes along!

No I didn't fry the cake. It's in a frying pan because I don't have any cake pans here yet. Tomorrow morning we are supposed to get our big container full of our things!!

I am cold.

OUUUUU!!!!!!!!!! Look what I did! Pictures! (a little un-centered)

I wanted to describe how cold I am and figured only pictures could protray my coldness. For a few days evertyhing had frost on it - all day long... and frost all day long means it never gets above freezing... and freezing is cold. (The mud froze though) :)

We all thought the frozen spider web was really neat though... The other pictures are of our front and back yard... The frost did make everything look very pretty though. It didn't snow, but it looked like it, you can't really tell in the pictures though. From what I hear it doesn't snow much here; maybe once or twice a year.

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year, so after that it's 3.5 more minutes of sunshine every day. :) Soon enough I'll be complaining about the sun rise at 3am...

Traditional Danish Dinner

Well. It was interesting. I went out with all the other moms from school for a "Traditional Danish Christmas Dinner" a Julefrokost is what I think it was called. There was no turkey or mashed potatoes or yams or corn... I guess that's Thanksgiving, but that is what I would eat as a "Traditional Christmas Dinner".

This is what we ate:
Marineret slld med karrysalat · Stegt sild i lage · Sild i dild creme ·Fisketerrine med røget ål & æblekompot · Røget svinemørbrad med krydderurte-æggestand ·æble-fl æsk · Orangemarineret laks m/salat og nødder · Æg og rejer···Ribbenssteg m/rødkål samt brunede kartofl er · berberiand ·Glaseret juleskinke m/grønlangkål · Hjemmelavet leverpostej med bacon & champignon ·Medister m/hvidkålssalat · Salat af rødbeder & nødder i honninglage···Ostebræt med div. oste, hertil oliven samt frisk frugt · Ris á l’amande med kirsebærsauce ·Æbletærte med kanelcremeVi giver velkomstdrinken og mandelgaver.

I'm not sure what all that is and in most cases it's probably better I didn't. I do know that I consumed some... Pickled Eel was it? Something had bacon on it - and the bacon was good. The water had ice in it - so it was cold and that made me happy.

But it was fun to get away from my loving children for an evening and to meet some other English speaking people. I did come home hungry though.

Today's Grocery Store Trip

Usually the highlight of my day is the grocery store. There is typically a grocery store trip every day since my little fridge can only hold so many of the little liter milks they have. (I can get a two liter of soda and a two gallon container of ice cream, but only a teeny-tiny-itty-bitty liter of milk... which doesn't last too long with 5 people in the house.) I'm not sure if it's quite as annoying as the Canadian bags of milk. :) Sorry mUm.

Anyways, a grocery trip can make or break my day. Today I had the right coin to rent the shopping cart instead of using the little basket. I remembered my own bags so I didn't have to buy more. Scotty was manageable. I found cream cheese for the first time AND Nestle chocolate chip Break-N-Bake cookies. I got little drinkable yougurt things for lunches and some taco shells and American pancake mix! AND It wasn't raining as I loaded the car... so 620 kronner later I have food for 2 days. Ugh. (620 kr x 2 = 1240 1240/ 10 = $124.00)

The grocery store is in a mall type shopping center and they have long walking escalators that go up and down ...like the ones they have in long halls at the airport, no steps involved... So your shopping cart can go on it and the wheels lock into the escalator floor so they don't roll away. It's kinda neat, and Scotty's favorite part of the day! We just go up and down for fun.

Dinner: Chicken (yes, again) Brocolli, and Cresent Rolls!

Christmas Lights

I feel like an obnoxious American. ...and all I did was hang up christmas lights. We hung up two strands of twinkly, colored lights in our front windows... no big deal, but nobody else has colored lights, much less twinkly ones! I even think having TWO strands opposed to just ONE is overdoing it for here. I can only imagine what the Danes would think driving through the States during December. Can someone send us the huge inflatable santa snow globe on sale at Wal-mart for $200? That'll show em'!

AND - Huge Accomplishment: We found a restaurant we all like, even Scotty. It's called Bone's and it's an American spare-ribs place. We found it while desperatly in search of food one night and it turned out to be a fun place that gives the kids toys and balloons! AND the food is good so nobody complains... It's Michaela's new favorite place to go. ...yah yah, we should be enjoying Danish culture, but Danish culture doesn't taste as good.

MUD

When we first arrived one of the other mothers saw Sierra's white fur-lined coat and joked "I wonder how long that coat will stay white." Answer: Two days.

At school the playground is the equivilant of a giant mud puddle. I pick them up from school and they are covered in mud. They've fallen on their bums, knees, backs, hands, and arms... They've had muddy soccer balls hit them and when they run mud splatters up the back of them. It's GREAT.

I should lay some plastic down in the car... luckily the seats are leather. As soon as the little mud balls walk in the front door everything from shoes to coats is stuck in the washer to get cleaned up for another day of abuse.

I think Michaela should start a MUD blog and every day she can type out her fantastic "mud story" of the day. Today's story involved a big hill and bushes... it was very detailed and took 15 minutes to tell. Sierra's mud story: She was trying to go up the hill and around the mud puddle but the hill turned into a mud slide. Obviously not her fault.

My poor little displaced California girls.

Girls started school!

The girls started school yesterday and really enjoyed it! They are going to the International School in Aarhus so they can be taught in English. : ) They both recognized a few people in each of the classes from when we were here before so it made it easier on them to start mid-year. Plus all the kids were so happy to have more English speaking friends so they were welcomed with excitement.

Not much else about school yet, but here in Denmark they don't really like to "push" the kids to learn difficult things, or offer any challenges... which is fine I guess, but when we go back I need the girls to be at the same level as others in their grade so we also have "Mommy School". I just spend some extra time practicing things with them. I brought a lot of educational stuff from home like workbooks and games...

This time of year school is pretty much a big party anyways. They have ALL their field trips coming up and each of their classes are preforming a play next week. Looks like they made it just in time for the good stuff. (Just means more "Mommy School")

I'm still working on pictures, I don't have a laptop anymore and this computer doesn't like my memory card.

Mommy Made Dinner of the Night: Snitzel, Spaghetti, Salad, Garlic Bread
(no claim to have spelt snitzel correctly) : )