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. :)

She really left...

I arrived at the train station this morning at 7:20am with four children... and I left with only three of them... Little Bear left us. :(

She was beyond excited to go on this trip. Scotty was beyond sad to see his sister leave. He had the most depressed and pouty look on his tiny face that you could ever imagine. He will miss his big sister very much.

Sierra to Copenhagen

I thought it was absolutely crazy when Michaela went to Copenhagen when she was nine. Now that we have been living the "European Lifestyle" where I send my kids to the grocery store for milk and make them ride city buses alone... going to Copenhagen at the age of nine doesn't seem so unreasonable. :)

Needless to say, Sierra is totally excited and has her bags packed and ready to go. They are gone December 1, 2, and 3rd. :)

Thought I'd tell everyone.

ThanksgivingS done

We had TWO thanksgivings. :) Neither one I was very good at taking pictures though. Thursday and Saturday. Thursday's are hard sometimes because it's just a normal day for everyone here. Work, school, etc.. It was a good day though, even though I spent the first half on standing at random bus stops in order to get kids where they needed to be and eggs that I needed since my car had been in Germany for the week! (Yep, this also means I transported a frozen turkey on the bus.)

...AND because of the pouring rain and a missed bus Scotty and I even justified a $20 snack of some juice and a cookie since it was Thanksgiving. P.S. - I've upped my "Danish level", 40 kroner is now considered cheap. 40 kroner is EIGHT DOLLARS!

Paul was driving home from Germany all Thursday morning which left me to prepare the house and cook the turkey. It was all relatively stress-free since I started so early and I cooked most everything the night before. The girls were a huge help too. I even made cranberry sauce from real, live cranberries!!! How domestic am I!!? I don't think I've ever seen a real cranberry before. I learned you don't eat cranberries unless you "do something" to them first. ick.

So for Thanksgiving Thursday we invited the remaining Americans to our house and had TONS of food. We had everything we needed/wanted... other than some great flyers to flip through but I'm not going to talk about what we DIDN'T get. It was a really nice night, I was happy. :) I think it was a record for number of people served dinner in my house. 8 adults. 10 children. It went pretty well and the house recovered. My house seemed so quiet when everyone left. :)

Saturday we invited another a different family over. Definitely not as crowded but it was a fun night and I got to catch up with my friend who, until she got a real job and moved to Horsens I got to spend a lot of time with her!! :) I miss her and the kids...

I hope my children don't think we are going to have a huge party in two more days. Party time is over at the Happy's. :) I will now scrub the floors and I will enjoy not cooking while we eat leftover turkey for a week. I made turkey soup just like my grandma taught me. I'll make another batch of turkey soup from the Saturday turkey too. :) My favorite turkey leftover is turkey and pineapple and cream of something? soup... put on top of white rice. YAY! I'm looking forward to that! I wonder what other yummy turkey things I can do? :) I'm sure I can figure out something.

I just decided I am going to try and feed my family turkey every day until I can't do it any longer. :) Let's see how far I can go!

Bornehaven

Bornehaven Story.

With the help of a friend I finally translated the newsletter from Scotty's school. On the last page it has funny stories telling about what some of the kids did/said that month. This month Scotty was in it.

His bornehaven has two rooms, the red and the blue. Scotty is in the red room.

One day all the kids were playing together in the blue room. A "blue room" girl was playing with Scotty. Another "blue room" girl came up to them and began playing with them. Soon she realized Scotty was speaking funny (English) so she asked the other "blue room" girl why. The girl said it was because he was from the red room. :)

I thought it was cute. :)

Scotty's teachers say he is speaking more Danish and English sentences and it's hard to sometimes pick out which words are from which language. Now when he tells me something about his day he tells me if it happened in English or Danish. Like, "I needed more soap so I asked in English."

Missing things...

...I miss being warm. Today in Tracy, California is was 20 degrees AND sunny.

I talked to my grandma on the phone yesterday and I miss her too ...and my mom, I miss her too.