Night Night

BEDDING. Even from Germany to Denmark the bedding is different. Pillows, mattresses, duvets, sheets...

We have a multi-cultural bedding household.
Sierra's bed is Danish, her duvet is Danish, her pillow is American.
Scotty's bed is Danish, his duvet is Canadian, his pillow is German.
Andrea's crib is Danish, her duvet is German, her two pillows are American and German.
Michaela's bed is American, her duvet is Danish, her pillow is American.
Happy and my bed is German, our American mattress has a Danish duvet and we have German AND American pillows. :)

Buying new sheets and bedding is a difficult task because they are all different sizes. THIS, Ingrid, is why I don't have extra sheets. :)


Head - German pillow
Belly - American pillow
Feet - Danish pillow

PAPER: is not the same size either: ...AND the holes are in silly spots.

PAPER HOLES: A sheet of lined notebook paper. Here you either get two holes in the middle or four along the entire edge. I think this is seriously just dumb. Three holes in a piece of paper makes perfect sense; one on each side and one in the middle. Two holes makes the paper wiggle all over and four holes... I don't know.

Another paper complaint while I'm at it. They make the kids use graph paper for math. Not just graph work, but for any math. They aren't supposed to write numbers in each of the squares either. I have no idea why. Denmark did it too. Writing on graph paper is hard because there are lines going everywhere... it's called graph paper for a reason. (Psst. It's used for GRAPHS!)

ENVELOPES: I have to fold my American standard business envelopes over a half an inch and tape it or else I pay five times as much. I finally bought German envelopes though because they scowled at me when I taped it right in front of them. (Of course Germans scowl at me all day long..)

Autum is here... oops I mean Spring

Everyone else on the street gets green trees for Spring. Everyone else in the world for that matter... Spring is when green leaves come and make trees bright and happy. Autumn is when red and brown leaves come. For some reason my house is currently surrounded by red leaved trees... and to call them red is a stretch, they mostly look a dull maroon, like my couch :) or even brown. Yuck. I don't understand. They are not red maple trees as my Canadian Husband thought, although the red one in the backyard looks maple leaf-y. They are just red ugly trees... that drop a zillion small pokey balls that open up revealing a small seed that grew baby trees all over the yard. Sierra called them "books, bo in Danish (bog)" she said they were in Denmark. My mom and I wondered if they would turn green. No Mom, they show little hope of becoming pretty and green. :( But you can't see the houses across the street anymore.



Here is my yard. I took these pictures from the kitchen window on our first floor since we are living the skyrise life and have no ground floor. The owner of the house lives on the bottom floor. She is great. She called the DMV for me yesterday and acted as my translator saving me a trip to that awful place.


Here are my rhododendron bushes Ingrid. :) They had a few white flowers and with this last week of semi-warm weather some purple and pinks flowers have been popping up. The homeowner said this year isn't a good year for the flowers and that usually the bushes are FULL of flowers. :) I think this is what California plants in the middle of divided freeways. Big giant bushes that make flowers. :) (Did I mention I miss California?)

ipod

This is Scotty, the coolest four year old in school. :) He sat down this morning and pulled out his ipod touch and within nine seconds he had this group of older boys over his shoulder. :) HILARIOUS!

This school is so great. I LOVE it! Scotty runs in and runs to his seat and sits nicely and does his work. :) A normal school with something to amuse the kids so they don't just run wild until the class officially starts. I miss Denmark but I do not miss the school there. I predict it will be a parking lot in two years...

I forgot

I forgot I had a blog. Oops.

Friday just Scotty was out of school. We played at home because that is what he wanted to do. His normal school days are pretty long (8:30 - 3:00), and they are full of activities so I figured the boy could have a day of Wii. :) I did manage to force him to help me make cookies. He was impressed with the electric mixer and even more impressed when the oatmeal he thought was yucky tasted okay when mixed with sugar, butter and chocolate chips. :)

Saturday we did nothing. Michaela was at a sleep over party. We went to breakfast at a bakery we found. I took Andrea and Scotty grocery shopping. Sierra and Happy spent the day at IKEA. :) They bought a new red leather couch and chair to replace the old red couch we had. :) The new red is more maroon-y, the old red was bright red.

My thoughts on the color red: It's not a fun color anymore because it's WAY too common. Red may as well be beige. I liked red before because it was different and fun. Now everyone has red in their kitchens. We had red kitchen chairs and I felt like I was being different. Now I'm just boring. I think we will get lime green chairs, or purple... maybe yellow or orange. Red is blah.

All that said about red, I do like our new couch much better than the old one... Which, by the way, was new too. We are good at changing our minds and returning things. We've probably returned a 1000 euros worth of things because we "changed our mind". :) Oh well, I like our green couch in the kids' living room and our new maroon-y one in the grownups' living room. :) The orange couch we have, I dislike it a great deal. (I would even go as far as to say I hate it, but Scotty doesn't not allow anyone in the house to say hate.) The orange couch is in the quest room and turns into a pretty handy bed so it will have to stay... for now.

Another product of Saturday's IKEA-thon was a bed for Happy and me!! For the last few months we have been sleeping on a mattress which was lying on the floor. :) It was fun for a while because it was fun to play on with the kids. :) I would have been happy a mattress on the floor because let's face it, at the end of the day I'd be happy with sleeping on a tile floor, I didn't care. ...but now that we have a real bed, the first real bed we've had since leaving the States, it's more comfy to go to sleep. I like it too.

It was a rare IKEA trip that went well since the bed was 70% off for a broken box and the maroon-y couch was discounted too AND the couch was even delivered the SAME DAY. The IKEA gods were smiling on us...

Sunday. I took Sierra out for lunch. Every other week I take Michaela or Sierra out for breakfast or lunch for some "Mommy Time". Secretly it's my time away from that small little Poozie Monster too. :) Then Happy takes the three big ones away while Andrea naps so I have some alone time. This Sunday Andrea slept for an entire 35 minutes and was woken up by the POURING rain and thunder.

Monday. No school again. I have absolutely no idea why. May is littered with random holidays. I can't even think of what we did. Maybe this was the day Happy took the kids for ice cream. I can't remember and I don't think it really matters. :)

Perhaps tomorrow I'll have something of interest to write about. I do actually, I took a picture of it with my phone today. :) It will have to wait though, I don't feel like getting up to get the phone. :)

me

Grammer, or lack of...

Why doesn't the German language capitalize the first letter of a sentence? It looks so weird to get a letter in the mail that has capital letters on words that are in the middle of sentences. I feel like giving it to Sierra to correct for extra English homework. I think the rule is they capitalize every noun. Odd.

here is what a german Sentence would look like. (maybe) i think It is silly. why does Everyone have to be so different? why can't We all just agree to do It the same?

Of course... in Spanish you put an upside down question mark at the beginning of the question. :) This seems perfectly normal to me since I've grown up with it. ¿What do you think?

I also think that 'these are not quotation marks' like the British text books say... I say, "Michaela, use the REAL quotation marks, they are better".

AND why does Europe switch the comma and the dot in numbers? I'm finally used to it and I don't notice it now... but for a while 24,95 DKK seemed like a lot of money for a loaf of bread!! It was also pretty tricky telling my bank how much to pay people because I'd have to type 1.500,75 DKK, and it just felt wrong.

Don't get me started on the dates being reversed. Obviously you need to know the month before the day... and the year is last. My birthday is 8/27/77, not 27/8/77. But at least I can figure that one out. What about 4/6/10. Is this June 4th or April 6th? Uh oh... When I look at 4/6/10 now I guess I see June 4th. That's kinda sad... :)

Happy Hotel

We had more visitors! :) I'm happy all my Denmark friends still love me!

We had two families visit with us this last weekend. One family is hopefully going to move here next year so that will make me very happy.

The other family, our friends from Poland, came to stay with us for the weekend... We took them around Hamburg, which was good for us to finally see too. We took the boat ferry up the river, went to the Planten Blomen park, saw some of they city... It was nice to see them again and have them stay with us.

The Happy Hotel is already booked for another weekend! YAY KERSTIN!!! She has reserved her room with the promise of a box of Cheerios. :) (I still think it's funny I'm importing food from Denmark.)

As for our weather... It's been cold and despite it's technically been warm I'm getting pretty tired of it really being cold. Not quite sure I can deal with this poopy weather much longer... I've decided that if the world voted, California would win for the best weather... but you are only allowed to vote if you have lived in California. :)

my TEETH.

Guess what? My teeth still feel funny. I still don't feel like I can bite apples or beef jerky. :) They don't really hurt, just feel weird and like they aren't fully healed. I use them to bite now, but they just feel wiggly even thought they aren't.

I went to a dentist last week to confirm they aren't dead. :) They seem to be fine, but I guess teeth that are smashed in by concrete take a while to heal. Here is the story... Reading it now makes me smile... :)

The bruises on my legs still hurt too... The bruises were from where my hands, which were still holding onto the pogo-stick, hit my legs. This is odd because the visible bruise isn't there, but if a kid leans on my leg it hurts still... I think I'm broken. Can a bruise last forever?

I was thinking about this because today Michaela stood on the edge of a cardboard box. I don't know why... but she jumped off but the box slipped and she fell, but caught herself with her hands and it was uneventful. After it happened I had to sit down. I was so scared that she was going to hurt herself like me! That second of fear made me sick to my stomach...

Of course, I still use my "experience" against the kids often. "Don't do that or else you might knock your teeth in and you'll get a teeth bandaid!!" ...works everytime!