Late Summer Catchup

To finally get completely up-to-date I have to whip through August and September to this point. So here we go.

Actually it looks like we’re going to begin in late July, with the very last days on Holger Danskes Vej. So cozy!

And the house became just as cozy the very day we moved!

But Molli Malou adjusted easily.

And once we had finally cleared some living space to breathe in, things got real nice real quick.

We were so happy for Molli Malou to finally have a room of her own, all to her self, uncluttered by stacks and stacks of Mor’s and Daddy’s stuff that couldn’t fit anywhere else. Here’s the room as we set it up for her originally:

Now, just this past weekend we spent Saturday at IKEA loading up on improvements for the room, which still looked more or less like it does in the above photo except for an addition 6-8″ of toys blanketing every square inch of the floor. No pictures of the improvements yet, but they’re coming.

Meanwhile, ownership of the room was established at once.

And our beloved green room, slated to become our exercise room, currently serving as Trine’s office, finally got a taste of its future:

And we had the unbelievable good fortune of stumbling across the one refrigerator in all of Denmark that actually fit into the custom-cabinets!

By now, of course, it was time to trim the hedges, which had grown so waywardly during our absence.

The rest of the yard was still a mess, as you’ll see, but the neighbors can’t see inside the hedges, so we figured the rest could wait.

Molli Malou and Mille had of course picked their friendship right up where it had left off.

Aha! The back alley. Believe me, it actually got worse than what you’re about to see long before it got better. . .

These weird things were popping up all over among the low shrubbery.

Turns out they’re called “Jack-in-the-Pulpit.” The berries are mildly toxic and can burn fingers and tongues.

For our fifth anniversary, the designated present was “wood.” So we bought and planted a tree. It’s some kind of azalea, I think… it was Trine’s counter-offer to my suggestion of a pear tree.

It’s about this time the new camera arrived. I took a shot of the overgrown back terrace, but keep in mind this was long after little feet and bicycles and scooters had tramped down most of the bigger weeds, some of which were nearly as tall as the intrepid acrobat who crushed them all.

Fiddling with the new camera, I discover a black and white option.

…and I experiment with the “Kids and Pets” setting, but it’s still not fast enough to capture two 4-year-olds in motion.

There was a parents’ night kind of thing at Molli Malou’s børnehaven, and she seemed quite proud of the place. She showed us her particular favorite places.

And she got to make her own Indian headdress!

That was a Friday evening. . . the following weekend I finally had my chance to attack the weeds. Who da man? (Da weed-killin’ man?)

The next weekend I advanced to walnut tree pruning. Never tried it before in my life.

Here are the walnut trees, on the left and right.

See the walnuts?

After I’d hacked a few branches down, Molli Malou helped gather all the walnuts off the fallen boughs.

She was so excited about the whole thing she wanted to take pictures of her own.

We climbed onto the garage roof — yes, even Molli Malou — where we got a new perspective on the house.

The fruits of our trimming were many… but unripe.

(In fact we had intended to make Walnut Schnapps and pickled walnuts, which you can do with unripe walnuts, but as the walnuts lay drying in the summer sun that week, a local squirrel got in the habit of showing up several times a day, picking through them, and scampering off with a prize every time. We liked watching him, so we decided to leave the walnuts in exchange for his entertaining us. He’s still coming by!)

The terrace beside the pool, before I unleashed my wrath:

And after:

There’s a playground a few blocks away that we sometimes visit. Molli Malou likes to hang there.

Yeah, who da LITERAL man?

Wait! Wait! I forgot about the black and white button!

We got in the habit one week in early September (before we turned the pool on) of biking every evening after dinner. Molli Malou is an intrepid biker and we actually rode a few kilometers, maybe two miles one night. Here she is up by the swimhall celebrating the mile we’d already ridden.

The next shot is my current computer wallpaper. It’s a spectacular shot. Ask if you want it.

Julius and his little brother Linus came by one day and Molli Malou loved showing them around the flora.

And speaking of Molli Malou’s boyfriends, her best boyfriend of all, the Franco-American Dano-Moldovan, got his little brother in September. Molli Malou and Liam have always been so close it only seems right to share this picture in Molli Malou’s virtual life story.

We are now caught up all the way to the pictures sitting in the camera! From now on, pictures will not be more than a week or two old when you see them!

And yes, there will be more videos as promised, including more from our American adventures!