Sensommer

By the Danish calendar we are now into autumn, although as I write this we’ve still got a few days of late astronomical summer left.

I thought I had posted something back in August and was surprised to see that my last posting was the American vacation post.  And then I found something even more surprising — and a little hard to believe: there are no pictures of Molli Malou’s first day of school!  Apparently the best shot I got off on that hectic morning was the blurry shot of her and Sofie with their arms around each other, which you can see on Facebook and isn’t good enough to merit the hassle of copying here.  But trust me, Future Molli Malou, you did have a first day of third grade — but after the assembly around the flagpole you and Sofie told me and her mother not to follow you guys into your classroom.

What else happened between midsummer and late summer?  To be honest, the answer is almost nothing: apart from the few special moments captured below, it’s been all we can manage just to keep up with daily life.  We’re all busy and it’s all good.

So let’s go back to late July and…  strawberry picking!

(Some of the berries may have been a little sour, as Molli Malou illustrates…)

We spent a weekend up at Kirsten and Frederik’s summerhouse in Stor Fuglede on the west coast of Sjælland — about five miles south of Kalundborg.  (I don’t know why I said that: the Danes all know where Stor Fuglede is, and Americans aren’t going to be helped by “five miles south of Kalundborg.”)

It wasn’t a full weekend: we drove up Saturday morning and back Sunday morning, so it was more like 24 than 48 hours, but it was a relaxing bit of fun nonetheless.

Stor Fuglede, by the way, is hard up against a little lake called Tissø, which when you say it is indistinguishable (to the Danish ear) from “Piss Lake.”  (Tisse is the verb to piss, and sø is the noun for lake or sea.)  Great merriment in the car as we drove around Piss Lake, as you can imagine.

We had barely arrived and said our hellos before Maddie and Molli Malou were very literally bouncing all over the place.

In case you don’t remember, Kirsten is one of Trine’s old handball mafia friends.  She was one of Trine’s friends who visited us in New York.  She and Frederik had just started dating when we moved here.   Their eldest son, Julius, is probably best remembered by this crowd for this iconic 2004 image:

(You can read about their first meeting and see more pictures in the October 12, 2004 entry “First Date.”)

Julius has subsequently acquired a younger brother Linus and a much younger brother Johan. 

After the kids finally got bored jumping up and down we took a walk to the beach.  I took a dip with the older boys and Molli Malou while Trine waded around with Maddie.  Somehow word got out that I was good at throwing kids up in the air and I had to spend what felt like six hours throwing Molli Malou, Julius, and Linus as high and far as I could into the water.  My upper body ached for days.

Kirsten and Frederik had lucked out by finding someone with a little mobile home — really a mobile camper, I guess — that they’ve set up as kind of a plaything for the kids in the backyard.  When they weren’t jumping up and down on the trampoline, they were hanging out in the clubhouse.

Maddie was a trooper.  Both boys were too old for her, and too busy competing for Molli Malou’s attention — often very aggressively — and Johan was too little and clueless to be much of a companion for her.  But she handled it very well and whenever she felt excluded she simply threw on her Ariel mermaid dress and swished around the grounds singing to herself.

The sunset was beautiful… these pictures pan around from northwest to northeast.

The darkness did not diminish the enthusiasm for jumping.

The next morning after breakfast Frederik built a fire and the kids made Snobrød.

Most kids aren’t too particular about their Snobrød.  They wind the dough around the stick, hold the stick over the fire, invariably drop it into the embers a couple of times, and eat it merrily regardless of the final consistency and ash content.  Not so Julius.

Now, I can’t remember it all verbatim, but the monologue he was delivering when I took the above photo was (in Danish) something like this: “You know, Dad, I’ll tell you what, this snobrød is gonna be something else, and it’s gotta be, because I’m not the kind of guy that takes just any snobrød.  Not me.  No, it’s gotta be just right.  I’m very particular.  I need the right shape, it has to be cooked right, it has to be just so or it’s not for me.  And this is a good one.  Look at it.  Right shape, nice browning, no burnt spots.  You see that?  That’s just how I am, I like thinks to be just so, and this snobrød is gonna be something else, oh yeah, you just wait and see…”

But once the snobrød was consumed, the kids finally reverted to form and gathered in the living room to play with their phones and tablets.

Meanwhile, back home, we realized we couldn’t put off painting the garage much longer.

…But we’ll get back to the garage later.

Meanwhile, one lovely late-summer evening we took advantage of a groupon to have a sushi dinner up in Fredensborg.  That’s the city with Fredensborg castle, but the restaurant was in a sleepy little part of the town I’d never been to before.  Its prominent feature was this tower:

And you know what tower that is, right?

Don’t feel bad if you don’t: we didn’t either.  It was Maddie who identified it: it’s the tower where Rapunzel lived!

That was the highlight of the evening for her, I think.  That they actually enjoyed their sushi was an added bonus.

(Weird trivia: this was, as I said, just one sushi restaurant in a little town about 25 minutes north of us, and we no sooner entered than we more or less walked right into one of Molli Malou’s school friends and her family.  Small world… smaller Denmark.)

It was a warm, clear evening on the drive back, but there was this bizarre fog bank hanging over the pasture where Kollekollevej meets the highway:

Oh, that damn garage still needs to be painted…

Front and back.

So over the course of one long week of evening prepping, cleaning, sanding, taping, and, finally, painting: behold!

The problem with outdoor painting is that once you paint one thing, you realize how badly other things need it:

Maddie in the forest!

The amazing Maddie defies gravity!

For Trine’s birthday we had decided to observe the festivities over the weekend.  It was a Thursday, and she couldn’t decide what she wanted to do for dinner: whether I should cook up a special dish at home, order something in, or take the four of us out.  In the end I was told to look in the local paper for any special offers.  There was only one restaurant ad in all of Værløse Lokaleavisen, and it was for all-you-can-eat chicken wings and spare ribs at an inn up in Allerød.  We’d never eaten there, but it was quite a find!

It’s called Blovstrød Kro (Bovstrød Inn), and they have a website if you’re so inclined, and it was actually one of the nicest family dining outings we’ve had — thanks to the fact that they have a playroom for kids.  So Trine and I were able to honor her birthday lingering over the table with too many wings and ribs while the kids knocked themselves out drawing and playing with toys.

Molli Malou’s favorite thing about the place was the tree in the parking lot.

“Look,” she said,  “it looks like a tree in Africa.”

And she was right.

On that Saturday we had a little birthday dinner at Vibeke & Jørgen’s.  With cake, of course.  And besides the cake (I really am trying to avoid the trend of sharing photographs of food, but birthday cakes seem somehow exempt), I tried to get a picture of each guest… neglecting only myself, unfortunately.  (I always forget.)

For some reason the conversation turned to Marty Feldman. . .

And I should mention, since it’s come up before, that I just took Maddie to the eye-doctor earlier this week for a follow-up on her eyes, which have always seemed just a little crossed. (Although of course it’s exaggerated in her picture here!) 

Eye doctor’s conclusion after two visits: yeah, they appear to be a little crossed right now, but it’s only an appearance.  There’s nothing structurally or mechanically wrong with her eyes or her vision; they’re not actually crossed, and they will lose even the appearance of being slightly crossed as her face gets larger.

This month is also school photo month, and Molli Malou was kind enough not to barf at the photographer this year so we have actual pictures to show for it.  We just ordered the pictures themselves last night, but I grabbed some screen shots off the photography website to share with you (hence the watermarks).

They take the pics in front of a green drop so that parents can choose the background they want.  (After some agonizing we opted for a blue background that’s not even included below because although we kind of wanted the white, we thought it looked a little weird with her white sweater.)

And here’s her third-grade class photo:

Her main teacher, Helle, is the woman in salmon on the right.  I think she’s outstanding and she really gets Molli Malou.

The last picture is supposed to be a gif that flips through the pictures above, but doesn’t seem to work in my page preview… maybe it will really work when I publish this post.  We’ll see.

Molli Malou is still enjoying all her activities, and is getting a kick out of the fact that they now have English class.  (Molli Malou and the three other anglophones in her grade have a special, separate reading group so that they’re not stuck learning how to say things like, “Hello, my name is… “)  She is taking swim, tennis, piano, voice, and choir this year.  Maddie is taking swimming and gymnastics.  Trine is also taking tennis and I have been sailing, but that will be drawing to its seasonal close soon.  (No frostbiting in Denmark, Dad, can you believe it?)

The girls continue to be happy and healthy.  Molli Malou is addicted to Minecraft and Maddie shifts her princess allegiance from week to week (Rapunzel to Ariel to Cinderella to Snow White and so on).  Trine and I are doing our best to catch up on Breaking Bad before the finale next week but just realized Netflix still hasn’t made the most recent 6 episodes available.  So we have to find them somehow (in the UK they put them on Netflix the day after they air in America!  Maybe we should just move?).  Any advice appreciated.

So there… we’re all caught up.  Now I need to get caught up on my weekend chores!