We left off in a sunny place: a post bubbling over with puppies, with pictures of our family splashing around in the sunny paradise of Algarve province.
The remainder of October and early November were consequently as uneventful as we could make them. And, as usual, a whole hell of a lot darker.
I passed the practical part of my hunting license test in late October and got my hunting license.
The bolded headline is “Congratulations on passing your hunting test.” The rest is superfluous.
This was a big event, in that it would allow me to buy my own shotgun and take it down to the
shooting range and blast away at clay pigeons — with such a bad stance that the recoil would give me a shoulder impingement. But that wasn’t until late November, and we’re still in October.
And of course, there was no getting around Halloween… Maddie went as Harry Potter.
Molli went as a Waitress at the Fiol Cafe in downtown Copenhagen:
No she didn’t.
She worked as a waitress at that cafe all week — all the 9th graders of Søndersøskolen had to work at some kind of job or other for that one week in October, and Molli had found this job at a cafe downtown. Neither Trine nor I ever made it down to have her wait on us, alas, but Mormor made it and received exemplary service, as evidenced by her testimonial photographs.
Those are my only photographs of Halloween, believe it or not. I don’t even have any pictures of our pumpkins. (I find this omission inexplicable and am sure the photographs have been accidentally offloaded and copied into a folder I can’t find, because this is an almost unimaginably flagrant violation of my instinctive principle of document all the things.)
On the other hand, it had been a pretty intense period what with all the puppies and Portugal and so on, so it may be that for once I simply didn’t give a damn. I forget if it was Socrates or Chesterton that said “every now and then a man has the right not to give a damn.”
Mormor’s birthday was celebrated a little early this year.
I love this picture of Maddie all dolled up for the occassion:
And here’s the hostess of honor greeting her guests.
And here’s me, struggling as I always do at every long-table Danish celebration to try and get a shot of everyone at table.
We used some of our “puppy money” to install a decalcifier into our water system. These two pictures are strictly for the permanent record, as a reminder that the installation was on November 11, 2019. So it doesn’t matter that the first one should have been rotated 90 degrees to the left.
Also just for the permanent record, there were other events in November 2019…
Maddie was industrious and ambitious enough to offer to help by raking. I offered her 25 kroner per full bag of leaves.
Also in November, with that hunting license burning a hole in my pocket, I bought my first shotgun.
To call it “used” would be the understatement of all understatements. It’s an old Soviet-era Baikal 12-gauge, and it’s the first firearm I’ve ever owned. (No worries, it’s locked up in the first gun locker I’ve ever owned.) I now have a hunting license and a shotgun, but I’m still not allowed to hunt until I’ve passed the shotgun shooting test, where I’ll be required to hit two out of six clay pigeons from the right, two out of six from the left, and two out of six from behind.
Mads and I made a trip to the range and I finally forced him to get a shot of me firing at the clay pigeons.
Based on my performance that day, the ducks and geese of Denmark (the only critters I can see myself hunting) have very little to worry about in the immediate future. It’s gonna take a lot more trips to the range before I’m ready for the shooting test.
(Even the clay pigeons have very little to worry about.)
That much said, I like to remind myself that good aim isn’t everything… situational awareness counts for something, too:
(Sorry, I saw that online and just giggle every time I see it. I love her misplaced pride! If you didn’t see what’s funny about it, give it a careful second look.)
I was able to see a few of the girls’ handball games — here are some shots from two of Maddie’s.
I got full game-length videos of two of her games, and you can access them on YouTube by using the following addresses on YouTube: XbLXjEf9hHM for Værløse v. Holte, and JNKx7mGiR1U for Værløse versus Amager. (I can’t put the links here, because then Google would become aware of this blog.)
Thanks to Aunt Deb, we have this wonderful and iconic shot of Nana surprising Sophie at her (Sophie’s!) opening in Little Women.
I include it because it went viral in our whole extended family. And, as Pop-Pop would say, because it’s just lovely.
Now we arrive at what is simultaneously the most celebratory and most stressful weekend of the year for us: the weekend on the cusp of November and December where we celebrate Thanksgiving, Maddie’s birthday, and first Advent.
We spent that Friday taking advantage of Black Friday deals online and prepping our contributions to the Thanksgiving dinner… and babysitting Billie.
Come Saturday afternoon, we were ready to load up the trunk for Thanksgiving.
I won’t comment a lot on our Thanksgiving pictures — readers of this blog should be used to the cast of characters and are more than familiar with our rites of Dan-American Thanksgiving. But I will note that this one featured a new character: Steve & Elizabeth had a new puppy. Barley.
You may not have been keeping track, but just for the record: the puppies we’ve been dealing with most in 2019 (apart from our own!) were, in fact, Billie, Bailey, and Barley… all three of whom appear at least once in this post.
I made a concerted effort this year to get pictures of more than just the food. So without any further ado, here’s our Thanksgiving 2019.
We got home late from Thanksgiving on Saturday night… and Sunday (December 1) was the day of Maddie’s “boller og kage” (buns and cake) celebration — following a busy morning of handball games.
Maddie’s friend Josephine came to celebrate with us, along with her golden retriever puppy Bailey, just 5 weeks older than Didi’s pups.
Didi was ecstatic to have a puppy back in her life.
There had been handball in the morning, so the festivities had started at about 14:30. We enjoyed the buns and rolls, as you can see, and although we took our time about it I find it remarkable that by the time we served Maddie her 11th birthday cake, night had descended.
I had to check the file metadata to confirm it, but this next picture is from 16:29 in the afternoon.
And of course, it was also First Advent…
…and it was the first night of this year’s Christmas Calendar shows: a repeat of Julestjerner, first broadcast when Molli was 8 and Maddie was 4, and the all-new Tinka og Kongespillet–a sequel to Tinkas Juleeventyr from just two Christmases ago (that was 2017, in case the math had you stumped). In English, those titles would be “Tinka’s Christmas Adventure” in 2017, and “Tinka and the King’s Game” this year.
We are no longer required by laws of broadcasting to watch these things at precisely the time they “air,” for technological reasons that probably require no explanation, and yet we do… mainly because if we don’t, then we don’t have the option of subtitles, and Daddy loves him some subtitles.
I feel so very stupid, sometimes, taking note of such things… and yet, I have yet to find myself having recorded some detail of our lives that I didn’t find interesting in retrospect. I think we’re all at least narcissistic enough to find our own lives endlessly intriguing in hindsight, and have no doubt the girls will someday consider this blog one of their great blessings. Or curses. Or both.
So I may as well note that we are long past the point of Molli watching the Christmas shows with us, but it is nevertheless such a hyggelig family time each dark winter evening that she will sometimes wander into our midst and sit with us, indifferent to the the stories unfolding on the screen but happy to bask in the hygge. Those are golden moments.
And now we come to the great day of December 2.
Mor and Daddy were running a little low on steam at this point, as it had been one event after another since Friday evening, with very little sleep. I actually had to leave work early that day, a Monday, so I could take a nap. And I was so tired that despite some municipal employees feeding a couple of trees into a wood chipper fewer than fifty meters from our bedroom window, I fell instantly asleep… and woke up just two hours later, full of good spirits and all the energy required to give Maddie the celebration she deserved.
…if not the blog post she deserved.
Let me compensate a little with some loving paternal exposition here.
Dear future Maddie Marie, at eleven years old you are a wonder and an amazement. The quickness of your mind, your impish humor, your athletic prowess, your ability to transition from the gravest and most heart-rending sincerity to uproarious nonsense in a heartbeat… you are smart and pretty and talented and fun, and a continual source of wild surprises. These days we’re giving you a lot of heat for the messes in your room, and at the table, and probably our constant admonitions are driving you crazy, but what a joy it is as a parent that with you, as with your sister before you, the big things are so well under control that we can focus on helping you with the little things. I’m so proud to be your father, and will never stop being astonished that a young woman as smart and beautiful and athletic and talented as you could have been raised by parents as clueless as your mor and me… I love you enormously and it is a joy to be your father!
So.
Having had Maddie’s boller-og-kage celebration the day before, and knowing we would be hosting her joint class birthday birthday within a week’s time, the birthday dinner itself was a simple affair: delicious steaks and fries with bernaise sauce, and Moster Mette as our only guest.
We did however manage to get things off to a festive start with a Playstation game of bowling
Moster Mette had never played before, but the two of us (combined age 104) still managed to put up a pretty good fight against Søstrene Nagan (combined age an astonishing 26):
Why do I post the scores? Because I love family trivia quizzes, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be asking something about that score sooner or later!
(Trivia question for future Maddie: why at the age of eight or nine did you suddenly start doing peace fingers half the time I took a picture of you?)
Time at last for presents!
That was kind of a weird one, in the picture above… some kind of weird metal thing. Box didn’t say what it was, just had a picture of some kind of bizarre metal assembly.
It reminded Daddy that he’d forgotten one little box down in the basement — which he brought right up.
The problem with Maddie is that she’s so guarded with her emotions, you can never really tell how she feels about things.
It was a television. She was evidently not displeased.
She does sometimes express her feelings in simple declarative sentences:
By Tuesday night the birthday decor was down in time for Julekalendar hygge.
The week went by in a blur as Trine and I struggled to get everything caught back up to normal, but the following Saturday I managed to get Maddie’s television mounted (with that box of strange metal stuff).
Saturday night hygge…
And BLAM! Sunday the 8th, time for 20 of Maddie’s new Atheneskolen classmates to celebrate her and Birk’s birthdays.
The featured entertainment was this hired Game Master, Rasmus, leading them through a game of Werewolves. He’s the long-haired guy in the very back of this picture:
The Werewolf game is a card-based game that scales pretty well, but it requires a good game-master. Rasmus (who was barely out of childhood himself) was clearly into it. I don’t think his inch-long fingernails were glue-ons, for example.
If you’re not already familiar with the game, just enter “werewolf game” into any search engine and you’ll see. It’s popular with kids, but I imagine it would even be fun for adults. We would have had tons of fun with it in back in Chicago, I’m sure… it might have made a nice alternative to Celebrity.
Basically everyone in the game is part of a village, and before the game everyone gets a card (that no one else can see) identifying them as a villager or a werewolf. Play is then turn-based: “Now it’s night,” the game-master says, and they all have to lower their heads and shut their eyes.
“The werewolves wake up,” he says, and the kids who are werewolves lift their heads and open their eyes. “The werewolves choose their victim,” he says. And the werewolves quietly use hand gestures to agree on which villager should be their victim. “The werewolves have chosen their victim,” the game master says, “and they go back to sleep.” The werewolves lower their heads and close their eyes.
But it’s not really just villagers and werewolves, see. Every player gets other cards, too, identifying specific roles or powers–there’s a seer, for example, and a troublemaker, and a cupid who can make any two players into a pair of lovers with intertwined fates. Also the villagers at the start of the game elect a mayor, who has some authority over them. And each “night” turn, the game master wakes all of these roles up in turn and has them do their own actions and go back to sleep. And then each “morning” he has them all wake up, and explains what the outcomes of all the “night” decisions were. For example:
“Cupid shot his arrows at two villagers who are now lovers. Only they know who they are. If one of them dies, they both die. If one becomes a werewolf, they both become werewolves.” And so on. And finally he will ask, at the end of the “day” turn, “Does anyone want to make an accusation?” And any player can accuse any other player of being a werewolf. And the accused werewolves are allowed to defend themselves and insist they’re not really werewolves. And then the villagers vote on whether or not to kill each accused werewolf. If they vote to kill you, you’re out of the game. If the werewolves chose you as their victim and you make it through the day without being voted to death, you become a werewolf the next night.
And that’s it. It goes like that, alternating nights and days, until only werewolves or villagers are left, at which point the game is over and the surviving “team” is declared the winner.
Anyhow, the kids enjoyed it very much, as you can see… sorry for the long explanation, but the pictures wouldn’t have made much sense without it.
The last game went a little long, so by the time Rasmus finally got it wrapped up most of the parents had already been standing around and watching for 10 or 15 minutes — and as soon as it ended, off they all went.
And it was just a quiet winter Sunday… and another Advent.
The second of the season.
Maddie let us scratch away as a family at a scratch card she’d received as a present.
And that, beloved friends and family, that photo from the 8th of December, is the end of the chronological part of this post.
But not the actual end of the post. Not by a long shot.
Because we also have Molli’s school picture!
The digital service that does the school pictures now gives you access to previous year’s photos, so we have the following sequence of Molli in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade leading up to her 9th grade picture — the last of her folkeskole school photos!
So… sixth grade:
Seventh grade:
Eighth grade:
And this year’s ninth grade beauty:
Unfortunately we have no school picture for Maddie this year. I don’t remember why, something about the new school. So we’ll take the dolled-up Maddie picture from November and call it her 5th grade portrait:
We do, however, have class photos for both girls.
Molli’s serious 9th grade class picture:
And their “goofy” picture (9th graders get to have a goofy picture):
And Maddie’s:
And now before a textual roundup to wrap things up, let’s get caught up with Didi’s brood.
First, on October 22 our beloved Blackie — now Samson — was apparently taken in for his vaccine.
Here’s a shot of him beforehand (the text just says “before vaccine”).
Apparently he had an allergic reaction, and the pictures are just hilarious…
I never saw a dog with allergic-puffy-face before. I wouldn’t have thought you could even notice. I’m so glad his owners shared those pictures in our Facebook group!
Here’s Arthur on November (with his mentor):
And Hollie on November 18:
And Arthur on November 11:
Arthur on November 18:
Hollie on November 17:
Hollie again, same date:
Otto, also on November 17:
And Otto the next day:
And how about this shot of Samson from November 20:
We are assured that was not a posed photograph, the owners just walked in on that sight.
And here’s Vega on November 11:
And Vega one week later:
Lastly, and just for fun, I take my memes like I take my literature: classically:
# # #
We’ve been mercifully free from any big dramas or twists of fate during this period (knock wood), and in the fortnight since the last events of this post transpired, we’ve been able to focus on enjoying the season and getting ready for the holidays. The girls are on holiday from this Friday, December 20th. Trine and I will both be going into work on Monday the 23rd, but from then we’re all on vacation until January 2nd.
We’ll be celebrating Christmas Eve and Christmas at home, as usual, and in the usual ways. On second Christmas Day we’ll be enjoying a julefrokost down at Mormor’s with some of Jørgen’s family. There’s the usual madness of the handball tournament in Lund, Sweden (Molli) and the AB Cup here in Denmark (Maddie) between Christmas and New Year’s, and we’ll be spending New Year’s Eve at cousin David’s. At least three of us will: Molli will be going to a party with her friends and has informed us that she thinks she’s done having New Year’s Eves with her family… and we can see the logic of that. (Because we can remember the logic of that.)
The reality of Molli going into gymnasium next year is beginning to hit us all. I suspect a lot of time and energy this winter are going to be invested in helping her find the right school, which I find particularly daunting since I myself still don’t entirely understand the Danish educational system. But I do understand the folkeskole system well enough that I’ve already bought three kilos of individually-wrapped caramels for Molli to cast about on her last day of school this spring.
See you all on the other side of Christmas!
Wonderful as always. AML Dad, Doug Pop-pop