Easter, Baptism, Salon

A week from tonight we’ll be at Morfar’s house in Portugal, where we’ll be spending the ensuing ten days to celebrate his 70th birthday.

Since that trip will surely generate a gigantic pile of photos, as our trips invariably do, I thought it would be a good idea to get caught up beforehand.

So fire up the wayback machine, Sherman, and let’s head back to Easter 2012.  We’ll start with a photo of Molli Malou having giddy fun with…  what?

Hard to tell, isn’t it?  Can we get a closer shot?

Of course!  The severed head of an eel!  What 7-year-old girl doesn’t  want to play with a dead eel’s head and make it talk as if it were a puppet?

Maddie appreciates the puppetry, but is getting impatient for the big Easter meal.

And what a meal it’s going to be!

But meanwhile — how sweet, now we have three out of a possible four generations slicing up the eel.

And Maddie finally loses patience and comes bounding over to join the fun.

…and Molli Malou is still entertained as hell heck by the eel head:

Too macabre?  How about a sweet shot of the two sisters:

Haha!  Psyched you.  It looks sweet, but they’re actually excitedly watching the cats corner and kill a little bird.  Seriously.  Charlee had hunted it down and wounded it, and the poor thing was hopping around and flapping its wings just trying to survive.  Good luck with that, birdie.

In mid-April we attended the baptism of the newest member of the tribe, Matteo.  He’s the son of Trine’s cousine Trine (Klaus’s daughter) and Fabricio.  Bearing the wee Viking is one of Matteo’s two twin half-sisters, Fabricio’s from a previous marriage.  I got a growly look from a parson or someone up there with the priest when I took this picture, so it’s the only one I have from the ceremony.

At the reception afterwards, however, there were no restraints on photography, and I managed to get a cute sequence of the girls doing their Sunday worst in their Sunday best.

(Why the bandaid on the head?  Because Molli’s ex-boyfriend whacked her with a stick or something at school that week.  But that’s not why he’s the ex — he’s the ex because he walked up to her one day, or so we’re told, and said, “I’m breaking up with you.”  And that was that.  No drama.)

I spent a good portion of the baptism party demonstrating the virtues of the iPad to Michael, who only  seemed to appreciate it when I played recordings of some of the old 78s he’d ripped for us.  The iPad was a mere affectation until he heard Satchmo belting a tune off it. Then he wanted to show me his toy….

And here’s a nice shot of Mormor with Trinene.  First cousins, same first name, and both have become physical therapists within the past year (and both graduated from the same program at the same university).

Just a cute shot of Maddie:

And one of Trine with the guest of honor:

Now we’re into a chilly May afternoon, and the sisters have decided to play beauty salon.

Such concentration!

Such focus!

Such results!

(That was Maddie’s.  Molli’s actually came out pretty nicely.)

And there you have it!

Molli Malou read her first English-language book from cover to cover today — “Fancy Nancy Goes to the Museum” or something.  Very proud of her.  Her Danish reading has been great and she’s cruising right through it at school, but the English seemed to be falling further and further behind.  No worries, she’s appropriately literate in English, she just doesn’t have the same self-confidence with English that she does with Danish.  Which is weird to me…  having a daughter who can read ydmygelse aloud correctly the first time she sees it, but hesitates on simple English words.  (And yet somehow hits “masterpiece” spot on without even pausing.  Weird.)

Maddie has been blossoming in her own vocabulary lately, venturing into very proper little sentences.  About a week ago she asked Trine for some juice, for example, and Trine poured her a cup of orange juice.  When Trine handed her the cup, Maddie sighed and said in perfect Danish, “Thanks… but I’d have preferred a juice box.” 

It sounds so trivial like that, but Trine and I were both struck dumb with astonishment.  (Meanwhile, she still has no idea what today, tomorrow, and yesterday mean, and mixes them up in her little verbal experiments to very interesting effect.)

That will have to do for now…  it’s a Sunday evening and there’s still much to get done on this, our last non-schoolday before we fly off to warmer climes!