The Holidays Begin

November and December are going to be a rapid blur of holidays and celebrations every year.

We celebrate American Thanksgiving the Friday after the real Thanksgiving, which is usually just two weeks after the Danish holiday of Skt. Morten’s Aften (you eat a duck because a it was a flock of geese that gave poor humble Skt. Morten away when he was hiding from the authorities that wanted to make him a bishop — but geese were too expensive for the average pious family way back in the day, so ducks were considered an acceptable substitute).  We then have Mormor’s birthday less than a week before Maddie’s birthday, and four days later it’s Oldemor’s birthday (she hit 90 this year).  By this point, of course, we’re up to Julefrokost season, and both Trine and I are being called upon separately and together to attend various Danish Christmas “lunches,” while we work madly trying to get everything done before the actual holiday of Christmas, which then lingers a little before smashing into the explosive Danish New Year, at which point the madness ends in full pyrotechnic glory.

You’d think a family careful enough to arrange that its core should only have one birthday in each quarter  (Greg in March, Molli Malou in July, Trine in September, Maddie in December) wouldn’t have to confront such a murderer’s row of festivity, yet there it is: from mid-November into the New Year we’re averaging two major celebrations a week.

Now, I had thought I was reasonably caught up until I sat down to post the pictures from Maddie’s birthday and realized in my haste to publish her “one month at a time” entry, I had skipped over Thanksgiving and other November photographs.  So this is a little bit of a time warp.

We have reached a time in the girls’ lives where they frequently disappear together, become suspiciously quiet, then suddenly come bursting into the living room dressed as princesses, mermaids, fairies, or some combination thereof.

Those shots were taken around Halloween.  One thing I neglected in the Halloween pictures was a shot of Molli Malou’s crypt of horror: she took her biggest doll, mummified it, then turned a big box we had into a sarcophagus.  I didn’t get a good shot of the coffin, but here’s the mummy:

It was our turn to host Thanksgiving with Steve, Elizabeth, Becca, and Sebastian, and this year we were also joined by the fully American family of Joe and Beth Mann and their three kids: Frank, Gabriel, and Lillian.

There were seven kids, which made it kind of hectic, but it was nice that Molli Malou and Maddie each had kids of about their own age to play with.

Maddie and Becca took a little while to warm up to each other, but then had a wonderful time.

And Molli Malou had a great time with Lillian.

I know the next shot is crap, but I like it nonetheless. 

Sebastian’s about 15 months old now:

I love the following series, but should note that although Maddie is indeed much taller than Becca, Maddie is wearing high-heeled boots in these pictures.

Mormor took Molli Malou to a kid’s day at Rigshospitalet, where all the kids got all kinds of doctor stuff at the end of the tour.  Molli Malou has decided she doesn’t want to be a veterinarian any more: she wants to be a people doctor now.  (That may already have changed; who can keep up?)

Maddie sometimes gets the camera without our knowing it, so there are always surprises when I unload the flash card.  Some of them are surprisingly good.

The next shot looks like something from CSI: Kindergarten.

One afternoon when Trine and I were both working from home I noticed a strange sound coming from a corner of the living room.  I investigated and discovered… a mouse!  Where were the cats?  Trine and I rushed around to find one.  We grabbed Emma out of a comfortable nap and plopped her down in the vicinity of the mouse, and although the picture below is terrible, this movie that Trine recorded on her phone is a very entertaining couple of minutes of Tom & Jerry’s real life adventures.  (The mouse is not too seriously hurt in the video, but was done for within about fifteen minutes of its conclusion.)

As John McConnico noted on Facebook, “Three at last, three at last, thank God almighty Maddie is three at last!”

(The blue potion is “Electric Blue Raspberry Kool Aid.”  I don’t think our girls ever had Kool Aid before Thanksgiving, when the Manns brought some over for their kids.  Molli Malou and Maddie were so enthralled by it that Beth left us a couple of packets, and we let them have a decanter of this chemical sugar potion for the big day.)

The day after Maddie’s birthday we attended Janne’s 40th birthday.  So here are Janne and Trine…

Trine and Puk…

Stine, Janne, and Trine.

And such a happy one of Janne and Trine together (Janne lives in Edinburgh, so they don’t see much of each other these days):

Friday I had my Nordisk Film julefrokost, and yesterday we bought our Christmas tree — a real monster. We’re going to decorate it this evening.

Meanwhile, we are already well into the rhythm of the Christmas run-up: every night after dinner we do the Advent calendars, then watch Nissebanden i Grønneland (“The Elf Gang in Greenland”) and Ludwig og Julemanden (“Ludwig and Santa Claus.”). If you want to see excerpts from either, just enter the Danish names on YouTube.

Hard to believe it’s only two weeks to Christmas: Trine is working feverishly to wrap up her thesis before then, and I’m in overdrive at work to try and close out some huge projects, so we’re a very stressed household right now, but we can all see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Trine has reminded me that although I may feel caught up on the blog, I’m really not, because she has tons of video and pictures on her phone, as I do on mine, that haven’t been touched on at all in this blog: Molli Malou’s dance class, other party pictures, and so on. But we’ll save those for another day…