Maddie was confirmed on April 22.
It was a big event so it gets its own post.
There are three primary cameras providing the photographs that follow: my own iPhone, my own Olympus, and whatever DSLR camera Michael’s girlfriend Lisa was using (and from which she was kind enough to share all the photos she took). There are also photos that other people sent me. They’re sorted by timestamp, and except for a few egregious cases I’ve let their slightly-different times stand… unlike the Tallinn disaster, where the two source cameras were about an hour apart, the system clocks of all three “main” cameras were clearly within a few minutes of eachother, so the chronology isn’t that bad.
I usually waste a lot of time centering all the photos because I haven’t figured out how to make the centering of photos a default setting. I’m still battling a very nasty virus, however—the same one Trine has been battling for about ten days and Molli is still getting over after two weeks—so by the power invested in me by me, I declare that this post will have left-aligned pictures and to hell with centering. (And I bet no one ever noticed that all the pictures were centered before, anyway.)
It had been a very cool and rainy April, so we’d been watching the weather forecasts very carefully. If the weather were too cool or too wet, we’d have to keep the whole celebration indoors, and with 35+ guests that would be… suboptimal. Not so much for the sit-down portion of the affair—by emptying the living room of almost everything and bringing in a few extra tables and chairs we were just able to seat everyone without having to cram them in like sardines—but for the general mingling before and after the meal we were really counting on having the great new terrace and our yard at our disposal.
The old nordic weather gods smiled on us. Already on Friday evening the weather was nice enough that we were able to move the living room couches and tables onto the terrace, and with all our other patio furniture we would have plenty of room for all our guests to sit down and enjoy a welcome drink in the sunshine. (Had we held the event on either of the next two weekends, we would not have been so lucky.)
It was the finest our terrace had ever looked.
It’s especially cozy with the pergola down and the couches out there, right? So cozy that it gave us ideas—ideas whose manifestations you’ll see in the next post. Or the one after that.
Anyway, by the afternoon we had everything set before we even left for church.
Before we set off for church I got a few shots of our lovely confirmand.
And at the church, the confirmand with her big sister.
A few moments after that picture was taken, we bumped into the parents of a fellow confirmand, one of Maddie’s schoolmates. (All but one of them were Atheneskolen schoolmates.) One of the parents extended a hand to Molli and said, “Ah, and you must be little sister!”
That left a mark.
Outside of the—the building where church business is conducted: what is that? I’m thinking “rectory” or “refractory” or something, but those can’t be right—outside of this one building, in any case, where Maddie and her fellow confirmands were to have a final briefing from the priest, there was this hideous sculpture.
It didn’t seem very churchy to me, let alone Christian. So I hereby add it to my collection of Wildly Inappropriate Art Commissioned and Approved by People Who Let Malicious Idiots Talk Them Into Bad Art.
But this was not a day to dwell on bad art: it’s Maddie’s confirmation… and look, here she comes up the aisle!
The priest’s name is Roar. Roar Tuxen Lavik. He’s not a bad dog: that collar is just part of the Danish clerical attire. Roar Tuxen Lavik is one of my favorite names ever. (It’s grrrrrrrrreeeeeat!) Maddie and her friends thought he was too strict and mean, and boring, and perhaps he was in all those classes they had to take with him, but his homily was pleasant and funny and charming and he even seemed to have the sparkling eyes of a good-humored man. (Nowhere better evinced than when, as he was telling the confirmands that their parents were probably the only people who loved them enough to be willing to give their lives for them, Mormor blurted out: “And mormors!”—and he paused, smiled, nodded in agreement, and said, “Also mormors.”)
We weren’t allowed to take pictures during the ceremony, so all you get are the preceding pictures from the entrance, and these from the exit.
Not pictured: the organ music for the processional was the theme from Harry Potter, and for the recessional it was the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s Roar Tuxen Lavik for you.
Then some family shots outside the church.
When you let Molli take the camera, you’re going to get a Molli selfie in the mix.
And when Molli disapproves of the way you’re taking pictures, then Molli’s going to insist upon the camera.
“Seriously, Dad, give me the camera.”
Families were then allowed to get pictures of our confirmands inside the church. Trine got some pictures of Maddie in front of the altar, and by the baptismal font, but I neglected to load them in with all these so you won’t see them until a future post. But I did get these two cute shots of Maddie and her friend Lucas.
Also these…
Out in the parking lot, “little sister” found a scooter to play with!
That was it for church: it was time to hurry home and get ready for the arrival of our guests in just a couple of hours. No pictures of that madness, obviously, so we transition straight to random shots of the pre-dinner portion of the celebration.
It was sad not to have any American family on hand, but just about all the Danish family and friends we invited made it, probably because none of them lived more than 25 kilometers from our house.
I’m going to assume anyone reading this blog knows who most if not all of these people are, so I’m not going to bother naming names. Just scroll through and enjoy the sight of so many generations having such a good time celebrating Maddie’s confirmation.
Worth noting for the permanent record: the girl in the floral skirt in that picture is Søren and Bodil’s daughter Dagmar. She could see how we were struggling to get the meal set out with the exacting timing the caterers had laid out for us and kindly volunteered her assistance. She’d been working in food service, you see. She was a lifesaver. Thanks to her help we were able to serve the mail at 17:00 on the dot, as advertised.
So now it was time for our guests to take their seats. . .
And for the hostess with the mostest to provide practical guidance and present the menu. . .
And then it was time to tuck in!
As at all Danish events, there were of course speeches and songs. Trine was the first to address the confirmand, first with some loving words. . .
And then with a song. Good lord she’d worked hard on that song. First it was weeks of jotting notes on what she wanted the song to include, then weeks of selecting the melody to set it to, then weeks of writing and rewriting and re-rewriting—and the effort paid off in a song that everyone (Danish) could sing and that swelled Maddie’s heart.
Next it was my turn. As usual, I just had a too-long speech and some embarrassing videos. But I also had a prop: a 1.5 kilo free weight that I handed around so all the guests could get a sense of how tiny this tall, beautiful, healthy girl had been at birth—that flimsy little weight weighed 200 grams more than she did!
The came a song from Mormor… Since I didn’t know the melody, I took the opportunity to go around and be sure we had a picture of every single guest.
And then, of course, some Hurras for Maddie: three long and three short, let’s hear it!
La plus ca change…
That ended the sit-down dinner portion of the event. From there it was just a party.
And finally a few pics of confirmand Maddie opening her presents.
And that was that!
Congratulations on your confirmation, Maddie Marie Kammer Nagan!
Now with the two big spring events out of the way (Tallinn and the confirmation), I’ll try to get the March through May post of regular daily life put together before we hit the first big event of the summer: Molli’s graduation!
