Out like a Lamb

Who’s this?

It’s Leonora, the singer who won the Danish Melodi Grand Prix this year, and who will advance to Israel to vie for the Eurovision championship.  Google her and watch the performance.  This is the first year that the contestant I was rooting for all along actually won, so I’m being fool enough to believe she can win the whole shootin’ match.  But she sings in four languages (English, Danish, French, and German) and her message is hard not to like (“Don’t be too political” is one of the lines).  So it seems calculated to win.

Anyway, Trine, Maddie, and I had a good time rooting her on one cold, dark February night.

And I think it was that weekend that Maddie got her ears repierced.  Either that or hey, look, some random pictures of Maddie at the mall!

I stumbled across some frozen escargots at LIDL one day.  Totally prepped, just put them in the oven for twenty minutes and glorious escargots ready to eat.  I had to try them.

Maddie decided she had grown up enough since our experiment in France, when she was eight-going-on-nine, to give snails another try.

Unfortunately she loved them.  I had to shoo her away to keep her from eating them all!

Here’s Molli in action, scoring a penalty shot:

Along with some not-so-good pictures of her in action, but at least you can actually see it’s here in these!

And the moment after yet another penalty shot scored:

We were way overdue for a night out as a family, so we finally got around to having a dinner at the Italian restaurant in Farum, “Big Due.”  (Funny, I never read that as English until just now… everyone here always calls it “Big doo-ay,” but the “big due” sounds like something you don’t want to see on your restaurant bill!)

Anyway, the three of us had a lovely dinner.  (Molli opted out, preferring to dine out with her own friends at McDonalds.)

This is, I think, the first blog post where I had pictures of all three dogs on my phone.

The Ides of March fell on a Friday this year.  We began festivities with a welcome drink and toast at Mormor & Jørgen’s.

We sipped drinks and snacked on munchies and I got to open my presents, which I was so excited about I actually got pictures of them.  First, a bottle stopper fit for a king:

And a homemade potpourri sachet from Maddie to keep my socks smelling fresh and lovely!

And yet another gift from the Department of Things the Stasi Could Only Dream of:

And some thermal glasses to keep my coffee warm!

Trine led us through some of the games we’d never had time to play on Christmas or New Year’s Eve thanks to my own overlong quizzes.  There aren’t too many pictures this month, so I’ll share the whole sequence of Molli and Maddie competing to see who can carry the most M&M’s (!) from the coffee table to the dining table using only a straw.

I believe Molli won narrowly.

My birthday treat from Mormor & Jørgen was a family dinner out at Salt & Pepper.

After Trine and I went out for a night on the town.  The town was crowded and we were tired, so it was a very short night!

This robot has been sitting on our stove hood for months, if not longer.  It’s something Maddie made at school.  We love it.  It warms me every time I see it.  And yet one day it probably won’t be sitting there.  So I wanted a record of it.

The Sunday after my birthday was St. Patrick’s Day, which we spent in a family-versus-family Go-Kart grand prix with Steve, Elisabeth, Rebecca, and Sebastian.

Here’s Molli all suited up:

And Maddie:

And some adjustments for Becca:

And Sebastian:

And, of course, our own selves.

How’d we do?

TOTAL VICTORY.  I think the Buzzfeed headline would be “WATCH NAGAN KAMMER FAMILY ABSOLUTELY CRUSH THE COMPETITION.”  Even Maddie beat every member of Steve & Elisabeth’s family.

Also worth noting: Trine had the fastest single lap time of any of us, but I had the fastest average lap time (by a few tenths of a second over Trine).

No question, though, that Maddie was most improved driver. . .  her lap times were almost 15 seconds faster than last time, she’s not much slower than Molli (who’s not much slower than any of the adults), and, like I said, she CRUSHED THE COMPETITION.

By now I was coming home from work to light in the sky.  Amazing how cheering something that simple can be.

The kommune has begun work on the new rainwater drainage system for our neighborhood.   They’re tearing the hell out of Enebærvej in particular, and they certainly caught Didi’s attention.

Courtesy of Mormor, a photo of Maddie enjoying the improving weather on a stroll through town with her Mormor.

Another sign of the turning weather: the annual trimming of the apple tree.  Before:

After:

Not much to report in terms of Bathroom News, but we did finally get toilet paper holders and handtowel hooks for the new bathroom and the guest bath.  Here you can see the hook enjoying its life as it was meant to be lived.

We’re into April as I post this — we’ve sprung ahead to summer time, the daytime highs are starting to average more than 10 degrees celsius, and the world is coming back to life.  In a word: it’s yardwork season again.

Meanwhile, as I was trimming the apple tree this past Sunday, Molli Malou was spraining her ankle in a game that Furesø ended up tying.  She’s already off her crutches, but it’s going to be a long recovery…  we’re all hoping she’s ready to play (in a brace) at the Holstebro Cup out in Jylland over Easter Weekend.

We’re also less than eight weeks from our first family trip to Florida!