The Darkening 2017

This will almost certainly be the penultimate post of the year, and since the final post of the year will invariably be mostly about the holidays, I want to be sure to get caught up on everything else first.

So: I never managed to post the girls’ 2017 school pictures this year. That may seem like a heinous oversight, except that it actually wasn’t my fault: the school took the pictures in late September or early October, as usual, but it was then about a month before the proofs were available online, and then after selecting the ones we wanted it was another month or so before they were delivered.

So this really is the first post since they’ve been in my possession.

Here, then, is Maddie’s official third grade shot:

And here’s Molli’s official seventh grade shot:

Because they’re school pictures and therefore Official and Important, I’m also making the full-size pictures downloadable: so click here for Maddie, and here for Molli, and you’ll get the HD version of the photo which you can then download.

Following the theme of getting caught up, here’s a photo from Portugal of me and the girls that Trine sent me. You know, to prove I was actually with them.

Halloween got short shrift this year on this blog. I think I mentioned elsewhere that I never got a picture of either girl in costume — Molli because she had no costume, Maddie because the timing just didn’t work out — but here is Maddie’s “costume” laid out the evening before Halloween.

Terrifying, right? (She was a goth zombie or something.)

We did get the house into the Halloween spirit, though:

And we had our usual pumpkin fun:

Both girls wanted barfing pumpkins this year.

Hard to see in the dark like that, so here’s the same shot with a flash:

Really they looked better without the vomit and newspaper, whether in the dark or in daylight:

That’s Maddie’s on the left, by the way, and Molli’s on the right. (Maddie did her own pumpkin entirely on her own; Molli just gutted hers and then asked me to carve a face on it.)

The school had a “theme week” this fall, where the classes work together across grades (and across classes within grades) on various projects that culminate in a presentation for parents.

Maddie chose to participate in a “traditional dance” project.

She was extremely proud not just of herself, but of the entire group.

Notice her scanning the crowd here…

And something made her very happy…

Now, the girl to her immediate left is in her grade, but not her class. She also happens to be the little sister of one of Molli’s best friends, Josefine.

So what you’re actually seeing in that picture is two little sisters very sincerely thrilled to find that their big sisters, who had projects of their own that evening, had come by to watch them dance.

Same photo, emphasis on big sisters:

And now, to the dance!

There’s video, of course, so at some point in that ever evolving and as yet unspecified time in the future when I have time to play around with videos, you will be able to behold the wonder of their 18th century dance, the name of which I’ve already forgotten.

Meanwhile, Molli’s project turned out to be (“Oh my god, Daddy, I don’t even wanna tell you, you’re just gonna talk and talk and ask me all these questions”)… the American Civil War!

It was mostly older kids on that project (older than the dancing group), and was more informational than presentational in nature. There were a lot of drawings and maps and illustrations.

If one gets shot in the arm, one has to amputate the arm one has whiskey to sedate.

SOLDIER: Ow.

DOCTOR: Shall you have whisky

NOTE: A doctor amputates an arm

SECOND NOTE: Whisky sedates the person

Molli’s particular team within the project made some maps. This first one was done freehand:

The others were from tracings.

Now, the following were not produced by Molli or her group, but fascinate me as representative of Danish middle schoolers’ notions of the American Civil War.

It was apparently a bloody period of mass amputations aided by whisky.

Whisky was so important, in fact, that it got its own poster.

FACT: They used whiskey to numb (sedate) people.

Meanwhile, in the period leading up to her birthday Maddie got deeply involved in knitting (or crocheting: I’m not ashamed not to know the difference) and after quite a lot of work she made her own hat, pom pom and all.

Once a month we have a big early morning assembly at work: a fifteen-minute meeting for everyone where we sing a morning song and then the Director talks over any major developments. There are always plenty of visuals: this month, by way of reminding us of the forthcoming 2017 Christmas Tree Party, they included a photo of last year’s.

I bet you missed Maddie in tha photo, didn’t you? Here, this’ll help:

(I don’t even know why I bother including such silliness.)

Meanwhile, as the weather shifted from autumn toward winter the fogs rolled eerily in.

Once again we had Thanksgiving with Steve, Elisabeth, Becca, and Sebastian.

Becca is know sometimes called Becky. I love that: it’s homey for me because I grew up with a lot of Becky’s and exactly zero Astrids, Josefines, Esthers, Milles, Thildes, or Amelies.

Maddie and Becky threw a bunch of furniture, mattresses, sheets, and other stuff together to make a fort in the middle of the living room. That was also familiar.

Two entirely American, entirely Danish girls! Seriously, how cool is it that they’re almost exactly the same age (within two weeks), and they can play together in English, Danish, or Danglish?

But Thanksgiving isn’t about forts (any more, anyway).

It’s okay to skim over the pictures: they’re mostly here just so I have a reference to the menu next year.

It was a nice Thanksgiving, and no blizzard on the way home!

This wine, by the way, should also be preserved for the permanent record:

Sebastian is just awed by Molli Malou.

And this isn’t a good picture, but once again: proof I was there!

One day work my phone suddenly exploded into life as picture after picture started being SMSed to me. It was Maddie’s field trip to the aquarium.

As December draws nigh, Maddie and her old friend Astrid N. practice a Santa Lucia procession and give me a command performance.

And we manage to get our Christmas tree yard lights up just in time for December first:

Meaning: the night before December 2!

Behold the power of nine!

Because it fell on a Saturday this year, we allowed Maddie to choose her birthday festivities. She opted for lunch at her favorite restaurant in Copenhagen (Valle Dalle), which is just a very nice buffet, followed by some birthday hygge at Tivoli.

She shared her birthday lunch with Mormor, whose birthday had (as you all know) been just a few days prior.

So here are the birthday girls at lunch!

Onkel Klaus was also there.

And, of course, Michael and Jørgen.

And these two.

After lunch we walked across town to Tivoli.

Last weekend before Christmas Eve, so it was packed.

So was Tivoli.

It doesn’t seem to play, here, but I tell you honestly and without exaggeration that having visited Tivoli 5 or more times per year, every year, for the past 14 years, I have never seen such a long line just to get in.

It was madness.

Madness!

Let’s zoom in on the main entrance: even the line for season ticket holders like ourselves was an impossible crush of humanity.

The adults looked at one another uncertainly.

“Daddy,” Maddie said, “please tell me we have a Plan B.”

And we did: we could go home, make a fire, play board games, and… oh, open some presents?

As usual, we have the Christmas Calendar shows every evening from the first of December through Christmas Eve. This year we’re watching Snefald (“Snowfall”) on DR1 at 19:30, and Tinkas Juleeventyr (“Tinka’s Christmas Adventure”) on TV2 at 20:00.

As you can see, they’re very engaging! Snefald is actually Norwegian (the original Norwegian title is Snøfall), but they’ve dubbed it into Danish. A lot of the Danish public is upset by the dubbing, but we’re happy enough with it.

Anyway, have a look at Maddie’s room a few days after her ninth birthday:

It’s a little weird not having a kid’s room in the house anymore — a room with princess posters and stuffed animals amok and toys on the floor and odd curiosities lining every horizontal surface. Nicer, and tidier, but weird.

Because Tivoli was so packed on her birthday, we’d promised to get Maddie in there one day the following week. I was lucky enough to be able to break away early from work and escort her to “possibly the nicest place in the world.”

The weather forecasts had been threatening rain, but instead of worrying about that we were actually pleased: it wasn’t raining yet, but we thought the forecast might keep the crowds to a minimum.

Our first glimpse of the entrance across from the train station gave us hope:

And, indeed, the park was more or less empty. We never had to wait for a ride, unless it was already in operation when we got to it.

Here, for example, is the line for the super-popular Odin Express — the elevated roller coaster:

We took the front seats of the front car, and chatted with the Norwegian operator who’d lived in Sweden for six years with his Danish wife before moving to Denmark recently. He’d heard us speaking our family’s native Danglish and we had a good talk about mixed language families and what an impossible mess they could be; this became a bond between us, and he liked us well enough to start the ride before anyone else even got on it!

Maddie and Daddy got to ride Odin Express entirely by themselves!

How you feel about that, Maddie?

Maddie was so exuberant about the lack of lines that when I had to use the men’s room she just hopped down into the Flying Suitcase ride on her own.

There was time for candy apples, too.

And it was cozy to warm up by the open charcoal fires.

Ah, Christmas at Tivoli!

It never did rain until we were well on our way home. And Maddie declared very sincerely that it had been the best Tivoli trip ever. And was wise enough to observe that it would not have been if we had insisted on forcing ourselves into the park on her birthday.

Note for the permanent record: these are now our outdoor cable coupling boxes for our outdoor holiday lighting:

How we did it (because I know eventually we’re going to have to do it again and we’re going to wonder): (1) trace a big plug fixture with a thick marker where you want the hole; (2) use a very thin drill bit and drill lots of little holes all the way around the circle; (3) use a slightly bigger drill bit and redrill the same holes: (4) repeat step three with bigger and bigger drill bits until you can punch the hole out. It’s tedious, but it didn’t take as much time as I thought it would, and it has the advantage of not cracking the plastic as you invariably will with a blade of any kind.

Second Advent: