Happy New Year!

Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! WOW!

Denmark really knows how to ring in the New Year!

At midnight, the number of firework displays easily quadrupled! There were literally fireworks everywhere and fireworks are being set off even now, 45 minutes after midnight!

Max is so happy he stayed up to see it...

Happy New Year everyone! Best wishes to you in 2006!

Ken

UPDATE: The bulk of the firework displays ended at 1 AM. As I get ready to go to bed at 1:05 AM, I can still hear random fireworks going off here and there. What an incredible way to start the year!

The End of The Year

Alas, 2005, we hardly knew ye!

Its hard for me to believe that 2005 is forty minutes away from being over. Last December seems like yesterday, what with our purchase of a new home, gearing up for my tenure decision, and getting prepared for our trip to Denmark and now here we are ringing in the New Year in Denmark, twelve months later!

We've had an excellent Winter break that was very inward focused; it was just the four of us in our apartment having fun as a family. We had a great Christmas; the kids enjoyed the gifts that they received and Leysia and I enjoyed taking a break from the chaos of "normal life" to really spend time with Max and Lilja day in and day out. Here are pictures of Max and Lilja on Christmas morning (the lollipops were stocking stuffers and "wonderful" substitutes for breakfast!).






We had wonderful weather on Christmas Day, which was good because it has been cold, rainy, and snowy ever since! Max received one "outdoor" toy for Christmas and the good weather that day let us get out and enjoy it before being "trapped" inside ever since.

We also had the good fortune to visit friends as well as have friends over (except for one get together that was cancelled due to Leysia being under the weather that day) and we had a great day today, riding sleds down a snowy hill with Aino and her family in the morning, and enjoying a wonderful dinner with Jakob and Eva and their two boys this evening.

We left their house around 10:45 and now I'm up with Max waiting for the New Year to arrive (Leysia is getting the baby down to bed) and watching the fireworks that are going off everywhere as people prepare to celebrate at Midnight. Fireworks are readily available here in Denmark and EVERYONE is setting them off, so the whole city is lit up with fireworks right now. Its certainly an amazing sight! Jakob even lit a "fireworks box" (essentially a box filled with rockets that go off one by one after the fuse has been lit) and two large "bottle" rockets from his backyard so his kids and ours could see the fireworks up close.

We had a wonderful year this year, with a lot to be thankful for. We are eagerly looking forward to what 2006 will bring.

Here's wishing everyone a safe and happy New Year!

See you in 2006!

Ken

Merry Christmas Eve!

Here's wishing our friends and family a very Merry Christmas this year!

Its a cold and windy day today in Denmark, but that's okay, we were planning to spend a cozy day indoors with the kids anyway. (We may still try to sneak in a walk later today, but we're playing it by ear since Lilja is under the weather today.) We'll be talking to my parents later in the day via an iChat/iSight video conference, so that will be a fun way to connect for the holidays given the distances involved...

Have a great holiday weekend!

Ken

Tiske and Taske

Recently, two elves visited our apartment twice from Max and Lilja's school. Their names are Tiske and Taske and they came one night for Lilja and one night for Max. These visits are apparently a Christmas tradition here in Denmark for kids under six.

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Actually, its hard to take two steps in Denmark without tripping over a Danish Christmas tradition! They've got a lot of them. Although, I had one Dane tell me that Denmark is not nearly as crazy about Christmas as Germany is. Apparently, Germans go all out for this holiday.

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Tiske and Taske are rather mischievous and like to hide things and otherwise play tricks on the children that they are visiting. For instance, last night, Tiske and Taske were visiting Max and they hid the chocolate chip cookies that he and Leysia had made the previous day. It took Max quite some time to find the cookies, eventually discovering that Tiske and Taske had hid them behind the microwave in the kitchen.

After the hijinks are done, it is the parent's responsibility to document the events by writing a story that is read to all of the kids at their children's kindergarden. I, of course, took my responsibility very seriously and produced two reports that the kids took with them when returning Tiske and Taske the next day.

For posterity, here are the reports that I made for Max and Lilja and their adventures with Tiske and Taske:

• Lilja
• Max

Enjoy,

Ken

P.S. Note: these files are large (7.2MB and 8.7 MB) PDF files that may take a while to download. Some Web browsers can display PDF files directly; others will simply download the file and you will then need to view them using Adobe's Acrobat Reader or MacOS X's Preview application.

Wyatt's Birthday

It was Wyatt's Birthday yesterday. For those who don't know, Wyatt is Max's cousin (via Leysia's sister) who is approximately six months younger than him.

Because we couldn't attend Wyatt's birthday party in person, we held a party for him here in Aarhus and even sang him Happy Birthday. See below for pictures and a movie.

Here's the "traditional Danish pastry" that we used as the stand-in for a birthday cake.



Here's Max and Lilja ready to dig in.



And here's our rendition of Happy Birthday in honor of Wyatt's birth!



Happy 5th Birthday Wyatt! Hope you had a good one!

Love,

Uncle, Auntie, Max, and Lilja

Catching Up: Marselisborg

Way back in August, I spent an afternoon with Lilja and Maxwell walking through the Queen of Denmark's gardens at her home in Aarhus, which is known as Marselisborg. Don't worry, the gardens are open to the public whenever she isn't in residence! (See below.) It would be like President Bush opening his ranch in Crawford to the public whenever he's in DC. (I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that to happen, however.)

Marselisborg is just a short walk from our apartment. (The Queen is practically our next door neighbor!) As you can see from the sign below, the gardens are open year round from 8 AM to 9 PM during the Spring and Summer and 9 AM to 4 PM during the Fall and Winter.



Here's the entrance to Marselisborg. Those gates are really impressive.



Walking up the road from the gates leads you to the Queen's summer (and Christmas) home.





I would have knocked on her door to ask for a cup of sugar but the only reason I was standing so close to that door is because the Queen wasn't home!



There were lots of neat details surrounding the house, including several guard stations and lovely wrought iron fences covered in roses.





The gardens are very beautiful and filled with some pretty funky sculptures, several of which give the environment a vaguely NC-17 kind-of-feel.









Here are two shots of the garden situated directly in front of the door and driveway of the house.





That garden leads you to a path which takes you to another part of the gardens. (Note: the Queen's gardens are quite extensive and my pictures here won't be able to convey exactly how big they actually are.)







Speaking of big, we discovered a rather large urn that has its own special spot in the garden. I can just imagine the story behind this urn. (Note: I'm completely making this up...)

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Scene: Queen's Dining Room. The Queen is quietly enjoying her lunch of pickled herring with curry sauce on top of buttered rye bread. (This dish is hugely popular here in Denmark; I've tried it and its actually quite good!) The butler arrives with some news.

Butler: Your Majesty, the Principality of Liechtenstein has sent you an urn in appreciation of your recent visit there.

Queen: Oh, that's nice. Well, put it with the other urns in the drawing room.

Butler: I'm afraid that won't be possible your majesty.

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Near the urn is a rather quaint gazebo that the kids liked running into and out of while screaming "Papa, Look!!" over and over again.



All of this walking around the garden had worn poor Max out... he found a suitable place and then promptly collapsed.



But Papa needed to kill more time that afternoon, and so with one hand holding Lilja and pushing Lilja's stroller, and the other hand dragging Max, he managed to get everyone to a nearby park where both kids perked up and played on the playground for the rest of the afternoon.





Hope you enjoyed this trip through the Queen's gardens!

Ken

A visit with Santa

We went to Copenhagen two weekends ago and visited Tivoli while we were there. While I plan on doing a more detailed entry on that trip, I wanted to quickly post two pictures of the kids visiting with (a somewhat formal looking) Santa Claus (or Julemand, as he is called here) at Tivoli. It was the last thing we did that day before heading across the street to catch our train back to Aarhus.






Enjoy,

Ken

The Four Elements of a Perfect Danish Fall/Winter Day

Just a quick post to report on the four elements necessary to a perfect Fall/Winter day in Denmark.

1. Dark
2. Cold
3. Rainy
4. Windy

Many days are, of course, not perfect; indeed, most days you simply pick any three of the characteristics above (although "Dark" tends to be a prominent feature), and a few pleasant days are enjoyed when nature has decided to just present one or two of these elements for the day. (Last week, for instance, we had a day that was simply cold and both Leysia and I remarked on how bright it was, as if we had been explorers trapped in a cave and were only now just emerging, blinking at the sunlight.)

The major feature, as mentioned above, is that its now very dark in Denmark, such that the sun comes up after we have left for work, and goes down before we have left work for the day. For someone who has just spent the last seven years of his life living in sunny Colorado, its a bit difficult. But, we are surviving and quite enjoying the Jul festivities; indeed, we just purchased our Juletræ (Christmas Tree) yesterday. I'll provide details on that in a future post.

Have to go wake the kids and tell them the disappointing news that even though it LOOKS like 3:30 AM, its actually 7:30 AM and time to get up!

Ken

Early Signs of Christmas

Yesterday, we were surprised to receive a notice that we had a package waiting for us at the post office. Our family usually lets us know when they have sent something, so we weren't expecting any packages. I went to the post office today and discovered that the package was from my Aunt Debbie, who lives in Tennessee!

Aunt Debbie is apparently very on top of things because the customs form is marked "Christmas Gifts" which means that not only did she already do her Christmas shopping for us, but she managed to get the packages wrapped and shipped off to Denmark in order to have them arrive by December 6th.

Way to go Aunt Debbie and thanks for thinking of us!

Ken

The Essence of our Kids

Leysia took a picture of Max and Lilja that, we think, really captures the essence of each kid.



Lilja is just bursting with energy, wearing a slightly funky, brightly colored outfit with ease. She looks like she's about to leap off the stairs and attack the day. (She was also very excited about her hair being up in pigtails!)

Max is much more calm, ready to ease into the day and sort of bemused at having to sit next to his fireball of a sister.

We love this picture and we hope you do too!

Ken

A Very Nice Thanksgiving

We had a very nice thanksgiving dinner with our guests (Sophia, Niels Olof, Susanne, and Jonas) just shy of two weeks ago.

Leysia set a very nice table, as you can see below...





... and did a very good job of cooking all the traditional Thanksgiving dishes, including a turkey, that Susanne very kindly carved for us! Here's a shot of Leysia in the kitchen.



Lilja was there, of course, and was looking forward to her role as hostess and goodwill ambassador to the visiting Danes who, in general, don't know about Thanksgiving but are happy to show up to drink wine and eat good food! :-)



Lilja became less happy, however, when Papa was asked to put tights on her. "Tights are for little girls!" seemed to be her attitude.



Here's a shot of Max enjoying the festivities while the mashed potatoes (a big hit!) were being passed around.



The evening was successful as everyone left the table claiming they felt stuffed, especially after Leysia passed around dessert (another big hit!) which consisted of a cup of chocolate-covered almonds and pumpkin pie served with crème frâiche. (All of this served with Leysia saying how she's just an "average" cook. Yeah, sure.)

Finally, the kids were excited because I set out the four christmas calendars that Leysia and I had bought for them (two each) and then Susanne brought them an additional calendar each (six total) in preparation for Jul (Christmas).








Two of the calendars are synched with shows on TV. Each day they open up a new part of the calendar that reveals some important aspect of the story that will occur during the episode for that day. This year's shows are called Bamses Julerejse (Bamse's Christmas Trip) and Jul i Valhal (Christmas in Valhalla) and Max and Lilja are enjoying watching both shows. (The shows are in Danish, of course, and Lilja and Max don't quite understand everything, but they seem to understand enough that they are excited to watch the shows each day.) The other (four) calendars are ones that each day provide a different type of candy or a piece of chocolate and, of course, the kids just LOVE this holiday tradition. :-)

Anyway, our thanksgiving celebration was a lot a fun and we now look forward to celebrating Christmas here in Denmark.

Ken