Thirteenth Weekend

For this weekend, we stayed around close to home mostly. But, Jeff has invited several friends to Rødding for an American Thanksgiving meal later this month, so we did leave town in search of some turkeys. He had seen them at the local ABC supermarket where we buy most of our groceries, and they were approximately $4 per pound, which seemed like kind of a lot. He asked one of the cooks, and she said that sounded about right to her. But we did want to go check at a larger store to see if the price was any better. Saturday after lunch, we headed to the Kolding Storcenter to go to Bilka. It's something like deciding to go to the Mall of America on a Saturday afternoon (i.e. a crazy madhouse). We ended up being in the supermarket -the Bilka- for over an hour, spent about 800Kr, and discovered that the turkeys were more expensive, and smaller, than the ones here in town. It seemed all the families in the store who had children with them had at least one child crying or whining, no one seemed to be paying attention to where they were walking or who else might be in the path they were headed. Total chaos. We found a few things that are not available at our little store (obviously, since we spent over a hundred dollars), and delightfully there is a Starbucks right outside the door of the store. So I got a delicious Christmas Blend coffee in one of those "scandalous" red holiday cups. It was about $5, and worth every penny.

I'm thinking of putting the cup on our Christmas tree. I can't believe all the hype around these cups, but I think it will look very festive with my other handmade Christmas ornaments this year.

On Pinterest I found some photos of paper ornaments, and the boys and I tried out a few.

Now they are hanging from the swirly branches with the other decorations the kids have made this fall. It's really fun having that to hang things on. I think I might try to figure out something like that at home as well. The boys really like it too, and have started finding their own ways to hang their art on it when they get home from school. Now we've got some pumpkins, a couple of ghosts, a few drawings, as well as the leaves and chestnuts we had before.

We were amused when we arrived at the mall (the largest in Denmark, supposedly) to see a drive-through Carl's Jr. right by one of the entrances. The full restaurant was in the food court inside, but there was indeed a drive through window outside. We didn't buy any hand-breaded chicken strips, but we looked to see if they were available on the menu, and they were.

Someday maybe we will go back there on a day that isn't a Saturday afternoon, to see what else they have there. We were sort of "done" by the time we finished our grocery shopping that we just headed back home. We did notice several signs for their Black Friday all-day sales. That seems kind of interesting, since they don't do Thanksgiving here like we do back home. Jeff says the Black Friday thing is new here too.

What I cannot believe is all the beautiful flowers still in bloom in November! Svea and I took the long way back from lunch and walked past the garden at the folk school. These pink ones were still very much alive and beautiful.

 There are a few of these yellow ones in the back yard as well. They almost look fake they are still in such pristine condition! Beautiful!

 The walking paths through the garden were a bit tight for the stroller, but we tried anyway. Svea liked being able to reach out and touch the flowers, saying "ooh, pretty!"

 It's nice when the kids start to get old enough to make their own snacks...but they sometimes get carried away! Torben wanted one of these amazing rolls with havarti, and didn't want to wait for help. So, he skipped cutting the roll or the cheese, skipped the toaster, and just put the remaining 1/4 of the havarti on the bottom of his roll. I stopped him just before he took a bite, and helped him cut some. That's about four servings of cheese -at least.

 Svea's first "big kid" drawing. I think I will bring it home and put it in her frame which currently sits empty on the wall. She loves purple!

 I like the idea of hygge ("hoo-ga", more or less) and we have a few candles in the center of the table that we light when we're going to be sitting here for a while. The kids like it too, though Svea says "hot?" and tries to blow them out all the time.

 One of our weekend purchases was a set of two microfiber cleaning cloths. I sewed one of them into a bag filled with rice to make a heating pad. I'm going to sew up the other one too. Warm rice packs are so nice on sore muscles, or when it's cold outside. I kept the one end, that I used to flip it inside out and fill it with rice, sort of messy in the finishing so that I can pretty easily unstitch that part to bring them back home. It seems silly to fill our suitcase weight with rice! These are washcloth size, and folded in half make a perfect size.

Since I decided to participate in national novel writing month this November, I've been spending a lot of my "free" time writing, but still feel behind. Sunday afternoon while Svea was sleeping, Jeff took the boys over to the folks school -they wanted to ride their bikes/scooter anyway- for a hot chocolate so I could have some time to write. They ended up over in the workshop making designs with the perler beads as well -and ran into Thøger as well. I think it was one of their most perfect afternoons. Anders asked us to get him some of those perler beads for his birthday.

A few days ago, Jeff and I were enjoying the gorgeous weather -it's been about 14 degrees, close to 60- and talking about how people kept saying November was the worst month here as far as weather goes, and if that was the truth, if this was how it got, then we could surely handle it! The next day the wind and grey and mist came. Ah. "This is the November I remember" Jeff said. Even though the temperature hasn't gone down much, it was still 13 this morning when we took the kids to school- the wind and rain make it feel cold. I can see why hygge is so important. You just want to curl up inside with a book and a blanket, light some candles, and be with the people who are important to you. Yesterday, I skipped writing entirely and just piled a bunch of pillows in the corner of the couch, made some hot chocolate, got a blanket, and read my novel "Bella Tuscany" the entire time Svea was asleep. It seemed like a good choice, even though I also felt like I was getting behind in the writing both for my blog and for the nanowrimo project. Funny how I feel sort of obligated to those things, even though they are completely my choice and I'm not doing them for anyone except myself! I still feel badly when I don't do them. But it was nice to sit and read. And today I am back at the table, with a couple of candles burning, catching up on the writing.

We've eaten more meals at home the last week or so than we typically do. There were several fancy meals at the folk school, and our kids don't really do fancy meals, and last night they were having some sort of party with yellow pea soup and boiled pork, so we opted out. Jeff saw on the students' facebook group that they were all meeting at 7 to go to the Burger Barn, so, apparently they weren't that impressed with it either. Today he is taking his Immigration class on a walking tour in a nearby town, and won't be around for lunch, so Svea and I are going to stay home too. I think we will have grilled cheese.