Sixteenth Weekend

Well, now I am almost caught up. It is the third post for this morning, and the others were pretty quick summaries! Hopefully now I can get back to the regular rhythm of weekday morning writing, and keep up more regularly.

Our weekend was fairly quiet at first. We watched Disney, as we always do to start off the weekend. I'm not sure if the kids love it or not, but they love the tradition of it for sure. They are always eager to get their jammies on, pull out the big bean bag, get the bowl of popcorn, and sit down together to watch.

Last weekend, one of the boys who came to visit showed our boys how to make a spinning top out of the plusplus bricks. They spent much of this weekend making as many as possible, and then having contests to see which ones looked cooler when they spun. This might be one of the coolest toys I've ever seen.

Sunday was the JuleCafe at the Friskole. The preschool class was going to sing the Lucia song and do a short parade, and then sing a couple of other songs. It was very cute. I thought the white t-shirt with finger-painted gold wings on the back was a perfect way to do Angel costumes for little kids!

 The preschool parade was led by two of the girls wearing Lucia crowns (battery operated, definitely a good call!) And they walked in a line through all of the tables of parents and families.

 Each of the "big" kids held the hand of a "small" kid. Torben got to walk with his good friend Freya.

 Andreas picked Anders to be his walking partner. They were very cute, all the kids walking together through the crowd, while singing "Sancta Lucia..."

 This is an even better one of Torben and Freya. Wherever he goes, she is not far behind!

 Here are all the preschool kids getting ready to sing a couple more songs. They sang "Frere Jacques" in Danish and English.

 They also sang a cowboy song. It was in English, but not one that we had heard before. The kids all seemed to have a fun time.

 We left the JuleCafe after the kids were done, even though the party was scheduled for a couple more hours. Svea hadn't had a nap yet, and Jeff had to get back to the kitchen to cook yet another American Thanksgiving! Sunday night, we had all the traditional foods for all the folk school students. The turkey turned out fantastic, and Jeff left one uncut to bring to the table. They cooked five turkeys! Fifteen kilos of potatoes, seven kilos of sweet potatoes, plus cranberry sauce, beans, corn.

 It was the first Sunday of Advent, so they lit the candle on the table wreath as well.

Pretty much all of this was gone by the time everyone had gone through! But the whole turkey didn't get cut -there were still some leftovers!

One of the traditions in Scandinavia is that you set up a special little door for a Jule Nisse (Christmas gnome) to come to visit. Sometimes maybe the nisse will leave you little notes, or presents, and you can write notes to the nisse as well. We have decided to adopt this tradition as well, so we set up our door against the wall. We have the door on the counter, so the ladder isn't really necessary this year. But it serves as a good spot to store his wooden shoes and the wreath. There is also a metal plate, on which we can put the treats for the nisse, and perhaps where the nisse will leave presents for the kids.

Aha! And here is the photo of Thanksgiving leftovers! Even in Denmark, we had turkey leftovers. They actually mixed the turkey with the cranberries, and then mixed something else (cheese perhaps, plus some spices) into the mashed potatoes. It was a fantastic leftovers dinner!

And with the last of the turkey eaten, and the Elves and gnomes beginning to arrive, and the snow and ice coming and going again, it seems November has gone and December is here. We have been here nearly four whole months now. It will be four months next week. It is amazing how the time goes! The boys have fantastic understanding of the Danish language, and speak it often. It's fun that they can play with their friends so much more easily now. Svea talks all the time too, though primarily in English since she spends the majority of her time with me. She has started repeating words to get an understanding now, which is fun. If we tell her something is this or that, she will repeat the word as a question, and then repeat it again as a statement.