I've finished reading two more books this week, which is fun. It's better to read than to sit and play candy crush, I suppose. Though that is pretty fun also. Hopefully I can get back into my writing habit now, too, that things seem to be back to a regular pattern again. It was sort of a mess there for all of November and December! I did lots of writing in November, trying to get that nanowrimo project completed, but then not much other writing, and by December I was out of the habit so it was hard to get going again. The new year didn't work as far as getting started with new things. I've never really been big on making resolutions to start in January anyway. I figure if I think of a good idea to make a change, best to just start it then rather than waiting until some arbitrary date. Finally today on the 11th of January I found an app for my phone that will let me access various Bible studies, so I am pretty excited about that. I forgot my Bible at home, and it's proven quite difficult to find an English one here (I would be able to handle French, too, but haven't seen one of those either).
I just remembered that in my post about starting the new year, I neglected to write about the amazing fireworks that rung in the new year here! Originally we were planning to go somewhere for the Christmas break with Murray and Vickie, but for various reasons that didn't work out and we decided to stay here instead. The fireworks went off on and off for about an entire week before New Years, at random times of the day and night. Sometimes we could see them, but mostly we heard them from time to time. Then, on New Year's Eve, there was a knock on the door. When Jeff opened it, several junior-high or high-school age kids were outside, and started lighting off fireworks in the driveway! Then, they just sort of stood there. Waiting. Apparently there is a tradition similar to trick-or-treating where they light off fireworks and you give them candy. We didn't know about this tradition, though, so we had no candy ready. Jeff gave them some coins -probably too much!- and that seemed to suffice. But we decided not to answer the door any more that day. It was kind of fun for the kids, though, to see fireworks right there in the driveway! In the afternoon, we went for a walk to show Vickie around town. Kids were all over the place knocking on doors and lighting fireworks. So it was kind of fun. Late in the afternoon, the fireworks started going in earnest, all over town. And as it got dark (which was afternoon), the kids were really enjoying running to the windows to see if they could find them. Svea would hear one and yell "quick! quick! pretty!" or "oooh! more pretty!" every time. It was so fun to see their excitement!
There was a shortcourse at the folk school over New Year's, and they were going to have a mini fireworks display at 10:30 for any of them that didn't think they could stay up until midnight. So we decided to let the kids stay up for that, and we walked over there just after 10. No one was out, so we walked around looking for where they might be, and came upon lots of fireworks going off all over town. The short course folks were dancing, so the fireworks were delayed. Then they wanted to have dessert. So the fireworks were cancelled since they were going to have the big display at midnight. The boys were disappointed, but on our walk home we passed a group of kids who had several big ones and they got to see those up close, so they were glad about that. Then they all went to bed, but Svea was so not interested in sleeping. Every time there was a boom (every 40 seconds or so), she would sit up and yell "quick! quick! pretty!" so we got her up again. No point trying to force a toddler to sleep through that. The boys were exhausted, though, and fell fast asleep very quickly. Just before midnight, we tried to turn on the tv online to watch the countdown, but it wouldn't load because everyone in Denmark was trying to watch the countdown online. Then we heard a lot of fireworks -ah, it must be midnight- so instead we went to the front door and looked outside. They were everywhere! Svea got a bit scared by the noise, so we went to the porch and looked out those windows. Then we went upstairs to the window in the boys room -I thought I heard them awake, and wanted them to see the fireworks if they were- and it was the most amazing display I've seen in a long time (aside from the Festival of Fire on the barges in Canada. That couldn't be topped.) Everywhere you looked, there were huge fireworks going off. We tried several times to wake the boys up, and even though Svea was in their room yelling "oooh! Pretty!" "oooh! more pretty!" over and over again, they slept soundly through it. At one point, Torben was sort of awake so I lifted him up to the door so he could watch, and he said "what are you doing mom?" so sleepily that I just put him back in his bed and he was fast asleep once again. Unfortunately, the boys missed it. And I kept thinking it was going to be done soon, so I didn't get my camera out. But the show lasted a good 40 minutes! Constant fireworks, 360 degrees around town, for 40 minutes. It was so fun! There were a few renegades after that, but by 1am most of it had settled down and people had gone inside for the rest of their parties.
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