Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Well, I wanted to sqeak in these last posts before the new year. We managed to get several great shots of Ruby's first Christmas and took lots of video too. Jared propped up the video camera and got quite a lot of footage of us opening gifts. We had hoped that Ruby would enjoy unwrapping the presents, but she seemed totally oblivious to what was going on. She pretty much just wanted to pull the ornaments off of the Christmas tree. Somehow she had totally missed the existance of the Christmas tree until Christmas morning when we were all crowded under it.


I'm sure you're aching to ask-- did we dance around the Christmas tree and sing carols. I'm somewhat ashamed to say that, no, we did not. Both Jared and I had been planning on it, but then we just totally forgot about it when the moment actually came to do something about it. I think the main problem was that we didn't really have any hoopla until Christmas morning. We have decided that it's definitely a Christmas Eve thing--something that should be done in semi-darkness! We (I) also chickened out on using the real candles. That darn cat has been under the tree almost non-stop and periodically shifts the tree to a precarious angle, so there was no way I was going to put fire on that tree. It's been really nice to have our Christmas lights though (even though we got the cheapest ones-- $13/string!!). Hopefully, we'll be able to bring the Danish dancing tradition with us back to the states--although, I think they can keep their real candles. It's a nice idea, but the reality with pets and kids sounds like a nightmare!

We also bowed out on the Danish tradition of a Christmas goose. The thought of cooking a goose and all the extras in our tiny oven was way too much! Especially when there are really only two of us eating. Instead I roasted a chicken and made all the typical Christmas side dishes including sweet potatoes--yum! For dessert we did have the Danish specialty-- ris a L'amande. It's a rice pudding with cherry topping. The tradition is that there are chopped almonds in the pudding and one whole almond. The person who gets the whole almond (and doesn't chew it up by accident) gets a prize. The trick is that that person is supposed to save it in their cheek until everyone has eaten the whole pot and is stuffed, then they say "Wow! Look what I found!". Well, I found the almond, but I forgot to hide it until the pot was empty, which really disappointed Jared. I'll try harder next year!



This week has been such a treat having Jared home with us. We were able to finally get our Christmas newsletter done and Jared's made serious headway with the video (sorry family, it isn't in the mail yet!). The city has been quiet, with the exception of the fireworks which have been going off with increasing frequency since before Christmas. I have heard that we're in for a real frenzy tonight, and I believe it. All day it's been one after another. Sometimes it sounds like they hit the house or whiz right past the window. I'm starting to feel like the townspeople in Fellowship of the Ring... some naughty hobbits have gotten into Gandolf's wagon and we're all going to be scared silly before the mischief is over!






I'll leave you with our family pic. Oddly enough, the first one ended up being the best. We kept trying to get Ruby to smile without holding the medicine bottle, but she wouldn't hear of it. Oh well, it's a memory!

Goodbye Miss Rachel!

We really had a great week with Rachel and she put up with Ruby's bad moods with calm and compassion--something that I'm not always sucessful with! Ruby really got attached to her Miss Rachel over the week and always had a big smile for her in the morning. So, now that you've seen a few of the adventures our first visitor had, aren't you anxious to come and see us?!?! Next on the docket are two of my sisters, Alyssa and Christina, arriving on January 3rd--yippee!!


As an aside, you'll all be happy to hear that Ruby has finally figured out how to fall asleep on her own! For the last week or so we've been "ferberizing" her and now for the last few days for naps and bedtime she just stands and cries a few minutes and then crumples down to slumber! We are so happy!!! She's still waking up at about 4am, but laying her down and giving her her pacifier calms her almost instantly. Thank you God!!!

Carlsberg Brewery

The last stop in a very long day of sight-seeing was to visit the Carlsberg Brewery. They had a really neat visitor's center where they talked about the history of Danish beer (which they date beginning in 1370 BC), working conditions through the years, as well as the process of beer making and how it has changed through the ages.

They had a bottle collection of beers from all over the world--thousands of different varieties!

Workers at the brewery were originally given food to eat during their 14-15 hour work day and were also provided with all the beer they could drink at work and two small kegs to bring home. I doubt that that practice is still in operation!!

They had about a dozen Jutland dray horses and various fancy wagons that they use in parades and such. They're really beautiful horses. Very powerful with lots of long hair.

I think that Jared really wanted this hat, but I had a feeling that he'd never wear it in the "real world"!

Slotsholmen

Slotholmen is the seat of national government and is on a small island, separated from the city by a moat-like canal. The centerpiece is Christiansborg palace, which now houses gorvernment offices.

There is a large coutyard in front used as royal riding grounds and still used today. We came to this palace, primarily, to see the ruins underneath of two earlier castles, including Bishop Absalon's fortress built in 1167.

The ruins were quite dark which didn't lend well to good pictures. Here's one of the old stone walls covered with bricks. It was kind of creepy down there... so much so that a Chinese girl who was sight-seeing on her own latched onto us to see the sights. She was too scared to be down there alone!

Yet another shot of Ruby sacked out in the backpack! She really looks uncomfortable, but sometimes we aren't able to get the stroller in all the places we want to go!

City Sights

One of Rachel's favorite treats while she was here was a bacondog! The Danes do seem to eat a lot of hotdogs, though I think that probably one of the main reasons is because they are the cheapest hot food available. Even so, a bacondog will run you about 27kr (~$4.50)!! The neat thing is that the bun is like hollowed out french bread and they just slide the hot dog in after squirting in a healty dose of your favorite sauce: Bearnaise, French, Remoulade, spicy mustard, or plain old ketchup. Yum!!

This gargoyle (along with several others) stands guard outside the "city hall" building. Ruby was asleep in the backpack, which is why she's harldy visible all slumped over!

There are lots of canals throughout the city and in the summer months they run canal tours through here to see all the sights. This canal is part of the "moat" around Christiansborg Slot (one of the castles in the city). During these winter months the cold air whizzes down these canals and it's freezing!!

Rådhus

On Saturday Jared was able to come with us for our sight-seeing and we decided to have the first stop be the Rådhus (Copenhagen's City Hall). Jared was most interested in seeing Jens Olsen's world clock which tells local, solar time, sidereal time, sunrise, sunset, pole migrations, planet revolutions, the gregorian calendar, and even changing holidays such as Easter.

I thought that this stained glass window of the city's crest was pretty cool...

The highlight of the trip for me was climbing the clock tower which is 105m high and 300 steps! Some of those spiral staircases were so tight I was a bit dizzy by the time we reached the top.

Here is some of the clock tower mechanism. I'm not sure if this was keeping time on the clock or in charge of ringing the bells--probably the clock I guess.
Here's the view from the top--well, in one direction anyway! From the other side of the tower there was a view of Tivoli and the rest of the downtown area.

Indoor Adventures

Our shopping day was sooo windy and cold that we were forced indoors the next day...

The first stop of the day was Vor Frelsers Kirke (Church of Our Savior). This 300 year old Baroque church has an elegant twisted spire and amazing Botzen Brothers organ (1698) inside.
We were originally drawn to the church by the chance of climbing the spire, but found that it is closed during the winter months. It was well worth the visit though with lots of marble statues, an elaborate baptistry and beautiful carving. Even the pew boxes were interesting with their little numbered doors.

After a side trip to the mall we headed to the Zoological Museum next door to Jared's building. The most interesting part of the museum was their compulsion include nisse as part of Denmark's natural history. They even pieced together a skeleton of one of the little elves!

Here are some of the nisse in their "natural habitats"! They also had them interspersed throughout all of the displays including a cave man nisse with the wooly mammoth--pretty funny!

Here's Rachel posing with a seal! It was a great day made even better by the fact that Ruby was sooo good and slept much of the day away. (I think she was exhausted from all the cold weather the day before.)

Strøget

My good friend and Wheaton roommate, Rachel Arriola came to visit us for a week before Christmas. On our first sightseeing day we went to see Strøget, the famous walking street shopping area. Everything was decorated and lots of people were busy doing last minute Christmas shopping!

While Ruby and I were in Magasin (Denmark's biggest department store) looking for a bathroom for an emergency diaper change, Rachel was serenaded by this marching band. Too bad we missed it!

Ruby's Robe

Ruby's Aunt Amy knitted this adorable robe for her when she was born. It's still pretty roomy on her, but I couldn't resist trying it on for size recently-too cute!!

Tivoli Sausages!

Two weeks before Christmas we went to Tivoli for the second time--this time with Julie and Stefan. Julie is Jared's coworker and Stefan is her boyfriend. Since I've already shown you several pictures of Tivoli I'll just leave you with this shot of us stuffing our faces with delectable Tivoli sausages--yummy! Of course we also saved room for æbleskiver and glögg!

The easy way out!

Before I start, I just want to let everyone know that I'm sooo sorry that things have been so crazy and kept me from blogging. But, now I am faced with the situation of having so many great pictures from the last few weeks that it would take me eons to do a traditional blog with each set of pictures... so, I'm going to just post a BUNCH of pictures and captions. Hopefully a picture will truly speak a thousand words!! Happy Christmas!!

Still truckin'

Sorry that the posts have been so scarce of late. I have several excuses!

1. We have had our first visitor, Rachel, here for the last week plus and we have been doing lots of sight-seeing. So much, that we seem to be exhausted in the evenings and after a few rounds of Dutch Blitz, we hit the sack.

2. Ruby is on a bender... a "no liquid" bender that is! She decided suddenly that she hated the taste of her formula. Formula she has been drinking part-time for more than a month. Then she decided that she really didn't even like water, so we're having a bit of a stressful time trying to get enough fluids into her. We've been certain for about 2 weeks that her top front teeth are trying to come through, but so far nothing is visible. ARG!! She also has been sleeping horribly, which in turn means that we are sleeping horribly.

I managed to make it through the shortest day of the year--it really wasn't that bad... but I must admit that the grey days coupled with Ruby's increasingly foul mood has put a major damper on my Christmas spirit. Both Jared and I feel as if it's just too much to keep in the spirit for two months, especially since we will be missing our families this year. We are so thankful for everything that God has provided... but, there are still hard days living so far from our loved ones.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I will be able to post some of our adventures, but if not, just know that I am feverishly working on our Christmas newsletter... better late than never!

Celebrating Christmas!

Christmas in Denmark is celebrated in much the same fashion as in the US-- with LOTS of shopping! There are several malls in Copenhagen (which I was quite surprised by!) and then there are walking streets such as the one sh0wn here. It is hard to see in the picture, but the street is packed with people and decorations (you can click on the picture to get a bigger version of it if you're interested!). It really is quite festive!












I wanted to post a few pictures of Ruby in her Christmas dress from my Dad. She looks absolutely adorable in it and got lots of comments at church yesterday! It is a bit big on her still so hopefully we'll be able to have her wear it a fair bit this winter and spring.

We had our Christmas carol service yesterday at church yesterday including special music from the choir (which both Jared and I were in) and a mens' quartet (that Jared was in). It was a wonderful service and we were glad that Julie, Jared's co-worker, could join us there!

Baby, it's cold outside!

It may be cold outside, but we come out from this weekend with warm hearts! All week long we have been dealing with our heating system which is over 25 years old and barely working. Thankfully, we were able to get a repair man out on Saturday afternoon and he got it fixed--yippee! While Jared and Ruby stayed home dealing with that situation I was able to go to a cookie making party at Jared's co-worker's home (she's the same one who invited me to the decorations party a few weeks earlier).

We were each supposed to bring dough for 100 cookies, but I think that I'm the only one that stuck pretty close to that guideline. Everyone else brought enough dough for several hundred cookies! Since the ovens are smaller here, we were only able to put one sheet of cookie in at a time and it took a LONG time. We started at 1:30 in the afternoon and when I left at 6:15 they were still making cookies. I guess they did finish up shortly after that and then relaxed and ate take-out in front of the boob tube! They are showing the first season of LOST every night here until Christmas, so people are getting really hooked on it (including Jared!). I only manage to stay up about every other night because it doesn't start until 9:30 or 10:30 depending on the night... too late for me with how tired Ruby makes me these days!

After the cookie party we went over to our friends, Danny & Claire's, for dinner. She had fixed delicious chicken enchiladas, corn casserole, fresh guacamole... tex-mex heaven! My mouth is watering just writing about it! Ruby and Carter had a good time playing together and really were cute scooting around on the floor after each other. I think that they're starting to get used to each other and relax, so that's been good to see. Once again, we are just so blessed to have found friends so quickly and easily here. God is so good to us!

Woven Paper Hearts

I spent a lot of time this last week fiddling with making woven paper hearts. These heart shapped baskets are traditional Scandinavian decorations, especially around Christmas that are used to hold candy or Pebernödder (Danish cookies) and are hung on the Christmas tree or around the house. The simplest heart, which is also the one you see most often, is on the bottom left of this picture.

I really liked the idea of making these decorations myself for our home, so I found this great website put up by a Danish fellow with dozens of different designs and have done 14 of them so far. I'm not sure that I'll be able to do any that are much more difficult that the ones shown here, especially without a compass or printouts from the patterns he has online.

The Danes will only really make these of red and white or red and silver or red and gold (playing off their national flag), but I decided to use various colors. Eventually I want to have 25 of them and use them for an advent calendar of sorts for Ruby. I can hang them up on a line of ribbon and have a treat and verse(s) to enjoy for each day leading up to Christmas. My Grandma used to always give us an advent calendar or two growing up and my sisters and I would argue over who got to open it each day even if it was just a picture and a verse inside. For as long as they last the hearts will remind us of our time here in Denmark.

Funny Ruby

Ruby has been her normal amazing self this last week. She really does change every day. Lately she has been playing so hard all day that she hardly wants to stop to take a nap ( much to my dismay!), but by about 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening she is so exhausted that she'll fall asleep anyway. Last Sunday evening she fell asleep on our way home from church and we had the hardest time getting her to wake up again! Even sitting up she just kept snoozing!

Another first for Ruby this week was eating rice. She loved it and while she did get some down I think that most of it ended up stuck to her hair, clothes, tablecloth, floor, etc. I had made instant rice for our dinner and it was really sticky, so eventually she decided that it would be easier just to pick up the plate and mash it into her face! Pretty funny! So far she has only had cheerios, small bits of rice cakes, and this rice for solids. She isn't a very picky eater, but does get easily distracted which makes for some pretty drawn out meal times.

Eventually, the fun had to end and we decided to localize the mess by undressing her at the table... she was not pleased to say the least! Thankfully, Jared did all the rice clean up while I took Ruby for her bath and "jammie-time!". Putting her to bed has been a bit more difficult this last week because we moved Ruby's crib upstairs with us in the loft so that her room could be open for our visitors. I have found that getting her up and down that ladder isn't the easiest thing in the world and since she hasn't spent much time in the loft she gets really wound up and wants to look at everything. Hopefully she'll get used to it soon!


I'll leave you with one last picture of our little "drowned rat"! She is still getting a bath in the kitchen sink, but I'm not sure how much longer that's going to last! It's getting really hard to keep her in there because it's rather shallow and she just pulls on the faucet non-stop trying to push herself up and out! Arg! Also, if anyone has a secret home remedy to deal with cradle cap I'd love to hear it. We tried the oil this last week and had to shampoo her hair 6 times to get it all out and she still has the flaky scaly scalp. At least it doesn't seem to be itching...

Whew! It's been a while...

Well, things here have been buzzing along at an alarming rate these last few weeks. So much so that I never seem to get around to posting! I do have some goodies to write about, but I also have oodles of great pictures to share, so these posts today may be a bit heavy on pictures. A picture speaks a thousand words, right?! Anyway, this first picture is a pretty one at sunset over the lakes right in the middle of Copenhagen. Well, I don't really think they're lakes, but that's what everyone calls them. This was probably at about 3:30 or 4:00pm in the afternoon two Sundays ago. Jared had Ruby for the afternoon and evening while I went to a party to make traditional Danish decorations including a holder for a calendar candle and another for advent candles.

After coffee hour was over Jared and Ruby went over to Rådhuspladsen to see the Christmas tree being lit. They didn't quite make it to see the lights being snapped on, but obviously there were still hoards of people around trying to catch a glimpse of the lit tree! As an aside, it is interesting to note that Danes find electric lights on Christmas trees extremely tacky and all use real candles to light their trees while the dance around it singing Christmas carols (no joke!), but I guess that they don't mind blazing lights on outdoor trees. Really, I suppose that the real ones would either get blown out or light the whole tree on fire!

I would have to say that my first attempt at these Christmas decorations was fair at best (especially after the bus ride and walk home!), but it is fun to burn the candle down a bit each day. It's a bit of Christmas spirit and reminds me that the reason we celebrate Christmas at all is Christ, of course, the light of the world. I have really enjoyed the Advent candles as well, though I wish that we had an Advent devotional series or something that we could read along with the lighting each week.

Sea creatures and land lubbers

Friday afternoon Claire and I braved the freezing cold weather with the babies to visit Danmarks Akvarium in Charlottenlund (north of the city). It wasn't quite as wonderful as their snappy website led me to believe, but it was okay. Really, I think that the kids enjoyed it as much as they would have the Shedd Aquarium... though I think that parents get a bigger kick out of the bigger aquariums. This one did have several tanks with tropical fish, which Ruby really likes, and a large area with a crocodile, sea turtle, and some other large critters. The funniest thing about the trip was Ruby's fasciniation with the eels. There were probably 4 or 5 varieties, some very large, and for some reason they would just make her giggle and giggle. I had been considering an annual pass, but found that I get a discount anyway with my zoo annual pass, so we would have to go at least 4 times a year to make it worthwhile... not likely!

Yesterday (Saturday) Jared finally got his new bike. There had been some kind of clerical error in getting paid this month, so the bicycle he thought he would be buying at the beginning of the week didn't get to come home until yesterday. I think that he will really enjoy using it and hopefully it will hold up well in the elements.

I finally got around to entering all those reciepts I'd been saving into Excel and found that we've been spending more than $150/month on clip-cards for public transportation. That is probably close to twice what we were spending in Moscow on our cars, including insurance! So, we decided to try getting monthly passes this month to see how that goes. We decided to buy three zones for 405kr/ea (about $65/ea), but will still have to pay extra to go to the mall, etc. (which is outside of those three zones). We may go back to the clip cards in January, but we'll see.

We also found that our heating isn't working. We have radiators in the house, but for some reason the water in the pipes is cold, even though we have hot water for showers, dishes, etc. So, we're not really sure what the problem is, but suspect a broken pump. We're going to have to attempt to get in touch with our landlord about it, because the heat from the wood stove doesn't reach Ruby's room and it's getting pretty chilly in there. We also have our computer in Ru's room, so my fingers are slowly turning into icicles as I type! More incentive to learn how to type faster I suppose!

Well, I better run! We have to find something to put around the woodstove because Ruby's is trying to crawl today. Crawl today, walk tomorrow... the time sure is flying.