Catching up!
It's been a while since my final weekly post, so I thought it would be a good time to catch up with you all on what's been happening in the last month or so!
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| All the puzzles!! |
Zac and I are loving our new Danish lives. We even started our Danish lessons! On Wednesday evenings from 18:15 to 20:45, we sit in a classroom in Hellerup (about 20 minutes away from our home) and practice counting, talking about where we come from, and figuring out how to say words "properly" versus "normally." On Sunday nights, we have online work to complete as well. The class is half in-person and half online, so it works a little better with the family life than doing it twice a week in a classroom.
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| Homework time! |
I won't bore you all with my first impressions of the Danish language here, but I will make a short, separate post about it if you're interested!
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Let's talk about Kaden!
Kaden decided to join the DISNAC basketball team at school, which means that their international school plays the other international schools in the area at a tournament in February. He has practice Monday after school and it's much more low-key than the basketball club he tried out before, so he's enjoying that aspect of it. He doesn't like that they aren't taking it as seriously as they could, and his complaint about the basketball club was that they were too competitive, so I don't really know what kind of happy medium he's looking for, but I hope he finds it!
He's also been going mountain biking with his friends. They ride over from their homes and then all the boys head up the hill into the forest. I don't have pictures of it since I'm not there, but they have a great time, take care of each other if they get hurt, and take fun videos of each other hitting the jumps and stuff.
Kaden is struggling a little. He misses our old house and neighborhood, and he especially misses Tyson! I have had several chats with the school and his teachers about his little disruptive outbursts or noises he makes in class, and the seriousness of the accusations is getting a little worse lately. Mostly, it's stuff like laughing at a funny word during a presentation, making silly noises with his friends in the back of the room, asking to go to the bathroom too much, etc. There have also been accusations of him purposefully spraying deodorant in class and of prank calling a teacher (we're still trying to sort this out...). In his version of the story, it's always a misunderstanding or an accident, and the teacher always says the opposite, and as parents who aren't present and want to believe the best in their child, it's very tough to know what to do. This is a struggle we are all working through, and I'm hoping to find someone who maybe specializes in counseling for immigrants or something to help him work through whatever he's dealing with.
He recently discovered some new (old) video games, so he's enjoying the basement a little more (Red Dead Redemption, anyone?), and I hear him chatting on games some nights with his friends from the U.S. He's happy to be on Christmas break for a couple of weeks now, and he's hoping to get a chance to go snowboarding in Sweden with Zac one of these days. He was excited when we got a little dusting of snow the other day, but it didn't stick around for long.
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Now Khloe!
Khloe has been leaning into her friend groups here and really finding her place among them. She had a fun sleepover with a new friend, Olivia, who writes her own songs and plays piano and sings. She also does photography, so Khloe really enjoyed her evening hanging out with someone who is into all the things she hopes to do someday.
She also quit theater. She said she wasn't having as much fun as she thought she should be and that some nights, it was a little isolating and lonely. Similar to Kaden when he quit the basketball club, I gave her a free pass on that. I made her write her own email (with editing from me), and hopefully, she'll join up again with some friends at some point.
She watches a lot of Netflix and a lot of TikTok videos, so most days, you can find her laying on the couch under a big blanket with her earbuds in, staring at a small screen. She takes breaks from that to work on her paintings and talk to people on WhatsApp, and she's really helpful with Harrison in the mornings. Her dish-washing skills are improving slightly, and she dotes on the animals every chance she gets.
Khloe attended a Danish cookie-baking party with some friends from school and had a wonderful time.
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| See her in the back center? |
The kids also had a Christmas bazaar at their school, and Khloe's class did a kind of "around the world" theme. She was in charge of drawing the poster for Japan and making lily pads for a game they created for people to play.
He also just went to a party at McDonald's last weekend. I don't know if you can still have a birthday party at McDonald's in the U.S., but dropping him off in the party space here brought back some good memories!
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| Harrison is in the bottom right corner! |
He loves going outside to play. He's good at suiting himself up, whether it's rain pants or snow pants, he knows how to keep himself warm and dry. He pulls on his boots and his Santa hat and jumps on the trampoline, rides his bike, or just plays pretend.
Speaking of his Santa hat, I recently bought him a julenisse hat (since Danes are all about the Christmas elves/gnomes). He loves it an it is currently missing, so hopefully, our search ends well.
He was gifted a hand-me-down toy machine gun from a neighbor kid last night, so he's been running around the house hiding and shouting things like, "Ho ho ho...now I have a machine gun!" and "Yippee-ki-yay, m*****f*****!!" Maybe we shouldn't have read him the Die Hard version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, but it's kind of adorable (within reason).
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| Precious little John McClane... |
We did some Christmas crafts the other day. He brought home paper snowman cut-outs from a project they did at school and we made little paper snowmen to stick in the plants around the house.
He also had a program and presentation at school a couple weeks ago as they wrapped up their first unit package. The early years, Year 1, and Year 2 all presented (Harrison is in Year 2, or 1st grade). He was one of the three kids who introduced the entire program, and then he had a part telling about some of the celebrations from different countries they learned about this year.
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What else? Zac and I got flu shots at work. I asked around and apparently, they don't regularly give kids or adults flu shots here unless they're at risk, but big companies often offer them to their employees on site. So we got flu shots, the kids did not, and we're hoping for the best this season. EVERYTHING is going around and people at work are being taken out left and right by influenza and COVID-19, so we'll see if we get lucky. Or at least don't die.
For a while, the weather was very rainy and chilly. This is how I look most mornings.
Zac and I got the kids some nice GOR-TEX coats to block the wind and rain, and they have puffy down liners that can be worn on their own. They're perfect for the Danish weather and I like knowing that they're warm and dry when they're out and about. Zac and I treated ourselves to new coats, too. My previous coat was a dressy little thing I bought about 9 years ago. When I was pregnant with Harrison, I kept zipping it over my belly until I ruined the zipper, so it hasn't zipped for about 7 years. It was time. Zac had an old cheap snowboarding coat that doesn't keep out wind or water. We are both much happier and better equipped now.
Oh, we bought 4-day passes to Copenhell! It's the big metal music festival held every June in Copenhagen. We look at the lineup every year and hope that one of my work trips coincides with the festival, but alas, it has never worked out. Zac has always wanted to go, and even though I don't love metal like he does, I do appreciate live music and talented musicians. Plus, the lineup last year had a bunch of people I would've liked to see live. I jumped on the tickets as soon as they were available.
The National is also coming next year in August!! I jumped on those tickets as soon as they went on sale, too. We are going to go broke living here. I'm just so excited! They released two albums within a year (and thankfully, the most recent one was easy to pre-order, even from Denmark).
We had visitors (Wade, Lisa, Katie, Jack, and Lucas) in November (see my other post about that) and celebrated Zac's birthday.
Our guests left the morning of Thanksgiving, but Zac made our little family a lovely dinner and we brought out our finest Georg Jensen bowls.
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