School's Out for Summer!
Obviously, I'm a little slow out of the gate on this blog. I mean, I've already posted about part of our summer vacation, so it's pretty clear the kids are out of school and summer has come, but we were so busy leading up to the end of the school year that I just missed my window. We'll just wrap it up now instead!
These evenings are looooooong and amazing. We are all home by about 4:30 p.m. at the latest, which gives us plenty of time for a family dinner and evenings on the terrace. Marabell spends all of her time lounging in the sun, just as an old kitty should. Han lays around with us, biting at bugs and scouting for intruders. He's a good boy.
Khloe takes Han for walks each evening. She likes to wait until pretty late so she can see the sunset. But as I mentioned, the evenings are long, so sometimes it's almost her bedtime before she heads out with the dog. I mean, the sunset is typically around 10 p.m., but it doesn't actually get dark until much later.
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| A look at 11:13 p.m. from behind my bedroom curtain |
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| 12:42 a.m |
Danes keep apologizing for the weather, but honestly, we love it. There's lots of beautiful, temperate days. We haven't had any scorchers yet (sorry to all of you experiencing the 90s and 100s in the U.S....yikes!), it's just very pleasant. Sometimes, the humidity is a little rough, but we just deal with it. There is a lot of rain and cloudy skies, but mostly, it's passing or intermittent, which means it's never super dry here, the plants are always lush and amazing, and as long as we aren't caught out in the rain wearing jeans, it's pretty easy to ignore the precipitation.
I guess sometimes, it's a little out of control...
We even got in a beach day! We live very close to a lake called Sjælsø (shee-yale-sue), and later in the summer, it will be overrun with toxic algae, so we needed to jump in while it was still just full of grass seed.
It was a fun day. We are outside pretty much every day, even if it's rainy. The sunsets over the lake are just gorgeous (a word I hate, but it's fitting here) and we feel so incredibly fortunate to get to take advantage of the many, many forested areas where we live.
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| Meet "Dumas Croc-er" *crickets* No? No Nitty Gritty Dirt Band fans out there? |
I took it upon myself to really tidy up the berry patch in our borrowed garden. It was pretty overgrown with shoots from the trees and hedges around, so with the help of Seek, I removed anything that didn't belong (except the volunteer columbine because it was pretty). My bun got tangled in the brambles about a hundred times, and I was stuck pretty good for about five minutes once, but I was pretty happy with the job once it was done, and I'm pleased to say I just ate my first raspberry and it was awesome.
As the kids wrapped up their school year, the school trips and teambuilders started happening in rapid succession. Check out the other blog posts about Khloe's trip to Bornholm, Kaden's trip to Kraków, and Harrison's trips to Skoveskolen and Louisiana!
When the kids returned from their school trips, there were still a few weeks of school left. School here gets out at the end of June and starts up again mid-August, so there are only about six weeks of summer break.
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Khloe was in Bornholm during Father's Day in Denmark, so we decided to celebrate on the date of U.S.'s Father's Day after she had returned. We decided to take a family trip up to Helsingør and visit Kronborg Slot (Kronborg castle).
If the name Helsingør sounds vaguely familiar to any of you Shakespeare buffs, it's because Kronborg Slot in Helsingør was the inspiration for Elsinor, the Hamlet castle! (Helsingør, Elsinor...you can see the similarity!)
Anyway, on work trips in the past, I've been able to visit the lovely exterior of the castle two or three times, but I've never gotten to go inside. It was really something I wanted to do within my first year here. The timing was good because kids get free admission all summer, and they have theater players pretending to be Claudius, Ophelia, and Hamlet throughout the castle that you can interact with to help solve the murder of the king.
After a chat with Claudius, Khloe and Harrison played some chess, then had a lovely dance in the ballroom.
While we waited to see what Ophelia had to say about the unfortunate death of Hamlet's father, Khloe tried her hand at embroidery and I found a cool room that had volumetric flasks and old balances and vials and stuff in it. There was absolutely no signage to explain the room or the stuff inside, and now I have my own mystery at Kronborg to solve...
We climbed the 140-something stairs to the rooftop. It was windy, but that's kind of every day in DK, so we tried our best to snap a selfie and then descend. This country is so beautiful, and it's fun to say hi to Sweden across the water once in a while!
After we toured the castle, we messed around in the courtyard, ate some ice cream, checked out the royal kitchen, and ran around in the absolutely dark maze of the casemates. We did find the Sleeping Warrior, Holger the Dane, who will awaken one day to defend Denmark in her time of need.
When we emerged from the casemates into the daylight again, we walked the wall around the castle and then strolled through a cool art exhibit with monsters representing different feelings.
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| I guess this is probably housing some kind of administrative service for the castle, but it's so cute! |
When we finished at the castle, we were hungry, and Kaden told us about a food hall that was just up the road from Kronborg. Værftets Madmarked has a bunch of different food stalls inside serving food from around the world. It was very cool and we all found something yummy to eat.
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In the last couple weeks, they really celebrate being done with testing and all that. Khloe's class had a day trip to the beach. Kaden's class had a day trip to the amusement part, Bakken. Harrison's class had a day trip to a different beach...look at these lucky kids!!
School is cool, I guess.
When Harrison's class finishes a unit, they have an "Exit Point" celebration. Parents are invited to come join the class for about an hour in the morning to have the kids show you what they've been learning and experience the fruits of their labor. His final unit of the year was "We are what we eat," so the kids made jam from scratch, helped their teacher make bread, and put together a lovely breakfast for the parents.
Harrison served me juice and banana bread with butter and homemade jam. He made my placemat himself, and it showed different food and nutrition facts. He also made a menu with the various choices for my breakfast experience on it. It was a super cute event.
I also attended his learner-led final conference of the year. He was most proud to share the story he wrote with his friends as a project where they all wrote a "Kit and Sam" story:
Of course, it was set in the world of Minecraft, which his poor teacher does not understand. He did a very nice job, and I was sad to see he got corrected on the spelling of "respawned" because he legitimately meant that the character was spawned again (respawned), not that they reacted to a situation (respond), AND he spelled it correctly. Oh well. He had a really good year.
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What else? Harrison is growing his hair out for summer. He's working on his ponytail.
We finally got a KitchenAid, so Zac made pizza and I made cinnamon rolls.
Zac's starting to find his way around Danish ingredients and navigating kitchen life without all of the utensils and tools we had back in the U.S. He's such a good cook (that's kok in Danish). We are so lucky!
Matt had a concert in Portland at 10:00 p.m., so Vanessa called me on WhatsApp video at 7:00 a.m. our time so I could watch the show! The kids were getting ready for school, but Harrison sat with me for a bit to rock out and cheer on his uncle.
Kaden got to experience the Danish dentist. The dentists for children in Denmark are always in schools. I had no trouble finding the school, but the signage was lacking and we ran around a huge school for like 15 minutes looking for the tandlæge. I finally found a person cleaning in a big open area and asked in my best Danish, "Where is the dentist?" ("Hvor er tandlægen?") and they just stared at me and said, "What?" I pointed to my teeth and said, "Tandlægen? Dentist?" and then they said, "Oh, dentist!" and took me to another part of the school where the clinic was located.
He had a response similar to mine:
"Why don't they use the apron when they take an x-ray here?"
"They aren't very gentle."
Oh well. It's efficient.
I've been enjoying lots of my favorite Danish cheese (Vesterhavesost). Vibe taught me that you're never supposed to change the shape of the cheese when you cut it. I've been getting more cultured. Haha. Also, check out the cutting board Kaden made me in woodshop during his last year of school in Post Falls!
Zac and I wrapped up our Copenhell excursion (there's another blog about that) with a trip to the Botanical Gardens in Copenhagen. It was a very peaceful stroll before returning home.
And as if we didn't get enough great live music at the festival, we ran off to see Opeth play at Amager Bio in Copenhagen just a few days later! We grabbed a quick bite at VACA across the street and then spent 2 hours with one of the most incredible metal bands ever. We had a great spot, but it was hot in there. So very hot. Overheating aside, the concert was phenomenal.
Anyway, I was waiting for someone to get out of a meeting in one of our other buildings so we could walk to lunch together. As I waited on a couch in the lobby, I was staring at a display case and lo and behold, my time capsule sitting in there on display!
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And now, it's official, Danish holiday season has begun. We hope you have an awesome summer!
Sooo many great pictures. Fantastic scenery and what a garden.
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