The New Year's Eve We Broke the Couch

Godt Nytår! As you can probably tell by the title of the post, this one was excellent.

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The day started pretty chill: coffee and scrolling and sitting around like lumps. Harrison and I watched several episodes of a Danish children's show called "John Dillermand."

John Dillermand is a man who lives with his great-grandmother and her dog. He has a mustache and a skullcap and wears a red and white striped old-timey swim outfit. He has the world's longest penis (like meters and meters ridiculously long) that behaves kind of like a fifth appendage. Sometimes, he can control it, and sometimes, it has a mind of its own and gets him into trouble.

Look it up. I swear, it's real. (There's also literally nothing sexual about it.)

The episodes are about 5 minutes long, they are in Danish with Danish subtitles, and they are all totally ridiculous. For example, in the first episode we watched, John is in line at the circus with his great-grandmother and he finishes a slush-ice. He loves slush-ice, so his diller winds its way out of the line and over to the snack bar to get him another and another until he has to pee very badly.

John leaves his great-grandmother in line and runs around looking for a bathroom, but there are lines everywhere, or people too nearby for him to do it discretely in public. Suddenly, a neighborhood boy who is playing with fire sets an apartment building on fire, and John comes to the rescue by sending his diller up to the top of the building and pees out the whole fire. He saves everyone, a cat comes down dripping wet, and John goes back to the circus to get in line with his great-grandmother and have more slush-ice.

Anyway, this is a very silly show and it's good for practicing our Danish reading and listening. We finished about three episodes before Harrison went to join the older boys on Fortnite.

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Poor Khloe finally got sick, so she hung out in her room most of the day resting. Since I don't play Fortnite and I had no obligations, I decided to pick up the accordion and see if I could put right hand and left hand together for Auld Lang Syne.

I literally did nothing else for hours. Accordion is hard!

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Around 3 pm, Zac started making some homemade pizzas to snack on. They were quite tasty, although our oven doesn't get hot enough to make them quite as well as in the U.S. I guess we need a pizza oven!

We enjoyed the pizza thoroughly since I don't think most of us ate anything before that. Of course, we have been staying up all night and sleeping in until lunchtime for the last several days, so it's not surprising. Haha!

What is "time" between Christmas and New Year's anyway?

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Khloe came out to eat and do a puzzle, so I helped her with that. Surprisingly, we didn't play any games. (Khloe and I have been battling it out with Sushi, Go! since Christmas.)

Kaden brought out his clarinet for a bit to see if he could still play it at all. He doesn't remember what the notes are, but he can still do the correct fingerings for a scale and play without squeaking. Yay!

When we started prepping our New Year's Eve snack buffet, Harrison was a big help. He wrapped all of the pigs in a blanket!

Zac prepped some little smokies in BBQ sauce and we laid out a platter with meats, cheeses, crackers, and peppers (how long has it been since any of us ate a vegetable?). Zac made salsa and I made some mustard sauce for dipping pigs in a blanket, and we laid it all out around the beautiful Farumhus kransekage.

I think I have said it before, but I LOVE kransekage. It's traditionally eaten at two times: as an announcement that someone is pregnant, or on New Year's Eve. The traditional New Year's Eve kransekage is decorated with sparkly things and flags. A colleague at ALK recently made one from scratch, as she was formerly a professional baker. It was so beautiful!

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I asked Zac if he thought we should have fun and dress up for our New Year's Eve living room festivities. He was on the fence, but I took a shower and made my hair nice and went in the bedroom to put on a dress that I bought on clearance at Macy's back in like 2018. It was a lovely floor-length floral pattern with a high waist. I remembered that the zipper was broken (hence the amazing clearance deal), but I figured I could overcome it, as I have worn it at least two other times over the years after winning the zipper fight.

After about five minutes of struggling with it, I figured out the underlying issue. The fabric part of the zipper edge is separated lengthwise, allowing the metal part of the zipper pull to move through the fabric edge from behind as it gets pulled up. I decided that if I tilted the zipper as I zipped it, I could avoid the problem, and as I held it in my hands while sitting on the bed, my solution totally worked. Trying to do that blindly behind my back while I was wearing the dress was another story. It got stuck, as usual, but since I was still tilting it as I tried to pull it back down, the bottom edge of the zipper pull also came through the fabric edge of the zipper. It became impossible to move it up or down.

Of course, my hips were too wide to shimmy it off downward, and I discovered my chest and shoulders were too wide to shimmy it off upward, so this will henceforth be known as the New Year's Eve where Zac had to literally cut a dress off of me.

If you're wondering, we selected sweatpants and t-shirts to wear to the living room party. Maybe I'll try to be fancy again next year...

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We snacked all afternoon and evening. Zac and I sipped the remains of our Christmas beers and amaretto. The kids had sodas, and then at 6 pm, Zac and I poured some Prosecco and sat down for King Frederick X's first New Year's speech.

(If you don't recall from last year's post, it's customary for the reigning monarch to give a speech to the country on New Year's Eve, and EVERYONE tunes in on DRTV or listens on the radio or stands outside the palace in person! Last year, Queen Margrethe II abdicated the throne during her New Year's speech.)

He gave a very nice speech about unity within Europe in these troubled times, and how we can only help solve global conflicts if we stand together. He discussed the importance of volunteering and listening to our youth. He talked about how things are very polarized globally right now, but that it's important to always try to see things from both perspectives and seek understanding. He praised Danes for being very good at that, and I had a moment of reflection where I recalled a few conversations I've had with Danes that suggest this is honestly the case.

He spoke on the responsibility we have to care for the earth and all of its inhabitants. Finally, he thanked the country for the warm welcome he and Mary have received in their new roles as King and Queen of Denmark and wished everyone Happy New Year.

I mean, that's what I understood. It was in Danish. With Danish subtitles. But I'm better at following the message than I was last year!

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After King Frederick X's speech, we made an attempt at our (now annual) New Year's Eve video message to our friends and family. My two hours of practicing accordion paid off, but I was still very clunky. I could use another two weeks or so to get it 100% right! So we were a little less smooth this year compared to last year, but the vibe was the same and it was still fun to make. We enjoy being silly as a family!

(If I failed to send you the video and you want to see it, I can do that, but you need WhatsApp because it's too big of a file to attach in email or in Messenger.)

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Harrison had fun doing some sparklers outside, and we watched some of the neighborhood fireworks going off over the lake. He decided to go to bed around 11:20 p.m. and fell asleep pretty quickly.

In Denmark, it is a tradition to watch "Dinner for One," also known as "The 90th Birthday," on New Year's Eve. It's a short comedy skit performed in English (and I think it's a German film). It features two characters, Miss Sophie, who is turning 90, and her butler, James. Miss Sophie has a birthday celebration every year with her four closest friends, who all have distinct character traits. Unfortunately, all of her friends have passed away over the years, so James is expected to go around the table after each of the four courses is served and toast to Miss Sophie in character as each of her friends. He gets progressively drunker and drunker, and his performance as each friend, as well as his own antics, become increasingly hilarious.

Anyway, for some reason, it's a tradition to watch this on NYE every year, and DRTV shows it at 11:40 p.m. Afterward, they show live footage from Rådhuspladsen in Copenhagen of the insane fireworks and the countdown to midnight.

The older kids and Zac and I sat down with our drinks ready to toast the new year. We watched "The 90th Birthday" and laughed at how wild the fireworks were getting in the public square outside city hall in Copenhagen as midnight approached.

Another Danish tradition (which you may recall from my post last year) is to get up on the furniture just before midnight and "jump" into the new year by jumping off the furniture onto the floor. We did this last year and it was a lot of fun.

This year, Kaden started pulling the bench from our dining table out into an open space in the kitchen.

Me: What are you doing?

Kaden: We can't all stand on the couch - it will break. Two of us can jump off the bench and two of us can jump off the couch.

Me: Naaaah, we were just all sitting on the couch and it was OK. I'm sure we can all stand on it. It will be fine!

Kaden: ...

Me: Come ON! We can hold hands!!

So the four of us stood up on the couch, and at midnight, we all heard a large CRACK as we jumped into the new year.

Thus, this will ALSO be known as the New Year's Eve we broke the couch. My bad.

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Happy New Year, everyone!