bike accidents, birthdays, breaking codes...

today was and still is spent completing our applications for residence permits.  this basically consisted of:

• coffee
• four separate applications
• four separate fees
• searching for a marriage certificate (this required an actual trip to a safe deposit box in the u.s. (clearly not by us)) 
• taking pictures of passport pages and certificates of live birth
• watching the upload progress stall at 92% 
• and then at 89% 
• and more than once disappear completely due to inactivity of more than ten minutes and having to start back over
• nearly losing and mercifully recovering an automatically generated and unchangeable user name and password
• exceeding the 10 MB limit on attachments and modifying the attachments to make them smaller
• and smaller still
• command C times 100
• command V times 100
• looking up the same phone number more than once and finally writing it down 

it's one of those things in life that is not difficult, but time-consuming.  it's not rocket science yet somehow makes you wonder how many people are screwing it up because of all the little details that can be screwed up if you're not careful.  as of 9:37, two of the four applications have been submitted.  we're still working on bullet points 10 and 11 for the other two.

but other things happened here too, today.  for instance:

• it rained and it snowed.  
• i was involved in a head-on collision (between bikes) with a 12 year old kid.  it was on my way to pick up the boys from school.  about 4 boys were riding up a hill as i was riding down.  i was on the far right side, and the boy who ran into me was on his far left, with his head down, going at an impressive speed considering gravity was working against him.  i thought, he's going to look up.  he's going to see me and get out of the way.  when it became clear he wasn't going to look up without some notification i yelled out something silly like, "HEY! YO!" but it was too late.  our front tires hit, head on.  i'd slowed down and braced myself so was no worse for the wear.  he fell off his bike, but i think it was a gentle enough fall... that is, no flipping over handlebars or anything.  still, he seemed shaken up.  all i could really think to say to him in danish was 'are you okay?' over and over.  he assured me that he was.  i assured him that i was as well and we went on our ways.  
• i played 'stone school' with william and henry.  henry won by making it to 10th grade first.  we're two steps short of actually graduating.  
• we read chapter 7 and half of chapter 8 in the voyage of the frog.  it's a little heavy on the sailing terminology but they seem to be alright with that.  and lights were out by eight!  

transferring more pictures from my phone to my computer.  here are some from the past couple weeks.  (and i am happy to report that in the time it took me to upload these photos, we made everything very small and submitted the last two applications.)


it wasn't actually this cold in our house...

making a mastermind code for me...

henry, taking over the game...

william's 'morning song' on the day they celebrated 'fastelavn.' (danish carnival.)  william didn't want to put on the perpetual ninja costume that somehow never gets too small, that early in the morning...



this next bunch is from henry's birthday.  first, his birthday celebration at school, then the ice cream sundae party with mom, dad, and big brother, then going to "the play paradise" with friends (well, you get one shot of it), then waiting on his cake....

proof that he does eat with a fork (at school at least)...

eating the oatmeal-raisin cookies he made the night before...

as seen on facebook...

making his cake...

waiting for ice cream...

(to my sister: my ice cream was simply frozen bananas, frozen strawberries, and a little cream whipped together in the food processor... it did the trick.)

the slides on the right would have some serious warning signs and age bans attached to them if they were in the u.s... kids under 20 pounds were seriously airborne and there were more than a few tears (and probably some whiplash) while we were there...

excited by the prospect of cake...

william had done up a little treasure hunt for henry and our kid guests to find sparsely packed goodie bags...

i really think that's the most birthday crazy we've ever gotten, but it was so fun!


finally, the typical state of our house during winter ferie... i do already miss having those little guys home.

well, that's it for now!  goodnight!