more apple juice!

a night that didn't go as slumberly as we had hoped.  we were up sometime before two changing pajamas, a baby sheet, putting in a new load of laundry, arranging towels on bed number three (ours), where he did, at some point, once, maybe twice, throw up again, but which, fortunately, we had our ears tuned to, so we were not caught off guard.  at some point, mid-morning, the kitchen rug and my leg were both hit, but then it ended.  he took a long nap, and other than a mostly absent appetite at dinner, seems to be doing better.  he was never too sluggish, never feverish, and so far, has not seemed to pass anything on to any of us, so maybe it was all the combinations of food from yesterday.  when we were theorizing about it late last night, greg reminded me that he'd also been snacking on raw onions as the pizzas were being made.  that probably didn't help matters.  

but finally, the last load of laundry is in the dryer.  everyone is asleep but me.  and i am nearly there myself.  a couple pictures from dinner, and then goodnight... 

 when you're sick you get juice and a straw...

and if your brother gets juice, chances are you're going to convince your parents to give you some too... 

goodnight! 

cookies

okay.  a short post.  william and henry had a good sledding adventure with one of william's friends today.  we had our american neighbors over for a (homemade) pizza dinner, and homemade kettle corn from them, and homemade burnt chocolate chip cookies from me.  and then, trying to get henry to bed, laying down with him in william's bed, when suddenly he throws up everywhere and it is nearly ten o'clock and we are changing sheets and stuffing pillows and pajamas into the washing machine and giving henry a bath and re-brushing his teeth and william is helping himself to cartoons on the computer and i am trying not to mind about the fact that much of our post eight p.m. friday and saturday nights have been unexpectedly comprised of getting our kids to sleep unusually late.  well, well.  no problem.  we're hoping henry just ate too many cookies.  but anyway, it's 11 now.  time to go to sleep. goodnight! 

Post title

(greg)

today was a flashback to graduate school, and I spent the afternoon in the basement tightening bolts. fortunately, I earned my PhD in righty tighty, lefty loosey, and I was well prepared.  knowing that I am now a 'scientist', I felt that I needed to show off what I learned at UW, so I undertook to finger-tighten a screw with my left hand, upside down, blind, behind an 20cm tube.  lucky for me I had a fifty percent chance of turning it the right way, and I got it.

meanwhile Regan and the boys went sledding around the backyard, 

 having more fun than a barrel of monkeys,

 and wearing themselves out for an early bedtime.

with that goal in mind Henry and I went for a ten mile run, hoping that it would ease him to sleep. by about mile eight it did.  sadly, his snores turned to cries when I accidentally laid him into bed on top of his half-asleep brother (how could I have known he was already in bed?). perhaps W is a bit too lumpy.  anyhow, he could not be consoled other than to have Regan hold him, so now they have gone to sleep, and here I am awake and snacking on everything.  

which brings me to this thought: there is something wonderful about marathon training, and that is perpetual hunger.  it really makes you enjoy your food, and cold water never tasted so great. ...so now that the cat is out of the bag, I assume that you will join me in København May 19th?  26 miles, and then after a nap you eat a whole pizza and two bags of chips.  this reminds me of something that one of Regan's friends pointed out, which is that being vegetarian is not necessarily healthy -on account of oreos not having any meat in them.  well marathon training, likewise, will not necessarily lower the cholesterol.

ramble ramble

ses!

thursday

today was much more sensible in terms of temperature.  the frost clung to the trees, but it gave up its mid-air suspension, also, it seems, its hold on noses and mittens and spider webs (though perhaps i didn't look closely enough to know for sure about that last one.  they did not, however, stand out to me today, like they did yesterday).  

from inside the house this morning.  already the day was clearer... 

greg and i both deemed the morning 'picturesque,' taking our own photos capturing the snow-covered landscape.  here are his, taken on his run to work...

and mine, after dropping the guys off at school...

 and in the afternoon, when we came home, henry and i did some sledding in the backyard...

i pulled him...

and then he pulled me... kind of.

later they all acted like monkeys...


what a wonderful thursday, winter and all.

ice frogs

remember that time i posted about how crazy the fireworks were, and then the next night they were even crazier?  well, what was i saying yesterday about the weather?

whatever it was like yesterday, i might as well have been talking about some tropical island.  yesterday wasn't cold.  today was cold.  (though i just watched a clip about siberia.  now that is cold!)

negative seventeen celsius, which only sounds slightly better when told in fahrenheit... just over a degree.  a single degree above zero.  as i wrote to someone in an email today, it felt like stepping into a walk-in freezer going outside this morning.  my mittens had frost on them halfway into the trip to the guys' school, or at least that's when i noticed it.  greg said he had frost on his nose on the way to work.  and the spiderwebs hanging from our carport definitely did.

generally, a frost, disguised as fog, hung in the air all day long.  it dawned on me at some point that this fog must be ice fog.  something i'd never seen before but only heard about in a book entitled 'going to extremes' (of all things)... a book about alaska, not temperate denmark.

the fog (also known as 'ice crystals suspended in air') before leaving the house this morning...

the fog when picking up the guys this afternoon... 

but given this lingering fog, you can rightly imagine there was not much wind, which is maybe why it felt like walking into a freezer.  and when you have all your proper winter gear on, it's not actually so bad.  it's the wind and flimsy jackets, no hats, and tennis shoes that make all the difference.  and all you (northern) midwesterners know this already.  this is your kind of winter weather after all (minus the ice fog), which can probably be blamed on the fact that we are living on a (not tropical) island.  william's class had a sledding day today.

so now let's quickly move beyond the weather before i call it a night.  it's so hard to get a clear photo of henry because he moves too quickly, but here's one where i caught him this morning at breakfast, actually posing for the camera in his moose pajamas...

and tonight before dinner, two guys playing together on the largest train tracks this house has seen in a long time, i imagine...

now it's time for a warm bed!  goodnight! 

tuesday

winter is back in denmark, and it's apparently here to stay through february.  when i took these, it was negative seven (just under 20 degrees fahrenheit)...

that i was maybe misled by all the fact books telling me denmark's winters are mild (like, in comparison to the midwest's winters), is okay.  whatever it is like... even if this is just the beginning, there really are only a couple more months of it until we hit what will feel like perpetual early spring (if last year's february through june is any kind of bellwether).  

a couple cute pictures greg and william took from the nightly toothbrush race (which william, somehow, always manages to win)... 

it's only 8:37.  i'm going to get into bed and read my book (for once!)!  goodnight! 

our day

a bike ride to pick up the guys following an awkward classroom discussion (best case scenario, chalk it up to cultural differences, where i was on the (culturally) shocked end of it), to a little henry who fought, as he so often does, getting into the burley (no amount of turning my back bike light on and off could appease his desire to not sit down), to the grocery store with william hanging on to the side of the cart (which i think he's allowed to do here, though he does tend to bump into people the slightest bit with his helmet when he wears it into the store), back out to the burley and another struggle for autonomy from little henry, who is always on the losing end of such battles at his young age, and i'm always on the feeling guilty end that i so often cannot disarm him peacefully but eventually use the fact that i'm bigger than him to simply buckle his struggling self in, and pulling my backpack out of the back of the burley to wear it home so as to minimize the time he sits unhappily fastened after we've come to a stop in the driveway, and the shift in weight dumping my bike over and all the milks and mittens the boys refuse to wear in this below freezing climate spill onto the ground, and it's beginning to feel like one of those kinds of days when pulling into the driveway we find waiting for us, a package from back home and it lifts all our spirits and it is filled with food (and so much more) and i don't know how they did it because i swore you could not send food to this country from that one, but somehow they did!

william with very first (?) pez dispenser... 'do i eat the polar bear, mama?'  and later, as he's filling it full of candy: 'i once had a (pauses) Z.E.P. shooter." 

henry attacked the pirate's booty for awhile...

and a new calendar to replace the old, and peanut butter (have i given that impression?) and chocolate chips, which do not seem to exist here...




and space ships...

and beautiful cards...

and colorful paintings...

and clever prose...

just to name a few... 

thank you, thank you neighbors!  you made our day.