Cluttered Desks and Ideas

Wanna buy a lamp?

2012-01-28T04:59:00.001-08:00

http://www.justlights.com/search_result.asp?params=Installation:16;

There's about 500 styles there (under pendant lighting) that you might be interested in, Mom. They may or may not be less expensive than the one you looked at recently!

(They're in Nashua if you want to go down there yourself and look at them!)

Ok, I'm a sucker for Star Wars, it's true....

2011-12-09T10:47:00.001-08:00

But this commercial is just completely awesome. It aired during last year's Superbowl - but I still love to watch it. The little 'look' the husband gives his wife after making the car start is just icing on the cake to me.

That, and Darth's reaction is absolutely priceless.

Grr! Grr! I say!

2011-10-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

About a month and a half ago, I was informed about mandatory attendance at a symposium next month, the 16th -18th.

Ok, no biggie; it's after my exams.

4 days ago I get the email for signups. I fill it out, send it in - and get a response, "You need to submit your MSc Thesis Abstract for presenting at the symposium by Nov 2nd, and your poster design for presentation"

Um...What.the.fuck?

How does 'mandatory attendance' become 'presenting at the symposium'?

Now ordinarily I wouldn't bitch too much, since I don't have an issue with public speaking.

HOWEVER

My first meeting with my Thesis supervisor is going to be on November 23rd - this is when we design the protocol, guidelines and basically DESIGN the project.

So I emailed Anders about it and managed to come up with this for an abstract:

Nanoparticle toxicity: Are we seeing the whole picture?

Engineerednanoparticles (ENPs) are becoming ubiquitous in today’s world, from uses incosmetics and personal care products to electronics and pharmaceutical productsand medicines. Their potential benefits for society are great, however littleis known about their potential toxic impact when released into the environment(Benn and Westerhoff, 2008). In particular gold nanoparticles (Au-NP) have beenproposed for medical and/or pharmaceutical uses e.g. for drug delivery (Yoon, et al. 2007) and copper nanoparticles(Cu-NPs) are heavily utilized in electronics (circuitry, batteries) and as a bacteriocide(Cioffi et al. 2005).

Manytoxicological studies have been performed regarding atmospheric or inhalationexposures (Chen, et al 2006, Warheit et al. 2006 and Cho, et al 2010), however the fate ofnanoparticles in the aquatic environment is largely unstudied. To complicate matters, there is nostandardized method for assessing aquatic toxicology with nanoparticles (Oberdörsteret al. 2005) nor is there adefinitive method for the preparation of nanoparticle suspensions nor aconsensus regarding how the behavior of ENPs in an aqueous solution(aggregation, agglomeration) can otherwise influence toxicity tests (Farré et al. 2009).

This report will attempt to determine how the behaviorof Cu-NPs and Au-NPs can affect the outcome of toxicity tests: namely examine themethods used to prepare test solutions and the accuracy of those solutions fortoxicological purposes.

References:

BennT M and P Westerhoff. 2008. Nanoparticle silver released into water fromcommercially available sock fabrics. Environ.Sci. Technol. 42:4133-4139.

ChenH W, Su S F, Chien C T, Lin W H, Yu S L, Chou C C, Chen J J and P C Yang. 2006.Titanium dioxide nanoparticles induce emphysema-like lung injury in mice. FASEB J. 20:2393-2395.

ChoW S, Duffin R, Poland C, Howie, S E M, MacNee W, Bradley M, Megson I and KDonaldson. 2010. Metal Oxide Nanoparticles Induce Unique InflammatoryFootprints in the Lung: Important Implications for Nanoparticle Testing. Environ. Health Perspect. 118 (12):1699-1706.

CioffiN, Ditaranto N, Torsi L, Picca R A, De Giglio E, Sabbatini L, Novello L,Tantillo G, Bleve-Zacheo T and P G Zambonin. 2005. Synthesis, analyticalcharacterization and bioactivity of Ag and Cu nanoparticles embedded inpoly-vinyl-methyl-ketone films. Anal.Bioanal. Chem. 382:1912-1918.

FarréM, Gajda-Schrantz K, Kantiani L and D Barceló. 2009. Ecotoxicity and analysis of nanomaterials inthe aquatic environment. Anal. Bional. Chem. 393:81-95.

OberdörsterG, Maynard A, Donaldson K, Castranova V, Fitzpatrick J, Ausman K, Carter J, KarnB, Kreyling W, Lai D, Olin S, Monteiro-Riviere N, Warheit D and H Yang. 2005.Principles for characterizing the potential human health effects from exposureto nanomaterials: elements of a screening strategy. Particle and Fibre Toxicology 2:8

WarheitD B, Webb T R, Sayes C M, Colvin V L and K L Reed. 2006. Pulmonary instillationstudies with nanoscale TiO₂ rods and dots in rats: toxicity is notdependent upon particle size and surface area. Toxicol. Sci. 91:227-236.

YoonK Y, Hoon-Byeon J, Park J H and J Hwang. 2007. Susceptibility constants of Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis to silver and coppernanoparticles.J. Sci. Total Environ. 373:572-5.

Anders gave it the thumbs up, and I sent it off.

I also said, "Since my thesis design is not yet finalized and will not be finalized until the 23rd of November, I am unable to supply the symposium with a poster design."

I got an email just a bit ago saying, "Oh, the MSc students don't HAVE to submit an abstract/poster - only the PhD students"....

Some days the urge to bitchslap people is almost overwhelming.

Anyhow, here's some cute pictures of Matthias to make up for it.

Here we have 'sticky faced' Matthias. He's been eating flødeboller that you can see in the picture to the right. It's essentially marshmallow fluff covered in chocolate with coconut shavings on top.

Personally, I think it looks like angel dusted turds.

Here we have Matthias in his new bed. We've got the binky down to only being used during sleep - hopefully after Christmas we can get rid of it completely.

Blah, blah blah... can you hear me now?

2011-10-27T00:32:00.000-07:00

So it's 9.30 am thereabouts and I'm sitting in my epidemiology class bored out of my skull.

I'm listening to the teacher completely flub her way through genetics and telling the class the wrong things - take how eye color is determined. If you have blue eyes, your genotype is bb. If you have brown eyes, you can have one of two genotypes: BB or Bb. The B gene is dominant. If you have one gene for brown eyes (B) and one gene for blue eyes (b) you'll have brown eyes - usually a lighter brown or hazel. If you have BB, then you have the dark brown eyes.

Well, she's going on about BB and bb can have blue eyed kids together, and they can't. Only bb and bb or Bb and bb can have blue eyed kids.

I'm just not feeling this class and I hope they find a new professor for it next year because this one just doesn't really do the job well.

Sigh.

What's that? More rain!?

2011-10-10T04:44:00.000-07:00

Absolutely.

It's been a complete BLAH day today; rain rain and more rain. Matthias didn't want to go to daycare, he wanted to snuggle up in our bed (not that I can blame him; it was warm!)

He'd apparently had a bad dream last night and he woke up crying for me - Hubby went and brought him into our bed and I spent the next three hours with a three year old wrapped around my neck like a boa constrictor.

After the 3 hours, he asked to go back into his own bed (THANK YOU!) and I could try to nap for another hour before I had to get up for the day.

Which, of course, means I'm dragging ass today.

Hubby wants quesadillas tonight for dinner, I'm debating if I have the energy for it or not. I'm tempted to just sneak off to bed here shortly and nap again.

Two posts in one day? Inconceivable!

2011-10-04T14:50:00.000-07:00

So here's some random pictures I've had on my camera for about a week, I figured I could put them up for your viewing pleasure. They've implemented a new upload interface for pictures so I'm trying to figure out how it works too, so bear with me.

Above we have Matthias in the shopping cart at Føtex, where we get groceries sometimes. He likes getting a cinnamon bun or some bread to munch on while we shop.

Over to the right we have Matthias sleeping in Mommy & Daddy's bed (aka the BIG BED). He looks so peaceful... so innocent. If only he stayed that way when he was awake..

This is Matthias while we were walking home from daycare. You can see how big he's gotten and all - he's a tough little dude!

He loves his backpack, his Superman lunchbox and his "drikkeduk" which is his water bottle. You might recognize the jacket he has on as the liner from his 5T winter jacket combo set.

We gave him a bath tonight and put him in the elmo pj's and we had to have them low on his hips or they'd ride up past his ankles. They're also snug around his tummy - he's just growing too damn fast!

Another thing to think about; they've come out with adult booster shots for whooping cough now - I'm planning on getting one for myself and Hubby when we're in the US if possible, we should also check to make sure Morgan is up to date on all of hers, and you too Mom!

Cold... I has one

2011-10-04T03:19:00.000-07:00

So yeah, I have a cold. Matthias was kind enough to share his with me, and while he's still coughing up phlegm, I'm at the stage where it feels like my sinuses are going to crack my skull open.

Sucks to be me.

Otherwise, things are fine. I'm sitting in the cafeteria at KU Farma at Universitetsparken (the University Park) waiting for my class to start at 1pm. I got here shortly after 9 am to work on our article for the Toxicology and Ecotoxicology class. It's going well, I'm in a group of 5 and as usual I'm the one they go to to find just the right word in English. I don't mind at all, but it is funny sometimes as we try to figure out what people actually mean when they use a wrong word in a sentence.

Hubby is on day shift with weekends off for the next 8 weeks, with a later 'meet' time out at his 'school period' - it's a quality training and 'refresher' on things like high school math, English, chemistry, etc. Needless to say, he's bored most of the time, but he's only 'working' 6 hours and is getting full pay for surfing Youtube or helping his co-workers with their assignments. He's also able to drop Matthias off at the daycare so I can rush out the door at 6:30 to make it to class for 8 on Mondays and Fridays.

The weather is getting crisper, it's still nice and sunny out but there's a definite nip coming into the wind (which blows ALL the time). We're trying to determine whether or not we're going to take Matthias trick or treating this year or not. I think he's old enough to try it, however it's not a popular event in Denmark. Halloween has 'caught on' more (because stores can sell more shit for it), so we'll see if there's more going on this year or not.

I guess I'll use the next half hour to work on a presentation (ungraded) for the Epidemiology class. I've picked the breast cancer and bisphenol A association. It shouldn't be too difficult, there's a wealth of sources on the internet that are readily available for me to use, and then just putting them into the presentation and then talking about it in front of the class.

I've never had an issue with public speaking so yeah, I'm not terribly worried about it.

Then I'll be hopping the bus back to Nørreport station and the train back home. I'll ring Hubby about halfway home so he can pack up Matthias and come down to the station and pick me up. I have to remember to buy some garlic bread; I made a huge pot of chili last night and it tasted great with garlic bread. Since I've been sick I haven't been in the mood to make bread daily so I'm going to be lazy.

I deserve to be lazy once in a while!

What it means to be 'on time'

2011-09-26T00:15:00.000-07:00

This is a concept that many in Denmark seem to have missed somewhere along the line. If your class starts at 9 am, you should be there well before 9 am (if you have to set up computers, etc), or just before if you have to grab a seat and pull out a pen & paper.

Nothing pisses me off more than to hear 'I'll be there at "X" time" and then they show up 2 hours later. Seriously, is it that difficult to plan your time? You have a cell phone, don't I deserve at least a call to say, "Hey, I'm sorry but we're running late, we'll arrive at Y instead of X."

I arrived here at class at the KU Farma building today at 5 minutes before 9, picked a chair close to a power outlet and got my shit set up. Over the next 30 minutes, people kept trickling in (while the lecture was lecturing us - rapidly, I might add) and asking ME to move so they could sit and/or sit next to me in the row.

Now, I left my house at 6:50 am to get here for 9. I took a bus to the station, the train into Copenhagen, and then another bus that dropped me off at the building. These kids LIVE in the city and they can't get their lazy asses out of bed on time? Jesus that pisses me off.

So now, I'm not moving. My ass is a fixture in this seat and they can just find somewhere else to sit, or bugger off.

How is it...

2011-09-20T12:55:00.001-07:00

That every SINGLE time I park my rear in my chair (or on the loo) my phone rings and it's Hubby calling. It's eerie the ability he has to predict the precise moment in space and time that will most piss me off to have to get BACK up to get the phone.

Skills, he has them!

Death of a laptop

2011-09-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

So I've been saying for a year that my laptop is dying. It's a definite that it won't last much longer; I might be lucky to have it last until Christmas. The fat lady is singing and it's Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust".

I've been looking around to price out laptops that are a: AFFORDABLE and b: can DO what I NEED them to do. I think the likely replacement will be found here:
http://shopping1.hp.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/WW-USSMBPublicStore-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductUUID=dZMQ7EN5nPIAAAEu9ykoLTf_&CatalogCategoryID=qy0Q7EN6V0AAAAEuX444ORFA&JumpTo=OfferList

But with an additional 4 gigs of RAM, to a total of 8. I figure it'll be around 800$ when everything is all said and done. Time to start saving my pennies and maybe I can try to order it around Thanksgiving or the beginning of December so it arrives for when I'm in the US.

Election Day.... in Denmark, at least.

2011-09-14T14:30:00.001-07:00

I freely admit I don't always 'get' how elections are run here in Denmark.

They don't have a bicamarel system here, just "Folketinget" or "The People's Thing". The way it works is there's a Red Block (generally left leaning) and a Blue Block (generally right leaning) which are a group of different political parties. How many 'seats' a party gets is directly related to how many votes it gets. So if there's 100 seats, and the Social Democrats win 20% of the votes, they'd get 20 seats in the Folketing.

Here's how it's currently divvied up:

Conservatives (Blue Block):

Venstre (Liberal Party) (V) .................................................................................................................47.

Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party) (DF) ........................................................................... 24

Det Konservative Folkeparti (Conservative Party) (KF) ........................................................... 17.

Liberal Alliance (Liberal Alliance) (LA) ........................................................................................... 3

Kristendemokraterne (Christian Democrats) (KD)....................................................................... 1

Liberals:

Socialdemokratiet (Social Democratic Party) (S) .................................................................... 45

Socialistisk Folkeparti (Socialist People’s Party) (SF) ............................................................. 23

Enhedslisten (Unity List) (EL) ............................................................................................................ 4

Radikale Venstre (Social Liberal Party) (RV) ................................................................................ 9

Others:

Inuit Ataqatigiit (Greenland) (IA) .................................................................................................... 1

Siumut (Greenland) (SIU) ................................................................................................................... 1

Tjóðveldi (The Faroe Islands) (T) ...................................................................................................... 1

Sambandsflokkurin (The Faroe Islands) (SP) ............................................................................... 1

Outside the parliamentary groups (Independent) (UFG) ......................................................... 2

Some of the groups in the red & blue blocks are actually quite 'centrist', but they're generally divvied up as I've shown them - they're with the ideologies they most agree with, or vote along with.

The 'others' are the votes for Greenland, the Faroe islands and other people - Greenland and the Faroes are self governing, but still part of the Kingdom of Denmark - and thus have a vote. Think Puerto Rico - they're self governing, but still abide by US laws, etc.

Hopefully, the blue block loses their asses. DF (Dansk Folkeparti) or the Danish People's Party makes those Tea Party Nutjobs in the US look like Left Wing Liberals. If you're not Danish, you don't belong in Denmark. If you're muslim, you don't belong in Europe. They're the reason behind immigration problems and whatnot.

Let's hope Denmark votes red tomorrow!

A few random pictures...

2011-09-08T10:06:00.000-07:00

You can always tell how much fun Matthias has had at daycare by how dirty he comes home.

Today he came home very, VERY dirty.

Yes, he's a happy boy!

Here's the result of a bath and a binky and his sock monkey doll.

ZZZzzzzz..

I managed to keep him awake until 6:30 and then I just put him to bed. IT just wasn't possible to keep him awake any longer.

LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THOSE FEET!!!

Happy Birthday Uncle Jere!

2011-08-04T06:14:00.001-07:00

Since I missed the date yesterday, I can at least say something here!

Here's a picture I snagged from Lindz's facebook page - they spent a nice day at the beach with the fam it appears.

Lookin' good guys!

The bed is bought!

2011-08-03T04:28:00.002-07:00

This is Matthias' new bed: It's a half size 'bunk bed' which comes about up to my chest.

It'll give him a place to play under it (he's currently enjoying making 'caves' with his sheets, etc) and it has built-in bedrails on top.

The only thing that we (read: Hubby) are worried about is the possibility he'll try jumping on it like he does our bed, and end up on the floor.

My view: if he DOES do that, it'll be a one-time thing. We can tell him not to jump until we're blue in the face, but until he makes a 4 point landing on the floor, there's not much that's going to convince him otherwise.

We bought the bed at ILVA.dk and they have a special running now; 10 months payment plan with 0 interest. So we picked up the mattress, mattress cover and bed for 3500 DKK, which is a little under $700 USD. The bed was on sale, too. That helped tremendously.

Birthday/4th of July/Anniversary Pictures...

2011-07-12T12:47:00.001-07:00

So here's some of the latest pictures to grace my blog:

Yes, he's more than a little impish here - if you note the rolls of TP in the background, that's because we had to remove them from the bathroom.

Matthias likes to dash in there while I'm in the kitchen, and then either clog the toilet with the TP, or roll it out for the cat to play with.

This is his, "I know I'm a little devil, but you love me anyway" look.

At least we managed to get all the chalk vacuumed up from the couch. He had broken one of his blue sidewalk chalk pieces and had it on his jeans earlier then ran and rubbed his tush all over the couch. Joy.

Here's one of the rare shots of me with Matthias. I hate pictures of me, and this one is no exception, but I figured it was time I put my ugly mug up here again.

Don't mind the bangs, I hacked them off because they were bugging the crap outta me. I'm planning on actually getting a proper haircut sometime this month.

Seriously.

Here Matthias has just realized that Mom has the camera. Therefore it is of the utmost importance that he immediately crawl up my legs to get as close to the camera as possible.

Preferably sticking his fingers all over the lens.

If you'll notice, part of his shirt is a little blurred. That's a spot I missed on the lens from the LAST time he caught up with it.

Here's the first picture from the party we had on Saturday.

From left to right:

Søren P. (glasses & beard)

Sarah (Søren's daughter who is 1 year older than Matthias)

Matthias - he's in his Thomas PJ's because they were long enough to tuck down into his shoes to keep the sunlight off the burns on his leg.

Marlena (in the black tights) - she's the wife of Søren R, who is sitting with his back to me in the foreground. He was also blowing bubbles for Matthias and Sarah, and they thought it was WONDERFUL.

Here's a closeup of the two kids enjoying the bubbles.

You'll note that Matthias is now taller than Sarah.

The little rainbow pinwheel in the background (over Matthias' head) was the anniversary gift from Søren and Marlena.

We grilled dogs and burgers and I made more pulled pork that day. I also made some potato & egg salad which apparently came out ok. I wouldn't know, I hate that shit.

Here's another shot of the awesome bubbles and the two cute kids!

Tired Matthias.

Well, tired and feverish from the run-in with the Hogweed.

We called the Dr and he sent a prescription to the local pharmacy for penicillin, but Matthias wasn't having any of it - complete fit anytime it came near him.

We called back and had them give him a different type of antibiotic - one that doesn't taste like death warmed up with a side of bullcrap.

This was Matthias the next morning.

Aww.

You can see some MAJOR tan lines on that boy!

This picture was taken today; he got to water all the plants in the yard with his little watering can.

Hopefully some of them have learned how to swim, because Matthias was very, VERY thorough with his watering.

You can see a little bit of the work we've done in the garden with the mulch and whatnot.

We need to buy a few more plants, but I want to keep the weeding down to a minimum as well as the cost - I hate spending money to improve someone else's property.

Call me silly, I know...

I ask for a smile, I get a grimace.

To be fair, he's doing the 'scrunchmyfaceupuntilitlookslike I'vebeensuckingonalemon' smile thingy that most kids do at his age.

Here's an 'action' shot of him watering the plants.

What you don't see in this shot is the puddle he's standing in after using about a gallon of water on that little crock there.

If you remember, each time I'm back in the US, I look for a suitable substitute for what's called rugbrød. It's a type of bread that's really only found in northern Germany and Scandinavia.

This is rugbrød. It's a little square piece of really, REALLY dark bread which is full of seeds and kernels of wheat, rye and other whole grains.

One slice of this each day and you could pass Elvis through your colon. Sideways.

This is also the 'base' for most of the smørrebrød (smothered bread) that Danes eat. They'll put pickled mackerel, curry salad and an egg on it and just yum yum. (YUCK!)

Matthias LOVES his rugbrød - with mackerel and curry salad. Yeah, you can tell he's part Danish...

Here's a new shot of the sores on his leg. The blisters have all popped, and there's not as much redness left around the areas where the sap touched him.

We keep a large surgical band-aid on the biggest area of redness at the back of his calf, and a regular band-aid just above his ankle.

All that from flowering plant sap and sunlight. Nasty plant, hogweed.

Must...keep...Matthias....awake...for....dinner....

After coming in from watering the plants and running around outside while I had dinner in the oven, Matthias started to crash on the couch from exhaustion.

We try our best to tucker him out as much as possible WITHOUT him falling asleep on the couch - because if he sneaks in a nap he'll be awake until 9pm that night, which throws off our 'our time' in the evenings.

As you can see, I lost that battle for both Matthias and Simon (who's on his way to sleep as well snuggled up on the couch).

He's a little scruffy at present, but he'll get a shave in soon and be handsome again.

If you thought Poison Ivy was bad....

2011-07-08T16:01:00.001-07:00

It's got nothing on this plant: Giant Hogweed

We noticed a some redness on Matthias' leg on Wednesday - we assumed one of the kids at daycare had scratched him, or he'd scratched himself on something. He's not exactly the most graceful 3 year old out there.

Yesterday I noticed a blister on his right foot - it almost looked like poison ivy, but there isn't any in Denmark.

Today when we got him home from daycare and went to change his diaper, we saw this on his leg:

Lovely, isn't it?

Those blisters are actually burns from the chemical reaction of the sap from the plant and his skin.

Hopefully - HOPEFULLY those few blisters will be the extent of what he has to suffer through.

We gave him a bath both Wednesday and Thursday, so there IS a chance we removed the rest of the sap.

The bad part? Those blisters are going to turn black as the skin dies from exposure to the sap. He'll most likely have scars there that are miscolored - and they can last for years.

Apparently, at some point Wednesday when the kids at daycare went out for their walk, Matthias managed to come into contact with the Hogweed plant (which is called Bjørneklø in Danish, or literally translated Bear Claws) - and you better believe that I'll be talking to the daycare on Monday about it. I'm three shades of pissed off and none of them are feeling particularly polite.

Matthias will have to wear long pants now for the rest of the summer, or something that will cover his left calf, since it will remain light sensitive for months (even years) and overexposure can result in more blisters and burns - and therefore scarring.

Happy Birthday Hubby!

2011-07-05T23:54:00.001-07:00

Sucks you had to work today!

But at the end of next week, we're on vacation for a month thereabouts.

It's 9am on a Wednesday, Matthias has been dropped off at daycare already, and I've set a load of dishes over and tidied up a bit in the living room.

It's in the 90's already and I honestly don't feel like doing much more than I am; namely sitting on my ass with a cold soda and just relaxing watching a bit of baseball on the TV, or playing a video game or two.

Of course, while I'm zoning in front of the tube, I can also read my textbooks for next semester. So I'm not being a complete and total slackoff.

Over the next two weeks the HOA has schedule our apartment to have some of its windows replaced, as the wood frames are rotted in some places.

Currently, my window has a bit of netting behind it, ostensibly to keep Abby from crawling out of the window.

You can see how well that's worked here:

Yep, it's a cammock.

Matthias, Year Three

2011-06-27T06:11:00.003-07:00

Ok, I've finally managed to get my camera recharged, so I have some pictures I can share again.

This is proof that Matthias can fall asleep damn near anywhere.

Seriously, how the hell is that comfortable? The half-stand, half-climb position?

Just in case you don't think he's actually fast asleep, here's the proof:

Dinner tonight: Casserole!

2011-05-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's the dreaded "C" word.

Casserole.

Usually the bane of kid's dinners everywhere, comprised of whatever's left over in the kitchen, the casserole has a bad rap.

I managed to come up with a halfway decent recipe for one tonight:

Chicken Casserole with Wild Rice and Veggies

I freely admit I like no-fuss, no mess cooking. Matthias is into everything and anything and he's quick about it now, so the less amount of time I'm not watching him like a hawk, the cleaner my house will remain.

So here's what I did:

In a 9X13" pan, add the following:

1.5 cups long grained wild rice (or brown rice)

8 oz hot water

1 can condensed Cream of Chicken soup

Mix these three together, adding a bit of salt & pepper. Then add:

4 Spring onions, chopped

1 jalapeno, diced fine

1 head broccoli, diced fine (the better to get kids to eat it!)

Finally, add:

4 chicken breasts, breast up

Add a little more salt & pepper, a half teaspoon of worcestershire sauce, and sprinkle just a bit of cajun seasoning on each breast (no need to coat it, 2 shakes per breast is fine).

Cover the pan with foil, sealing it tight.

Bake at 425F (210C) for 35 minutes, then remove the foil.

Add havarti cheese (or pepper jack!) 1.5 slices (or more if you like) per breast.

Sprinkle 1/2 cup bread crumbs (any type) over the top of the casserole, as well as 1 handful Ritz Crackers.

Bake for 10 minutes more, until cheese is fully melted.

Easter Egg fun and Pictures

2011-04-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to recharge our camera yet, so I've been relying on Camilla and Andreas to take pictures of Matthias the past few weeks.

They've gotten a few gems I think.

Here's Matthias (and Aksel, in the foreground) at a fort at the playground not too far from Vivi's house.

Isn't he just handsome?

Here's both Aksel and Matthias playing peekaboo in the little fort.

Aksel is now a Red Sox fan, in case you haven't noticed. Gotta keep it in the family!

Yep, I gave him quite the buzz cut.

The downside: I have to be very careful with his scalp and make sure he gets suntan lotion on it.

The upside: Not a grain of sand can hide in his hair anymore, and it just rinses right out.

I think he's a cutie with short hair. (Boys can be cuter than girls with short hair!)

We had the Easter Bunny hide some eggs at Vivi's house for the kids to go out and find.

It took him a bit to get the hang of it (he walked by the chocolate bunny in this shot about 4 times)....

It was rather cute to see him looking around, under the leaves, etc.

There's the rabbit!

Hey wait!

There's something IN the rabbit!!!

Hey!

It's an EGG!

It's a CHOCOLATE EGG!

Here. You take this.

I don't want it anymore. It looks funny!

Even Aksel got in on the game.

Last Day of classes tomorrow

2011-03-30T02:31:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow's the last day of classes for both my Chem classes. Then comes the exams. I'm going to be studying my ass off this weekend.

I have to try to send in for my student ID card since I haven't done that yet; if nothing else I guess I can deliver it tomorrow or on Friday if needs; hopefully it'll be processed and whatnot before the exam. Otherwise I'll bring my passport - if that's not good enough for identifying who I am, then there's bigger issues out there, yanno?

I can feel the stress coming my way.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

2011-03-17T16:18:00.000-07:00

.....and don't mind the snow!

Ok, so technically it's the 18th of March here, as it's after midnight, but hey - I won't tell if you won't.

Yes, it's snowing.

I shit you not.

It was sleeting rain on the way home from class this afternoon, and it quickly turned into the fluffy white crap by dinnertime. It's been snowing since.

What.the.hell?

In other news...wait. There is no other news.

I guess I'll just head to bed.

Chemistry, Chemistry....

2011-03-16T04:41:00.000-07:00

Something my father could never get his head around.

He once told me when I was taking courses at TRCC that if I took chemistry I was 'on my own'. Apparently he had once considered getting his degree in chemical engineering, but that there was one class that stood in his way: Chemistry.

I can't say that I blame him completely, it sure isn't the easiest concept to work with, but it is fascinating on many different levels.

In my Terrestrial Environmental Chemistry class we've been working with a herbicide MCPA (also known as 2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxyacetic acid. Say THAT five times fast!

The data has been giving me fits (ok, it's Micro$oft Excel that's doing that), but I think we've got a decent shot at making a nice report.

I like nice reports, especially since it can boost your final grade.

My exams for this course are going to be in early April (6th or 7th) and I'll be studying my ass off so I can do well on them.

T'was the night before surgery...

2011-03-07T14:01:00.000-08:00

...and both Hubby and I are nervous.

Yes, yes, we're know that the likelihood of something going wrong is small, but still - there IS that chance that it'll all go to hell in a handbasket.

We'll be leaving the house at about 9:10 am for the 50 minute drive up to Helsingør and the Dr's office.

We hope it doesn't take long, and that we can come home quickly and get him settled in for the day.

Tonsils, tonsils...

2011-03-02T13:19:00.001-08:00

Well, it's official. The tonsils have to (partially) go.

You can see them in the picture here - those two round looking things in the back of his mouth.

Yep, they're huge - but at least today there's SPACE between them. Some days there's NO space whatsoever. That sucks.

So Tuesday the 8th we have a time up at a surgeon in Helsingør (a little northeast of us) where they're going to remove half of each tonsil.

Apparently it's safer to just remove a portion of it rather than the whole given his young age. They're going to cauterize the tonsils after they're done, and they might grab his adenoids (again!) while they're in there.

All I can say is that he's not going to be a happy baby, at ALL once it's said and done.

He's got a nice set of choppers there, that's for sure!

One of the new sweaters I picked up for him recently - he looks SO damn cute in those overalls too - and he LOVES them, absolutely LOVES them.

He puts his hands in his pockets and swings back and forth and gives cute faces.

Yeah, he knows he's cute.

Look at that pout.

This was the 'no, you're not getting a cheeseburger tonight'. For some reason, if you ask him what he wants, he'll say 'burger'. But if you FIX him said burger, he eats the bun and the cucumbers, but not the meat.

He will, however, eat a burger from McD's. It's too bad for him they're not on the menu!

I know, I know.. I'm such a mean Mom...

He's growing like a weed - or at least his FEET are. These are the sneakers that were BIG on him this Christmas.

They're losing ground fast... his feet are just that big.

I ordered 2 pairs of sneakers from Target - one a DC Comic Superhero sneaker and the other a pair of tye-dyed converse sneakers. They're being shipped separately, so who knows when they'll both arrive in Milton.

This was taken when we put him down for the night tonight.

Yes, he picked out his own sleepwear. No, he didn't want it to match.

Sue would be rolling about the non-matching PJ's.

He's really getting too big for his crib, we'll definitely have to move him to a bed for his 3rd birthday.

The only reason he's not crawling out of the bed nightly is because Hubby caught him trying once and said, "No!" and he hasn't attempted it since. Well, not seriously at least. He's thrown a leg up once or twice, but hasn't tried to pull himself over the railing.

So about that pulled pork....

2011-02-26T10:10:00.001-08:00

I caved in and bought a nice pork roast for pulling on Wednesday.

It's been such a while since I've had a good pork bbq sandwich that I couldn't resist it while it was on sale.

It's about 4.5 - 5 pounds, and I've trimmed off any large pieces of fat on it. I left little bits because you don't want to make it completely bare of fat or your meat won't be quite as juicy as it could be.

I've rubbed it down with the dry rub recipe I mentioned in a previous post here: http://darwynnia.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-wish-list-for-this-year-i-want.html but as a twist, I added about 1/2 a cup of brown sugar. I did the saran wrap on it Friday and let it be happy in the fridge until about 10 am today. I turned it twice just to make sure it was evenly coated.

In went the meat thermometer, reynolds wrap sealed the top (I could still see the thermometer) the oven was set to 160C (about 325F) and I let it bake for 4 hours until the thermometer read 190.

This is what it looked like after 4 hours. I let it rest on my countertop for an hour, so the juices would be set into the meat.

Resting is important!

(it also gives me time to make everything else!)

This is how it should be - you put two forks into the meat and it just pulls apart, the meat glistening with happy juices!

After an hour on the countertop, it's actually not necessary to use forks to pull the meat, it's tender and juicy enough to pick apart with your fingers.

Trouble with that is, you're more tempted to eat bits and pieces as you pull it.

Pull, pull, pull away!

Last but not least, add BBQ sauce!

I toasted up some buns and added lettuce and onions and some sweet red pepper, made some scalloped potatoes and a salad to go with it.

It.was.yummy!

Killin' Critters

2011-02-24T15:11:00.000-08:00

That was the name of the game today.

Apparently the revised protocol I sent in yesterday was approved. (Would have been nice to have known that BEFORE I went in to class today, but hey - what's a few hours of angst among friends, right??)

The little critter you see pictured here is called a Daphnia magna, commonly called a 'water flea'. These were the critters you could order off the back page of comic books, under the name of Sea Monkeys.

They're not insects, despite the nickname of water flea - they're actually small crustaceans - they're the zooplankton you'll find in fresh water. (Like the Milton Town Beach! Don't fear the water now!)

They're important in research because they're the most common zooplankton organism IN fresh water and as such can be considered representative of that part of the ecosystem. Zebra mussels are another common organism used in toxicity studies.

What we're testing is the toxicity of nanoparticles. Itsybitsyteensieweensie particles that are used in our everyday lives; in our case zinc oxide (ZnO). It's used in sunscreens, cosmetics, lotions and creams. After we shower/wash/whatever the ZnO off our skin, it goes out into the waterways and can accumulate there.

While zinc is an essential vitamin, like anything else, it can be lethal in high doses. If I recall correctly our recommended daily dose of Zn is 40 mg. Not a whole lot, if you stop to think about it. If you did manage to overdose yourself on zinc (which would take a lot of effort, truly), you'd get a severe case of anemia, vomiting and the runs. Too much zinc will interfere with the copper levels in your blood, which causes a host of other problems.

Anyhow, I digress....

Basically we made different concentrations of ZnO in some beakers filled with a salt solution. 10 mg/L, 1 mg/L, 0.1 mg/L, 0.01 mg/L and 0 mg/L (our control). 5 happy go lucky critters were put in each beaker (4 replicates of each concentration) and they were left to swim around in the solution for a day.

Tomorrow I'll go in to school and see how many critters are still swimming. Saturday the lab technician is going to see what's left swimming. We anticipate 0 survivors in the 10.0 mg/L concentration, as other similar studies have reported a LC 50 (Lethal Concentration 50 - where 1/2 of the test subjects die) of about 1.0 mg/L.

The most fun of the day was trying to fish the little guys up out of a petri dish. They're about the size of a gnat and DAMN are they quick to swim away from your eyedropper....

Things that irritate me...

2011-02-23T09:36:00.000-08:00

When it comes to handing in assignments, I like to hand mine in on time. I also expect to have them returned in a timely manner.

I sent off my lab protocol to the professor last Thursday, with the intent to start lab work tomorrow afternoon for my Aquatic Chem class. I get home this afternoon to an email from her saying I need to revise my protocol before I can start tomorrow.

Gee, would it have killed you to have sent that oh, 5 days ago? I mean seriously here people, have a little common courtesy! Imagine if I hadn't been home until late this evening, I'd have had ZERO time to revise it for tomorrow, and it would have thrown off my entire experimental timeline.

Meh.

On a brighter note, I was forum chatting with some friends, and they were talking genealogy. The search engine familysearch.org came up in the conversation, so I figured I'd see if it had anything interesting.

I can say that I now know the name of my paternal grandmother's parents, as well as my paternal grandfather's parents, and that Grampy Hall also had a sister named Sophia I. They even had a copy of their marriage certificate online for viewing! Turns out Grampy Hall was born in Terryville Connecticut, and he was 8 years older than Grammy.

Unfortunately, I don't feel like paying 15 bucks a month for Ancestry.com, but apparently there's a buttload more information on 'em out there.

2-22-11 ...and other interesting things

2011-02-22T12:52:00.000-08:00

Seriously, I'm out of witty ideas for titles for posts. You'll get what you get at the moment!

It snowed a bit more today; just flurries without any real accumulation to speak of. I've been slacking on taking new pictures of Matthias, so I brought the camera along with us when we picked him up.

Yes, Hubby needs a shave, but he's been off work for a week on a mini-vacation so he didn't bother. I don't mind him a little scruffy, either.

Look at that look on Matthias' face. It reminds me of that little grin you see on the Old Spice Guy. The "Yes, I know I'm cute and you want to pinch my cheeks. I'm ok with that. Pinch Away."

That is definitely the face of spoiled!

Here we have Matthias taking a 'picture' of Mommy while Mommy takes a picture of him!

Smile pretty for the camera, Mommy!

OH NOES! NOT ANOTHER PICTURE!

Ok, another picture. Maybe if I come in REEEEEALLY close it'll be a good one!

Another busy week in store..

2011-02-21T13:25:00.000-08:00

My week is pretty full nowadays with classes 4 out of 5 days. Weeks like this where Hubby has evening shift we don't really see much of each other or of Matthias. Hubby got him off to daycare this morning so I could sleep in, and then Vivi picked me up at the train station at 5:30 tonight with Matthias in the car. I'd had about 10 minutes to grab some groceries at the store before she arrived at the station, but a gourmet dinner it wasn't.

So I managed to get about an hour of cuddle time with Matthias before it was time to brush teeth and go to bed. It was sweet the way he held my hand and pulled me out to brush teeth and then up the stairs, etc.

So now it's my time to sit at the computer and get my schoolwork done, and think of what to make for dinner tomorrow... hopefully I'll be home in time where we can do a real grocery shopping run.

My 'wish list' for this year... I want a smoker.

2011-02-18T08:37:00.001-08:00

Yes, a smoker. (Not the kind that smokes cigs, sorry Mom!)

I've got the biggest BIGGEST jonesing right now for pulled pork. Yeah yeah, I can make it in my oven, that's true enough (in fact, I'm going to write how to make it here on my blog so Morgan and Nessa can try it sometime.)

I'm talking about 15 hours of slow smoked goodness that melts in your mouth and gives your taste buds orgasms.

So I'm debating whether or not I want to try to make my own, or simply buy one. Decisions decisions... but by this summer I WILL have some kind of smoker!

Anyhow, here's how to pull pork:

Ideally, you have your own smoker (or a grill in which you can use woodchips and smoke).

However, given the temperatures, only a diehard BBQ fan (or a crazy American) would be caught dead outside tending to a smoker.

It IS possible to smoke meat in your oven, although I don't recommend it for beginners - the potential to burn your house down IS rather high if you don't watch your oven like an expectant father.

So.... what kind of pork?

In the US, I'd buy a Boston Butt, or a Shoulder cut. (you can see it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_butt )

What that correlates to in Danish cuts.. I think that's a nakkekam or a bov.

IF you're smoking it outside, you need to figure about an hour to an hour and a half of smoking time (at 200F/~100C), where a 10 pound (~4.6kg) cut of meat will need **15 hours** to finish cooking. If you're using a smoker, have an external read thermometer for the smoker temperature, so you don't keep opening and closing the lid - that'll extend the cooking time and you'll lose the smoke. Have a second thermometer for the meat itself - you'll want it to get up to 180-190F to pull it. If you cook it less, it's tough to pull. If you cook it more, your meat will be dry. I recommend apple or cherry wood for smoking. Hickory is commonly used, but can come out tasting VERY strong in the meat, so if you use it, use it sparingly.

If you're going the oven route, expect to cook it at 300F (150-160C) for 4-6 hours, depending on roast size (a 2.4-3.3 kg roast will need 6 hours. For oven pulled pork, you want an internal temperature of 170F/80C.

Either way you go with it, you need to rub the pork.

Here's the rub that I personally use:

3 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon dry mustard
3 tablespoons coarse salt
1 tablespoon onion powder

It's very simple - wash and pat dry the pork, trim off extra fat, then rub it generously with the spices above. For best results, wrap the pork in plastic wrap and let it sit in your fridge for a day before baking - otherwise try to at least let the meat rest for 4 hours minimum before cooking.

Put it in a roasting pan and cover with foil, sealing around the edges. This will help to keep the juices in. When the internal temp reaches 170 F/80C, the pork should be practically falling apart on its own. Let it rest on the counter for 30 minutes to an hour, then pull and mix with BBQ sauce for sandwiches.

If you want a spicier rub, use hungarian paprika, which has a stronger flavour. You can also choose to make small slits with a knife over portions of the pork and slide sliced garlic in them. The sky is the limit, honestly.

A week with the flu...

2011-02-17T14:17:00.000-08:00

That's what I got for Valentine's Day.

Ok, so I actually got sick the Saturday before, but hey - who's counting?!?!

I'm fine now, other than still an occasional cough tickling my throat but no other ill effects. Hubby took good care of me, and Vivi took care of Matthias while Hubby was at work and I was laid up in bed.

I missed a week of classes, but I'm sure I can get caught up in the next week or two, as we have a week break starting the 28th of Feb.

Matthias is doing well; he's over his case of strep. His tonsils, however, are still the size of cherries. The ear, nose & throat Dr. gave him an extra 3 day course of broad spectrum antibiotics, and while they're smaller than they were (they WERE the size of olives!), they're not normal sized by any stretch of the imagination. I forsee a tonsilectomy in Matthias's near future.

The weather's taken a bitter turn here, tonight it's supposed to be down to -15C (5F) before the windchill is considered. We'll be bundled up for sure tonight!

Is it Friday yet?

2011-02-11T09:28:00.001-08:00

Oh wait, it IS!

It's been a busy week with school and all; I can tell this semester is going to be a killer with the amount of homework that's piling up on me.

Luckily, Vivi has agreed to watch Matthias for a few hours this weekend since Hubby's going to be at work, and then (hopefully) I can get caught up on it all.

Matthias had his appointment at the ear, nose & throat Dr. today, and is on (another!) course of antibiotics - this one for 3 days. His tonsils are still the size of black olives and you can tell it's hurting him and his voice sounds funny.

We have another appointment in 2 weeks, and if they're not back to normal then, he'll be scheduled for a tonsillectomy.

Other than that, not much to say really. I've got the beginnings of a nasty cold - sore throat, aches and whatnot. I'll be dosing myself liberally with NyQuil tonight and hope that it's not the flu. That's the LAST thing I need.

It's Friday!

2011-01-28T14:02:00.000-08:00

So we took Matthias to the dr's today to get his tonsils looked at.

They're still GINORMOUS, so we had another strep test done, and it came back with a faint positive.

That means 10 more days on antibiotics for him, which will put us at right about the right time to see the ear, nose and throat dr about his ears, etc.

This picture was taken today, just after he tore through the books you see in the background, and ran over my foot with his little scooter.

That's him pointing down at my foot and smiling because I was hopping up and down after he'd run me over.

This one's for Mom...

2011-01-25T23:19:00.001-08:00

I know you hate buying organic foods. I know you think they don't taste as 'good' as non-organic foods.

I'd like you to reconsider some of the fruits & veggies you buy - and think (just THINK!) about buying them organic.

I've told you it's because of the pesticide load placed on them - and this recent article really hits home as to how many different chemicals we're spraying our food with:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/eat-safe/Dirty-Dozen-Foods

I'll walk through the list with my comments and thoughts:

Meat:

The meat itself isn't likely to be contaminated with pesticides. Most are fat-soluble, meaning you'll see higher concentrations of them in the fat that's on/in the beef. Same with pork. However, the hormones they use to grow the meat - that's another story.

If you can't (or don't want to) buy organic meats, at least be sure to trim as much of the fat off as you possibly can (or ask the butcher to trim it for you).

Milk:

Buy Organic. Just do it. The prices of organic milk are comparable to non-organic milk, and it IS healthier for you - milk will give you a double whammy of both pesticides AND hormones. Just remember how much milk Sue used to drink??

Coffee: I know there's not a snowball's chance in hell you'll switch coffee brands, and you don't drink a lot of coffee regardless. I can't find any information about Chase & Sanborn and their harvesting policies, either.

Veggies:

Celery: Read the article. 64 different pesticide residues. You can't peel celery, because it has no skin - this means the chemicals will penetrate the entire plant. Buy organic - most of the time you use it in soups - so you won't really be able to 'taste' the celery or any difference in it.

Bell Peppers: 49 pesticides.

Spinach: 48 pesticides

Potatoes: 37 pesticides

Carrots: 26 pesticides

You can peel carrots, which will reduce the pesticide load somewhat, but not completely.

Fruits:

Peaches: 62 pesticides.

Strawberries: 59 pesticides.

Apples: 42 pesticides.

Blueberries: Up to 52 pesticides

Grapes: 34 pesticides

There are a bunch of foods which you don't have to worry about being organic: onions, whole corn, watermelon, broccoli and sweet potatoes. None of these veggies have a lot of insect pests present, so they don't get sprayed for them.

It's not always feasible to buy organic, I know - however I would REALLY wish you'd consider substituting organic foods for one or two of your usual buys - peppers, spinach and potatoes perhaps?

Ugh, once more into the breach, dear friends...

2011-01-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

Apparently it's still the season for.... lice.

We were picking Matthias up today and they were just putting the notice on the door that one of the little darlings there is infested.

For fuck's sake.

So, tonight both Matthias and Hubby got buzz cuts. Now that my hair is shoulder length, if it gets passed on to me again (shudder), it'll be much easier to get rid of.

It still pisses me off that they aren't allowed to send the child HOME that has it, instead they get to stay and play with the other kids and pass the joy around.

Well, with Matthias' new cut, anything that creeps or crawls on his head will be INSTANTLY visible, thank God.

Poor little guy...

2011-01-22T10:42:00.000-08:00

So Matthias has the flu. He's been running a fever of 102 for over 2 days now, and has turned into a complete lap baby.

Not that I'm really complaining - I'd rather he not be sick, of course - but he's not normally one that wants to be held at all, so I'm enjoying the snuggle time.

We were trying to get him to drink some more water and juice today, and he was complaining that his throat hurt. So I grabbed a flashlight and took a peek....

....little white fuzzy dots.... all over the back of his throat.

Strep.

Lovely.

So now he's got penicillin for his strep and let's hope it gives his immune system a chance to get in gear to combat the flu. His coughing this evening actually caused him to spit up a bit of blood, his poor throat is like so much raw meat.

The week of the stomach flu...

2011-01-18T20:58:00.000-08:00

That's right, the wonderful bug has made a stop here in Denmark. We were first warned about it in Matthias' daycare - apparently they've got LOADS of kids sick with it (and employees too!) - so they said that Matthias might come down with it as well.

Oh Joy!

Well, it looks like Matthias managed to sidestep the most of it; he was sick just twice. He was sitting at the table, turned his head to the side and ralphed up his juice he'd just had, then started eating his dinner and not another problem. Hubby on the other hand....

Wasn't so lucky.

This is apparently that lovely bug that you're not sure which end of you needs the toilet first. I had Matthias on the toilet to do his business and I heard Hubby land on the floor upstairs and the upstairs door being nearly ripped off its hinges. I grabbed Matthias off the throne as I heard heaving on the way down and the sound of 'rain' indoors, then Hubby came around the door into the bathroom and....

You get the picture.

Luckily, I'd closed the shower curtain between the baby, myself and Hubby. The rest of the bathroom wasn't as lucky. On a brighter note, the bathroom is now sparkling clean after being vigorously washed & rinsed twice. (By Hubby no less - he didn't want me to have to deal with the mess - what a guy!)

My classes start up on the 31st of this month; it's going to be interesting seeing how we're going to get the baby picked up from daycare, as it looks like I'll be at school until 5pm 4 days a week, and normally you have to pick up the kids at 4pm. We'll have to see if Vivi can step in and lend a hand, or Hubby will have to work out a deal with his work when he's on evening shifts and whatnot.

Now for some random pictures...

Here we have Aksel, our little nephew. He's cute as a button and is completely FASCINATED by his big cousin Matthias.

He wants to do everything Matthias does, and gets really frustrated that he can't run around too!

Here's Matthias, after he found his binky. We're trying to wean him off it unless he's sleeping.

Aren't they two handsome boys?

Ok, I admit I'm biased, but hey - that's part of my job description!

I LOVE the little socks Aksel has on, they're SO damn cute!

Here's my bongo boy - he's discovered the fun of making your own drum set out of Mom's Christmas Cookie containers.

That kept him busy as we unloaded the cubic assload of luggage we brought back from the US this Christmas.

Here's one from this Christmas at Mom's.

Matthias helping us trim the tree.

He was FASCINATED by everything on the tree, especially Morgan's little star and the Santa Claus doorknob thingy.

As usual, we made sure to put all the fragile ornaments where he couldn't reach them. He was just too happy about being able to put stuff on the tree, he had to keep adjusting everything!

Christmas morning; his new Santa Claus. He was more interested in all the chocolate that came with the stocking, but we're still rationing it out to him.

Isn't he a cutie?

My babies!

Happy New Year's Everyone

2011-01-01T08:57:00.001-08:00

I bet you can guess what one of my New Year's resolutions was, right?

That's right. I'm posting here.

I'd left off posting since my mother's laptop died, since she was my main motivation for writing this blog - I took up calling her more often to keep her up to date on what was going on out in Denmark.

Now that we've gotten her a new laptop, I need to get into the habit of blogging more often so she doesn't feel left out of the loop being in the US.

So yeah, here's my first post of 2011. Hope you've enjoyed it.

Promises, promises...

2010-11-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

I keep telling myself, "I'm going to blog about what happened today!" but as you can see, I haven't quite kept that promise to myself.

Sigh.

I'm going to try to compile what's been up this year (ack!) month by month and give some pictures to go with it.

I promise.

*ducks*

Snow!

2010-01-31T12:10:00.000-08:00

That's the word of the week.

It's snowed off and on the entire week, and we now have a little over a foot of snow here. Considering we're in the heat island that is Copenhagen, that's pretty significant. Other places in Denmark have almost 3 feet.

We've all been sick, cough, phlegm and the whole 9 yards, it's like we're passing the bug between us on a daily basis, which really sucks.

Tomorrow's the orientation for the Master's students at school; I'll have to dig out the car at around 8amish I guess. This semester is going to be geology for geographers, drainage basins and modeling and I think I'm going to go for the trifecta with nutrient cycling.

We'll see more tomorrow.

A Lazy Sunday

2010-01-24T10:18:00.000-08:00

Seriously, everyone needs a lazy Sunday.

The baby woke up at 7am with a dirty diaper, I gave him a cup of milk and he wanted to go back to sleep. BONUS! So I got to sleep in, Hubby took over at 9 when Matthias woke up again. Then it was play, play, play and a good quality nap, dinner, play, play, bath and into bed.

It's not a bad life, if you can get it.

Tomorrow I'll get the baby off to daycare, get my shopping done and just putter around the house some more. We're throwing a Superbowl party next Sunday so I need to make sure I've got stuff ready for that.

Hubby also asked me to make a cheesecake for him to take into work this week, so I'll get that done too.

Don't know when my grades will be posted, hopefully before the registration for my Master's courses closes!

Finally Done with my Bachelor's*

2010-01-20T09:27:00.000-08:00

* assuming I've passed my last final from Tuesday, that is.

Population Biology with Morten F. Pedersen.

Morten's a great guy - very knowledgeable and quite passionate about his field of study - which makes him a wonderful professor, IMO.

This semester has been rough for me, attendance wise. Between the baby needing tubes in his ears (twice), having pneumonia (twice), having lice (again, TWICE), Hubby having the flu and then ME having the flu (and the week before the exam, no less).

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about the last minute 'change of venue' - which I found out about when meeting one of my classmates in SuperBrugsen (a shopping center like Hannaford's) who mentioned that she'd spoken to the House Secretary who had said that the exam had been moved to the second floor in the building, but she hadn't sent an email out because, "She'd sent so many out recently, she didn't want to overburden us"

Uh... you know - they LOCK the door to the exam at 10 am. If you're not IN the room, you're OUT of the exam. So knowing the right room is kinda IMPORTANT, don't you think?

Anyhow, I sent a nicely worded email to Morten about it saying that it'd be easier to get to the exam if one knew that the room had been changed beforehand....

In other news...

It's snowing again today, not much really - just enough to make everything pretty again. We have winter tires on the car, so it's not a pain to drive in (and it's flat like a pancake where we live anyway so no hills to conquer) . The house is a wreck, since both Hubby and I have been sick the past week, so I'll probably be spending the next three days going through everything and getting it back in shape.

I'm looking forward to my Master's courses: Geology for Geographers and Drainage Basins, Flows and Modeling. I've the opportunity to take other courses at Copenhagen University in the city, but I'm not really sure I want to be going back and forth between two campuses 30 miles apart on the train/bus with the baby in nursery school, etc.

I think it'll be just too much, and Hubby agrees. It's not like I'm going to be behind on any courses or anything, so I'm not worried about it. I'm going to speak to one of my old project supervisors, Anita Veihe, on possible Master's projects I can start doing some preliminary research on - as well as what the field trips are this year which are required (and when they are).

So far, I know there's 2 trips, and that I have to attend one of them.

The Faroe Islands or Manchester, England.

I'm personally hoping for Manchester, England - since they tend to eat mostly fish/lamb on the Faroe Islands and I can't stand either of those two things...

But, I'll find out more during the introduction period the first of February...

The last exam...

2010-01-19T03:58:00.001-08:00

So today was my exam in Population Biology here at RUC. The last class I need to complete my Bachelors Degrees in Geography and Environmental Biology.

We had a studygroup meeting last week with Morten our Professor (who is one of the greatest guys out there), which included a 6 page pensum of formulas we were expected to know and understand for the exam.

6 pages of formulas... that's a crapload of alphas, betas, gammas, K1, K2, etc.

I busted my ass to memorize as much as possible and..... we used 1.

The Lotka Voltera model for competing populations:

dN1/dt = r1N1[(K1-N1-aN2)/K1] and dN2/dt = r2N2[(K2-N2-bN1)/K2]

Where a and b are the competition coefficients - the effect of species 2 on species 1, and vice versa. K is the carrying capacity of the species and N is the population. R is the rate of change in the population.

Whee.

The plus side, I'm positive I passed the exam, which means I can go on to my Master's studies without worrying.

4 Years...

2009-12-21T12:31:00.001-08:00

It's hard to believe that it's been 4 years now since we lost Sue. It still feels like it was yesterday to me.

They say that time heals all wounds, but right now that sounds like such a crock of shit to me.

I miss you so much.

Oh the joys of daycare....

2009-12-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

Today Matthias came home from daycare with a little gift for us...

It's a 4 letter word that begins with L and ends with E...

...and it ain't love.

Yep, the gift of public daycare - Lice.

@)(#*@)%&_)@#*@)%&@)(#*@)($*()@*!!!!!

So at 4pm we drove down to the pharmacy and picked up two lice kits. One for Hubby and the baby, and the other for me - since chances are there wouldn't be enough solution in the one bottle to do my hair.

To make life easier, I took the clippers to both Hubby and the baby. Now they're both sporting crewcuts, and are nit free. (We only found 2 eggs on the baby anyway).

I soaked my head for a half hour before showering and sitting down to laboriously use the nit comb on my own hair. Yeah, that was a fun half hour.

All the bedclothes, pillows and puffs are in the washing machine, 95 degrees C, and his plush toys that can't be washed will spend the next 4 days out in the shed.

Then next Wednesday we do it all over again to be sure we got the little fuckers.

Friday the 13th

2009-11-13T04:09:00.000-08:00

Sheesh, life moves pretty fast when you'd like to stop and smell the flowers!

Matthias has had tubes in his ears, he's had pneumonia and now he's got crap coming out of the ear that the tube has already fallen out from.

He's not feverish, he's not complaining about pain, he's not fussy - he's still the happy go lucky camper he's always been, other than he's got gunk running out of his ears.

I don't get it.

So it's another round of Dr's appointments and everything for us.

Oh yeah, tomorrow's my birthday too. I figure we'll just be homebodies and cook some nice steaks for dinner. I'll be making a cheesecake tonight for my birthday cake so it's all good.

The first haircut

2009-10-29T08:56:00.001-07:00

So Matthias had his first haircut on Sunday, and no - I haven't taken any pictures yet (I know - false advertising).

Vivi got out her scissors and Hubby sat down in the kitchen, put a dishtowel around the baby's neck and sat him on his lap.

Apparently, they figured he'd sit still for them.

Heh.

Didn't happen quite that way.

With the first sensation of, "Someone's pulling on my hair! OH NOES!" the screaming began. You'd have thought she was stabbing him with the scissors or something the way he was screaming.

She managed to do a decent clip around the sides and top of Matthias' head, and then said, "That should do it!"

I looked at my baby and saw that she'd left the back long.

OH HELL NO - NO MULLETS

I said, "Um, the back needs to be cut too."

She thought it looked cute long.

I used the Presidential Veto.

The back is now short like the rest. I'll try to get some pictures of it tonight, but now he looks like a toddler and not so much a baby anymore.

Pictures? I happen to have pictures!

2009-10-23T15:34:00.000-07:00

As well as SOME news.

I passed my Bachelor's project from hell. We got a C+ for a grade because our data, "wasn't reader friendly". I bit my tongue, nodded and just signed off on the papers, because the urge to strangle Ole was nearly overwhelming me.

You see, he was supposed to go OVER our data with us, but blew our meeting off to go golfing with his son because, "it's going to be the last nice weekend of the month".

Nice, eh?

Well, that's done with. Provided I pass my Population Biology course this semester, I will have a double Bachelor's degree come January.

Yay me.

Now, on to the IMPORTANT stuff: Pictures!

Here's the little munchkin!

You might notice he's not so little anymore.

He eats like a horse and is built like a brick privy.

He's about as heavy as he is tall, too.

If I recall correctly he's about 35 pounds and 35 inches.

He's also a very dirty, dirty boy.

Rest assured, he gets regular baths. He just likes playing in the dirt like most kids.

If I could just get him to stop saving sand in his diaper....

He's a complete Daddy's boy too. I don't mind it though. It means Hubby gets to carry him around everywhere.

How can you not love those cheeks???

He's also the proud owner of 12 teeth.

You can see 6 of them here. He's got a matching set upstairs too.

His incisors are on their way in soon, so we'll have more grumpy baby drooling over everything.

He's had tubes put in his ears and his adenoids removed already. Hopefully that'll put an end to the ear infections, water on the ear and snoring he's had.

I haven't heard him snore since they've been removed and that's a good thing. He actually woke Hubby up with his snoring once (and that's saying something, since HUBBY snores himself!)

Here he is playing peekaboo on the couch.

I think Sunday we're going to go to Vivi's and cut his hair. He's got nice, fine hair all over his head EXCEPT for the very back which is like coarse wire, and gets snarled EVERY night.

He's not fond of the hairbrush (neither was Nessa), so cutting it will make things easier for all of us.

It'll be a shame to lose the curls though. He gets some of the most adorable curls I've seen in years - curls like Morgan had when she was a baby.

This is his, "No Mommy, not the HAIRBRUSH!" look.

"You don't REALLY want to brush my hair now, DO you?"

What?? The 31st of July already??

2009-07-31T05:15:00.000-07:00

Holy crap has time gotten away from me.

I can't believe I've gone 3 months without posting here. Well, as you can imagine the baby has grown by leaps and bounds, and at 14 months (almost 15 now) he's starting to walk on his own.

He's gotten "hi" and "taytoo" (thank you) down so far, as well as Mama and Dada. On occasion he'll say 'woofie' for Vivi's dogs.

He's gotten the swing of being in daycare, and usually he's completely covered in sand and gritty things when we pick him up - a sure sign he's having a blast.

He's got 8 teeth now, 4 & 4, and is working on at least two molars, if the amount of drool he's producing is any indication.

We've had two bouts of pinkeye, got rid of it the first time and it came back, even though I'd washed the house down with bleachwater: washed all his toys, bedding, crib, walls, doors and floor (carpet included). It seems to be gone now though, thankfully - he wasn't too thrilled about the gel we had to put in his eyes. (Not that I can blame him, really).

This may I was back in Kansas, for the first time in 15 years. Believe me, not much has changed. Oh sure, Lawrence KS (where KU is) has been built up pretty well, there's lots of new development there - but it's still as flat as ever, and the people there haven't changed at all.

Except for Daniel. His hair has REALLY thinned out since we divorced. He's still burly and all, and he's smoking again - but I was amazed at how much hair he'd lost.

Vanessa's graduation was lovely - a bit different than what I'm used to from back home, but lovely all the same. What you're seeing here is their 'receiving line' for all the new grads - since the school is so small, and everyone knows everyone, they line up for well-wishes, etc outside. I wasn't aware of it, so I was kind of taken aback because I'd hurried to get outside (in the fresh air) and then realized I was going to have to wait until everyone else had gone by in order to give my hug to Vanessa. Shit happens.

While I was there, I saw Jack and Jasmine again - Daniel's father and sister. Jack hasn't changed much, might be a bit thinner now - but since he lost Darlene in '06 I think he's a bit lost.

He seemed happy enough to see me, and he was very proud of Vanessa as well.

He and I both agreed that Daniel married a shorter version of Darlene.

That speaks volumes, doesn't it?

Vanessa has a new boyfriend (of course). His name is John, and from what I've seen he's a very nice young man who knows he will suffer for a very long time should he hurt my baby.

They all play in a band called "Your sweetest alibi" - a mixture of rock/punk. He's a junior so she'll have a year in college without him (which isn't a bad thing), but all in all I like him more than I liked her previous boyfriend.

She looked beautiful for her graduation. She's grown up to be a very self assured young lady who's got her head set on right.

I'm very proud of her.

Here she is at her graduation party with her father. It was held at a shelterhouse at Pomona Lake, and was very nice. Her friends showed up as well as the band and her boss (a very nice gentleman, I might add).

It was a nice quiet place until the band fired up their amps and started playing. I can now say that I understand what my mother went through when she had to listen to my music when I was growing up. Sorry Mom! I'm still proud of her though!

Speaking of being proud, Vanessa was all excited about their 'gig' they were having the day after I arrived. Apparently it was to be held at a barn in Carbondale, and that all the local talent goes there to practice and play. So I rode there with Daniel, Amy and Vanessa in their car while they followed John to the gig.

That's when things got interesting. When I think of a 'barn' in Kansas, images of the Grand Ole Opry come to light - something wholesome and family orientated - you know with actual FARM ANIMALS and things there.

This 'barn' was actually a machine shop, and I think it doubled as the stage setting for all the Jeff Foxworthy, "You might be a redneck IF..." jokes.

The kids all had a great time playing and jammig along, while I could feel my hair turning grey.

This was not at ALL what I'd expected from a 'gig', if you know what I mean.

Did I forget to mention the BIKERS?

Oh yes, there were bikers at this barn. This is where they come to have their meetings, drink Jagermeister, and wear their handguns at the waistband of their jeans.

Think I'm shitting you? Check the picture.

One of them came up to me and said, "Man, the blonde that's singing is hot, do you know her name?"

I gave him the stare of death and said, "Yes I do, since I'm her mother."

He got the 'OH SHIT' look on his face, turned around and ran the other way.

Daniel spent most of the night apologizing to me for bringing us all there; he'd had no idea that the 'barn' was what it was either. I think he was afraid I'd start screaming at him for being a fuck-up or something. Amy said she'd had a wonderful time and felt right at home, seeing as her father used to be a Hell's Angel.

Somehow, I wasn't surprised to hear that.

Anyhow, the girls came out to Denmark in June, and we had a wonderful time. We went to the beach, to the movies, into Copenhagen and even spent a day in Aarhus in "Den Gamle By" - which means "The Old City".

Basically they've preserved buildings from the middle ages on to the late 1800's and reconstructed them in a small city where you can walk around and see what life was like at that point in time.

We visited the bakery, the inn, the toyshop and pretty much admired the buildings and the cobblestone streets. It was an odd juxtaposition between old and new, because this little city is tucked inside the city of Aarhus, which is very much into the 21st century.

We ate at the restaurant in the Old City, and then we wandered off into the botanical garden which is right next door.

I can't say that we saw too much of it, we all pretty much just collapsed into the grass beneath the shade of a tree, took off our sandals and just relaxed.

It was hot as hell that day.

Here's two pooped teenagers.

Not to be outdone, one pooped Husband.

As you can see, Matthias had it made in the shade..

Picture time..

2009-04-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

So I've been slacking the last month with the blog, I know, I know.

There's actually been quite a bit happening, I just haven't had a chance to sit down and go through it all.

Where to begin, where to begin...

I'll start with school. That's always a good choice.

School is going as well as can be expected; our Supervisor Ole either had a senior moment or forgot what we had discussed when we set up the experiment but he realized that we were essentially MISSING half of the setup. Naturally, neither Marietta nor myself were thrilled to hear that, but we busted our asses (as well as our husbands') to get what we needed for the other half of the experiment.

Hopefully it won't impact our grade, since it wasn't our fuckup, you know?

Mom's birthday was uneventful - I sent her a gift card from Newick's - not that she can USE it since she's having more trouble with her teeth, but I know at SOME point she'll be able to, and I suppose that's good enough for me.

Matthias is now officially in nursery school, and doing well. He eats like a horse while there and pretty much sleeps for 2 hours over noon and then is a bundle of energy again (after eating again, of course). He's pretty much off baby food (still gets 1-2 bottles a day) and is eating our table food and drinking whole milk. (Babies need the higher fat content for their little brains - they develop so quick between 1-2 years).

My ex-fiance Michael is now married. Today was the big day for him, and I wish him the best in the world with his new wife. Even though he and I didn't work out; he'll always hold a special place in my heart (and he knows it). I did nag at him to remember a hat and sunscreen for his honeymoon in the Caribbean though.

Some things will never change.

This was after he'd been at nursery school the entire day, and had played outside in the dirt (all of the dirt), and managed to get himself completely dirty.

A nice long soak in the tub occurred shortly after this picture was taken, which resulted in a flood in my bathroom and Hubby being drenched from head to toe.

Good times.

...and we're off!

2009-03-29T09:26:00.000-07:00

Matthias is now officially crawling.

He's up on all 4's and on the move.

Life as we knew it is over! (ha!)

Playground fun

2009-03-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

Since the nice weather's been holding out, we decided to take Matthias out to the playground that's behind our apartment.

On the plus side, there's plenty of things that he can use and play with when he gets older.

On the down side, our neighbor's cat apparently thinks it's a large litterbox. If we catch the cat in the gravel doing its business, we're going to report it to the homeowner's association and make them keep the cat indoors (they're supposed to anyway).

I mean really - who wants their kids playing in cat poop? Not me!

He's such a little charmer, isn't he though?

Gram Chase would say he was cunnin'!

Rubber Ducky, You're the One...

2009-03-14T16:19:00.000-07:00

You make my bathtime SO much fun!

Or, in lolcatspeak, "I HAS A RUBBER DUCKY!"

See Mom??!? See!?!??! I have a rubber ducky!!

We were having such a good time in the tub, I had to grab the camera and take some more pictures.

You can see the bottom teeth now too!!

"Aren't I handsome, Mom?"

As you can see, he's been splashing around too!

"What do you mean, duckies aren't for tasting?"

"Mmmmm... duck"

...and after the bath, into the Batman Jammies.

Some of the 18 month outfits are getting short on him.

He's growing longer and longer by the day, it's incredible.

More proof that my ex's current wife is an idiot.

2009-03-03T04:15:00.000-08:00

There was a shooting in Copenhagen the other day - I heard just a snippet about it on the news, but hadn't thought much about it. Shootings are rare here, as there's a strict gun control policy here.

Today I get an email from Amy:

"I read today there was some shooting in Copenhagen Denmark in front of a cafe. Possibly gang related. Was that near you? Did you know any of the individuals involved in the shooting? Hopefully no one you knew were the ones shot. Have they caught the people that did the shooting. I read they four that were shot were rushed to the hospital. I guess one has already died due to this shooting....I hope the other three will be alright. Let me know!!!"

First:

I don't live IN Copenhagen. I live in the suburbs. It's 20 minutes away if I'm driving. It's like living in Boston or living in Quincy. It's a burb, it's not the city itself.

Amy knows I don't live IN Copenhagen.

Second:

There's almost 6 million people in Denmark, and 3.7 million in the greater Copenhagen area. I have no fucking idea who the people were that were shot, who their assailants were and who their doctors are or what hospitals they're in.

I'm not about to go to the hospital and ask how they're doing - she should be able to google the shooting and find out for herself.

I don't ask her about shootings in Wichita or Kansas City, why the hell is she asking me about a shooting here? I guarantee that there's more shootings there than there are here.

Shovels and rakes and implements of destruction...

2009-03-03T03:41:00.001-08:00

Today we had an early meeting with Ole, our supervisor for this semester. We've been designing our experiment for our Bachelor's project and trying to define the parameters we're going to set it up under.

We decided that we were going to go with larger buckets with roughly 15 cm of sediment, covered with 10 cm of seawater and 5-7 worms per bucket. We'll be having 14 buckets in all I believe with a varying amount of pollutant (used motor oil and diesel fuel at a 1:1 ratio).

We're going to have from 10,000 ppm (parts per million), 3000 ppm, 1000 ppm, 300 ppm, 100 ppm, 30 ppm and a control with no oil/diesel.

The highest concentration will pretty much be a basic toxicology study - how many worms die from the pollution. We anticipate that we'll have the most biological activity in the 30-1000 ppm range, but the higher the amount of pollutant, the harder it is for the worms to survive.

Not too difficult to follow along, I hope.

So today before Animal & Plant Physiology with Hans (the 'fucking shit' guy, if you recall me mentioning him before), Marietta and I ran around the buildings to gather up hardware for our project.

I really feel bad for Ole at times - he'll have gathered up supplies and set them aside for his projects in one of HIS storage rooms and it seems that everyone else comes by and borrows (read: steals) all his gear.

So rather than a simple run downstairs to get buckets and tubing and airpumps and whatnot, we had to chase down buckets, tubing and airpumps and a sediment sieve and all the other things we're going to need.

After 2.5 hours of crawling everywhere to get almost everything (we're still missing airstones which will have to be ordered), we've got it together and are going to pack it into the van tomorrow to end up out at the coast somewhere at a marina to go digging up the worms we need.

We're going to go after Nereis diversicolor and Marenzellaria viridis. The nereis is the native species of worm, and marenzellaria is actually an invasive species which is outcompeting nereis. So we'll have to work a bit harder to get the Nereis, whereas the Marenzellaria is pretty much everywhere.

Both Marietta and I have enlisted our Hubbies to help us with the digging, sieving and carrying of water and sediment for our project, and we'll be having Matthias out there with us, since we don't have anyone that can babysit for that time. It'll definitely be interesting, that's for sure.

We've estimated that we'll need roughly 320 pounds of sediment and roughly 200 liters of seawater.

Fun times ahead!

Sunday dinners...

2009-03-01T14:51:00.000-08:00

So today was dinner at Hubby's mother's house.

No biggie - she'd been planning on us coming with the baby, as well as Jonathon and Camilla and their partners.

We went over there earlier this time (we'd had a visit from Steffen and Marietta) and Matthias had been up a little longer than usual before he had a power nap just before we left for Vivi's. This time around we also packed up the high chair, since Matthias has been wild about eating with us and that's kept him from being crabby about being in the playpen while the rest of us eat dinner.

(As you can see, he's gotten into eating 'big boy' food)

This is his bread. There are many mini-loaves like it, but this one is HIS.

All you heard was *slurp* *scrape* and 'mmmmm' from him.

Here we're having (or had) broccoli, corn, carrots, greenbeans and hamburg (97% lean, with onions, garlic, sweet red peppers and orange peppers)

He thought that was nummy enough, and surprisingly didn't start throwing any of his food on the floor.

He'll toss toys down to make us pick them up, but not food - apparently food is too important!

Hubby and I took turns today trying to catch some wonderful candid shots of the baby.

He's got the bluest eyes, doesn't he?

Daddy took this one.

"I has an apple"

"Mmmm, apple!"

That quarter of an apple kept him entertained for a half hour.

He ate about a half of it, without choking on it. He's gotten MUCH better with chewing and swallowing, as opposed to just shoving food down his throat.

Yep, we've learned that the teeth DO help!

So I got distracted by the wonderful pictures of the baby while talking about Vivi's dinner. Apparently both Jonathan and Camilla left SMS's on her cell phone saying they wouldn't be coming to dinner, and Vivi had made 2 meatloaves plus potatoes and veggies, etc. Ordinarily I really like her meatloaf but sometimes she gets a little funky with the ingredients.

Tonight's meatloaf had apples and prunes in it, and was covered in bacon.

Needless to say, this was not my expression:

Has it been that long?

2009-02-28T05:20:00.001-08:00

Heh, today's been one of those 'sit back and remember' kind of days.

Today would have been my 18th wedding anniversary with Daniel had we stayed married.

18 years...

There's no way. I'd have killed him long ago I think if we'd tried to make a go of it.

But, thankfully it's not and I didn't.

I'm in a MUCH better place now, most definitely.

Seriously - how can you not love those cheeks???

Matthias has found out how to use his teeth now for things like wheat bread and whatnot. We gave him a roll yesterday from the bakers and you'd be surprised how much he could actually shove in his mouth before he tried to bite it off.

Before you wonder, no we don't pack him in the crib with all the stuffed animals.. there's only 1 at his head when we lay him down to sleep.

He wiggles around and grabs the rest and snuggles down into a happy nest of love.

Course, if he'd sleep longer than a half hour at a time, we'd all be happier -but he's sleeping longer at night which is (in my opinion) MORE important.

At least for my sanity it is.

There are some who might call me....Chip?

2009-02-25T09:48:00.001-08:00

Or was that Dale?

Yep, the teeth are on the way in - and it looks like he's got about 3-4 more waiting in the wings.

We had to get creative to get a picture of the new pearly whites because Matthias won't open his mouth for the camera any other way.

So yeah, Hubby was tossing the baby up over his shoulder and making him shriek with laughter and I finally got a picture of them

He's got the one on the bottom and two on the top - now he's ready to eat steak with the rest of us!

Or so HE thinks!

Why, HELLO there!

Isn't he a happy baby?

First day of classes...

2009-02-13T01:22:00.000-08:00

Today's the first day of classes for my Bachelor degree. Tuesday class was canceled due to the Prof being ill.

In the first 10 minutes of class, Hans Ramløv (the Prof) has managed to use the phrase, "Shit man!" about 6 times.

This is definitely going to be an interesting semester, to say the least.

Well, at least so far it's not boring, right?

The teeth are coming, the teeth are coming!

2009-02-12T00:41:00.000-08:00

So Matthias has been teething hard the last two weeks and both Hubby and I have been checking those bottom gums for signs of new bumps and (hopefully) some relief.

He's not always been very cooperative about it, preferring to keep his treasures hidden away, but occasionally he'll let us get a looksee in there.

Hubby was changing him yesterday and Matthias gave him a BIG smile (it was a BIG job in his pants and apparently he was happy to have it removed. At that time, Hubby saw something......

Yep.

He's getting his TOP teeth in first.

Obviously he wasn't too thrilled with us getting the picture but you had to see it to believe it.

We couldn't get a better picture than what's here, but when he lets you peek in his mouth you can definitely see the whites getting ready to come through the gums.

Looks like it's about time to start feeding him ice cubes...

Election Day is over...

2009-01-22T11:45:00.000-08:00

I was watching the election coverage on Tuesday and thinking about Sue - she would have been 40 now. I wonder if her hair would be a little more grey (I've found MY first grey hair already), and what she would have looked like now.

I stumbled upon a nifty 'Patch' about the changing of the President - it's written like it's being applied to one of the computer games that Hubby and I play, and I personally find it DAMN funny.

US Democracy Server: Patch Day

Version 44.0
President

* Leadership: Will now scale properly to national crises. Intelligence was not being properly applied.
* A bug has been fixed that allowed the President to ignore the effects of debuffs applied by the Legislative classes.
* Drain Treasury: There appears to be a bug that allowed loot to be transferred from the treasury to anyone on the President’s friends list, or in the President’s party. We are investigating.
* Messages to and from the President will now be correctly saved to the chat log.
* Messages originating from the President were being misclassified as originating from The American People.
* A rendering error that frequently caused the President to appear wrapped in the American Flag texture has been addressed.

Vice President

* The Vice President has been correctly reclassified as a pet.
* No longer immune to damage from the Legislative and Judicial classes.
* The Vice President will no longer aggro on friendly targets. This bug was identified with Ranged Attacks and the Head Shot ability.
* Reveal Identity: this debuff will no longer be able to target Covert Operatives.
* Messages to and from the Vice President will now be correctly saved to the chat log.
* A rendering bug was affecting the Vice President’s visibility, making him virtually invisible to the rest of the server. This has been addressed.

Cabinet

* There was a bug in the last release that prevented the Cabinet from disagreeing with the President, which was the cause of a number of serious balance issues. This bug has been addressed, and we will continue to monitor the situation.

Judiciary

* Many concerns have been raised regarding balance issues in the Supreme Court. This system is maintained on a different patch schedule, and will require longer to address.
* A large number of NPCs in the Judiciary were incorrectly flagged "ideological." We are trying to identify these cases and rectify this situation.

Homeland Security

* Homeland Security Advisory System: We have identified a bug in this system that prevents the threat level from dropping below Elevated (Yellow). The code for Guarded (Blue) and Low (Green) has been commented out. We are testing the fix and hope to have it in by the next patch.
* Torture: This debuff is being removed after a record number of complaints.
* Item: Large Bottle of Water is incorrectly generating threat with TSA Agents when held in inventory. We are looking into the issue.
* Asking questions about Homeland Security was incorrectly triggering the Chain-Jingoism debuff.

Economy

* Serious on-going issues with server economy are still being addressed. We expect further roll-backs, and appreciate your help identifying and fixing bugs. We can’t make these fixes without your help.

PVP

* Reputation with various factions are being rebalanced. The gradated reputation scale was erroneously being overwritten by the binary For Us/ Against Us flag.

Quests

* The” Desert Storm” quest chain was displaying an erroneous "Mission Accomplished" message near the beginning of the chain.
* The quest chain that begins with “There’s no Cake like Yellow Cake” and terminates with “W-M-Denied” has been identified as uncompletable, and has been removed.

Reagents

* Many recipes that currently call for Crude Oil can now be made with Wind, Solar, Geothermal and Ethanol reagents. We hope to roll out even more sweeping changes in the next patch.

Events

* The “Axis of Evil” event is drawing to a close. Look forward to the “Rebuilding Bridges” event starting in January.

Yes it's true...

2009-01-15T08:21:00.000-08:00

There actually ARE people that haven't seen the whole of the Star Wars Trilogy...

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

I hate to say it, but I think even my MOTHER can tell it better than this chick.

"One of THOSE Days"

2009-01-06T15:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I finally got to witness someone ELSE having 'one of those days'.

Hubby and I went out to eat last night and yeah, our waiter was having a rough day of it. He was polite, charming and everything a waiter SHOULD be, just nothing went right for him.

We ordered Cokes and a cider margarita - and he informed us that their coke syrup was out. We substituted the coke for sprite and he went off to put in our drink orders, only to have to come back and inform us that they just ran out of the margarita mix. We declined any other margaritas and ordered our appetizers (which they thankfully had - the last time we ate there they were out of their firecracker chicken wraps).

We placed our salad orders (caesar and garden with italian dressing) and our steak orders (I wanted mine rare and Hubby wanted his medium rare), and he took off again. He came back to say they were out of the 12 oz steaks, but they had the 8 oz left - we said that'd be fine with us. He then brought out our steaks and asked us if we wanted anything else - we said, "Sure, how about our salads?" The look of consternation on his face was priceless. We told him to just box the salads, we'd take them with us to eat the next day.

My steak was perfect and so was Hubby's (we've never had a bad steak there). So we dined and had fun and all that and he asked us if we wanted dessert - and we ordered the brownie sundae. When he brought it out, he told us how the chefs were getting in on the action - they told him they were out of brownies and at that point he was ready to just beat his head against the wall.

All in all, despite the 'outages', it was one of the more memorable dinners Hubby and I have had in recent memory.

We giggled all the way home.

Silence....blessed silence...

2009-01-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

Mike and Julia went back to Virginia today, and the house is quiet at last.

Don't get me wrong, I love Julia, but she's absolutely rotten. I told Michael that he needs to take a 3 week vacation with Elena and let me stay in their house and I'll straighten her out.

I'd offer to do it in Denmark, but then I'd get arrested for spanking her ass when she needs it. She bosses both her mother and father around and will lie to your face if she thinks she can get away with it.

She doesn't get away with it with me, and she knows it. Nor does she sass me when I tell her to do something. She'll look at her father and I'll tell her that she just needs to get her tush in gear and do as she's been told.

Yeah, I'm sure I'm not her favourite Auntie at all, but hey, at least I don't have to deal with her on a daily basis. Mike and Elena must have more patience than I do.

Matthias is teething again, drooling everywhere and trying to chew everything he can get into his mouth. We're giving him the oragel when he needs it and cool things to gum on. Hopefully he'll break his first tooth through soon so he's not grumpy on our flight back to Denmark.

Tonight we had buffalo burgers - yes, burgers made out of bison meat. My mother actually liked it, which I thought was a miracle. I made a cheese sauce to go with our veggies - habanero jack and pepperjack in them and it made a lovely counterpoint to the tender burgers.

Maybe Mom will buy some bison meat more often? Never know!

All the news that's fit to print...

2008-12-31T12:53:00.001-08:00

We've had a very nice Christmas so far, and I'm relaxing in the recliner watching the snow fall outside the window. It's very soothing, just to watch the flakes tumbling down onto the ground, covering it in a pristine white.

Matthias is taking his nap with Hubby, and Vanessa and Morgan are up watching a House MD marathon. Tonight the plan is to make philly cheesesteaks for our New Year's Eve snacks.

I've got some extra raspberries and blueberries, so I'll most likely make a berry cake bar for dessert - between Hubby and my brother Michael, they've managed to polish off all the deserts we had around the house for Christmas week.

Nessa and I have spoken about her college plans - she most likely will be going to K-State University for marine biology/zoology. She also wants to sing in their choir - and she'll be getting scholarships for both singing and schooling.

She's confessed that she really wants to live in the dorms and I don't blame her in the least - college should be about testing your wings and learning how to function as an adult in society. I also know that she's looking forward to being out from her stepmother's thumb.

Hubby and I have told her that we support her decision for where she wants to go and what she wants to study - I've been telling her that for years - she needs to study what will interest her and make HER happy. As long as she's happy with what she does, I'm happy with what she does. It's not about the money - at least it shouldn't be.

My brother Mike has been having a good time with Matthias, as you can see.

The family's been by for a dinner together and to see the baby - they're all amazed with how big he is, and they love that he's a happy baby.

Christmas Eve...

2008-12-24T17:59:00.000-08:00

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house,

Not a creature was stirring, not even the mouse...

Bah, Dickens I'm not.

But, I'll give a Christmas Eve poem a shot.

T'was the night before Christmas, and I am happy to say
That our presents are all safely wrapped and secreted away

Some for my Hubby, my daughter and son
Others for family, and family time fun

The stockings are ready to lay by the fire
While the pile of cookies grows higher and higher

The kids are relaxing and watching TV
While Hubby and I can't wait to see

The looks on their faces come Christmas morn
The sound of paper being eagerly torn

The giggles and laughs and the toys galore
The diagrams and instructions covering the floor

Family and friends coming over to eat
Dinner, dessert and all things sweet.

It's a lot of work for those we hold dear
But its worth it for sure, the Yuletide cheer

With the family in bed, I turn off the light
Whispering Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

3 Years...

2008-12-21T12:53:00.000-08:00

It's been 3 years today that we lost Sue.

It hasn't gotten any easier really - there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of her, especially now that I have Matthias.

I know it's harder on Morgan - there won't be a Christmas that goes by that she won't remember losing her mother.

We can share our memories together and just be a family this Christmas - that's what Sue would have wanted.

Phew.... what a week it's been.

2008-12-21T11:49:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy week and a half over here in NH since we arrived from Europe.

The flight from Copenhagen to Iceland wasn't too bad - Matthias handled himself well up until we began our descent into Keflavik. Then his ears started to hurt him, but he wouldn't take his pacifier or his bottle. Going through customs and all that was a breeze and we pre-boarded the flight to Boston.

The flight to Boston was hell.

Matthias was WAY past his bedtime, and a cranky baby on a flight = sad times. I held him and soothed him and all that and he was JUST about to fall asleep when one of the flight attendants turned on the overhead lights and woke him up. *sigh*

He was cranky off and on the entire flight there, and we had planned it so he'd be getting his bottle when we were landing at Logan. So when we started our descent, he began drinking furiously from his bottle, draining the entire 8 oz. Then we get a message from the captain that we had to pull up again and enter a holding pattern due to heavy traffic at Logan, so we climbed back up - making Matthias's ears hurt again and this time he was too full to drink.

Got through customs at Logan without any real problems, declared what we needed to (had to tell them about the baby's powdered formula we brought with us, since technically it's powdered milk and therefore an agricultural product) and got on the bus up to Dover.

Arrived in Dover to freezing rain. If you've never tried to install a carseat in a Jeep in the freezing rain in the dark, well I don't suggest it.

We got to Mom's house at about 10:30pm, had a drink of soda and got our suitcases into the house and the baby put to bed (he was all but passed out from being overtired by this point) and then we went to bed - we were just too tired to do much of anything else.

We figured we could take our showers in the morning.

Did I mention that the 'freezing rain' became the worst ice storm in NH in the past 75 years?

We lost power during the night so yeah... no showers for us.

It took Public Service of NH until Tuesday to get our power back, but we were ok with the fireplace running and sleeping in front of it with the baby and all - none of us were cold or otherwise in any danger. We went out to eat a few times and ordered delivery a few times, no big deal.

Friday it started snowing and it's snowed pretty much all weekend. We're supposed to get about 10" today (30cm or so) at least. There have been times when you couldn't see out the windows very well due to the amount of snow coming down.

We bought a new digital camera and have started taking more pictures, will be posting some of them soon.

Senior Pictures

2008-12-05T06:02:00.000-08:00

Vanessa's had her senior pictures taken; and she's scanned them and emailed them to me so I know what to expect when I get pictures from Amy.

Here's my beauty:

What the photog wanted with her in water, I have no idea.

She said it was cold as hell in there.

I think this one here is my favourite.

Vanessa had highlights put into her hair (she's been lamenting turning a light brown, like her father and myself), and I think they've come out very nice.

This one's ok; I'm not sure if I like the black/white body with the blue of the shirt, because it really takes away from the blue of her eyes I think.

It's a very pretty pose, to be sure.

This black & white looks very nice. There's also a colour version of it.

I like this one as well, but I wish she'd been smiling in it more.

I hope she remembered to check for ticks after she got done in the leaves, last thing she needs is Lyme disease from her picture shoot.

Probably my favourite of the black and whites.

I think she's stunning in this picture.

And the coloured version.

I like the picture, wish she'd worn a different top though.

I'm not a big fan of her in red.

But she's gorgeous anyway, if I do say so myself.

Picture Pages, Picture Pages...

2008-11-23T03:20:00.000-08:00

So we had our Thanksgiving dinner a week early. I remembered why I bumped it up early - we have plans to go to the Semper Danica Christmas party on the 29th, and I didn't want to be doing 2 huge things in the same week.

Semper Danica is a gamer's guild - they have members that play all sorts of MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). I think I'm the only American in the guild - one of the requisites is you must speak/read/write Danish. They're a good bunch of folks there, and both Hubby and I are looking forward to an evening getting to know the people behind the avatars. There's around 100 people signed up for the party (across all the games I think the guild has over 1000 members), so it should be a very interesting night.

Matthias ate his dinner a bit early and was unfortunately ready for bed before Hubby's mother, brother and Katrina came over for dinner. I think Vivi was disappointed, but we couldn't justify keeping the baby up past his bedtime (and thus deal with a screaming child for most of the night) just for her to see him on that day. She came over the day after and had an hour or so with him here. He's also FIRMLY into the "Stranger Danger" period where it took just about the entire hour for him to warm up to her. This means we'll have to bring him over to her house EARLY the day of the Christmas party so he's got time to like her again before we leave, otherwise her house will be hell.

Matthias is also becoming VERY independent. (He doesn't get that from me, no - not at all.) He wants to feed himself (whether it be the bottle OR spoon feedings) so we've had to be a bit creative with feedings so that we're still in control of what goes on. This, of course, doesn't mean he doesn't get to have fun on his own:

Here we're eating Turkey with veggies.

Or, just the bowl - take your pick.

I apparently wasn't shoveling it into his mouth quick enough, so he decided to try to go get his own.

At least he's realized that yes, plastic tastes like crap when you try to eat it.

I give him points for being able to get the spoon into his mouth reasonably well.

At least the first few attempts, and then he gets excited that he's feeding himself and yeah... he's no longer quite as neat.

Slowly but surely, we get messier and messier...

You'll notice it's a different spoon.

I started giving him his own spoon to hold while I'm feeding him with another, so when he opens his mouth to feed himself, I can sneak my spoon in first and WOW MOM, I'm DOING IT!!

Here's the aftermath:

All in all, not too bad - it's not in his hair or in his ears.

So, as far as Turkey day went, yes I made lots and LOTS of food. It's a family tradition from Gram Chase!

The prep:

The bird itself was a little over 10 pounds, and had been slaughtered the day before we picked it up.

They missed a feather or two which I took care of.

I didn't mind the thought of a freshly slaughtered bird, so long as it wasn't still, well, WARM when I picked it up, know what I mean?

This is the beginning of my stuffing. There's a bit of garlic, vidalia onion, celery and leeks in butter, with salt, pepper and some herbs.

Mom uses oysters in her stuffing but yeah, I hate fish.

It was bad enough just making the clam chowder for Hubby's family, the smell made me want to gag.

Here's how it went into the bird.

Added Sage, Thyme, Rosemary and a bit of Basil with diced apples and fresh cranberries.

Now silly me, I forgot to take a picture of the bird when it came out of the oven before it was carved, as well as a photo of the chowder (which everyone said tasted very good. They also thought it was funny I made Hubby test it for taste, because I wasn't going to do it.)

So, here's a picture of the right half of the bird - the left half is gone.

Hubby's brother Jonathon got the leg and picked it clean.

I had done what Mom does basically, but with my own twist to it - she likes to rub it down with crisco oil, I used herbed butter both under and on the skin itself. The skin came out nicely crisp and the meat was tender and juicy.

I made a cake from scratch, but was lazy and used some Betty Crocker frosting.

This was actually my 'birthday' cake to myself.

I figured it'd be easier to get it all eaten if I made it for a time when we had company, that way we wouldn't be stuck trying to finish it off just Hubby and myself.

We had been out shopping in Føtex when I spied frozen blueberries in the veggies section. Normally blueberries are HELLATIOUSLY expensive here in Denmark, especially if they're out of season (5$ for a cup of berries), but these weren't bad.

So I grabbed a bunch of bags and decided to make a blueberry pie.

OMG YUM. It's been ages since I've had a blueberry pie.

Of course, I made a pecan pie as well. Neither pecan pies nor blueberry pies are very common in Denmark, so it was quite an experience watching everyone else eat them.

Hubby was surprised by the blueberry pie - it tasted nothing like he had been expecting - he had been expecting it to be sweeter and fruitier - and the cinnamon was a complete shocker.

Here's Jonathon and Katrina having coffee after the desserts.

I made sure they went home with some of each cake because yeah, I didn't want to get stuck with it all.

This is Vivi, Hubby's mother. She brought extra insulin for desserts and then complained she should have brought a bigger size pants to change into.

Yep, a Thanksgiving dinner just like Gram Chase used to make!

Happy Birthday to me...

2008-11-14T13:39:00.000-08:00

Yep, another year older.

It's a mixed bag of feelings today; I'm happy with my life as it is - Hubby and the baby and all. It's still a bittersweet birthday though. I mean, I'm the same age as Sue was when we lost her. A sobering thought, honestly.

Hubby let me sleep in today and took care of Matthias until about 11am, and I finally had a day where I woke up full of energy as opposed to feeling like hell warmed over.

We went out to Rødovre Center (a shopping center) to window shop and get some groceries. Ended up at the butcher's to grab some beef to make philly cheesesteaks with (although it wasn't shaved beef I made it work), some good meltable gouda cheese and peppers and onions.

Hubby got a phone call from his mother; she's been sick for a day or two - and her DVD player died. So we went to El Giganten (electronics/appliance store) and picked up a new DVD player as well as a digital cable box. All of the cable in Denmark is switching over to a digital signal within the next year, so we might as well get that done for her now.

I spoke to Vanessa for a bit today; she's been sick for the past week. Apparently the night she came home from the FBLA conference in MN. Antibiotics haven't done much; so her doctor changed them and added in a steroid - apparently her mouth has swollen and the glands under her tongue as well. If she's not better by Monday she'll have bloodwork done to test for mono.

Yay, mono.

Other than that, it's been a quiet day, really. Matthias is starting to change his sleeping habits a bit, taking fewer naps during the day and sleeping a bit longer during the night.

Not going to hear me complain about that, at all.

Random Pictures Day...

2008-11-09T15:31:00.001-08:00

We had fun just taking some pictures of the baby today after his bath; enjoy!

He's eating well, nearly an entire jar of 6 month baby food at a sitting, sometimes with some fruit for dessert and a bottle later.

He's much more patient than Vanessa was when it comes to being fed, he doesn't lunge after the spoon like she did, nor does he scream when it's not shoveled into his mouth as fast as he'd like it to be.

All in all, he's very much a laid back baby.

See?

Nothing's bothering him here... other than the flash.

It's damned hard to get a picture of him with his eyes fully open with our camera - he tends to blink rapidly with the flash and yeah, it looks like he's stoned.

Of course, this means that I can have fun captioning the pictures where he looks funny in.

Kind of like this!

A Day in Copenhagen...

2008-11-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

So for the better part of the week we've been planning on taking a trip into the city. Of course, we've been having so much fun with the baby we've lost track of time and yeah, we finally made it into Copenhagen today.

So we bundled Matthias up in the car, with extra warm layers on (it's getting cold and very windy here now and the wind can cut right through you), as well as a hat.

He hates hats.

But once he got a good earful of wind, he stopped complaining about having it on, unless it managed to fall down over his eyes and then he would shake his head back and forth as if to say, "WTF, who turned out the lights??"

We went shopping in at the American store - which has to be the worst excuse for an 'American' store I've ever seen. I was hoping to get some Karo Syrup or some hot sauce and they had Ritz crackers and some frozen foods that were probably as old as I am, and for some unknown reason they're selling clothes in there - like a prom gown too. WTF?

I did pick up a can of cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving there, as well as an Angel Food Cake Mix from Betty Crocker.

I went next door to the 'English' shop and got frosting and other needed items.

Halloween Fun!

2008-11-01T17:25:00.000-07:00

Well, almost.

Matthias had his second series of vaccinations yesterday and handled the shots themselves beautifully - no crying or screaming just a look at the doctor as if to say, "What the hell was that for???".

He ran a fever that night and most of today he was pretty much a lapbaby, which was fine by Hubby and me, since we felt so sorry for him.

This was him on the 30th, after his first experience with baby pasta and meat sauce.

Yes, that's some sauce on his eyebrow there - but he definitely enjoyed the meal. It came out as orange as it went in, let me tell you.

For Halloween itself, Hubby indulged my creative side with getting me a pumpkin and a small watermelon, as well as a bunch of apples to have fun with.

You might ask, "What the hell are you going to do with that watermelon?"

Well, some friends of mine on a chatboard had some suggestions for it, and I thought they were brilliant (if a little time intensive).

Peel the rind off with a veggie peeler until the pink is JUST barely visible under the white portion of the rind.

Then, go to town with swirls and whatnot to give it a little brain action going on.

Cut the bottom so it lays flat and etch a few more whorls in and you're good to go!

I took the added fun of smearing oil and goop on top of it so when the kids touched it it'd be cold, clammy and absolutely disgusting.

The joys of being me, I tell you...

Here's the final doorstep results:

Yes, my pumpkin is puking. The brains were just too gross for it.

We had just a couple of kids come by this year, it was cold and rainy and not the best weather for trick-or-treating, given that it's not a 'real' holiday here in Denmark.

I made 15 caramel covered apples to hand out, and whatever is left over I'm dumping on Hubby's mother tomorrow for dessert. I'm not big on caramel apples, really.

Just a daytime shot of the pumpkin :D

Rain, Rain and rain....

2008-10-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

That's about the size of it.

It's rained like a bastard for most of the past week and a half. Really puts a damper on taking the baby out for a walk - sure he'll stay dry but when the rain is falling at you sideways, yeah...

Not a whole lot to talk about really - I get my haircut tomorrow, my eyes checked and then later on I have my yearly mammogram.

I was originally supposed to have it May 13th, but I was rather busy that day.

We've gotten a new toy for Matthias, it's a jumper.

Here's the results:

That little black harness is attached to a chain link which is squeezed above the doorjam.

Yes, it's sturdy enough for him. I hung off it and it supported my fat ass, I know his is fine.

So he usually has about an hour a day in this, hopping skipping and jumping.

Hubby has learned to NOT put him in it after eating, however. Matthias was giggling and having fun and then BAAAAAARF.

Not so fun.

Otherwise, we tend to spend time in the living room with Matthias on his playrug with all his toys and whatnot, or passing him back and forth between us when he wants snuggles.

This is the bestest snuggles, ever.

Of course, he's damn heavy and he sleeps hot like I do so after about 10 minutes you're sweating like a pig from the body heat he puts out.

He seems to enjoy it though.

He'll fall asleep in my arms or Hubby's - he's not that picky really.

Isn't he precious?

And HUGE???

How to tell when your child is ready....

2008-09-19T13:00:00.001-07:00

For food beyond formula...

They say your child will give you a definite sign that they're ready.

I don't know about you, but I think this is a DEFINITE sign.

Yes, he's a prune child - mixed with the birdseed cereal and breastmilk.

Much like Vanessa, I couldn't shovel it in fast enough.

Fun at the Embassy and first meals

2008-09-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

So today was the day we had an appointment to go into Copenhagen to the American Embassy to register Matthias as a US Citizen, get him a SSN and his own passport.

Apparently they don't put riders in the parents' passports anymore, so the kids get their own. That's rather odd, in my opinion, since Matthias is 4 months old in his picture and by the time he's actually going to USE the passport he'll be nearly 7 and a half months old and probably look NOTHING like he does now.

But, as long as we have the passport we shouldn't have any flying issues.

I hate flying issues.

So we drove into the city for 9am, and arrived a few blocks away from the Embassy at about 9:15. Traffic was pretty bad today and there was a lot of construction, as well as suicidal bicyclists that can't seem to stay in their own damn bike lane. We elected to park a few blocks away just because it would have been a bigger pain in the ass to try to turn the car around down a side street and come back across to the main road to get a parking spot in front of the Embassy. We passed through security without problems, and they even checked the baby carriage as well - which many won't do if the baby is sleeping, but we were like HERE LOOK AT OUR SON!!!

We hit a slight snag with the passport - Danish passport pictures are smaller than the standard US pictures. Naturally the pictures we had were the wrong size, so we were referred down to a 1 hour photo shop about 3/4 of a mile away where we could get the proper sized photo, as well as the Post Office so we could buy a self-addressed stamped envelope with the proper registered mail payment stamped already on it. The clerk also asked me about one of my responses about having resided in the US from '72 until '05 - he was like.. you've NEVER left the US for any reason? I said I took 3 vacations to Quebec, but it clearly states in the instructions that vacations do NOT count as time away from the US with regards to residency.

He fixed the answer anyway. I made him initial it though, because it wasn't MY answer.

While we were filling out paperwork (I also sent off my absentee ballot request while there), a young American couple came in looking to get a replacement passport for one of them. The poor thing was in tears because she'd left the passport on the plane and she was supposed to be flying back home the next day and was all in a panic and nearly hyperventilating.

I felt so bad for her, you could see she was WAY stressed out. I told her and her boyfriend (husband?) that if things went south they could both spend the night at our place and come back to the Embassy in the morning if needs. I can only imagine how rough it'd be to be stuck in a foreign country, not speak the language and not have your passport to get home when you want to.

Luckily, they had her a new passport by noon. That must have been a HUGE relief to them both.

So, regarding first meals....

Matthias has been a little pig the last few weeks. We think he's already starting to teeth, he's gumming everything like mad, not sleeping as well as he had been and he's pulling at his ears. He doesn't have a temperature really - nothing constant that would indicate an ear infection, but every now and then when he's really whiny he'll feel slightly warm but not overly so.

We decided we'd try him out on some baby cereal, called hirsegrød. Now we had to go and look up what exactly hirsegrød is, because none of us could figure out what the English translation was.

Here's what it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proso_millet

Yes, I'm feeding my son birdseed.

Actually, it's gluten free and iron enriched and is very low at risk for causing allergies and has a good nutritional value (Danes are big on that). The only problem we encountered with it is constipation.

Hubby found that out today.

We were sitting upstairs playing Warhammer Online when we heard the baby start grunting in his crib - a sure sign of some bowel activity.

After 5-10 minutes, Hubby took the baby up to the changing table to change the diaper and yep, there was a solid lump of poo sitting in the middle of it, when his poo is normally very fluid and grainy from breastmilk and formula.

Hubby was showing me the solid poo when Matthias started grunting again...

...and out came a nice little solid tube of poo for the next 20 seconds. It was about the size and colour of toothpaste and it just kept coming and poor Hubby was holding a wet wipe under it trying to catch it all.

He hasn't had much luck with diaper changes this week. He's been peed on at least 3 times, and puked on more.

So since he was constipated, we decided to try the other route - prunes.

Yes, they make baby prunes suitable for eating from 4 months onwards. So we sat down on the couch with Hubby holding Matthias, and put on the bib and opened up a jar.

Me, I LOATHE prunes. I can't stand the sight, smell and the taste makes me gag. Literally. So I was holding my nose while trying to scrape up the prunes from the bowl to try to feed him.

I put the first spoonful in and the look on his face was priceless.

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS???

Then he started chewing and swallowed.

I came back with another small spoonful and nearly drew back a stump he opened his mouth so fast and wide, and all but lunged at the spoon.

He ate nearly 1/3 of the jar of prunes today and yep, his next stool wasn't hard at ALL.

Oh the joys of spoon feeding which are coming our way!

So yeah, I'm not always too observant...

2008-09-14T05:50:00.000-07:00

Somedays, I can be downright oblivious it appears.

I had been playing with Matthias in our bed earlier today, and I had laid my glasses up near the pillows while blowing tummy farts on him.

Once he was taking his nap, I took my glasses and sat down at my computer to read emails and the like, and I noticed that my glasses were a bit lopsided.

I took them off and looked at them - and the right side nose piece was missing.

I showed them to Hubby and he said, "We'll get that fixed at Synoptik (optometrist's office) tomorrow."

So I went downstairs to do some dishes and some bottles and the thought occurred to me that it was highly likely that the missing portion of my nosepiece was in the bed, and we should probably go look for it before Matthias was put down to sleep tonight because he might get a hold of it and swallow it.

So I hollered up to Hubby to look for it in the bed and he comes down with a strange look on his face and asks me, "Did you lose anything else in the bed?"

I was confused and said, "Uh.. no?"

Then he opens his hand and there's a LENS in it.

I pull my glasses off and sure as shit, I'm missing a lens and didn't even realize it.

Luckily, I have a spare set of glasses for computer work, but DAMN I feel stupid.

Although - since I didn't realize I was missing a lens, I can say with some measure of happiness that my vision hasn't gone to hell yet either.

So I guess it wasn't a total stupid moment!

Rollin' and Dreamin'

2008-09-08T04:12:00.000-07:00

First let me say, I had the weirdest dream tonight.

For some reason I was at an avant garde amusement park in California. (What I was doing in California, I have no idea.)

They had a version of the 'Hellovator" - where you're brought up 4 stories and then dropped down - except this one was on the coast and around a lighthouse. This particular ride was a distance of 1000 feet when you were dropped.

(On a side note - what kind of lighthouse needs to be 1000 feet tall is beyond me, unless it's directing space traffic - but that's a dream for a different day.)

It looked like a large needle (the lighthouse), with a big innertube on top. The catch of this particular ride: you weren't dropped around the needle, you were picked up from the needle via a helecopter and then carried out to the water and dropped there.

I remember looking down through the floor of the innertube thingy (which was somehow clear) to see a mock 'landing area' lit in the water. I remember thinking that this particular stunt wasn't one of my smarter ones, just as the countdown hit 0.

The drop itself felt like I was weightless - for about 9 seconds or so, and the landing in the water wouldn't have cracked an egg it was so gentle.

Then reality hit and a wave nearly swamped the innertube, and we all had to bail out of it.

Weird dreams I tell you...

In other news:

Matthias rolled over today for the first time from his back to his front. He still gets caught up on his arm on occasion, but I forsee many a happy roll in his future.

We knew it was close, since he's been trying to roll over to get away from his diaper changes (I have some pictures of him doing that to Hubby on our camera, I'll try to get them up here a little later today).

Progress, I tell you!

Mmm... toes

2008-09-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

Yes, toes are tasty things.

Here you can see Matthias getting ready to take a nibble or two on his tootsies.

He's gotten very good at getting his feet up to his mouth to lick his toes, which means we have to do a toe check to make sure there's nothing funky there - cat hair, etc.

Matthias inherited my liking of kicking the covers all over the place in bed, and since it's starting to get chilly, we bought a baby bag. They're apparently called Buntons in the US (I had no idea), but it's one surfire way to make sure he stays warm at night.

It's damn cute, too.

Hubby's Uncle showed up yesterday. Apparently he decided to leave his cell phone at home when he went on vacation, and not leave a forwarding phone number either. According to him his father, "looked fine" when he left for vacation.

How a 91 year old man that's severely dehydrated and has pneumonia in both lungs can 'look fine' is beyond me, really.

Now they have ANOTHER issue.

According to Danish law, anyone that stands to inherit from Aage's estate must be present for the reading of the will. Camilla is inheriting, as is Hubby and his brother.

She's in BFNowhere Bolivia at the moment doing her internship at some tiny hospital down there. So the lawyers have said she needs to waive her right to be present at the reading of the will by writing a sworn statement witnessed by two DANISH citizens, which she can fax to them.

Really - how many Danes do you think are down there?

She's stuck making a 2 day trip by bus to the capital so she can get to the Danish Embassy to get it filled out.

Family and Funerals....what gives?

2008-09-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

I mean seriously, what gives with family and funerals? Why do they bring out the shitty side in relatives?

I'll give you three guesses who didn't bother to show up to his own father's funeral today, and the first two don't count.

I'm sure some are saying, "Well maybe he didn't know about it?"

Vivi's been frantically leaving messages at her brother's house on his door, on his cell phone and been calling round to everywhere he frequents, all his friends and every last scrap of family she could remember and/or find a phone number for.

Nada.

So she's had to shoulder the responsibility of all the funeral arrangements herself, which is completely shitty in my opinion.

Apparently there's always one person willing to be a complete asshole about a funeral, eh?

More Peektures!

2008-08-28T15:02:00.000-07:00

We had another lazy day today (I forsee many of those in the coming 7 months!) and Hubby was holding Matthias at his computer table, and well yeah - I had to take pictures.

How could you not want a picture of those cheeks?

Can you believe he's only 3.5 months old?

Here's a closer shot - Matthias was like, "Mommy, what are you doing with that thing AGAIN???"

He's absolutely beautiful.

Then again, I'm very much biased.

Just hangin' out...

2008-08-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

So today was just a day to relax and all, for the most part.

Hubby had to go to his grandfather's apartment and look for the address book for his mother, which he found, and then there was some light shopping to do, but other than that we were pretty much laid back for most of the day, playing with Matthias.

So when you're taking it easy, why not take some pictures? This one's an excellent shot of our little droolmonster.

Yep, he's a drooler. Drools everywhere.

We've also discovered our feet. We like to wave them in the air and wiggle them as much as possible.

It's true, he's got tootsies.

He's not yet chewing on them, but he's been bringing them up to his mouth and to his chest a lot.

He likes it when we go "Pyew! Stinky tooties!" Sets him off in giggles every time we play it. He also likes playing patty cake with his feet to.

So far, I think he's got my feet, which means duck paddles are in his future, along with some LARGE shoes.

This is how we spent a lot of the day - snuggled up and cuddling.

It's the best thing in the world.

Aren't they precious together?

Vaccinations, OH NOES!

2008-08-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

So Monday was vaccination day up at the doctor's office. They just finished remodeling the suite (they rented out a second suite to expand the clinic and add another doctor).

It wasn't a wellbaby checkup, so we didn't get him weighed and/or measured. That'll be at 5 months.

This time around Matthias received the diptheria, pertussis, polio and tetanus vaccine in his leg. He was sleeping when we brought him into the room and when we pulled off his outfit.

Then the nurse pulled out the needle and Hubby's eyes got BIG. The look on his face said, "HOLY SHIT THAT NEEDLE IS HUGE." And then the nurse stuck Matthias with it, and I thought Hubby was going to cry right along with the baby. The nurse rubbed the thigh and talked to Matthias a bit, and we put the binky back in his mouth and he fell back asleep.

Here's two pictures of the stick and the aftermath.

He was a little feverish off and on over the course of the day, but the baby Tylenol saved the day.

...and he's gone.

2008-08-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

Aage passed at 9:45 this evening, Hubby had just come home to have a late dinner after having been at the hospital at his grandfather's bedside for 4 hours. Hubby's mother had come up to take the next watch.

Hubby had just gotten dinner and was sitting down to eat when the phone rang. As soon as I heard it ring, I knew he'd gone.

According to Danish tradition, Aage will have his funeral services within 5 days (they don't embalm here - they cremate), and his ashes will be interred next to Ester's at the Glostrup Kirkegaard.

Hubby's Uncle is somewhere on vacation, no one's been able to really get a hold of him (although he knew his father was being admitted to the hospital). I don't know whether or not he'll be home in time (or will come home) for the funeral services.

Camilla is unfortunately going to miss the funeral as well. She spent most of the day at the hospital today with Jonathon, Hubby and their mother while Aage was awake, so his last time being awake, his family was there, which is a good thing. She starts her internship in Bolivia tomorrow (she flies out of Copenhagen for a 6 month working internship at a hospital in Bolivia, then she'll return to Denmark and begin looking for a job here for a year internship where she'll choose her specialty).

I'm sad to know that Aage is gone, but I'm very glad he's not suffering anymore. He got to see his great-grandson be baptised and hold him and that's what had kept him going for pretty much the last year.

Rest in peace, Aage.

I hate waiting on bad news.

2008-08-24T04:23:00.000-07:00

You guessed it, Hubby got 'the call' from the hospital this morning.

At this point, it could go either way - it's all up to Aage whether he can fight off the infection, and if he really wants to.

He's on morphine for pain, and if Hubby is right, they're giving him 15L of oxygen per minute to keep his blood oxygen levels up. Unfortunately they can't give him much more than that, so if his O2 levels drop below critical with that much being used, then the game's up.

I don't think he's going to pull through this one, and I really don't think he wants to. He's seen the baby born and baptised, and now he just wants to see his wife again. I don't blame him - they were married 65 years and went through hell together during WWII when Aage was sent to a concentration camp for forging papers for the resistance.

He's tired, he's earned his right to rest if he wants to; in my opinion.

No Good News...

2008-08-23T16:21:00.001-07:00

So Hubby and I went to visit his grandfather (with Matthias), and he looked absolutely horrid.

He was barely responsive, he looked completely sunken in and he complained that something hurt. Hubby's mother stopped by while we were there and she had a fit.

She asked the nurses' aide to call an ambulance, but the ambulance company said that they'd have to call the emergency doctor first, since she was an employee of the nursing home.

Not surprisingly, that didn't fly well with Hubby's mother. She called up the ambulance herself and was yelling at them on the phone telling them that if they DIDN'T come to pick him up NOW, there was a good chance he'd be DEAD before the emergency doctor got there.

I know it sounds weird - an ambulance telling them to call the e-doctor, but that's the bureaucracy they have in Denmark. After normal doctor's hours you call the lægevagt - 'guard/watch doctor' - he's at the hospital and fields calls and sees people and makes house calls if needed.

Problem is, the lægevagt is always busy and you have to wait in a phone queue to speak to him/her. If it's urgent, the lægevagt can send the ambulance over.

To make the story short - Aage was admitted to the hospital and drank nearly a liter of water and had an IV of fluids inserted (he was severely dehydrated) and he was also diagnosed with pneumonia.

He's responsive again and all, but it's still very much touch and go. Hubby's mother was asked to authorize a DNR order, and she refused. I respect her decision even though I don't agree with it. At this point, he has no quality of life left - he can't even hold his own class of water. Why keep him here when he's always been self-sufficient and VERY independent?

Needless to say, with him having pneumonia we won't be bringing the baby to see him in the hospital. Matthias will be getting his vaccinations on Monday, so that night will definitely be interesting.

Sigh...colds suck.

2008-08-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

So yeah, I have a cold.

It's bad enough that I canceled the wellbaby visit and didn't make it to the blood sugar appointment today either.

*sigh*

Hubby went to visit his grandfather today, since he wasn't feeling well yesterday and yeah, we don't expect him to be with us much longer. Fact of the matter is, I don't really expect him to last the month.

He's pretty much stopped eating, drinks very little and talks about wanting to see Ester (his wife) again. He knows his time is here, I think.

Hubby is of course crushed. However, he doesn't want his grandfather to suffer any longer either, and understands that he just doesn't really want to be here. He's seen his great-grandson come into this world and he feels that now is the time for him to leave it. You have to respect that, really.

The bright side, Hubby is now off work until April 1, 2009, so he'll be able to visit his Grandfather every day if he wishes, as well as spend time with Matthias and myself without worrying about getting enough sleep for work the next day.

No pictures taken today, maybe tomorrow!

Takin' it easy...for a day.

2008-08-17T17:06:00.000-07:00

That's the mantra of the day, takin' it easy.

We went out shopping at Bilka today, they had some good sales on stuff we needed to pick up (pasta, diapers, etc).

After that, we came home to put up our groceries and whatnot, then we went off to the nursing home to visit Hubby's grandfather. He's supposed to be moving into a permanent care facility (actually right across from his apartment building) soon. He's really started to go downhill, he seems like he's slowly fading out the more we see him. I know he's tired, and I know he's been in pain - I don't blame him if he doesn't really want to be here anymore. All he has to look forward to are the days that Hubby and I come by with Matthias to talk with him, and bring him cake or candies. (He hasn't lost his sweet tooth).

Hubby gets sad after visiting, because he knows it won't be long before his grandfather passes, but at the same time, he also knows how tired his grandfather is, and none of us want him to be suffering just to stay with us. He's happy he lived long enough to see his great-grandchild, but I think he's decided he's ready to go.

At this point, it's getting to be more of a relief when he does, because I hate seeing him lying in the bed looking lost and miserable.

Tomorrow we're house cleaning, doing dishes and laundry and cleaning floors and windows and whatnot. It's not like the house is trashed dirty, we just know that the baby is soon to be mobile and we want to get ahead of the game.

Tuesday the nurse comes to visit and check over Matthias and chart his growth, etc. Hubby will be at work so I'll be talking with her alone - which won't be an issue I don't think.

Wednesday morning I have the glucose test at the hospital to make sure I didn't keep my 'gestational diabetes' after the pregnancy. But on the bright side, Hubby will be on leave then so I don't have to bring the baby out with.

Amy's been after me for more baby lists so she can buy something for the baby - she didn't like the fact that I had only books up on amazon.co.uk (because that's all that can be shipped from the UK to DK), so I indulged here by making different lists at stores (amazon.com, target.com, toys R us.com) for all sorts of things that will break the bank to ship to DK.

We'll see if she actually buys anything from the lists or not. I don't really care either way - what I put on the lists is things that would be nice, but I can't buy out here in DK and wouldn't want shipped out either - not for the amount of $$ it'd cost.

Some people don't get it...

2008-08-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I've been talking with Amy again.

She can't seem to understand why my mother and Morgan don't want e-cards, or anything like that being sent to them from her. She says she regrets not getting 'closer to your family' before we lost Sue, but then life's full of things we regret now isn't it?

Now her worry is that when Vanessa is in college in NH, they won't see her at all during the summer.

Welcome to MY world for the past 15 years.

I know Vanessa will want to go home and visit. I'd never stop her, nor would I try to dissuade her from visiting. I know it's a little petty, but part of me wishes that Vanessa will opt for an entire summer with me and Hubby and Matthias and just a handful of days with them in Kansas, so they know what I've gone through for so long.

Yeah, I'm petty, but I'd like her to see and experience what I've been through for so long.

3 Months Old already!

2008-08-13T14:30:00.000-07:00

Wow has time flown.

It's hard to believe Matthias has nearly doubled his birth weight already, Hubby weighed him yesterday at 8.1 kg or 17 pounds 11 oz.

He's such a happy baby, smiling when we walk into the room when he wakes up from his naps, cooing and gurgling and giggling and trying to talk to us.

Today we had some 'tummy time' and here's one of the pictures I took.

As you can see, he's enjoying himself and yes, that's drool. That's his second favourite occupation - drooling upon everything and anything he can.

Here's a picture of him as he just woke up from a nap in his crib - his bestest buddy by his side, his sockmonkey.

No, he wasn't having a good hair day, but he LOVES his sockmonkey.

Monday Monday...

2008-08-11T13:18:00.001-07:00

Not a whole lot to say, really. Doing the fall cleaning of the house, since it's becoming apparent that Matthias will be wanting down on the floor to scoot around VERY shortly.

Hubby has 4 more working days left of work this year, then it's time to enjoy being a family. We're really looking forward to that.

Matthias was fussy today, but so far hasn't come down with the chicken pox. If he makes it to Friday without them then I think we're safe, and can schedule his vaccinations.

Phrases you'd rather not hear in the morning...

2008-08-07T06:52:00.000-07:00

So our friend Søren R. called us today to see how we were doing.

That's how the phone call started out, at least.

Then he asked how Matthias was feeling, and I said, 'Fine - a little fussy but fine.'

Apparently his son Markus has come down with the chickenpox, and the blisters appeared today. That means he's been contagious for about 4 days already, which would mean that Matthias was possibly exposed to the chickenpox at his baptism/baptismal party.

*sigh*

It can take up to 20 days for the pox to appear, so we'll be playing a waiting game. We were supposed to have his vaccinations done in the next week or so, but if he's potentially coming down with the chickenpox, we'll have to postpone them until we know for sure.

Frederiksborg Castle

2008-08-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

One of the places that we visited this summer with the girls was Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød.

It's a 'summer' residence - meaning that it isn't heavily fortified for attack (it has a moat and a drawbridge, but that's about it), and has a large expanse of French styled gardens.

One wing of the castle is still in use by the Danish Royal Family.

It's a very pretty castle, and it's been very well maintained by the Danish Government. We didn't take the museum tour inside, we spent most of our time out in the gardens walking around.

Here's me and Vanessa at the gardens. We're standing on a bridge over a stream which is channeled through the gardens into the moat.

You can see some of the topiaries on either side of us.

Naturally, I had to take a picture of the girls there too.

Morgan didn't have her retainer in for this shot, because she wouldn't open her mouth to smile.

I don't think she realizes that's one way I check to see if she's wearing it. She'll smile with teeth if it's in.

This is inside the courtyard area. You can see the intricate brickwork and the buttresses along with the gothic arched windows, which are stained glass.

If I recall correctly, it was King Christian the IV that renovated the castle for the use of the Royal Family.

Here's another shot of the courtyard, which includes this large fountain.

The courtyard still has the original cobblestones paving it, which was a complete pain to drive the baby stroller over, especially when he was sleeping. I think Hubby ended up half carrying the rear end of the stroller to keep it from jostling Matthias awake with every step.

Here's the entrance to the castle's gift shop and museum tour.

Nothing to ostentatious, mind you.

Just you, me and an entire pantheon of gods and goddesses in marble.

The arches remind me of the opening act of the Muppet Show, personally...

The Sound of Silence, and Baptism Follies

2008-08-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

So the girls flew home today, and the house is awfully quiet.

I miss the girls, but I must say I am enjoying the stillness now.

That, and the fact that I'll actually have TOWELS again for my bathroom. I know I was 17 at one point, but I don't recall needing 6 towels a day for showers.

But, on with the pictures!

Here we have Morgan with Matthias - she was trying to get used to holding him before she had to do it at the baptism. It took Matthias a while to warm up to her; because she was so nervous when holding him, he could feel it and he would fuss. Once she got more confident, he enjoyed it much more.

Here Hubby is busy watching the baby. As you can see, he's applying himself diligently to his task.

Matthias has begun to scoot himself across the bed quite admirably.

When he was put down on the bed, he was where his bottle is in the picture. Over the course of being in the bed, he has managed to scoot himself right next to Hubby.

He does this to me at night too. I'll wake up to him right next to me, when he was originally 2 feet away from me.

Here's me with Matthias. As you can see, he's REALLY grown quickly. By the end of the week it won't surprise me if he's hit 17 pounds. He's not at ALL fat - he's just going to be a big boy.

His pacifiers are the 4+ months now, because he doesn't like the ones for newborns anymore.

He certainly isn't shy about letting you know if he doesn't want something, lemme tell you!

Like I was saying...

If he doesn't want to do something, he's not at ALL afraid of letting the entire room know that he doesn't want it.

Here he didn't want to be held in front of Aage, Hubby's Grandfather.

His face got red enough to clash with his outfit!

This is Glostrup Kirke, where we had the baptism held at.

The church's homepage is: http://www.glostrupsogn.dk/GlostrupPjece.htm

Not that any of you can read the Danish, but I'll give high points about it:

The original church structure was built in the early 1200's, and has been renovated a number of times. It has a bell tower with two bells; the oldest is from 1558 and the other from 1708, although it was recast in 1848.

The priest requested that no one take photos during the actual baptism service, so we waited until after to snap a few.

Here's the baptismal font - it's made of sandstone and dates back to the 13th century. The ewer and bowl are tin, from about 1750.

Actually that's not an ewer really - it's a german beer stein.

Go figure.

Morgan handled holding the baby for the baptism remarkably well. Originally the priest was very concerned about having Morgan give the responses to the baptism, since she doesn't speak Danish and all. I pointed out that the total of her responses will be "YES" and "Matthias Aage Peter Tock" and those shouldn't be all that difficult, really.

As it turns out, he shouldn't have worried about Morgan at all. He should have worried about the Danish guy at the first baptism (they traditionally baptise 2 babies, one right after the other).

When the priest asked if the godfather would be willing to guard the child against all evils, teach the child the way of the righteous and how to be a good Christian, he said, "NO".

The priest looked up from his book and said, "WHAT?"

The man said, "NO" again.

Apparently he wasn't really paying attention to what the priest asked - or he'd not actually READ through the service and just counted answers in the Bible. You're only supposed to answer, "NO" if the priest asks you if the child has been baptised at home.

So after everyone up at the font nudged him, he said "Oh, oops YES", and the baptism continued.

Morgan handled it beautifully - she said the baby's name clearly and answered YES when she was supposed to. She even held the baby confidently enough over the font that he didn't complain about it.

The water was apparently cold, however and when the first handful ran over Matthias's head, he spit out his binky in shock.

Where did it land, do you ask?

Right in the baptismal font. So the binky is now baptised, too. The priest had to fish it out and put it back in Matthias's mouth.

Here we are outside the church (happily, I might add - that church has NO air conditioning and it had to have been over 90 degrees inside. Poor Hubby was sweating bullets in his dress shirt.)

Me, I had Matthias gnawing and drooling down my left arm to keep me cool.

The largest of the baptism gowns my Mother sent out with the girls from NH fit the baby. The other two were just too small (or he's just too damn big).

She's not sure which side of the family they're from, but they're all handmade and absolutely gorgeous. The traditional baptism outfit here in Denmark reminds me of a satin sailor's suit and I'm frankly glad we could loan one that's been in the family for so long.

Poor Hubby sweating inside - we had to do an emergency diaper change in the back.

Unfortunately for the priest, he didn't have any other trashcans available other than the one under his desk.

I hope he empties his trash daily.

Here's us at the baptismal font.

Yeah, I need a haircut, BADLY. I've been procrastinating about it though - hopefully I'll get one done at some point this month, or I'll go nuts with my hair in my eyes.

Cat on a Hot Tile Roof....

2008-07-28T07:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, artistic liberties aside, Abby learned an important life lesson today (Cat Life #2):

Hot tile roof + 90 degree sunny skies = one cat risking heatstroke

Vanessa had been in playing with Matthias in our bedroom, and when she left (after singing the baby to sleep), she forgot to close the door all the way.

Abby, being a curious cat, used that opportunity to crawl out our bedroom window onto the roof - probably hoping for a grand adventure of chasing birds and mice.

Unfortunately, the side of the roof she crawled out onto was in full sun, and none of the neighbors had their awnings down which she could use to jump down onto and get to ground. Consequently, she was stuck on the roof.

I first noticed she was missing after she'd been out for about a half hour, and we looked out the window and saw she was about 4 apartments down the roof and just laying there in the sun. Luckily for her, that particular neighbor was home and was herself trying to coax Abby out of the sun. Hubby went in and plucked the cat off the roof and brought her back here, where we doused her liberally in cold water until she stopped panting and drooling.

We called the vet to get advice and to see if they thought we needed to bring her in; but unless we could get a temperature reading from her (and I'll give $50 US to the first person brave enough to try to hold her down and put a thermometer up her butt), they couldn't be sure she needed to be brought in. They also didn't want to have to sedate her to take the temp, because if she DID have heatstroke, the sedatives could kill her.

So, she had to endure 10 minutes of being chased into the bathroom and subsequently drenched thoroughly until she looked like a drowned rat and could only meow at us as if to say, "ALL RIGHT ALL READY I'M WET!!"

In funnier news, Hubby had the girls do the dishes today, and Morgan piped up with, "I don't understand where all these dishes come from; we only ate once yesterday..."

First, they had 3 squares, 2 snacks and enough chips to cause a shortage of potatoes in Idaho. Naturally, they used a new plate each time for each snack, etc - and let's not forget the ice cream after dinner, too!

Dinner yesterday was a very nice pork tenderloin dish, I'd actually highly recommend it. I'll list the recipe below:

*********
Oven Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Braeburn Apple Puree

2 to 3 pork tenderloins, 3 pounds total weight, trimmed of excess fat and silver skin
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon packed light brown sugar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Braeburn Apple Puree, for serving, recipe follows
Sauterne Wine Reduction, for serving, recipe follows

Place the pork tenderloins in a large non-reactive pan.

In a mixing bowl combine garlic, crushed red pepper, canola, soy sauce, ginger, vinegar, brown sugar, mustard and allspice and pour over the pork tenderloins, turning over to coat both sides. Cover the pork tightly and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, and up to 12 hours.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and remove the pork tenderloins from the marinade.

Season pork with salt and pepper and sear on all sides in a hot, nonstick, ovenproof skillet over high heat.

Transfer to oven and cook to an internal temperature of 150 degrees F, about 12 to 15 minutes. Let rest for 5 minutes before serving with Apple Puree and Sauterne Wine Reduction.

Braeburn Apple Puree:
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup minced shallots
8 cups peeled, cored and diced Braeburn apples, about 6 apples
1 sprig fresh thyme
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground white pepper
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
3 cups apple cider

Set a 12-inch saute pan over medium heat. Add the butter to the pan and once melted, add the shallots and sweat until softened, about 1 minute. Add the apples, thyme, salt and pepper to the pan and saute, stirring occasionally until the apples begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Pour the cider vinegar into the pan and cook until it is nearly evaporated, about 1 minute. Add the apple cider to the pan and raise the heat to high. Bring the pan to a boil and continue to cook the apples, stirring occasionally, until they are very soft and the cider is nearly completely evaporated, about 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and remove the thyme sprig from the apples. Place the apples into a food processor and puree until smooth, about 1 minute. Remove from the food processor and serve alongside the pork tenderloin.

For the Sauterne Reduction:
4 cups or 1 (750-ml) bottle Sauterne wine

In a large heavy saucepan, bring the wine to a boil over high heat. Continue cooking at a low boil until the wine thickens and reduces to a syrup measuring 1/3 cup, about 20 minutes.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/oven-roasted-pork-tenderloin-with-braeburn-apple-puree-recipe/index.html

*************

Now, I made a few substitutions, as follows:

First, I didn't have a sprig of thyme, I used a pinch of dried instead.

I halved the amount of ginger and doubled the amount of Dijon. My pork marinated for 4 hours.

I didn't have shallots, so I used regular white onions.

I used a can of hard apple cider (Somersby's)instead of normal cider (you can't get apple cider like we're used to in the US here in DK - it's either apple juice, or hard cider - and I'm tempted to drive down to Holmberg's in December just to get a few gallons)

Since hard cider isn't spiced like the cider back home, I also added a Tablespoon of cinnamon, a half teaspoon of nutmeg and some freshly ground cloves, as well as a cup and a half of sugar, because I felt that the cider vinegar here was coming through a little too strongly - so you might want to taste before you add sugar to yours.

Oh, and I didn't bother with the wine reduction - none of us are really wine drinkers and to be honest, it was more work than I wanted to do (like I hadn't done enough already).

While I'm thinking about it...

2008-07-25T15:51:00.001-07:00

I do have some pictures of Nessa with Matthias, as well as Morgan.

I think the 6th picture we took Vanessa actually liked, and said it was ok to put up.

Vanessa has taken to being a big sister like a fish to water - she absolutely adores Matthias and wants to take him home with her.

Matthias has grown like a weed, he's got to be closing in on 16 pounds already - and getting longer every day. It's hard to believe he's almost 11 weeks old now!

More bathtime fun!

He loves getting a bath and having water drizzled all over him - even his head. He was cooing and giggling up a storm when we gave him his last bath.

Obviously, Matthias is very comfortable with his big sister!

But, to be fair - his favourite place to sleep?

With Daddy:

Two Teenagers in Copenhagen....

2008-07-25T15:38:00.001-07:00

Yeah, what's the worst that can happen??

Camilla, Hubby's sister, offered to take the girls into Copenhagen to the Amager Beach - which is apparently where all the youth (read teenagers and 20-30's) go to hang out and enjoy the sun and the surf. We dropped off the girls at noon, with a cellphone and money for lunch/drinks/dinner/what-have-you, and have had a few of the 'We're having fun Mom' phone calls since.

In case you were wondering what two 17 year old girls do while they're lounging around the house:

They've seen the entire first two seasons of Supernatural, the first 3 seasons of House, MD, they've seen seasons 1&2 of Eureka and all of the "Rush Hour" movies.

Granted, the weather for their first week here absolutely sucked, so there wasn't much else to be done during the day, since none of us really wanted to go anywhere and get rained on all day long.

When Camilla asked if they wanted to do the beach today, they absolutely jumped at the chance to go out and have fun.

So they called earlier today all happy and giggly and asked if it was ok if they 'hung out with' Camilla some more. Wisely, I told them to have Camilla talk to me - and made sure that when they went out (I figured they asked her to take them clubbing), they weren't to be drinking any alcohol. She said she'd make sure they stayed sober and that she knew some nice places where they could have fun without trouble.

I just got an SMS from Camilla that says, "We're having a blast - we're all fine" and it's a little after midnight. The plan is when the girls are coming home, Camilla will put them in a cab from Copenhagen out to our house in Glostrup. This way we don't have to try to find them in the city at dark, and we don't have to get the baby up from his sleep.

I can't wait to hear about this one...

The Teenage Occupation....Day One

2008-07-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

Well, the girls arrived on time (actually 10 minutes early from Iceland), but their bags were delayed a half hour.

Tomorrow I have to call Icelandair and complain, since the girls walked out without an escort with them. Apparently all the paperwork was in order at Boston, but it never got sent to the gates for the attendants to check over - so I'll need to get a refund on that first leg of the trip.

Vanessa spoke to Amy on the phone and on my MSN messenger account while I was nursing the baby, I'm not sure what she said about it, but I'm going to do my best to clear it up, and I'll make sure she has it for when she goes back. If Amy and Daniel find out that they didn't do the escort like they were supposed to, I'll never hear the end of it and I really don't want to deal with it. I did everything I could to make them happy about it, it's not my fault that the airline didn't send the papers to the gate (sighs).

It's cool and rainy out here right now, the girls are on the couch watching Supernatural after we grilled bacon cheeseburgers and hot dogs for dinner, with a nice salad.

Tomorrow we plan on going to the bowling alley in Glostrup to bowl for a bit, since the weather's not supposed to be any better - and it's no fun at the beach in the rain.

If it keeps being crappy weather this week, we'll try to go to the movies at the Imperial and maybe out to a museum in Copenhagen or something fun (right?).

No pictures yet, but we'll be taking some soon!