Flensburg

Flensburg, Germany is where Danes go to fulfill their need for shopping, especially junkfood. If it wasn't for my conscience (actually my daughter's voice) telling me that products with palm oil are destroying the orangutan's natural habitat, I would have come home with several enormous containers of Nutella. Instead, I bought peanuts and soup. And chocolate. And advent calendars. I'm sure something somewhere is being harmed by the purchase of them as well but I am blissfully ignorant so far.
One of those advent calendars was a Lego one, which was quite a bit cheaper in Germany, even though Lego is a Danish company. So I went to Germany to save money on something Danish. Flensburg itself is very Danish however, as it has been a part of Denmark previously and now lies just a few kilometres south of the border.
Enough about shopping, here are some pictures of cool things we saw while walking the streets and visiting Museumberg Flensburg.

Museumberg Flensburg - it was a bit of a rainy hike to the front door but it was worth it.

I always love the taxidermy section. The deer in this part of the world are tiny!

Closeup of one the interior walls of an old farmhouse.

A sewing chest

This thing is old - circa 1400

This sucker is even older - circa 1300 

Our English friends make fun travelling companions - "peace" signs are for my benefit, despite what the gesture might signify in the UK

Interiors of old farm houses like this one were dismantled and put back together in the museum. They were at least 400 years old, full of beautiful paintings and carvings.

The rainy streets of Flensburg

The conductor let the kids sit in his chair before the train ride home. Dean was in heaven!

fame without fortune (and Halloween)

My family has this funny habit of appearing in local newspapers and publications. I joined a Kolding Facebook group and inquired about Halloween in Denmark. It received a lot of response and discussion which led to a reporter from a newspaper contacting me. He came to interview Rus and I about what Halloween traditions meant to us in Canada and what we will be doing for Halloween here. A photographer came and did a photo shoot with us, which was definitely not within my comfort zone, but still fun.

We didn't end up going treat-or-treating on Halloween night but Rus took Dean to Halloween in Legoland a while ago and we all went to an awesome Halloween parade (with fireworks) in the neighbouring city of Vejle on the weekend.
We decorated our front window a bit to let trick-or-treaters know that we were open for business but only six kids came. We all miss the good Halloween night vibe of Canada, when everyone is out in the streets, eating junkfood, showing off their costumes and meeting neighbours. It is considered an American holiday here, and has only just caught on about ten years ago.

That's Freya's head that this creature is eating!

sweet 16 x 2

My awesome, intelligent, sweet little girls turned 16 yesterday.  It has been such a privilege to be their mom. I was never that awesome when I was their age! They had a good weekend hanging out with friends and a good evening last night with family. I am looking forward to see them grow this year and learn even more about the wider world that we all live in.
(You can buy beer here at 16 so Ila and Mei think it is hilarious that they can legally purchase alcohol. It can be purchased at the local grocery store for 4 kroner per can - the equivalent of about $0.80 CAD. This is not the wider world that I am referring to...)

Legeparken and Nicolai for Børn

Free-play and outdoor play is very important here. Learning through play is a big part of children's education. Dean goes to an afterschool program where they spend most of their time outdoors. Whenever I walk by a daycare, I see all the children outside wearing fully protective rain gear, free to roam in large outdoor areas with no fear of getting dirty.
There is a free outdoor play park in Kolding (Legeparken = the play park) that has rowboats, pedalboats, mooncars, zipline, etc. that we have been to a few times. It will inevitably rain when we are there, so we have learned to do as the Danes do, bringing along full mud gear when we go.
Another fun play place we have been to is the children's section of the Nicolai arts and culture center, Nicolai for Børn. There are several storeys containing rooms with varying themes all encouraging free-play and imagination.
I love the play based approach to learning that they believe in here!

min fødselsdag

I made a goal about a year ago to get my weight down to 140 pounds by the time I was 40. Thankfully, we don't own a scale here so when I turned 40 yesterday, I was blissfully unaware whether I had reached my goal or not. Someone once told me how happy they were after fourty because they stopped caring about their weight and appearance.  I must say, it has been nice not knowing my weight and thus, caring less. A present to myself.

The best present, however, came in the form of family. 

I have never celebrated a birthday with my extended family before so to be able to celebrate my 40th in Denmark with cousins and aunts and uncles was the best present I could ask for. 

Also, the cake my cousin Lars brought for me was pretty cool; a "kagemand" 

(literal translation = cake man).

My mother made similar ones for many of our birthdays growing up, using bread dough in the shape of a girl for me and a boy for my brothers, with brown sugar, icing and candy decorations. Something I had not heard of yet until my 40th though, is the tradition of screaming as the cake replica of yourself is being cut apart. So I obliged, gagging and whining a little as Rus beheaded me. That is one tradition my family will definitely hold onto!

4 Kolding Birds

We've been in Denmark now for a whole month already so this first post is a long one as I attempt to catch up! After a gruelling two days of travel from Calgary (long layovers in Toronto and London) we made it to Copenhagen on September 10th, where we spent the night in a hotel before taking the train further to our final destination: Kolding (pronounced a bit like "calling"), hence the title...four girls in the family = 4 birds...(Rus' joke).
We were greeted at the train station by Liam (yay!) and my cousin Marianne and her parents Finn and Kirsten. They had to come in two vehicles to pick us up because there are so many of us. Marianne came in her husband's "big" car, which to us is an average sized vehicle. I haven't seen a single pickup truck or SUV since arriving here and minivans are rare. We had ordered beds from Jysk that were there for us at our rented rowhouse when we arrived. My family made sure there were other basic necessities in the house for us as well. I was happy as long as we had beds and toilet paper for the first night at least! The next few days were spent shopping for food and other basics, which was done with the huge help of my aunt and uncle. We also had to register ourselves with the district government and get those coveted CPR numbers for my kids that are the key to everything here in Denmark. Fortunately, I had one from when I was born here, making planning and arranging our move from Canada a bit easier. Rus, unfortunately, is not able to get one until he finds work, which is a big complicated story in itself.
Ila and Mei started school the Monday after our arrival at Kolding Gymnasium in a Pre-International Baccalaureate Program taught in English. They loved it right away and are making friends easily. They fit in well in the diverse program with young adults from all over the world who also speak limited Danish.
Freya and Dean started two days later at Munkevængets Skole, which has an integration program for children coming from other countries. Freya is in class 7M, which is made up of only 8 kids that are about the same grade level and age as her. There are three other girls in her class and the four of them are all friends despite the occasional preteen drama, which I get to hear all about...
Dean is in class 3M which is a bigger class with at least 15 kids in it. He has made fast friends with a girl from Manchester, England named Melody.
Our most notable moments this month were attending Marianne's son Gorm's 14th birthday at her place, which is a beautiful old traditional Danish farmhouse and of course Legoland! It only takes an hour to get there by bus so we bought season passes. We also had Liam come stay with us for a night when my aunt Karen and uncle Peder came for lunch from Vejen. It's been 16 years since I have seen my extended family so it's been nice to reconnect.
It feels almost like home to me here now but also like we have barely gotten to know the place at the same time. I still have to do laundry and dishes and get my kids off to school and I go about life here like I am just in survival mode sometimes. But then I come across a building that is 500 years old and am in awe that we are here, that we made it. We moved across an ocean with our family and are living among this ancient history, just a train ride from other countries in Europe. Now if only we can find employment so we can experience those other countries without burning through our savings! Rus has applied to over 50 positions and I have applied to at least 30 so hopefully something will start to happen...

we miss you, Arizona

We made it home Saturday night. We are becoming more efficient travelers as it only took us 30 hours this time. My goal is 25.
We are not so pleased to be in all this snow and cold and are in the process of figuring out a longer term solution to our aversion to cold weather.

random sights

It was our last day here, so we found a way to get to this crazy huge baby cutout in the middle of a field next to the freeway. It is something we have been curious about since we first saw it two winters ago. We found a dirt road by an irrigation canal that took us pretty close to it. After playing around by it and snapping lots of pictures, we drove around the area and found some buildings nearby with more fun plywood figures, including a newsboy holding a newspaper that reads, "Big Baby Frightens Freeway Travelers". Also in the area were cabbage farms and lettuce farms and a rose farm which is something I have never seen before. Ila and Mei loved the fields of roses too. Tomorrow we head north again.