An unforgettable Christmas eve

The past few years we have been traveling for Christmas. Either down south or out west, but this year we decided to stay put. Both from a financial (#hellocollegepayments) and from a “we want a Danish Christmas” perspective. We even had another Danish family come over with my “name-sister” (is that even an expression you use outside of Denmark? I don’t know, but that’s what you call two people who share the same name in Denmark. If they are women that is) and her two little kids. Kristian was crazy busy all morning baking rye bread, making vegetable roast for Teresa, getting the duck and the pork ready etc etc. since we would have dinner early to accommodate the 2 year old. Her brother couldn’t care less about dinner obviously, due to his age:

And dinner was wonderful with as many sugar coated potatoes as everyone wanted! But in between dinner and dessert Emily played a jumping game where she apparently aimed directly for the steel wires on our coffee table with her forehead...... and the cut was bad enough to need stitches🥺So off the two Henriettes went with a screaming toddler (which was completely my fault as she was quite cool until I, in a moment of acute brain failure, decided to take her to the mirror to show her what was wrong. I kind of forgot that this is not a good approach with toddlers😬 Oh boy, I was embarrassed). But we made it to the children’s ER where I hung out in the lobby with a 5 month old who was utterly transfixed by watching Coco on the TV, until his sister and her mom got themselves a room. The we hung out there for a while. Luckily the little patient had received some new books for Christmas, which came in quite handy. After a while another friend arrived, so I could take off and I could proceed with our Christmas Eve with the rest of the family at home. And as always - because he can eat more risalamande than anyone else in the family - Ulrik won mandelgaven.

And then we pulled out the tree so we could “dance” around it. In reality it is more of a pathetic waddle as everyone has stuffed themselves so full that they can barely stand up. A beautiful Danish Christmas tradition! Bailey thought we had gone insane and tried to walk with us, then decided to block everyone by laying down right next to the tree with his chewbone, and finally he hid under the table as he didn’t feel appreciated I guess.......But he sure did like his Christmas present under the tree

And Kristian also got very excited to have a little bit of Royal Copenhagen back in his life:

So overall a traditional Danish Christmas - just as we intended. Except for the need to go the the ER. Nobody wants that for Christmas.