Prepping for school and end of summer

Summer is coming to an end - not that the days have started to get cooler yet, but evenings have shortened quite significantly and the other morning I even had to pull out my bike lights before setting off to work.

School start is getting close and Ulrik and Teresa have both got their schedules for the coming school year plus some books the size of coffee tables. Both of them are quite happy with their schedule. Teresa gets her middle school German teacher, who is probably the sweetest teacher ever and Ulrik has two ceramic and sculpture classes every day = less homework. We do not know yet who Luca's teacher will be but we have our hopes high. All kids are definitely NOT feeling ready for school. The summers here are so long (11 weeks) that a new rhythm settles over the summer and it doesn't really feel like "vacation" anymore, it just feels like another way of life.

We have had a few things on our goal list before school start and one was to go tubing at Argo Cascades. We invited Teresa's friend Lauren over as well as the German exchange student living with her. And off we went:

Getting the tubes ready

It was crowded but fun:

 

Here's a video (starring my singing husband floating down the cascade.....): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXBqz3YRYoo

Luca and Bailey did not want to try!

Of course a thunder storm came rolling in and we made it home just in time not to be in the middle of a crazy storm. Yet the girls were bored and decided to bake creampuffs. Well....... They were not super successful so we had to go to Whole Foods instead:

The so-called cream puffs.......

An additional thing on our to do list was to go to Lake Erie - just so Luca and I could go for a swim. Nothing else. This summer we have been swimming in Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, and Lake Superior. And, honestly, it would be quite a shame not to get the 5'th one as well. So here we are. 5 out of 5 lakes. Yay:

Last but not least Teresa has settled for high school sports. Her original plan was to do only synchronized swimming at the YMCA, but then she got headhunted for the high school's field hockey team as a goalie. And what a team! The coaches are on the olympic level and super enthusiastic. It seems that the Pioneer Field Hockey team is one of the best field hockey teams on a national level, and because of this they have 3 teams rolling this year. I am quite relieved that she can get to practice by bus as I don't think we could have managed to keep up as parents. Here she is just done adding the sticker to our car:

In the past week

- 2 household members turned 14. One as counted in human years and one as counted in dog years. We shipped a card + some sleezy gossip magazines to Teresa on top of the birthday gift of British pounds for shopping in London. I made the mistake of using Fedex instead of the postal office and I am NOT going to embarrass myself revealing how much that cost, but we could have shipped a very big box for the same amount of money at the postal office

Nope. He is not wearing a diaper on his head. Luca worked hard to make a "party hat"

- we have cleaned out kids rooms. Luca's room needs that quite often (sigh) but we also got Teresa's room done including getting a new dresser.

- we are not good friends with the US sprinkler mania (we currently have muddy soggy grass non stop where we live). Here is a sprinkler sprinkling away during a massive down pour. #WhySaveWater?

- Kristian has had his first test launch at GM including getting up at 4AM to restart servers, working during weekends, and working late. I have finally (finally finally) gotten so far in my setting up of surgeries/brain anatomy/floating-sections-for-immuno-histo-chemistry that I got to do my first micro infusion directly into distinct brain areas. It took quite some boot camping for me and the test subjects to relax during these experiments, but we are totally pro's by now

- I have had to say goodbye to the summer intern who's biggest accomplishment has literally saving my a.. with some of the new methods that just would not work no matter how hard we tried. They worked the last day of his 10 week stay! and he got me a little token, that I can hang on my wall to remind me of never quitting:

- last but not last "someone" has a lot of fun with silly putty. Here he disguised himself as a chicken

 

Summer summer summer time

We're almost half way through school summer break and despite Kristian and I both being quite busy at work the days do have a summer feel to them. Luca has been at a gazillion summer camp already, but so far the last one was the best. Blue turtle nature awareness and wilderness skills camp. He has worked with knives, bonfires, water filtering, knobbing, medicinal plants etc etc and now his biggest birthday wish is a life straw and storm matches. Our cool 10 year old has also spent a night in a tent all by himself (because he was the only boy on the camp staying overnight) - a tent which he set up all by himself too! The camp councilors were quite impresses and so were we.
Since we still only have one car Luca and I use bikes to go to and from camps. And sometimes (aka quite often) we take a break to eat some cake or icecream on the way. We have even come up with a hashtag just for that #savingmoneybyeatingcake.

Ulrik is on his way to North Carolina as I write. He is going to camp Lutheridge with our church and they will be white water rafting and volunteering at an animal shelter. He is doing good at macdonalds, but he certainly does not mind a break either.

Teresa is still going strong on her tour de Denmark and flew off to London today with my sister. They have Harry Potter world and a musical on their busy scheme and quite some shopping to do too ;-)

In 10 minutes I'll go and get my nails done and then we'll hang out at the Ann Arbor art fair in the afternoon - which is probably going to be hot with temperatures close to 100F/35C.

Burrowing wolf spiders, a coughing dog, and wet horses

As one might guess from the title our weekend has been far from boring. We were invited to spend the weekend in Traverse City with some friends that were there for an international horse show. Our original plan was to leave Friday night, but since Ulrik had to work over the weekend (yup, he is at Macdonalds all summer) we decided to leave Saturday morning. This turned out to be a good thing workwise too, as I have a rat that needed some extra TLC (and peanutbutter gel diet) to recover from surgery. So after a quick stop at the University we headed North early ' ish Saturday. Luca's friend Alessio was waiting for us as we got up there and we almost instantly went out to see if we could catch some pokemons. We had hoped to get some of the water ones, but most of the beaches were private, with that kind of retired people that rake the sand multiple times a day so they can immediately spot, if an intruder dared to set foot on their property! But seriously - get a life people!

Instead we went swimming in the bay. It was awesome and I am glad I did not learn about the burrowing wolf spiders, that live in the sand by the beach and come out and bite people, until afterwards. Then I might not have enjoyed the beach quite as much.........

We went for dinner in downtown Traverse City with a stop at the big Cherry Republic Store. They had 16 different kinds of cherry icecream! Does it get any better than that?

When we got back Luca and Alessio did a little glow stick performance and then it was time to find a bed. Unfortunately I shared the room not only with Luca but also with Buddy, the very old dog with extensive coughing. Guess who was woken up about every 45 minutes by a dog coughs? :-(

Sunday we went to the Great Lakes  Equestrian Festival, an international horse show running for 7 weeks, where Soleil was participating. It was pouring down most of the day, so it was a cold and wet experience for the two legged as well as the four legged audience. But a stop for hot lunch at Big Boy helped quite a bit, and now we are eating up the miles to be back in Ann Arbor before it is too late. Hopefully the apartment (and Ulrik) are still standing ;-)

Ontario Wine Country and Niagara Falls

This year July 4'th fell on a Monday = 3 day weekend. Yay. We had planned to go camping up north but we tried to book a campsite WAY too late. The only available spots we could find were outside Kalamazoo, and that was not really a place where we were dying to spend  a long weekend. I looked around on Google maps and Niagara Falls are actually not THAT far away. I even found a small family owned camp site (Jordan valley campground), right in the heart of Ontario wine country, where we were lucky enough to get a spot due to a recent cancellation (July 1'st was Canada day, so they were busy on that side of the border as well).
Kristian took Friday off and I left work early so we could leave around 2'ish. That was not a minute too early. We just made it to the campground before they closed at 9PM (the trip included getting Luca picked up from camp, a border crossing, and trying desperately to find an open grocery store in Canada).
Here's the view from crossing ambassador bridge to Canada. Not bad, eh?

Most of the trip the landscape looked exactly like what we came from except the highway being creepily empty.....

But as we got more east it turned into a beautiful hilly landscape with vineyards and fruit orchards, wineries everywhere and fresh cherries and strawberries to be bought by the side of the road. Oh, and Lake Ontario!

Saturday we went to Niagara Falls. The town next to it was not really for us. It seriously looked like a mini version of Vegas. But we found a parking lot upstream that was more quiet and then walked down to the falls. Absolutely breath taking:

It was busy and we had the dog with us, so we skipped the tours and "just" enjoyed the scenery.

Then we had a crowded, overpriced lunch, and decided to leave with a stop at a winery on the way back. And a stop at Walmart. Sigh. Guess who waited outside with the dog and got approached by several weird Walmart shoppers including a lady on a scooter who kept going on and on and on how dogs should live in goat milk yogurt, aloe Vera juice, and raw liver.......

Sunday we wanted to walk one of the trails in the area. There should be a gorgeous Bruce Trail, if one could find the entrance that is. We passed some nice scenery before we spent way to much time walking on the side of the winding country road with a lot of cars.

Eventually Bailey got overheated and refused to take one more step. Lucky for us this happened right next to a beautiful winery, where Luca, Bailey and I got to chill while Kristian and Ulrik went to get the car. We also got some ice wine (which not all wineries have).

On the side of the road we had passed a small flea market with live music, more than decent juicy burgers, and a lot of old junk for sale.

In the afternoon we went out to the lake where two of us went in the (cold) water. We tried our best to convince Bailey to join us. We even made him watch another dog happily fetching sticks in the water. Based on Baileys look he must have thought the other dog was a psychopath. Eventually he started rolling himself in the sand instead. I guess that works for birds, but dogs? Not so much. Guess who is going to have bath as soon as we get home!

We stopped for harbor stroll icecream at Port Dalhousie before we headed back for BBQ, badminton and a pool match that Kristian won! Seriously! (Certain members of the family really do not like loosing?)

Overall we were surprised how nice Ontario wine country was. We almost do not dare to say it, but we liked it better than Napa Valley...... And we deeply appreciate that we are now in a more stable financial situation where we can start seeing more of this side of North America. We plan to get Michigan Upper Peninsula under our belt this summer as well, and we also have Toronto on our radar.

Yesterday we entered the wardrobe crossed the bridge to Narnia Sarnia which is in Canada right across from Port Huron (see map here). The purpose was to do a Danish Sankt Hans midsummer celebration with a bonfire together with other Danes, primarily from Michigan. This is the third time we celebrate Sankt Hans in the US. 4 years ago we did it on the beach in California (read about that here) and last year we were in Ann Arbor with my colleagues (more about that here).

This also happened to be the first opportunity to test if our green cards actually worked, and we were more than ready to cross the border:

 

We were however less prepared for 40 minutes of wait time to cross the border. Sigh. We have not had to do any passport control in a car for quite some time and I certainly don't miss it.

Lucky for us a wonderful pool and good company was awaiting on the other side:

Luca spend every single minute from 3:30 to about 6:30 in the pool, and maybe he fell asleep in the car still wearing his swimgear....... He maybe even slept in it and did not change until Sunday afternoon...... But hey, he is at least very clean!

We enjoyed all the most Danish of Danish summer foods such as "koldskaal", "grillmad" (anything barbecued), "matador mix" and "snobroed". Yum. It was quite fun to watch some of the kids trying to roast a "snobroed" for the very first time and it did not take long before most kids were doing s'mores instead.

 

Today has been a quiet Sunday. We picked up Bailey from his sleepover at his friends house (Freya - the super excited, chubby bulldog with the craziest undershot I have ever seen. She actually will scratch you with her teeth when she tries to lick). Bailey had apparently not been super happy and even refused to eat :-( And he was beyond exstatic to see us all again. 

We have skyped with Teresa in Denmark. She is doing good and has been more than busy hanging out with all of her friends.

And we have watched Kurt and Sophie (our patio chipmunks) dart across about a gazillion times today. They must really like the heat! We also found a toad. A very dumb toad! It tried to hide under Bailey. Lucky for the dumb toad his hiding spot was also quite dumb and we managed to rescue it into safety.

Otherwise we a re recharging for another round of weekdays. Kristian's new job is going really well, but he is of course tired. Luca has been worn out for a week of outdoor day camp activities, but seems to be ready for a week of Star Wars camp in the upcoming week. We have tried to find a job for Ulrik but have not succeeded. And I struggle with my rat brain surgeries that takes a lot of practice, and some geometry as I need to angle my cannulas with 0.1mm precision......... Stay tuned

Greetings from Windy City

Teresa and I have spent the past few days in Chicago and it ain't called Windy City for nothing:

 

 

It has been beyond awesome to spend a few days in a big city with my favorite daughter, but the purpose was more than just for the fun of it. Teresa left for Copenhagen last night to spend the summer in Denmark with her friends and family. The plan was for her to fly out during the weekend, but as her Washington DC trip ended early Friday morning, we thought that was a little harsh and booked a ticket for Monday night instead. So I took some days off work and we hopped on the Greyhound bus Sunday morning. This is my first US Greyhound experience (I don't think my ride 20 years ago in Canada still counts) and I had my comfort expectations quite low - which turned out to be a good thing. The floor was slightly sticky, I will spare you for a description of the bus toilet, and Teresa and I spent the entire 5 hour ride trying to watch Slumdog Millionaire with a wifi network allowing for 1 minute of streaming buffer update for every half minute watched. Weeeeeee. We still had half of the movie left when we arrived in Chicago!

But then once you arrive in Chicago, what do you do in the company of a 13 year old?

You go to Korean beauty stores:

You find those sidewalk lines that match your foot size exactly:

Go to the hotel pool:

And giggle in the elevator about all the not so smart people staying on the 4'th floor, who obviously are not smart enough to actually push the elevator button but tries really hard to push the floor designation plate next to the actual button instead.......

Oh, and you eat. And drink giant gobblers of virgin candy cocktails:

And even visit a Dr Marten's store. I felt very old as I used to have those boots when I was a teenager. I was not brave enough for the knee high red ones (but oh how I wished I were) back then, so I only had the black ones. Now I wish I had a 5 year old boy I could buy these for. But seriously they are SO cute:

And then when you are all tired, sticky sweaty, and have eaten way too much asian food with bubble tea at Joyees, then you go back to the hotel and help your daughter pack her suitcase and take her to the airport. 

Teresa was flying as an unaccompanied minor and I got a gate pass so I could take her all the way to the right gate (which they changed in the middle of everything......). I was required to wait in a designated area right in front of the plane until it was in the air but SAS kind of forgot that I was there. Luckily my sister could keep my updated from her flight app and as soon as she texted me it was off I left the now very empty terminal :-/

....... to go back to the hotel room and feel very lonely and spend an almost sleepless night in the noise of a ridiculously loud air conditioner. 

A few hours ago Teresa landed safely in Copenhagen, with a pit stop at "Lagkagehuset" (very expensive but oh so delicious bakery) apparently - LOL. And I will now have to drag myself down to the bus station for another 5 hour of greyhond and then go home to all of my boys <3