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

Give me a "W"

W for work as in Kristians new job at General Motors. Where he will not only get benefits (vacation, retirement, and a yearly bonus) but also a 50% salary increase. Yay. Had anyone told us some years ago (as we were still living happily in Denmark) that he would be working downtown Detroit we would most likely have laughed our - ehm - derrieres off.

W for Washington DC where teresa is returning from any minute. It's 5:30 and I am currently waiting at the Middle School for her to return. She will have exactly 2 nights on her own bed before we head to Chicago so she can fly direct to Copenhagen. I have threatened her to show up in my pyjamas if she did not send us or post any pictures. So I have gotten a bunch af boring pictures. Thank you Teresa!

W for "what a bloody mess" - quite literally! I have starting doing my little brain surgeries in live animals. Wow, that bleeds. A lot! But they mostly survive and even still like me after. Actually they are super cuddly and I certainly do not mind cuddling them every day :-)

School's (almost) out and summer is in

The weather forecast leaves no doubt that the Midwestern summer is back:

Lucky for us the T storms do not show up as often as predicted, but it does look like we're in for some serious thunder this afternoon. Time will tell.

With summer comes the need for bright green lawns of grass = sprinkler bonanza. They have some heavy duty ones here at Briar Cove and somehow the timing has been screwed with, so we were puzzled by the strange sounds on the patio the other morning, until we looked out the door. Seriously! Is this really necessary? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skp7Xj4m9Og

 There is one more week left of school - unless you are an 8'th grader graduating from Middle School. This is apparently a bigger deal than we anticipated and according to Teresa we were the ONLY parents now showing up for the graduation ceremony :-( But we did get up early and curled her hair (me) and drove her to school (Kristian) and took pictures of her outside - with a 4 legged intruder:

Next week she is going to Washington DC leaving at 4:30 AM Tuesday Morning and returning 5:30 AM Friday morning!!!!! I guess that's sort of a good thing, because then she won't have as much jetlag when she flies to Denmark Monday night to the spend the summer in Copenhagen. 

While she is gone Luca will go to a gazillion summer camps and Ulrik will be working - with that little detail that we have not found him a summer job yet, but we hope Meijer can always use some strong teenagers to push carts from the parking lot :-/

Kristian I will be working. That is always a lot of fun. Especially when you spill blue dye all over yourself and knock over towers of mouse cages. Yay - or whatever:

 

On the bright side is that we can sit on the patio in the evening binging on garden fresh herbs (#MojitosAreHealthyRight?):

 

Creepy dolls and visitors from overseas

We are lucky to have visitors all the way from Denmark once more this spring. This time it is my niece and her husband on a sort of late honeymoon/work/roadtrip-trip. They came Friday evening and have spent the weekend with us before going west Monday morning.

On our own bucket list for the summer of 2016 has been The Heidelberg Project in Detroit and Belle Isle, so we filled up the van Saturday and headed for Detroit. First stop was Eastern Market, which was super crowded. We have not been this time of year before, but apparently flowers, herbs, and trees are "the shit" this time of year. We do not have enough garden space for any more flowers but we got a bunch of basil and mint for some pots by the patio. Licorice basil and pineapple mint among others:

 

We also had lunch at a newly opened very industrial, very hipster place called "stache". They had really good sandwiches (albeit slightly overpriced in my opinion, but who care about that anyways.....):

 

Then we went deeper into the the residential area of Detroit where we have never really been. On the way we passed the islamic slaughter house..... creepyyyyyyyy. It did not seem like the place to be after dark:

Finally we reached our destination: The Heidelberg Project. A block of houses converted into art 25 years ago. Some of them burned down, some are still standing. And some of them still have people living tin them. On one of the burned down houses was the creepiest collection of toys I have ever seen. Those dolls..... they are what nightmares are made off!

 

Other things were less creepy. And no matter what - should any of you ever come to Detroit it is worth a visit.

Unfortunately we came the wrong day for Belle Isle. There was a Grand Prix with race cars going on, and we did not feel like getting stuck in traffic for longer times, so we went back home with a pit stop at Biggby Coffee. 

Sunday we went to Church. For a special celebration that they have now paid off an 8 million $ debt for renovating the entire building, there was icecream. Guess who made the most of that? Also we now have a deal to have the sweetest guy, who used to be homeless, come teach Luca how to swim. Perfect.

 The rest of Sunday was spent in a dog-friendly way with a visit to the arb, where the peons are in full bloom:

And we introduced our guests to bubble tea right across from Ulrich's book store, where we of course HAD to get a picture. It certainly makes it a lot easier to be named Ulrik, when there is a book store in town with the same name, that everybody knows off.

The car was even washed today (or at least the windows.....)

 

Confirmation - updated

Today is the day after the day, and I have time to write a little more detailed.

Teresa's confirmation was such a good day, but also a day where it really could be felt that we are far away from family and our friends back in Denmark - besides my brother and sister, that came all the way here for Teresa :-)

Last year none of the confirmands were wearing white dresses, so Teresa had found a really nice second hand one in neon pink'ish and blue. And also hair, nails, nails and shoes were carefully selected to be just right. But then we saw the weather forecast and some of Saturday was spent panicking in Plato's Closet to find a dress that might be slightly warmer to wear - but no luck.

Teresa's friend Lauren came and spent the night. Definitely a full house for us, but fortunately she did not mind spending the night on the couch with Bailey...... Actually we ended up being all done and ready way too early Sunday morning, even after having curled the hair! That left time for preparing melon balls:

We even made it to our church way too early (driving in snow!!!!!! by the way) where we could then panic a little bit that all the other girls were wearing white dresses. Argh.

 

But honestly it did not matter too much in the end. Here we are after the confirmation. I just love that the parents and family got to be with their confirmand.

After church we had some of our closest friends invited over for lunch. There was the song (a very proud Danish tradition).

 

And my sister had dragged a giant bag all the way over the Atlantic with embarrassing pictures and embarrassing little gifts to go with the pictures. All her nephews and nieces truly fear her! LOL

Mother's day highlights

Concerts on porches and couches on the patio

We are counting the down the days right now till next Sunday where we will have Teresa’s confirmation. We are far from as ready as I would have liked to be but she has a dress, freshly cut hair, the song is in the writing (2 verses so far), Brazilian brigadeiroes are in the making by Fabee (our favorite Brazilian!), and Friday we had the carpet cleaned in our apartment. Sigh. Including getting the living room emptied out completely. Most things fit in the bedrooms but our dinosaur of a couch had to go somewhere else, so Kristian and Ulrik ended up placing it on the patio. It was brilliant! When we got home tired Friday afternoon to a wet carpet (and a super confused dog) we decided to heat up the barbecue and just chill on the couch outside (and no, i do not know why Kristian looks very unhappy on this picture, maybe because there was no space for him on the couch as the kids and I filled it out........):

 We encountered a baby squirrel that was even more confused than our confused dog. But based on the intelligence level of the poor squirrel’s mom it was not surprising. She left her pup, as a black cat sneaked in, and chose to climb into the nearest tree hissing and yelling but leaving the pup unattended. In the end I put on some gloves and carried the poor thing to the tree where it’s mom was having a fit. We have not seen them since, and I wonder if they made it.

 

Saturday has been pretty uneventful as we moved furniture back and hunted down Ann Arbor for something cheap to resemble a water resistant patio couch. Et voila: some free pallets picked up at the lumber store, an old futon mattress from that had been left by the trash container, a couple of outdoor tablecloths from Aldi, a few abandoned couch pillows, and a whole lot of plastic and duck tape to seal everything:

It works super well and only cost us 35$ (including getting a saw to deal with the pallets).

Teresa had been pretty bored being dragged around town to lumber stores and Home Depot, so she really wanted to test some of her new make up on me. After 30 minutes of several layers of primer, concealer, 3D illuminating powder, failed attempts at fake eyelashes etc etc I was very concerned to go look in the mirror. But actually it was not that bad:

And finally a little on “concerts on the porch”. Last Sunday was the annual Waterhill Music Fest which takes place in that area of Ann Arbor where only few people can afford to live but where it is so nice that you would want to stay anyways. Kristian has been asked to join Purple Gold Mountain (or maybe it is Gold Purple Mountain…..) for a porch concert. The band consists primarily of a couple of guys from the church band with a profound love for folk music and banjos. Frankly – it was the best band I heard that day: