October life

Life lately has been....... well life lately. In an October kind of way. I have a thing for butternut and acorn squash and try to eat them as often as possible. And we have done a tiny bit of halloween decorations. Just a bit. And honestly - that trip to Target, where we found it, was such a good one. Target for Halloween and Christmas is just the best! And a whole lot less distasteful than what can be found at other stores.......

 

 

 

Ulrik has had his first test. The practise SAT. We went to an info meeting about all this testing and college applications etc and it just stressed me out on the spot. Not only is college one of the most defining periods of the rest of a life, so you really want to make sure that your kid goes to a place that is right for them, but it is also really expensive and filled with "rules" that we do not know, because we have never tried it before. I guess we just have to start climbing up that mountain too. At least we have become really good at climbing mental mountains :-/

The apartment is slowly filling up with ceramic. Ulrik is really enjoying his ceramics classes and every time he brings something home, he talks about that next piece that is almost ready, that will be so much better. 

 

Luca has band in school this year, and has decided to stick with flutes (the rest of the family are kind of relieved he did not get the violin.....)

 

And the dog still cracks us up on a regular basis. Why can he just not sit like a regular proper dog? The legs somehow always escape like they belonged on a rubber chicken.

Sunday Luca and I will fly to Orlando to meet up with my sister and spend a couple of days in Disney world. We are both beyond excited and I will make sure to spam the blog with pictures. Stay tuned!

Best halloween deco EVER

I am still giggling over that crossfit skeleton. Seriously! It's the best

Going nuts

So my bike has been broken........

I repeat: My bike has been BROKEN!

For those of you who do not know me, this means that my world stopped spinning and I have to spend significant time every day doing something I absolutely despise: riding the bus :-(

At first it seemed simple. The chain needed adjustment, but then the rear tire needed to be replaced and once that was done, Kristian could not get the nut back on. The nut that holds everything together. Small world problems, right? So he went to Home Depot. And ACE hardware. And the bike shop down the street. And amazon. No luck in finding a replacement nut, because the one that my bike needed was 10.5mm inside, and every nut in the US (apparently) was either 10mm or 12mm.

I seriously almost cried of frustration. Until I decided to contact my colleague that can fix everything. He somehow managed to track down the one and only nut on the North American continent in the appropriate size and yesterday it arrived from Seattle. Here it is. Isn't it just a pretty sight ;-)

Our stove is broken too. Sigh. Yesterday all our power went away and when they finally got it back on close to 10PM we figured out that the stove was somehow dysfunctional and needed to be switched off. They haven't repaired it yet and my skills in cooking dinner with no heat are non-existing (we don't even have a microwave) but hey, blog post writing does not take a functional oven, right?

Still there are things to appreciate. Tomorrow we have a cleaning agency coming over for the first weekly appoinment I am as excited as a kid for Christmas. No more nasty arguing about washing the floors or trying to hype that kids about the awesome task of scrubbing the toilet. It is even a lot cheaper than I expected. Only 45$ for a weekly cleaning by a small company that use only environmental friendly cleaning stuff. Yay. The thought of stepping through the door on any random Thursday to a clean home - aaaaaaah.

Some October days should never end

Of colds and birthdays and November in September

Hello from rainy, soggy, windy, and grey Michigan. Where more than one Frikke-Schmidt is coughing, sneezing, and popping dayquills like candy. A week ago it was sunny, warm and nice but the past few days have been misery. Oh, and did I mention that my bike is broken, so I have to take the bus? Seriously, it's like November has taken over and the weather kind of skipped October. Hopefully it will get better. Soon!

Last weekend we hosted Luca's birthday trying our best to combine Danish style with American kids. Luca wanted a "cakeboy" and tater tots followed by a treasure hunt and a pinata. So that was exactly what we did. I have a feeling that American kids don't go on treasure hunts that often - they were really puzzled with what the heck I was doing. Especially when I made them do a "cakewalk" that involved stepping on cupcakes in the grass. A few of them simply refused! But when we got to shooting pokemons with nerf guns the excitement peaked. And from what I heard they actually thought it was an awesome birthday. Afterwards I also thought a bit about how amazing it is, that Luca's friends are part Serbian, Indian, Malaysian, Peruvian and a little bit of Scottish.

 

  

Our weekends are quiet. We are all exhausted from September and this blog post from Huffington post sums it up pretty good:

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/8224250

I honestly do not understand why the school year always starts like the kids are way behind even before they set their foot in the classroom. And the craziness continues until Thanksgiving where everyone (including the teachers) are completely out of breath. Teresa in particular is super tired as she leaves the house at 6:55 every morning, comes home at 6PM and does homework til 9:30 before she passes out in bed. Luckily she really enjoys her school and her Field Hockey practice. 

These days we are also having a dog friend staying with us. Sigh. They are super jealous of each other and tries to compete for attention. But it is also nice to be greeted with an inferno of wagging tails and barking when we get home. 

 

But now it is Friday. Yay. Tomorrow is (another) game Saturday - not so yay, as the traffic gets crazy and the town is super crowded. I guess it will be another quiet weekend, but at least we can enjoy the smell of "pumpkin everything"

 

 

Gone fishing

Back to school

It is with a certain degree of skepticism that we have watched the date for start of school to move closer. Primarily because the summer has worked really well for all of us (which I think is the first one of our total of 4 summers in the US that has succeeded in this) but also because it was a very stressful and tiresome fall last year, with Kristian starting work and Luca having s very strong reaction to his dad working.

Hm. I am sure the dog does NOT mind  having a little downtime while the kids are an school

But guess what? It has been beyond all expectations. Luca rates school 10 out of 10 this year. He has gotten a very sweet teacher, he has to chose an instrument for the school orchestra (we currently do not know if t will be violin or flute - stay tuned. But bring your own earplugs........), and best of all: no homework during the first week. I, on the other hand, almost got a heart attack when I picked him up at the bus-stop, as it made it very clear how much he has grown over this summer. Out of the bus came this tall, skinny kid, with long hair, wearing cool survival bracelets, adidas sneakers, and peace signs drawn on his hands.Maybe he will actually grow into a teenager one day?

Our preteen at sleeping bear dunes

We have hardly seen Teresa. She (and Ulrik) needs to catch a school bus at 7:08. When school is out she stays for an hour doing homework and then she has field hockey practice and is not home until after 6PM. Her evenings are a quick shower and then homework until 9:30. Field hockey practice is intense and if I had a dollar for each burpee/pushup/bullseye etc etc she did every afternoon, we could probably spend Christmas on Hawaii. Her massive amount of homework is because she has Geometry AC (advanced class) and rumor has it that they tend to bury the kids in homework the first couple of weeks to make sure they belong in the class. But she just LOVES it! And we have not heard a single complaint about her being bored so far ;-)

Ulrik has been quite lucky with his schedule as well. This semester he has 2 classes of ceramics and sculpture every day where they, as part of the curriculum, will have to design their own homepage to display their works. He has continued with engineering as well, and it seems that despite him promising my sister that he will never become an engineer (we have quite a few of those in the family already) that is where his interests are.

Which brings me towards all the how to: "apply for college", "fund college", "score high on college preparedness tests" events we have to participate in this year. I have made a choice NOT to stress out about this, as I am firmly convinced that the most important thing is the kids figuring out what they want to do, then we will find a way to get there. But it is honestly a little hard to stay cool, especially when Teresa started babbling about taking a 7'th class hour as a freshman to make space for college credit classes later etc etc. Yikes.

Well. A(nother) visit at the bank awaits us. This time because they forgot to hyphenate our last name when they signed us in for debit cards and IRS has started to complain that the information they have from the bank does not comply. Sigh.