The Baker's Blog: November 2015

The past few weeks have held some special moments for our family: the girls experiencing their first snowfall and snowmen, Joel's 30th birthday, Thanksgiving parties and the beginning of my favorite season - Christmas. It has been nice to have these sweet moments in the midst of the difficulties of settling into a new country and culture. I am still far from feeling at home here, but trying to embrace the new opportunities and adventures we get to experience. The days are getting much shorter, but we do see more sunrises and sunsets. They are especially beautiful when its not raining. We purchased our first light therapy lamp and are trying to take Vitamin D supplements to counteract the lack of sunlight we were used to in Oceanside. Our house is slowly looking more Christmasy as we await the arrival of our Christmas tree tomorrow (we found a local company who can deliver it right to our door for free, which is super handy considering we don't have a car). I am very much looking forward to watching more Christmas movies, sitting by the fire and enjoying our tree this next week. Joel has a busy week ahead with travel to Hamborg, Germany for play tests, LEGO factory tours and moving further along on his other secret projects.

Now onto new photos for more stories of our latest adventures...

We have not been able to secure our real Christmas tree yet (so much for my early decorating reputation), so Daphne and I opted to make one out of the numerous pieces of cardboard we have waiting to be recycled.

My latest bread baking ventures - our current favorite made with some Rye flour - they taste even more like sourdough now.

Rainy day walk home from school drop off.

Touching their first fresh snowfall. Daphne immediately put it in her mouth to taste while Ev stayed pretty mesmerized by the texture and temperature.

My personal lumberjack restocking our wood supply. After 7 years of marriage, we found a chore he actually enjoys doing :)

Olaf throwing snowballs at me

Snow buddies with their snowmen

Nice big snowflakes were coming down at this point and my house robe was not cutting it to keep me warm.

The trio gathering snow to make more snowmen

Daphne was quite proud of her snowman

and so was Ev :) Daddy made a giant 3'+ wheel of snow.

Post snow play, rosey cheeks might be my new favorite look on this girl.

Evelynn recovering from the cold with her Christmas tea and a LEGO set (which she built all by herself - notice the 7+ age recommendation!) She recently got to go spend a few hours at work with Daddy. Joel set up a mini desk for Ev with a little name plate and she got to pick out bricks to design her own model. She worked on a new castle for Elsa and has been begging to go back to finish the job. Hopefully she'll get to return in the next few weeks.

View from our back window after the snow stopped.

All the snow play created a great opportunity for Mommy to make our official family Thanksgiving meal. Daphne was quite excited about her big plate of food.

Evelynn chose and plated her own food. Her favorite was the turkey with gravy.

Handsome hubby enjoying his personal sweet potato casserole and cranberry sauce.

Pumpkin pie for dessert

Daphne and Mommy had a Duplo building date.

Evelynn showing off her turkey she made on Thanksgiving at school.

Pumpkin and Apple pies for Joel to have at work to celebrate his birthday. At LEGO, if it is your birthday, you're responsible for bringing in a dessert to share with your coworkers. Joel picked some traditional Thanksgiving pies for them to try. Pumpkin, especially as a dessert, is not common in most other countries, but fortunately sounded like it was a hit. He was in a building workshop most of the day and they surprised him with a little singing and birthday cake.

Carnitas tacos, friends and lots of good conversation (so much so that we forgot to play Settlers like we intended...it may have also been the two pitchers of Sangria we consumed)

Evelynn pretending to have rainbow hair. Mimi sent the girls a super fun craft kit. She kept giggling saying "I'm so happy about this hair"

Daphne peaking through her mask and Ev trying to decide what to make next!

After all the pie baking, we had a few extra scraps of dough and made Christmas trees and stars for the girls. Daphne brought me a doily to decorate her plate. Her face cracks me up.

Evelynn has been asking on a daily basis, "Is today Christmas yet?!?" Today we made a paper chain so she can officially count down to Christmas day. 27 more days to go!

Cutie

My other favorite cutie

Waiting for the tiny Christmas parade in Billund (aka Santa and a few of Santa's helpers riding trackers pulling kids in wagons)

Santa!

Their reactions to seeing Santa

The huge town Christmas tree - officially lit for the season after the parade.

On our way to our final Thanksgiving dinner with some fellow Americans and British friends, we met a VERY friendly cat. Daphne ran up to him yelling, "SAMMY!!!" I think we might be missing our Sam kitty who is currently being loved on by Grandpa and Grandma in California.

Daphne was pretty excited to play with new friends.

Evelynn enjoying some chocolate pie with Joker.

After daylight savings weekend, it officially began to feel like winter was rolling in. Daylight hours are generally from 8:00am-4:00pm right now and it is getting into the 30s overnight...there are snow showers predicted for early next week. Yikes...I need to find some snow pants to keep me warm on the walks back and forth for school drop off/pick up. We are officially into our 6 month living in Denmark and things are feeling a bit more settled...and I'm sure it helps knowing we have our first trip back to the States booked for Christmas. I (Ashley) am looking forward to lots of family hugs and snuggles with Mr. Sam Kitty.

Unfortunately November was met with lots of sickness in our house. I don't think we've had a day where all four of us are healthy yet this month. This has meant a lot of recovering and relaxing at home, so not too many new adventures to share. The highlight of the month thus far was celebrating Jacob's first birthday (Mike and Karen's son) at his "gentlemen's Thanksgiving" party. Evelynn and Daphne have become quite fond of "baby Jacob" and are trying to convince Joel and I that we need another baby in the house. Mommy and Daddy beg to differ at this point ;) We had a delicious American thanksgiving meal, with everyone bringing a dish to share. Karen even grew her own pumpkin to make a pumpkin pie for the party...it was delicious and a year in the making! We arrived back home 2 hours after typical bedtime, but the girls were troopers and didn't have any meltdowns on the way!

We also had our first official family of four photos taken by our friend Christy. We are looking forward to sharing them with you. Hopefully I will actually get a Christmas card out this year, but that also means I need to figure out how to send mail from Billund. I still have many things to learn here :)

Hopefully I will be better at getting the next blog post up before the end of the month...did not mean for there to be such a long gap in the updates this past month!