And now it is Christmas...

Today is Christmas Day. We celebrate Christmas here on the 24th. In Tom's family the day goes as follows:

9am- everyone gathers at Tom's parents & we eat breakfast together.

10/11am - We all put on our warm coats & hat & gloves & scarves & boots...pile into the cars & go to a Christmas tree farm to pick & fell a Christmas tree. This always takes a while as there is dicussions over what size, which has the best base, top, branches etc. But finally a choice is made & the men go about cutting it down while us women stand & watch & laugh & take pictures.

12/1pm - Lunch

2-5pm - Sleep, play games, Tom's dad decorates tree & places presents under

5-7pm - Prepare for dinner...take a shower, put on your finest clothes.

7-9pm - Christmas dinner of turkey, potatoes, red cabbage, caramel potatoes, beetroot, & veges. Then wash up.

9-12 - Walk around the tree singing carols, open presents, eat Christmas goodies.

Sometime between 12 & 3 - go to bed

It's beginning to smell like Christmas

This entry is a little old, but I've only just got round to finishing writing it.

Every Christmas Tom's family gathers together one day to bake. We all come & spend the day baking Christmas goodies which are then dealt out at the end of the day & we spend the next month eating!! I always make a few goodies from Australia. This year I made, white Christmas, fruit mince slice & 3 kinds of truffles (I know they're not really typical aussie).

The other main event of the day is the building of world known building out of gingerbread by the boys. This year it was the White house. After a bit of confusion in the beginning as to what the White House actually looked like (they got it muddled up with the Lincon Memorial) they set about drawing diagrams of it & making templates for all the various bits of it. Then they rolled out the dough & cut out the various bits, which were then baked

.

Afterwards came the tricky bit of constructing the house by setting all the pieces in place & joining together with icing.

Finally it was finished & the end result as I think you will agree was quite

good.

Denmark's national winter sport

I've been getting a lot of practice in recently of Denmark's national winter sport...ice skraping. There is one main risk in this sport...frost bite to fingers. That is why it is a good idea to use the protective equipment...gloves. Of course these do make the other piece of equipment required for this sport, namely the scraper, hard to hold. This means that it often flies out of your hand while trying to scrape the ice off the field...car windows. Some people employ the help medium of warm water, but you have to be careful it's not too hot otherwise you will end up with a cracked windscreen.

Julefrokost "Christmas Party"

Lit trans: Christmas lunch. However it's a bit like the wedding breakfast, it doesn't matter what time of the day it is.

Last Saturday we had our work Christmas party. It was held at one of my collegues house. They had ordered food from a catering company & the menu was as follows:

Entre:
Rugbrod & sild (rye bread & raw fish)
Tiger prawns on stick, with peach relish
Crab salad on green asparges
Russian rissoles with apple & prune kompot

Main:
Roast beef
Bagt laks med flødestuvet spinat (baked salmon with cream stewed spinach)
Æbleflæsk (not sure how to describe this, will get back to you.)

Dessert:
Rice pudding & cherry sauce
Cheese platter

Supper:
Coffee & biscuits

But instead of having just all the dishes on a table & you take a little of whatever you want, each dish came around individually & you had a small portion of it. So in actual fact we had a 10 course meal!!

Inbetween the entrees & mains we learned to dance the salsa. They had hired a teacher to come & give us a one hour lesson. It was lots of fun, but a little hard on my back. It was also fun to see Tom dancing, something I had not been able to get him to do.

We went home at 12:30am, due to the fact that I was literally falling asleep sitting in my chair!!On Monday though I heard that the others hadn't gone home until 3am.

Another interesting fact to note is that you get really dressed up. ie. formal dress. Of course my helpful husband didn't inform me of this until I got out of the shower & was in the process of getting dressed!! Hence we got there 1/2 hour late.

More snow

We've had more snow & this time it's a little more worthwhile to write about.

Still no where near a heavy snow fall, but at least you can see a bit better that it has snowed. Still hoping for a white Christmas. At the moment they say there's a 6% chance.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Well, now that we are past the 26th Nov, so it is time to take out the Christmas decorations. This year Tom has decided we can buy some lights to hang on the house. So we bought 5m of isicle lights. Unfortunately this only covers the back door enterance.

In Denmark there is a tradition where starting the 1st December you begin to burn a calender candle. This is normally a tall candle that has markings on it for each day & you burn it down to that days mark. This year however they had block candles, one for each day & I decided to buy them instead.

Another tradition is that they have an advents wreth that is often made of fresh greenery & has 4 candles. You light one each Sunday for 4 sundays before Christmas. This is the first year we have had one & we made it ourselves.

They also have all these decorations made out of straw. The most common are pigs & goats. I have no idea why!

I'm dreaming of a White Christmas

We had our first snow of the winter last weekend. Though unfortunately because we live on the south west coast we didn't get as much as other parts of Denmark. But temperatures were still max. 1 min -6. They say it is going to be a proper cold winter this year...well I just hope that we get lots of snow with it to make it worth while!!

The Taxman

Well I got my first paycheck the other day. Quite exciting until I look closely at it. I earn approx. $3000/mth. Not bad you say...well first the taxman has to have his share...then a bit has to go towards my pension...and finally I get my pay...a measely $888!

Gym take two

Tom & I joined a gym 1 1/2 years ago & have been going regularly (apart from a few periods of lapses in attendance) ever since. But since starting work I have found it hard to find a suitable time to go. This mainly because my gym membership only allowed me to go in the mornings. Well last month Tom decide we were just wasting our money & that we should quit & find something else to do. Problem is we couldn't find anything else to do & with winter coming on the option of going for a walk/run outside everyday just isn't appealing. So it's back to the gym. We have found one that is cheaper & allows us to go at anytime of the day. You can definatley tell that it's cheaper though...no individual TV on the treadmills, no free coffee & breadrolls, no heat adjustable showers. But I guess those are all just frills & the main purpose of the gym is still attainable.

Soon to be parents

Now that got your attention didn't it!! But it's not what you think...
We finally took our kittens to the vet today to get their vaccinations & found our that Tiger (who is female) & Soots seem to have been fooling around a bit & Tiger is expecting kittens at Christmas!! Of course we won't be able to keep them, as 3 cats is more than enough mouths to feed, but it will still be fun & hopefully we will be able to find good homes for them.

Off to the football

Tom came home from work today & asked if we could go to the football. Seeing as I'd had a good day & he'd been obliging in going to see "High School Musical 3" with me, I said yes. Well the temperature was 6 and the weather was windy & rainy. So as I explained in my last post I applied the onion principle & here's the result...

Despite the cold though & the fact that our team player poorly & didn't manage to score I had a good night.

Autum is here

My thoughts that I had adjusted well to the Danish climate were dashed this week. It has been getting progressively cooler the last month or so (max. 13-15), but where as normally I'd have been getting round with warm clothes & a jumper I was finding that long pants & a t-shirt were enough. Then this week started & the temperature dropped to max. 10 and the blasting winds so common to this side of Denmark came and the days were grey & rain. Suddenly I was racing to find all my winter woollies & starting my onion phase again (layers).

Of course there are positives to this time of year. One being the beautiful colours of the trees. The best way is to just show you some pictures.

The other positive is being able to sit inside in front of the fire with a cup of hot chocolate.

Cat rescue

Well this event was just so funny (though distressing as well) that it just had to be written about. I took Dartanian out for a run in the back-yard after I got home from work & as usual he chased the cats, except I notice that one of the cats wasn't running away. Whe I got closer I realised why...it couldn't see where it was going because it had it's head stuck in a cat food tin!! Unfortunately I was more concerned about the welfare of the cat than the funniness of the situation & didn't take any photos to post. I simply ran inside with it & with Tom's assistance removed the can. Tom assures me that it hadn't bee running round like that all day as it was fine when he got home. Still it must have been quite a distressing experience for the poor cat.

New Job

Well I decided I should write about the most exciting (more like stressful) thing going on in my life at the moment....my new job. For those of you who haven't heard, I started a job 3 weeks ago nursing at the local hospital here, in the recovery ward.
I'm glad to be back into nursing, but it's hard going back to student status after being a fully qualified, independant nurse for 7 years. Having someone looking over your shoulder all the time and having to ask permission to do everything. I can't wait until the 6mths are over and I can't just go about my work & enjoy it.
Of course I also have the added stress of it being in a different culture & language to what I am used to. Also a completely different area of nursing to where I've worked as well. I'm very efficient though at asking...
Are you awake?
Do you have pain?
Do you have nausea?
Do you need to pee?

I should be though seeing as I ask it about 100 times a day!!!

øhhhhhh

This is me trying to be nice and write a post on our new blog.

Things are going well, the leaves are turning yellow, red and brown and soon they'll all be falling of the trees and we will be into the dark, raining and windy winter on our small country site here in Denmark.
Winter may bring a lot of new adventures or maybe we'll just be stuck in the old daily routines of life - you know - get up, go to work, get home, go to bed. Ohh and then there is all the small unimportant things inbetween.

So my big projects for this winter is: Write a book, make a movie and build a church.

That's all for now. I'll write again when I've achieved the three above projects.

New Neighbour

As of Saturday our old little house that we used to live in is empty no longer. One of Tom's work collegues has moved in for a short period. He sold his house due to some problems & needed somewhere to stay until he found another. We believe this is an answer to our prayers as Tom used to have a bit to do with him at work but due to office rearrangements lost contact. We had been praying that Tom would be able to get contact with him again.

Beginning with good intentions

Well it seems anyone & everyone has a blog these days. I (Alison) tried once but didn't succeed, but have decided to try again.
The page is still under development at the moment so it may change a bit over the next few weeks. Suggestions are very welcome.