Moving Day

This past week was spent packing up our entire house getting ready for moving day, so my first week of maternity leave was not the most relaxing! However, I am very grateful that I had so much time to pack and not have to worry about other stuff.

Half of our things in one room!

So yes, finally Saturday arrived and we got to move into our new house. Yay! We have been waiting for months and the day finally came. It started out with a bit of rain and a trip up to the house with some small loose items in our little Toyota Yaris.  Then we picked up a big moving truck and drove to Frøstrup.  There our friend and neighbor David as well as Søren’s Dad and Hanne met us to help pack the truck.  We had to take 2 trips with the big truck, but then all our belongings were in Skjern, our new hometown! Luckily we had some friends to help empty the truck here in Skjern, so it all went fast and smooth…At least I thought so, but then again I didn’t so much lifting and moving   Another friend brought some cake over to the house and we all had a short break from moving. 

Moving out

Moving in

Søren and Benny sharing a beer on the bar stools!

Us in our new home!!

After the 2nd load was delivered we ate lunch and relaxed a bit.  However, Søren’s Dad was quiet anxious to help with all sorts of things so the lunch break wasn’t so long.  It was great to have him to help set up lights, tighten the toilet seat, put doors back on, move boxes around and arrange things! All the small details!  As the men were working on those things Hanne and I were in the kitchen putting the 5 boxes of kitchen supplies and food away in the respectable drawers. By dinner time we were all happy with our efforts and had a nice dinner before Benny and Hanne went home. 

Søren and I enjoyed a relaxing evening watching TV, hooking up the internet and just talking about all the exciting things we have experienced lately. 

We slept very well our first night in our new home, and didn’t discover any strange night time noises. Then today, Sunday, we woke up, had breakfast and unpacked a few boxes before getting ready for church.  It was an absolutely beautiful day so we decided to bike to church! It was fun and awesome that we had that option to bike!

So yeah…now we are looking forward to unpacking more this next week and taking breaks here and there to visit friends and family for the Easter break.  Søren is working on his huge and final project before graduation….it’s called a "Bachelor Assignment."  So he’ll be working on that and taking breaks to unpack a box or two!

We are well and happy and thanking our Lord today on Palm Sunday for the blessings He has bestowed on us!

PS: More house pictures to come when we get things moved in and settled!

35 weeks!

An end and a new beginning

This past week has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Thursday was my last day of work before going on maternity leave for the next 9 months or so.  It is so amazing, and I feel so privileged to have 6 weeks off before my due date and so many months afterwards to spend with our baby.  I hope I will never take it for granted, but it does feel a little strange as well.  I have spent so much time working the last 4½ years with colleagues and students that I really enjoy and appreciate, that it feels strange that  I won’t see them everyday.  Or just the fact that my brain doesn’t have to coordinate things about work and concerts, etc.  I feel so blessed to have a work place that  I love and will miss. So yeah the reason for the rollercoaster of emotions…(and well maybe just the pregnancy fact as well!)

But also this week we finally got the keys to our new house!

We went up to the house Wednesday to get the keys and check out the house for what colors we should paint everything.  Then later that day I went and bought some small trial buckets of paint so that we could go up to the house and make sure the colors were just what we were hoping for.  So that is what we did Thursday.  We had our first meal in our new home, and it was so fun to think…This is ours!  Then on Friday and Saturday we had our big painting days.  Luckily we had a lot of friends and family who were willing to help so we were actually able to get the whole house painted in a day and a half!  Everything looks great and now we can’t wait to get our things moved in and in place.

Our first meal at HOME

Inger and Ida painting the music room

My type of job!!

Ulla working on Baby Madsen's room
(white on top, green on bottom)

Hanne in the kitchen

Nikolaj swinging in our back yard

Benny, Peter & Jette in the entry/mudroom

Lukas and I baking cookies for the hard workers

Dinner at our new dining table!

Time for a break again!

Painting done...next job..put the cabinent together
(I think they wished there was more painting to do!)

While everyone was painting Saturday I took a walk with our nephews and found some interesting trails and a park with a playground near by.  It was fun to be on a little adventure and check out the area a little bit more.  I also met one of the neighbor ladies and she was very friendly and informative…she told me all of the neighbors names and ages!!!

So yes, we have been busy with lots of exciting things.  Luckily today, Sunday, we have been able to just sleep in, relax and go for a nice long walk in the beautiful spring weather. Next week we will pretty much be packing and buying the last things we need for the house before Saturday…MOVING DAY!

Bit of this and that

This past week has been filled with all sorts of different things.  Monday we had a band named Stoew give a concert at our school. We had been planned it a long time ago, and it was great fun to finally get to hear them play.  They are a band who has written new melodies to old Hymns, and both Søren and I as well as the students enjoyed it very much.

Stoew

Thursday we had a busy day. First with classes and setting up the stage and gymnasium for the evening celebration, where all the students that are going to be at the school next year come and get information.  Then a quick break from setting up to go to our midwife and see a video on child birth with 4 other couples.  It was nice to have a change of gear, but I was not looking forward to this experience. But as it turned out, it wasn’t so bad.  It was actually nice to see some actual real life births, to have a more realistic pictures of what it will be like…(as opposed to what you usually see in movies)…we found out that it maybe isn’t as dramatic as it might seem, having to drive 100mph to the hospital and so on.  I also had a checkup after the movie and everything looks great.  Our midwife guesses that our little boy now weighs 2kg or 4.4lbs.  He has been moving like crazy lately, and it is fun to actually be able to feel body parts at times when he kicks really hard.  But yeah…afterwards we went back to school had a sound check for all the music that we would play with the choirs and bands that night.  The evening went well and as always it was fun to see all the new students. (It was a little weird knowing that I wouldn’t be there for the first half year though!)

On Friday we had our final meeting with the bank before getting our house keys.  We signed all the loan papers, and on Wednesday April 6th everything will be officially ours!  After our meeting at the bank we had an appointment at the hospital where we were given a tour of the delivery area of the hospital. It was nice to get a little more information and see the area.  It didn’t seem so scary!

Finally on Friday night we had a cast party with the show choir to celebrate the show we had in January.  It was fun to see them all again and as always when you get so many crazy people together, there were a lot of laughs! While I was at the party Søren was visiting his Mom and they had a great time as well.

Playing a game at the party (my team won!)

2 pregnant ladies

Now we are just counting down the days until we get the keys to our house….9 days!  Can’t wait!

Update: 32 weeks

Practice makes perfect

Just a quick update on what we’ve been up to the past 2 weeks.
Last weekend we were put to the test as parents as we had to babysitting jobs in a row! The first was watching our two wonderful nephews while their parent’s were at a wedding anniversary party. We had so much fun playing with them, making dinner, and putting them to bed. They were so well behaved for us and didn’t fight with each to other even though I said they had to share things. It made it not so overwhelming to think of taking care of one kid after being able to handle 2 kids! My favorite story from watching them was seeing how Søren got Lukas to eat his chicken even though Lukas said he really didn’t like chicken.  Lukas ended up eating all of his and asking for some of mine!

Then on Sunday we watched our friends little girls aged 2 and 1.  This was a bit more challenging just because of their age but again it was a successful experience. We also ate dinner with them, got them ready for bed and put them both to bed. It was fun getting to read and sing to them and comfort them as they missed their mommy! By the time their parents got home Søren and I were pretty tired but happy with our weekend accomplishments!

So yeah, we got some practice in and luckily look even more forward to becoming parents ourselves soon!
Otherwise this past week has been pretty normal. I had my final performance with the Showchoir for awhile, as we performed for a big bank business gathering. It was fun performing some of our songs again, but I could really feel my stomach getting in the way this time.

Friday we went to the bank and talked about what kind of loan we wanted to take out for our home. It was a long talk and it felt a little weird walking out of there knowing we are one step closer to officially owning a home…and owing a lot of money. But yeah, I guess we better get used to feeling like “adults.”
This weekend we had all the siblings of the students visiting where I was on duty. It was fun to see the big students taking care of their small siblings! So cute, and a bit exhausting.

Getting ready

This past week has been so wonderful having my husband back home.  Søren was on a study trip to London all of the previous week. He had a really great time getting to experience music in many different ways.  They went to a musical (We Will Rock You), visited 2 schools where they got to hear different lectures and see how things are done with the music there, heard a choir, went to a music science museum, heard some local jazz at a jazz bar, and some other interesting things as well. I was a bit jealous seeing as it was all music things that they experienced, but I am glad that he had a wonderful time and made it safely back to me.

Abbey Road Studios, London

The Abbey Road crosswalk

Hearing some jazz

London Tower

"We Will Rock You"

I was also able to have a musical experience of my own while he was gone. I had received tickets to Thriller Live from Søren for Christmas and finally the day arrived.  Since Søren forgot he was going to be in London that day, I invited a girl friend and we went to see the West End version in Esbjerg.  It was so amazing! The lights and staging effects were fantastic, but nothing compared to the singing and dancing.  I don’t know how 15 people can fill a stage for over 2½ hours singing and dancing to some of Michael Jacksons most energetic songs day after day, but these people were outstanding.  It was so fun to hear so many MJ classics and to see the tribute to his life in such a fun way! Wow, I was really impressed!!!

Thriller Live

Otherwise we’ve been getting ready for the 2 big events coming up in our lives.  The first of which being that we are moving in April. We get the key on April 6th and plan on painting the following weekend so we are ready to move by April 15th-17th. Anticipating the move we have had to buy a few new things for our new house and just in the past few weeks we have bought a new kitchen table, a little hutch for the living room, and a new TV.  As we don’t have room for these things in our current house, they are still packed in the boxes, but we couldn’t just let our TV stay packed up for another month! So when it arrived we opened it and set it up in our living room.  Lets just say that it is gigantic compared to our teeny living room we have now! However, in our new house we will be sitting much further away, which is why we absolutely had to have a 46” TV.  It is crazy large, and the people look life sized, but it’s fun too, and nice to not have a fat, pregnant looking TV anymore! The picture is so sharp! We love it!

The TV is almost as wide as our love seat

See it's huge!

We have also been getting ready for the arrival of our little boy in May. We have been fortunate to be able to loan a lot of baby clothes and I had fun at a flea market for baby’s and kids stuff, so we are doing great in that department. We have also been given a crib, car seat and other various things so our spare bedroom is just heaped with things waiting to move into our little guy's new room! So yes we have been slowly accumulating things, but the biggest new buy is that we bought a used baby buggy and stroller this past weekend. I have a friend from Show choir who wanted to get rid of theirs so we bought it up at a great price.  It felt weird walking around with the buggy to try it out, but also really exciting.
So yeah that’s really all for now. We’re just taking one day at a time, but I can’t help but say that it’s only 10 weeks until my due date now!!! Yikes!!

30 weeks

How time flies

Time has certainly flown since Christmas.  I personally had a very crazy 6 weeks with all the big events going on.

On January 27th we were finished with our performances with show choir and it went extremely well. There were more tickets sold then anyone could have hoped for and well the highlight for me was having 43 of our students come and see our final performance. It was so fun to hear them cheering and talk to them a bit afterwards. They had so many sweet comments…it reminds me why I like working with teenagers!

Work, work...

Singing solo - On My Own

Curtain call

The day immediately following our final performance I went to work writing songs and choir arrangements for the Musical we were to perform at work.  It was a lot of work writing 8 of the 10 songs down as notes with lyrics, chords, etc.  Then when I could see an end to that, I had to make choir arrangements for all of the songs! It is really fun work and I can tell I am getting better at it every year, but man it took all of my spare time! Finally the day before we started I finished all the arrangements and had them printed out, ready for the students to learn. 

The entire Musical week and a half went extremely well. I was in charge of the choir and they did a magnificent job learning all the songs and sung quite well. Søren was in charge of the band and they were also amazing…we really have some talented musicians at the school. It was fun to get to conduct side by side again this year.

As the Musical was over, so was the long string of crazy events and projects in my life. Both Søren and I had really been looking forward to a little break after that project.  Søren had been busy student teaching since before Christmas while he still had the Musical at work to think of and writing projects at school as well. So we agreed that a week long vacation was well deserved by this point.

We decided that we would rent a little cabin for a few days during our winter break.  Going away for a few days would give us the chance to really get away from everything that has to do with work, cleaning, whatever. We spent the first few days of vacation visiting with friends and getting a little work done, then on Wednesday we drove 3 hours north to a nice cabin in an area called Djursland. It had snowed the day before, and well since not very many people go to cabins during the winter, the small cottage roads were not exactly plowed.  Luckily our Yaris could just make it and we found our destination.

Cabin from the back

Cabin from the front

Inside

Inside

When we arrived we immediately turned up the heat, unpacked the food and decided to go out in the snow again to buy some firewood for the wood burning stove! We fired up the stove and had some hot chocolate before going for a brisk walk in the near by area. We had a  very relaxing afternoon and evening reading, doing a puzzle and spending some time in the outdoor hot tub!!

Hot cocoa!

Steamy hot tub on a cold day!

The next day we drove to a nearby town and took a little day trip. ON the way we stopped at the “mountainous” area of Denmark (more like small hills ) and walked around. It was beautiful in the woods and we had fun plowing through the snow by foot. Then we headed for town.  The town, Ebeltoft, is right near the sea so we bundled up and walked down by the harbor before walking down the shopping street and ending at a café for a warm cup of cocoa. In the evening we continued relaxing, what a hard life!

Danish "mountain" Mols Bjerg

Scenic drive near Ebeltoft

Famous ship

It was already Friday then, and we only had one day left at the cabin. We slept in and made an American style brunch! Later in the day we went to a different town and took a walk on some hiking paths. We ended the day eating at a Mongolian Barbecue before heading home for the last visit in the hot tub!

Making brunch

Saturday morning it was time to pack up and go. We headed to Viborg to say goodbye to our friend Jenny who is moving back the United States. We also got to say hi to 2 of our friends from Watermark, Jim and Maria. It was fun to see them all again, and Jim and Maria lent us a lot of baby and maternity clothes, so that was nice!

On the way back from Viborg we stopped at Søren’s sister’s house and had dinner and a nice evening with them. It was great to see them and our nephews again. Lukas and Nikolaj had to show off their Fastelavn costumes (a celebration for lent where the children dress up and have little parties at school, church, etc.) Nikolaj is going to be Pooh and Lukas is going to be Batman!" They were so cute.

So yeah, now we are just enjoying a relaxing weekend after starting up at work again this week. I only have 6 weeks left of work before going on maternity leave, crazy!  We have been slowly buying things for our new home, which we just found out that we can move into April 1st already, instead of the 20th as previously agreed upon. And well, now we are only 12 weeks away from when the baby comes. It’s a fun process and we are really looking forward to the coming months!!

PS: Mom and baby are doing well. I visited the midwife this week and everything looks great. Søren came with and got to hear the heartbeat this time. It is truly amazing!