McDonalds

We drove to Aalborg today and met Tina to see a Danish children's musician. It was at a Christian center. He was very entertaining, but the poor guy - after every song (which Broderick would thoroughly enjoy), Broderick would loudly announce "AH-DONE! Bah-bye." (All done, bye-bye). I was hoping the guy didn't understand very good English.
Broderick got quite the treat when I took him to the McDonalds there which had a playcenter. He was quite thrilled and ate all his McNuggets. I have to admit, my cheeseburger tasted pretty good, kind-of reminded me of home. He didn't want to leave, wanted to keep playing on the "whee" (the slide), but he was definitely due for a nap.
Tomorrow morning, Brad will take a few hours off to take us to the Kommune with our approval letters to get our CPR #s and our residence papers. Hoping all goes well with that.

Gym Time!

Tonight at 5:00, we took Broderick to a gym play time (Don't know what its officially called here), and he loved it. The first part, they're just let lose to play and climb on these mats and balance beams and slides. He thought it was quite fun and was not so thrilled when the mats were put away and it was singing time. The evening was great until he ran head on into another girl running straight at him. Forehead to forehead. It wasn't good for either child. Thankfully he recovered quickly.


This last picture is Brian, who lives down the street from us and works with Brad. He brought us here with his son Krister, who is 2 days younger than Broderick. They have this every monday.

We also met two girls tonight who are babysitters and would like to babysit for Broderick. A lady Brad had met this summer who works with kids, knows of all these "barnepiger" and was nice enough to recommend two of them for us. That is so nice, since we know no one to call as a babysitter.

Not much else to tell right now. Its been rainy here last night and today, but still not too cold yet. We went to church yesterday afternoon with that family. It was nice (of course understood nothing) and they had a dinner there afterwards.

Oh, good news! We got our guest bed today, so we are officially ready for guests. If you're looking for a place to visit, come our way. We'll be happy to have you.

Dinner Guests and Becoming Legal

Today was a busy day, but a very good day. We slept in a little which was nice and then went out to run some errands. We were on a mission to find some folding chairs since we were having a family for dinner. We did find some and we also found a kids table for the children to sit at.
We had told Broderick that some kids were coming this evening, but weren't sure how much he really understood. When he saw them pull up and get out of their car he ran to Brad and I and yelled, "BOYS!!!" I think he was pretty excited. The above picture is Jeppe (3) and the below picture is Lukas (5)
This is the family that we had mentioned before that had lived in our area for about a year. The two boys had New England Patriot Football Jerseys on. They had to show their American side. Broderick had a blast. We weren't sure how he would do since these kids speak Danish, but it didn't seem to phase him too bad. There were definite times that Broderick would be asking something or vice verse and the other wouldn't understand, but they just move on. Broderick and Jeppe just ran around yelling for awhile, I guess that's a universal language.
This is Brad with Heine Bach. If you can believe it, he's taller than Brad. I guess we are in the land of the Scandinavians. Brad no longer seems all that tall. They got the job of watching the kids play after dinner. The picture below is Tina and me. She is so sweet and I thank God that he provided her as a friend for me here.
We had a great time with them and will probably see them tomorrow as we're planning on joining them for their church service. They are a great Christian couple and have given us good advice on what churches in the area are good and we would enjoy.

Great news, we got the letters in the mail confirming that Broderick and I can legally be in Denmark. That means our visas have been approved, so we need to go to the Kommune and get our visas and our cards to be here. The cards are very important, its comparable to a social security # in the states. So you need it to sign up for about everything and its what gives you free medical care - very important with all the doctor visits coming up. One minor problem, Broderick Jon is legally Jon Broderick Schmidgall over here. They switched his names around while processing him. I hope its not a major deal to have them switch it back as this won't match his passport and could cause some problems.

Brad also has some great news or at least he thinks so. He was able to get a live radio feed to the Iowa Hawkeye game. He was quite excited, of course he wasn't so excited with the results today, but there's always next time.

Pizza Time

This is a typical place for Broderick to be located. We ordered a cabinet to store toys in (because they don't have closets over here), but it has yet to arrive. Therefore, Broderick is playing out of boxes still, but usually ends up playing inside of them as well.
The garbage cans they give you over here are small, very small. They are about half the size of a 33 gallon can in the states. You're not allowed to fill them past a certain line, but we're told if you do, then put a couple of cans of beer on top and the garbage men will take the garbage (and the beer). Well when you move, you always have more garbage and we have boxes from different things we've bought - so what do you do with these things? You recycle. There is a huge recycling center where you need to take your items to get rid of them. Some of the bins are easy to figure out, like papir (paper), and plastik (plastic), but there are some that aren't so easy. I always wonder what people are thinking watching a lady walk around basically a garbage dump looking up words in her dictionary. I finally asked someone where do I put the milk cartons and cereal boxes (a normal thing to recycle in the states), and was informed they were just garbage and he showed me where to put it. All that work to find out it was just garbage in the first place.
We went out for pizza tonight, it was nice to go out. Interestingly enough, most pizza places here are pizza and kebab places and are usually run by middle easterners. The pizza tonight wasn't bad and the workers were happy to meet me and Broderick. I guess they had seen a lot of Brad this summer and were interested to finally see his family. I don't think that was a good sign of Brad's eating habits while he was here by himself. =)

Praising God in little things!

Well, we're to praise God in all things. Today I'm going to praise Him that he has given us the technology of portable DVD players and Elmo DVDs. Broderick was great at the doctor. He sat on the floor and watched Elmo. The doctor said how patient he was, and I explained that this isn't normal, but was because of the DVD. She said, "that thing is a very good thing." I had to agree with her. The nurse that took care of me had lived in St Louis for a year as an au pair for a couple. So she was quite excited to talk about the US and while she enjoyed living there for a year, she was also good at pointing out all the reasons Denmark is better. Many of her points were good, but even if not, I'm not going to make enemies over here.

Signing up for my language classes did not go so good. We went to the center and the one lady that we need to talk to was not there. They told us to make an appointment with this lady we have one hour in the day which we have to call. So Ulla, the danish lady who went with me is going to set up my appointment and let me know when it is. That's nice because phone calls are much harder to do than talking in person. When you call a business or office, you always get these options, but of course they're in Danish, so I have no idea what is being said.

After dinner tonight, we took some bread that was getting old and took Broderick to the park to feed the ducks and swans. He was having fun throwing the bread to the ducks, but then decided to start eating it himself. At that point it was Broderick's bread and he didn't throw one more piece to the ducks. I couldn't believe it, if I had tried to feed Broderick stale bread at home, he wouldn't have touched it, but all of a sudden its his bread and not the ducks. The ducks were fairly aggressive, they started to come out of the water, pretty close to us. So we called it quits.
It was fun while we lasted.
Since arriving, we have had home cooked meals every night except for when I went out with my mom, so tomorrow we're going to have pizza. I'm taking the night off. Brad says its not very good here, but I'm going to give it a try. Oh and remember the waffles that I found, I made them for Broderick this morning, not good. A big disappointment. So I guess I'll have to pull out the waffle iron for Broderick every now and then. Convenience foods aren't big over here, but I guess that's a good thing, a healthier diet. That's all for now.

Meeting People

Today was spent driving to Aalborg to a friend's house (thank goodness for navigation) and going to that "playgroup" sort of thing with her. It was a nice time. There was some other kids there, but I think Broderick was a little nervous because he played by me the whole time. It was good to be with other women and they were so nice - they held their meeting in English.
This is Tina. After the playgroup, we walked back to her house and had a cup of tea and Broderick played there. She has 3 boys, so you know how exciting it is for a kid to get his hands on someone else's toys.

My doctor appointment was switched to late tomorrow morning, so if any of you are up at 4 am, you can say a prayer for me then. =) I'm also going to sign up for my Danish classes tomorrow morning. A lady from town, Ulla, is going to go with me to help. People have been very willing to help here. That has been so nice.

A couple of things about food here. I was at the grocery one day last week and saw Doritos. They had different flavors, including cool ranch, but it wasn't called cool ranch, it was called "cool American". I thought that was pretty funny. (What's not so funny is I bought a bag and ate the whole thing in a matter of 3 days). I've been on the search for frozen waffles since they are Broderick's favorite food, I haven't been so fortunate, but yesterday in the cake/bread section they had premade waffles to be toasted, but they're not frozen, just sealed in a bag. I'm hoping they work because Broderick will be so excited. I've yet to find ice that I can buy. I think of our friend Chad back home often because I know you can't survive without ice Chad!! I'll have to find some ice cube trays of some sort.

Signing off for now.

Goodbye Grandma

Well, all things must come to an end and today my mom had to go home. I think my dad probably would kill me if I tried to keep her any longer. Although I hear he's had some good meals cooked for him while she's been gone, so thanks for those who have taken care of him.

Broderick will definitely miss her. He had a lot of fun with "mama". And usually preferred her to me. That's ok, I was happy to give her as much time as possible because now its me and him. I'm sure he'll get sick of me.
Here they are in the kitchen, with her bags packed. He wasn't happy about her leaving, but was pretty excited about going to look at airplanes. Unfortunately he was kind of a crab her last morning here as he woke up at 6:30 this morning. Ugghh. Another reason I'll miss my mom, she wakes up early so she could take of him and I could sleep a little more.
Saying goodbye at the airport. We'll miss you so much "mama". Thanks for everything you helped us with while you were here.

I of course was crying when I dropped her off, but came home and Broderick and I took a nap together. He definitely needed one. After dinner tonight (which was quite a process trying to find the right ingredients for that - you should see me at the grocery store with my English-danish dictionary trying to figure things out. ), anyways we went to Joergen and Kirstine Bundgaard's house. Their daughter Maria was there from Spain also. He works with Brad and she is Brad's danish teacher. She has done a good job. Brad's danish is doing great. Of course I don't speak any so I may not be the best judge. They gave Broderick a soccer ball (of course he has to play that over here) and Maria had gotten him a Zoo Duplo set since he had recently had a birthday. They were so hospitable and friendly. It was a very nice evening and Broderick really enjoyed them. Of course I was worried he was going to destroy their house, especially since he had possession of a soccer ball. It's so nice to actually meet people and make some personal connections. Helps it feel more like home.

Tomorrow morning I'm meeting up with Tina Bach. She and her family had lived in Ft Madison (a town just south of Burlington) for a year. They were transferred back to Denmark and live in a town just 15 minutes away. Terrean Schmidgall had told me about her, and Brad had actually done some work with her husband. So its a great contact and she has offered to help in many ways. Tomorrow we're going to something called "Legestue", which is a play group. I think its similar to kindermusik or babygarten. I guess I'll see. I'm excited to have Broderick play with some other little kids and excited to meet some other mothers.

I'm excited for things like this especially now that I'm here alone. I think its getting involved with things like this that will help us adjust. Thanks again mom for coming with me. I can't imagine having to make that initial trip alone.

The Doctor

Good evening to all (or afternoon for most of you). Today was pretty low key. The only thing I had going on was my first doctor appointment here. I had no idea where I was going, but we actually found the office with no problem. Thank God for navigation in Brad's car. We walked in and I thought, "oh no!", the waiting room was packed, there weren't enough empty seats so I had to stand. I thought we'd be there forever. They must have a lot of doctors though because we only had to wait like 15 minutes. Much more simplified than in the US. I never saw a nurse, it was a doctor who came to the waiting room and got me. She came out and said, "Is there any American here?" I assumed she was talking about me. She didn't speak great English and kept apologizing, but I assured her that it was much better than my Danish.

She only talked to me today and I have to go back on Wednesday for my actual exam. You can pray for us then because my mom will be gone, so I'll have Broderick with me right during his nap time in the afternoon. I'm thinking portable DVD player and snacks. I'm hoping it goes quickly. Its strange to think I literally know nobody to call for help. Kind of a weird feeling. I'm also hoping my visa gets here quickly so I can get a medical card. Right now I'm on a cash basis. That can add up fast.

This was my mom's last day here, we take her to the airport tomorrow. Broderick will be very sad, but I'll probably be more sad. She's been a huge help over here. Going to sign off for now. Good night.

At the Beach!!!

Today we visited the west coast of Denmark to see the beach and the ocean. It was a nice day in the 60's, so we had a good time. Broderick loved running in the sand and kicking it. There were fishing boats out, so Broderick was pretty excited to see those as well.All along the beach there are WWII bunkers that the Germans built after invading Denmark. (Which took all of 45 minutes to take over.) They were trying to protect the coast. I know I have certain nephews that would love to see those and climb around in them. Isn't that right Joseph, Jack, and Jesse?
There was a long pier that went out in the ocean and Broderick wanted to walk along it again and again. Thankfully Grandma was more than willing because as you went out farther, the smell of fish was overpowering and there were some dead fish on the rocks. Not good on a person with morning sickness. =) Broderick thought the pier looked like a train track, so he thought he was being like a train.
After was walked along the beach, we went into the coastal town and ate at a little cafe and visited a candy store. I don't know who was more excited - Brad or Broderick. My mom got some different kinds to try and take back home too. The town had a really nice area to walk around with lots of little shops (which were actually open on Sunday), but Broderick had woke up early and needed a nap so we headed home. For dinner, we had a girls night out. Brad didn't think Broderick would cooperate during a lengthy meal, so he took him while my mom and I went to a restaurant near the park in town. The food was really good. I would tell you what we had if I had a prayer of being able to pronounce or write what they were called, but we were impressed with the traditional
Danish dishes. Thankful since who knows what we could have ended up ordering since we couldn't read the menu and our waitress spoke very broken English. Brad brought Broderick over to the park on his bike so we met them outside and let him play a little bit.

Tomorrow morning is my doctor appointment. Pray that goes well. And its my mom's last day here. It will be sad when she leaves. Good night to all. I'm heading to bed.

Broderick's 2nd Birthday!

Today is Broderick's 2nd birthday. I can't believe our little boy is already 2. Who would have thought we would have moved across the ocean when he was born. We started out the day by making him waffles. About every day when we ask Broderick what he wants to eat, he tells us waffles. He is quite a fan of eggos. Unfortunately they have nothing like that over here. He was pretty happy.

We then went to the Aalborg Zoo. Aalborg is a town about 20 minutes from us with about 140,000 people. That's where the hospital is and other major conveniences you may need are located. It was a nice zoo, big enough, but not so big that you can't cover the whole thing. Broderick liked seeing all the "aminals" and his favorites are the "oo-ahhs" (monkeys) and the polar bear. The polar bear was kindof playing peek-a-boo and Broderick didn't want to leave. The whole way to the zoo and at the zoo, he kept asking for the zebras, so we finally get to the zebras and he couldn't have cared less. Kids!!!

Here is Brad, Grandma, and Broderick waiting for our lunch at the little bistro in the zoo.
Here's Brad, Megan, and Broderick in front of the zoo. Broderick is in the stroller here, but he walked or was held the entire time in the zoo. He wanted nothing to do with the stroller. He did pretty good. The weather was beautiful. It was in the 60's and sunny. We were so thankful since the week had been pretty chilly and rainy at times. When we got home, Broderick took a nap and then we had lasagna (one of his favorite things) and fresh bread from the bakery (yum!) Then we had cake. You should have been there when we were trying to make this. We had tried to find yellow cake mix at the grocery store. We thought we did, but it turns out that it was some sort of "DreamCake" which appeared to be some sort of coffee cake or we're not sure what it was, but we tried to still make the yellow cake out of it. It was supposed to be in a springform so we used a skillit and we were following the directions using a danish-english dictionary. It was quite funny. But it turned out ok.
Broderick got a cool excavator from "mama". It was just like "bop-pop's". He keeps telling us. And he got some Thomas trains from us. He's quite into choo-choos right now.
It was quite a day for Broderick, he did good though and was a trooper. Here he is getting ready to call it a day in his big boy bed.

Tomorrow we're going to head to the coast and show my mom the sea. Its supposed to be good weather again. Brad installed a light fixture here the other day. He was quite proud since its 220v here instead of 11ov so we were a little worried about getting shocked. We also did laundry yesterday. Of course the manuel is in danish. The load at capacity is about 1/3 of what our loads are in the US and then the wash cycle is 2 hours long. We did laundry all day. We tried to figure out ways to shorten the cycle, but no luck so far.

Monday morning I have a doctor appointment. I'm 12 weeks now, so we'll see what they do. This is just our regular family doctor, so most likely she'll refer me to a diabetic specialist. We'll see how that goes.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. So far ours has been great.

Another day!!

Well, another day is almost done in Denmark. Right now, we are watching "Bee Movie" which Broderick is totally entranced with. The surprising thing is that it is entirely in Danish and he doesn't seem phased by it at all. He is perched on top of a rubbermaid as his chair about 5 feet from the tv and seems to be loving it.
Here are Broderick and I earlier in the day looking at pictures on the couch in our place. while we are busy trying to settle in and figure things out, we've had plenty of time to snuggle and read books, ect. The day was beautiful. Started out a little cool, but then the sun came out and there was very little wind, so we walked down to the playground at the end of our street and spent a couple of hours there. Broderick was a little scared of the slide at first, but then loved it. When Brad and I came in April to look at homes, we saw people from the neighborhood out building this playground, so its kind of neat to see it done now. While we were there, another neighbor with her kids and some of the neighborhood came and we met here. She was very friendly and thankfully spoke some English. Her little boy was 18 months so pretty close to Broderick and they live just a few houses away. While walking home, a coworker of Brad's was out in his yard with his little boy who is just 2 days younger than Broderick. His wife is on maternity leave until April, so I'm hoping she's someone who I can connect with. I'm so thankful everyday that God has provided this house and neighborhood for us. They have all been very friendly so far.
There is a bakery/deli right by the main grocery store and we ate lunch there yesterday. It was very good and here's Grandma and Broderick sharing a special moment there. I think Broderick is going to be pretty sad when she leaves. I'll try to play with him and he'll push me out of the way and say, "no mommy, mama" which means I don't want you mommy, I want Grandma.

Broderick is growing up, he turns 2 on Saturday and today his big boy bed was delivered and we put it together. We'll see how he does staying in it. We're having a little trouble with his heat. Its radiant heat flooring, so there's no instant change. They say it takes about 24 hours to feel the change that you did. So whenever we try something new, we have to wait a day before we know if it worked or not. Brad of course thinks its fine and doesn't think anything is wrong. If you know me, you know i like my house warm, so I am quite miserable at times. Hopefully we'll get it figured out soon.

Hope everyone is doing good, keep in touch and don't forget to keep us updated. We love getting emails from home. Tomorrow is laundry day, wish us luck trying to figure out how to work the machine.

Grocery Shopping!!

Today started out great. We slept in until 9:00, which of course I loved. After we ate breakfast and got ready, we headed to town. We first shopped for bedding for Broderick and got a few kitchen utensils that I needed and then we went grocery shopping. It went relatively well. I couldn't find a few things and ended up buying a couple wrong things due to the fact I couldn't read the labels, but I guess that's to be expected. Broderick unfortunately was horrible. So that made the whole grocery shopping experience a little more difficult.

For dinner, a couple Brad knows over here had given him some fresh pesto they had made from their garden, so we had that with pasta and chicken and fresh fruit. It was so good to have some fresh fruit, since we hadn't had any since we had gotten here.

For lunch there is a little bakery right by the grocery store we went to, so we had some danish hot dogs wrapped in a doughy bread and they were good. Then we got some fresh bread to take home and it was great. We made plans to return there for some of the amazing pastries we saw.

Its getting late here, so I hope you all take care, sorry no pictures today, you wouldn't have wanted to see Broderick at the store anyways, it wasn't good. =)

A day of Shopping!!

Today was a busy day for us. Brad went to work for a couple of hours and then he and I went shopping for all sorts of things. Furniture, cars, misc houseware items. It took most of the day and so I was pretty tired when we got back, but we got a lot accomplished. I couldn't believe looking at cars though. I knew the prices were bad, but it was still unreal. We looked at a used volkswagen with about 80,000 miles for over $50,000. And that was the cheapest car we looked at. We're really limited because we're trying to find an automatic so that leaves us about 1 car per lot.

After we got home, my mom and I fixed supper, while Brad put a little seat on his bike and took Broderick for a ride. Broderick loved it. The seat attaches right to the bar on Brad's bike and there's a little seatbelt on it to strap him in.


While we were out, my mom stayed with Broderick. (Hopefully he didn't drive her insane). He's really into trains (choo-choos) right now so I think they played a lot of that.

I can tell Brad hasn't totally integrated into danish culture yet. This morning he woke me up and said, "Megan, its raining, you need to drive me to work, I can't take my bike." Ok, I thought that was a reasonable request. We went outside and there was not much more than a drizzle and everywhere we looked people were biking to school or work. What the danes say is that "there's no such thing as bad weather, just wrong clothing."

We have our phone hooked up here now and I also have a cell if anyone cares to call us ever. We're going to get an account on mobivox, so if anyone cares, sign up there, we get a better deal when we talk then.

Send me an email if you need our information and I'll send it to you.

Hope you're all doing well. Keep in touch with us.

Megan

Gettin settled!

Well, I finally did it. I have started a blog. I know I had doubters out there and I was one too. Hopefully I can keep you all up to date with our happenings across the ocean and I'm sure I'll learn as I go on how to work a blog.

Last night everyone went to bed great. Unfortunately, Broderick woke up after about 3 hours (just like a nap) and was wide awake. The deal was if he was up at night Brad would take care of him since Mom and I needed to catch up on sleep. Broderick seemed to be making quite a bit of noise, so I came out to check and Brad was cashed out on the couch, cartoons were on the TV, and Broderick was happily playing with his toys. He didn't seem a bit tired. He finally fell back asleep between 3:30 and 4:00 and we all slept until 11 this morning (except for mom). Hopefully he'll be back on track tonight with his schedule.

Broderick has already made a few friends in the neighborhood. While Brad and I were napping, 3 neighbor girls came to the door to play with the little american boy. My mom went outside with them and although some language differences, they seemed to communicate ok. Thankfully they start teaching kids english early in school. This neighborhood should be great for Broderick, there is about 70 kids under the age of 8 according to one of the neighbors.





This is Maria, Carolina and Josephine.


It was a nice day, a little brisk when there was wind, but when the sun was out, it was great. Brad took Broderick down to the playground at the end of the street. He had just found his golfballs in the stuff we had packed so he had to take those with.

It was a great day for me too, while we were outside watching Broderick play, my mom decided to wash windows. Note that I'm leisurely sitting in a chair with my mom behind me washing windows.
Well, not much else to tell for today. Brad went out to eat with Rick (his boss from the US) who just arrived in Denmark today and Al, who is also in town for a little from the US. Keep in touch with what is going on in all your lives back home. We should have a busy week trying to get settled in and get things for the house.

Megan