Happy New Year

New Year's Eve. We had a pretty light day with family. We took the kids to a local soccer field to go ice skating. (Not sure whether it's accurate that the soccer fields double as hockey rinks or vice versa. I suspect the latter).

We were accompanied by Uncle Charles and quasi-cousin Emma who hasn't left Tess's side despite the fact that they don't have a common language between them.

After trying skating and sledding, we settled into dinner where your narrator was firmly corrected when he referred to the entree as "Swedish" meatballs. They were, in fact, Finnish meatballs. Possibly someone can explain the distinction to me later.

After dark, which came quite early, we set out to divest ourselves of the days fireworks acquisitions. Much joy was had.

We finished with a Finnish New Year's tradition of melting tin. Everyone in the family melted 2 small tin horseshoes that we'd purchased for this occasion. We then poured the melted mixture into water. The resulting shape signifies your fate in the coming year.

I truly thought that mine looked like a motorcycle but every woman in the room promptly and assertively corrected me.

Tess says that hers looked like a piece of melted tin with lots of holes. I sense that she will have a very literal year in 2010.

We are having more fun than you, Alison

Ice skates... check

Dinner supplies... check

Fireworks... check

Baby Niilo... check

Snow... check, check and double-check

Wishing all of our families a Happy New Year.

More Finland

We had a confirmed sighting of the sun yesterday. At 12:10, it was definitively spotted about 10 degrees above the horizon. Hard to see through the haze but it was definitely the sun.

Night vision goggles would have been useful (credit to Beth).

Not sure what's on tap for today. It's scheduled to get freaky cold (it was merely very cold yesterday). Also, we have New Years Eve to celebrate. Fireworks appear to be for sale in all the stores so it may be time to teach my children how to handle explosives.

Yay Finland

An update for those family members who worry about us (you know who you are).

We arrived safely in Finland yesterday. First impressions. Helsinki is Buffalo with funny letters -- assuming Buffalo was more hard-care about the weather, didn't salt the roads and had no sunlight. And if there was a sauna in every bathroom (this is a hearty land populated by hearty folk but they're pretty clever...)

An update. Local experts have informed me that the sun does rise above the horizon here but I've seen no evidence so far.

The kids are atwitter because we're headed to a local (indoor) water-park this morning.

Finland packing list

Packing list:

** hiking boots (10 of them, hopefully that go in five pairs)

** snow boots

** ice skates

** snow pants and all other snow-type clothing

** swimsuits? (indoor water park, not! the Finnish sauna rounded out with a dive in an icy lake)

** not sun glasses

5fordhams can usually pack for weeks in a small carry-on. Not this trip. Two big duffles.

Junkyard Wars Update

The kids just built a working mangonel out of tinkertoys. Photos to follow.

Christmas After Action Report

Christmas festivities concluded Friday evening on schedule. Thank goodness. As a kid, I don't remember anybody warning me that Christmas was so much work.

We ended the day watching yet another episode of Junkyard Wars. This has inexplicably become my families latest addiction. As a result, we are learning all kinds of post apocalyptic survival skills (assuming your apocalypse left a little trash behind). Season 1 starts with a practicum on siege engine technology and works its way up to even scarier stuff (last night's episode was marine salvage). At least one of my kids is now desperate to learn to weld.

My film critic friend Becky would say this is a total red state show. I assume that's a complement.

Maddie was a bit under the weather this morning so she skipped church with her dad. As soon as our van drove away, she immediately felt better and asked to do a project. Fortunately, Micah gave me a roll of duct tape for Christmas so we decided to make a kite.

Alas, there was no wind to be found.

Tess has been busy with her new yoyo book learning tricks. With luck, she'll be ready to go on the Smothers Brothers in a few years.

Click on our tree for photos...

Christmas SITREP 2

15:40 Central European Time. The morning went well. I have the world's best family.

Around noon, I went for a 10 mile run to burn the sugar of the past few days out of my system. I've been getting progressively twitchier with all the garbage I've fed myself in the past 2 days. Also, I got a new jacket that I had to try out.

I was - briefly - all better. Ever so briefly. While I was getting fluids back into my system, Micah handed me a German candy bar from his stocking that must have weighed half a kilo. Note the use of the past tense. It weighs nothing now.

I'm now back to where I started.

Dinner is done. We're going to lie on the bed, hold our stomachs and watch another episode of Junkyard Wars.

Gnadebringer

Germans have this wonderful way of mashing words together for what they want to say. Today's language lesson is Gnadebringer, literally "Grace Bringer."

Wishing you joy that the Grace-bringer has come.

Christmas SITREP 1

10 AM Central European Time. The presents are opened, the coffee cake is consumed and we are all feeling the after-effects of a pleasant sugar rush as the morning Christmas adrenalin fades from our systems.

My children are playing quietly and pleasantly together in the other room. I am taking a break from sweeping and herding trash for a quick internet fix. Piper is in the kitchen contemplating how to cook a large American bird in a small European oven.

No casualties or injuries thus far.

The day is young, however.

Contrition

I have been informed by one who claims to know that "Lowells stink at contrition."

Happy Birthday Piper

How Hard Can It Be

In the course of my married life, I have always purchased birthday cakes for my spouse. If we had them at all... Piper is not exactly a "let them eat cake" kind of wife.

This year, she requested a carrot cake for her birthday. During a scouting expedition yesterday, the kids vetoed that idea. The word carrot has a healthy sound to it that evoked negative images of peas, asparagus and tofu. They wanted chocolate fudge. We compromised with a healthy sounding lemon recipe coupled with cream cheese frosting.

Yes, I know that "healthy sounding" does not equate to healthy but I try not to question these small balms to my conscience when I find them.

Today, we cooked it, baked it and frosted it. The result is less than picturesque. It is, in fact, quite a mess.

Tonight, I will beg my children to destroy completely all evidence of this embarrassment. There will be no photographic record of this event in the annals of our family history.

Come the morning, we will never speak of this again.

What We're Doing

I was up til 1:00 am reading The City and the City by China Mieville. After finally reading to the end and discovering who killed her, I was able to sleep.

No such closure for Tess. In the past week, she has read perhaps every book ever written by Cornelia Funke. She now has all of the Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan to plow through as well as an entire new American Girl series that she just got for her birthday. There is no rest when you've just turned 10.

Speaking of Birthdays, Piper has one later this week. The kids cooked her breakfast and we gave her presents today. She wasn't too enthused by getting this book as one of her gifts. Can't figure why she didn't like this when she was such a big fan of the original book and the BBC adaptation. Women are truly a mystery to me.

Here is what Maddie is wearing all day today.

Quote of the Day

My children are in the other room eating dinner. Current topic is debating the merits of the 3-second rule vs. the 7-second rule for dropping food on the floor.

Current conclusion is that the 3-second rule has less risk of germs but it's not enough time to actually bend over and pick up the dropped food.

Happy Birthday Tess

Wish us luck...

MAA (standing at a display of calendars) "Look Mommy. Look at this" lifting up a calendar of body builders and staring at the sculpted, greased muscle.

Mommy: "Those are body builders. I think they look a little silly though."

MAA: "I think they look silly too."

Goes one calendar up and points to the bikini calendar with sculpted, greased silicon. "Look at this one, Mommy."

Mommy "I think that one may be a bit silly too."

MAA "Oh no, Mommy! That one is not silly. Not silly at all!"

Calendar salesman, who must understand some English: howls of laughter and "Viel Gluck" (German for "good luck")

Quote of the Day

I overheard Maddie talking to herself while looking at a book:

"Bleck. Kissing. I don't like kissing..."

Runner up quote (added 3 hours later) from Tess:

"Daddy, you misspelled Blech."

Hmmm. That Wasn't So Bad

Today, 5fordhams experienced another milestone of German living. Our first speeding ticket.

As an engineer, I'm in awe of the process. It's probably how my father felt the first time he went to a dentist that offered novacaine.

Speed limits here are reasonable. They post the speed that they want you to drive. Go faster and there is a 3 kilometer/hour grace limit. This is the thickness of the hand on my speedometer. In other words, if I'm going fast enough to see by my speedometer that I am speeding, I will get a ticket.

Enforcement is fully automated. This has the surprising benefit of eliminating all anxiety when you see a police car behind you. Police on patrol don't issue tickets because they have better things to do like help people, or give safe cycling classes to schoolchildren.

Cameras, some visible, most hidden (the camoflage netting is particularly hard to spot), are posted all over. Your first indication that you're speeding is a bright red flash. If you see the flash, you've got a ticket coming in the mail. You can choose to contest it but you will never, ever win because the cameras are calibrated and the judges here hate whiners.

My ticket was accompanied by a bank draft form. I took it to my bank, handed it to the teller and she paid it. Elapsed time, 3 minutes. She didn't even smile. She's obviously seen them before.

The cost is also reasonable. First offense was 15 Eu (about $21).

The best part of all. Piper fessed up as soon as I asked her.

Hmmm...

This post could explain alot if it weren't parody.

Reunited, and it feels so good

This will sound out of character for a woman who has one domestic-arts bone in her body, and it's maybe above my left ankle, but I have been pining for my mixer. A thing if beauty it was. A Braun hand-held multi mixer. It could do everything a Kitchen Aid could do and it fit nicely in my cupboard. I blew it up last December trying to make Christmas dinner.

So when my friend Jess offered me her mixer--she can't use a 220v back in the States-- I said yes. I was coming up on a year. I needed to move on. Plus Christmas was coming again and I wanted something other than a fork.

It was a 220v Braun multi mixer! Like Doctor Who, regenerated with a new volt system, but otherwise, exactly the same. Jess had trouble letting go. When I said I had owned this one before, I think it made it easier for her knowing that the mixer was known and loved.

I'd rather have Jess here than the mixer here. The only good news is that they are moving to a city where we have family members so we'll see them again.

Andy is in Houston this week. Andy gone+mixer here= non-Bisquick waffles, with egg whites beaten to peak and folded in at the end. Yum

Who is she fooling

Tess went to sleep last night with 3 hardcover books under her pillow and a flashlight in her bed.

...and she wonders why she was tired this morning.

(Piper just checked. Maddie has a picture of her dragon under her pillow).

Good morning, Alison