Happy New Year!

Let me tell you, the 4th of July has nothing on the Danish New Year's Eve.

We did what we always do on New Year's Eve, stayed in with the dogs and relaxed. Unlike apparently everyone else, we did not see the Queen's speech. At least not that night. I did finally see it last week at Sprogskole - my teacher used it as a teaching tool so we could learn some of the expressions used, so it was pretty cool, but let's get back to the subject at hand - crazy Danes!

What we did do was watch a movie, and hang out in the house, waiting for the magic moment to begin. Some don't officially wait until midnight by most do, at least for the 'good' stuff, and at the stroke of midnight, the sky is ablaze with fireworks. These are not the little piddly stuff either, these are huge, and there are many of them.

Being a house on a corner has it's advantages and disadvantages. The advantage here is that we are totally surrounded by neighbors who probably spent at least one paycheck, if not two, on their New Year's Eve arsenal.

The disadvantage is that it means we get to scour the yard on New Year's Day for assorted debris from said fireworks, madly attempting to pick everything up before the dogs find the trash and decide it's new toys for puppies!

Zoe LOVES fireworks, and just like last year, she stood in the middle of the yard staring up at the sky. She is completely unaffected by the noise, and loves the show. Lexi on the other hand, umm, not so much. She tried to be brave, she didn't hide under a bed or in a closet, she stood with her paws on the window sill looking out at the magic. She bravely tried to come out to the yard, but each time she did, she was, of course, greeted with huge crashes of noise, which would immediately send her running back into the house. The only time she managed to stay outside for more than 5 minutes was when the neighbors wanted to say hello to her and pet her - she overcame her fear in exchange for some good luvin!

This is just over a minute, filmed just as it all began. I am standing in my driveway slowly walking in a circle. The film doesn't do the madness justice!

On the 5th Day of Christmas...

Okay, okay, it's my last Christmas post, I promise!

And really, this has nothing to do with Christmas. This is more about one of those things that I miss from the US.

What?

Squirrels!!

I grew up surrounded by squirrels. The street where I lived had these huge maple trees up and down both sides and it was so much fun to watch the squirrels run up one tree, jump over to another, run down, run up another, etc. It was like having your own little circus show.

In New York, we had grey squirrels. When I attended college in Michigan, the squirrels were black (very cute little buggers if I do say).

I'm told there are squirrels in Denmark, and I did see one.. one! I was always used to squirrels just being everywhere. Yes, they can be a royal pain as they can be quite destructive and they're a bit mischievious, but you have to admit - highly entertaining.

While visiting my parents, we grabbed the camcorder and filmed the squirrels swarming the bird feeder in the neighbor's yard. This video is a wee bit shaky - hard to hold it steady when you're on the super zoom! And, we didn't catch the best moments as there were several times when they were multiple squirrels on said bird feeder, but this little guy is too cute....