Two Different Worlds

First, Michael made it safe and sound. About 5 minutes after I woke up at 7:30 this morning my phone rang and it was Michael telling me he just got to the hotel and was exhausted and was going to bed. It was just after midnight in Dallas. This morning I checked the weather in Dallas and was jealous to see that it said:

"79 and Sunny"

That is BASICALLY 80 degrees...we haven't seen weather above about 45 since we arrived on November 30th!

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what it looked like here today

This is directly behind the other side of our building. SHOPPING!!! :)

This is the most snow we have gotten since we got here. It is about 10:00 at night and last time I measured (with my trusty ruler with a picture of Einstein on it) I had almost 6 inches piled up on our table outside and 11 inches on the ground of the balcony, and it is still coming down hard and fast. I wonder what it will look like in the morning. I took a bunch of pictures to make a slide show for Michael to see what he was missing, so I am posting it here as well.

EDITED: It is now the next day and I came back and looked at the slideshow I posted and the picture quality was just really really bad and you couldn't see much, so I re-did it, took out the music and just uploaded some pictures. So go check them out! These are pictures of Lyngby and stuff we see daily....

Lyngby Sne

Good Luck Michael!

Ok, let me get this straight. My name changed back to Negrete AND my husband just left me in a foreign country by myself... Does that seems strange to anyone else besides me? haha.

Michael is on his way...well kinda. He left here this morning at 11:00am and is at the airport right now. His plane doesn't leave for another 3 hours (3:35) but we have a habit of getting to the airports ridiculously early. So, I guess he will be hanging out there for a while. I actually have a really busy day today,since it didn't really start till after he left at 11. I have some work to do around the house, do Danish homework, then go to the gym, come home take a shower, eat a quick dinner, then out the door to Danish class. Then back home and we usually go straight to bed when we get back. Maybe I won't even notice Michael isn't around today!! ok, thats pretty doubtful! ;) We realized a couple days ago that this will be the longest we have been apart since I went to Russia in 2001 for 2.5 weeks. We could hardly believe it. I've been getting a lot of what will you do while he is gone questions. Seems like most people think my life is going to come to a screeching halt while he is gone. I suppose with not working I portray myself to a lot of people that I am completely dependent on Michael, which I am in a way, but I wear a good mask to the incredibly independent and tough girl that I really am and always have been. I suppose thats why I never get bored doing what I do. :) I have a ton of stuff planned to do while he is gone. Several things its really hard to do with him around, which includes organizing the heck out of our place. It seems I can't get things meticulously organized the way I like, without creating a huge mess as I move along, and that's hard to do with two of us trying to move around in here. There are a couple places I want to go to that Michael doesn't have much interest in seeing so I'll probably hit up those places up as well. I have a Tai Chi lesson early next week and 4 Danish classes while Michael is gone. Also when Michael gets back we are starting private lessons here in Lyngby and will drop our other classes. I'll talk about those more later.

So, if you could for the next 10 days send out strength and recovery vibes to Michael we would both be grateful. :) When he left he told me he was really nervous about this trip and how his body and mind were going to handle it. He will hardly have a moment to come up for air between the all the traveling, preparations for big meetings and the meetings themselves. Plus he has a bad habit of forgetting to eat when I'm not around to remind him... that's never good.

My Little Traveler

Michael's all better, but before he got better, he got worse. He basically had an off and on fever from Tuesday night until last night. But today he has felt fine all day and its already 3:45. I think its safe to say, he is over whatever it was. We both have our fingers and toes crossed that I don't catch it too. When I catch something from him, I always get it much worse. So here's hoping I stay healthy.

Michael got his itinerary for his little whirlwind trip of the world. He will be leaving here Tuesday afternoon flying to Chicago to Dallas. He will leave Dallas on Sunday (he made it so he had an extra day there so he could do some shopping for us) and fly back to Chicago, then onto Tokyo. He will get to Tokyo Monday at about 3pm and will be there until noon on Friday. He will get back here on Friday afternoon. Turns out, while he is in Tokyo a second very big company wants to talk to him about a different chip that he worked on almost the entire time we were in Dallas.He isn't very happy about having to go all these places for such a short time, but hopefully it won't happen often. While he is gone he asked me to start looking into going somewhere at the end of March, even if just for an extended weekend. So I can spend some time figuring out where we need to/want to go for a few days. Any suggestions on a destination?? :)

A Sick Hubby on Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentines Day!!! :)

Michaels birthday went great. Well mostly. He had an up and down kinda day. Sometime during the middle of the day he said he felt like he was getting sick again. Achy, stuffy nose and sounded like what he just got over about a week ago, was starting to come back. We will get back to that in a moment. We are on spring break for Danish lessons this week so it was nice we didn't have class on his birthday and got to stay home.

For Michaels birthday he asked if I could make fajitas. Sure thing! So I spent the day running around to about a billion different grocery stores, and markets looking for all the ingredients I needed. I have found that Cilantro is near impossible to find here, and I didn't find it yesterday. I also was going to make homemade tortillas but couldn't find shortening. Michael asked some of the guys from work what it was called here and no one seemed to know what it was. They looked it up online and found that Denmark was the first to ban tans fats (which we knew) but all shortening is, is basically a big blob of trans fat. So outta luck. I was trying to use illegal ingredients. I did find a substitute, but I didn't have time at all once Michael got home to get the tortillas made too,so we had store bought ones. But I was able to manage to have enough time to make the guacamole and Spanish rice and of course the fajitas marinade from scratch.

Monday night we made a bunch of brownies. They seem to do things backwards here, but you know, when in Rome! Apparently it's customary to do your birthday like your in elementary school . You have to make the cake and bring it for everyone else instead of being giving a cake. We made some espresso brownies that Michael always loves so he could take them to work on Tuesday. We saved some so we had some to eat at night with ice cream. yum. Also on people birthdays they tend to decorate with the danish flag, so, I did too! I got the sun room all decked out for a party :)

Michael came home and I had to run out to get some chili powder (and had to go to two stores because the first one, didn't have any) because I used it all, came home and spent about 2 hours cooking while he laid on the couch, watched tv and tried to feel better. He started to and we opened a bottle of wine, ate and had fun.

I think when we pull down the shades in the sun room it makes it feel like we are in a tent like a party tent..

By the end of the evening Michael felt all better. We went to bed and the alarm went off at 5:00 (we were suppose to go to the gym this morning) Michael said he really didn't feel good again and that he felt really hot, but really cold at the same time. uh oh.. I was a little warm from the blankets so touched my neck first to feel my temp so when I felt his I had something to compare it too. I felt his chest, neck and head and I am surprised my hand didn't catch fire. He was burning up! And I could hover my hand above his body and feel the heat coming off of him. I know he had to have been at about 100 or slightly over. Unfortunately somewhere between Lubbock to Allen to Plano to Denmark we have misplaced our thermometer, and there is nothing open at that hour here so I couldn't go get one. He took some Tylenol and reset the alarm to 9 and said he would go to work late if at all. He woke up and felt surprisingly better. OK good! But I had a sneaking suspicion that the Tylenol was masking the fever and any pain. He took it slow this morning, but had a meeting with the other language school at 11:30 so had to leave for that. His skin felt cooler this morning right until he was getting ready to leave and then he was starting to get warm again (just about the time the Tylenol would have been wearing off) So he took some more and then out the door. He was going to come home early too. Poor thing. I feel bad for him.

Oh, also Michael found out he is heading to Dallas on Tuesday-Saturday then to Tokyo from there from Saturday-Tuesday then back here. He isn't looking forward to all the traveling and doing stuff he could do from here. The only thing he is excited for is to be present during a design review in Tokyo with a big wig from a big big Japanese corporation where he will be drilled about this product. I know he will do great, but he will be a MESS when he gets back home.. Jet lag in Dallas...jet lagged from Dallas and new Jet Lag in Tokyo to jet lagged from Tokyo to jet lagged again from Denmark. He isn't going to be a happy camper when he gets home.

He's Finally My Age Again!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHAEL!!!!

Not that you are going to read this, but I hope you have a fun day!
Thanks for everything you do for us. You are more then I could have ever hoped for in a husband. :)

February 13th 1980

I Love that he still has the exact same hair line from when he was born.

Updated Pictures

I realized the only pictures of our place I posted soon after we got here with no everything really set up yet. So here is what our place now looks like.

Entry way

Bedroom
Bathroom

Kitchen

Kitchen again

Living Room
Office Area

Dining Area

Sun Room

Friday Night Fun

Last night was our get together with The Møltoft family. To refresh your memories they Jørgen and his wife Agnus use to call themselves our surrogate grandparents our last time we lived here. We would never have survived a few things here without their help. Anyways, we got to know their kids and grandkid first time we were here and so the whole family got together last night with us. When we walked in the door they even had a brand new 4 month old grand baby. She was adorable. We had a really great time. Drank wine, drank beer ate good food and had a lot of fun. We have always said that Agnus is the best cook in the world. We use to get so excited when they would cook for us because she cooks these meals that are just AMAZING, and last night was no different. Started off with some appetizer that I can't really explain, then we had pork, duck and potato's (VERY typical danish food) and for dessert we had fruit and homemade ice cream and coffee. YUM! I had never eaten duck before we went on our cruise back in August, but we have both quickly come to love it!

We don't have much planned for the weekend. It is nice not have to run around trying to find things we need for our place. We will go to the gym in a few minutes, come home, shower, change, eat lunch, then maybe just go out for a cup of coffee.

Yellow Banana's

A couple nights ago, Michael was watching something boring on TV, so I made art.
Exciting huh?

Lyngby Sunsets

“Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk.”
~Jack Handy

That always makes me laugh...

I'm a firm believer that the best sunsets in the world are seen in the desert. Never seen more beautiful sunsets then in El Paso and New Mexico. That being said, recently Lyngby has been trying to prove me wrong. I don't remember the sunsets here being particularly memorable last time we were here. The past few unclouded days though, its been lovely!

This is one of many reasons I love our sun room! I love that we can sit there and watch nature paint us a picture in the sky.

I'm looking out the window and it is starting to snow ever so gently with big giant fluffy flakes. They are so fat it is easy to see them dancing around in the wind on their way down. It's always odd to see seagulls flying around as the snow falls. We are just a few kilometers from the beach so quite often seagulls come and pay us a visit. I suppose while it is still calm outside and before the clouds might dump massive amounts of snow/rain I should go ahead and head on out to the grocery store!

Oh, before I go though, I had my Tai Chi lesson yesterday and it went very well. This guy seems like he is going to compliment and build on everything Chris has already enlightened me with and rather then really teaching me a completely new style and form, he will go in to a lot of depth on the principles that are Tai Chi allowing me to incorporate his teaching into my current style but with new perspectives, as his main style of Tai Chi is not the same as the one I currently practice. Don't know if that really makes much sense to anyone but, it was the easiest way I could explain it and well it makes sense to me!

The 24 Hour Vegetable

See anything funny about this picture?
Lets have a closer look shall we???












Oh, there it is!!!

I bought these tomato's on Friday, this is what this one looked like on Saturday!! When we left Denmark and moved back to the states the first time, I couldn't stand that everything had preservatives in them. All of a sudden, I appreciate preservatives (though I know when we move back one day, I won't be able to stand them anymore again) Its been 2 months since we got here, and it is still not super easy to try to remember not to buy a ton of fruit and vegetables in the store because I sometimes forget that they will go bad by the time I use it! I am still so use to buying a weeks worth of produce. At least we go through milk really fast, because I know that goes bad quickly as well.

Our little get together on Friday was a lot of fun! Everyone showed up and we chatted for a while, ate, and sat around and had a really nice time. It was kinda cool to see all the guys that have been through the program (minus 3) all together. For us it was especially nice because when Michael did the program he was the first one through and at the beginning everyone was unsure if the program would last, or even work for that matter. Seeing that it has lasted 4 years and 8 students later was quite wonderful.

Roland (current student that just arrived about 2 weeks ago), Klaus (everyone should know who he is) Michael, (Everyone better know who he is), Austin (current student that arrived in June) and Jens (Danish student that just finished in the states in December)