Rewind to November 1st

November 1st for the past couple years has been a bit sad for us in the Pate household.

It was 1999 and we were both 19 and Michael and I had been dating only about 8 months. I missed my dog KC in El Paso from the time I moved away to college and wanted nothing more then a sweet fuzzy thing to snuggle with. So being the sweet guy that he is, when I got back from my Easter trip home to El Paso, Michael gave me a card at the airport with a dog on the front cover along with a cd. The card said, I'm sorry the dog isn't exactly what you wanted. Oh, thats ok Micahel, a picture of a dog will do for now..

I dropped my stuff off at my dorm and when we got back to his place, he opened the door (and I still don't know how this worked out so perfectly) but sitting at the front door to greet us was the cutest, blackest, fluffiest dog I had ever seen! He was a boy dog, I had always said I just wanted female dogs, and thats what Michael meant on the card, "Sorry the dog isn't exactly what you wanted" Awe.

It didn't take us long to name him. We narrowed it down to Stevie (after Stevie Ray Vaughn), and Hendrix (after Jimi Hendrix). It was obvious that he HAD to be "Hendrix", because he was sporting the super cool afro!

He was our first dog that didn't belong to our parents.
He was our first dog that we had together.
He was the first dog we had that made it to be a full grown dog (6 years old)

We had to put down our sweet puppy in 2005, soon after we moved to Allen and I started this blog! If you want the whole story... its all here: (but I'll warn you, it's 5 quite long posts)

http://mnp8.blogspot.com/2005/10/halloween-horrors.html
http://mnp8.blogspot.com/2005/10/pet-hospital-update.html
http://mnp8.blogspot.com/2005/10/monday-puppy-update.html
http://mnp8.blogspot.com/2005/11/bad-gone-horribly-horribly-worse.html
http://mnp8.blogspot.com/2005/11/gotta-get-outta-here.html

I honestly think that loosing Hendrix the way we did and at the time we did was the #1 reason why adjusting to life in the DFW area took such a long time. It took us over a year to get to the point where we could even imagine having another puppy. And now, we have Puppy Fever SOOoooo bad that there are many times I'm afraid one of us is just going to snatch one off of a leash while he is being walked by his owner! Unfortunately,(or fortunately for all the people walking their doggies) our lease is a "no pet" lease. Though personally I think, depending on the dog of course, that dogs are so much less destructive then kids! Why don't people have "no kid" policies? ;o)

Our sweet Hendrix

He thought he was a cat

He loved his uncle Joe

He loved laying on carpet

He loved baths

He loved showing off his "people eyes"

He loved BBQ's

He loved being able to look outside, without being outside

He LOVED his Uncle Joe....did I mention that?

He loved fall weather

He loved Popsicles...and his uncle Joe

He loved to sleep

He loved his mommy

He loved his daddy

And whether or not he knew it, he loved posing for holiday pictures!

Sorry I think I went overboard on the Hendrix pictures, but I couldn't just pick one or two. :)

So, why am I telling you guys all this? Well, the story gets happier. This November 1st, my very very very dear friend of about 13-14 years, Jesse and his sweet wife Mika had a precious little boy. I was so thrilled when I found out he was born on November 1st because I can finally attach something extremely happy to this date. So to Jesse and Mika, Congratulations again. We and I know our friends/family that know you are just so very happy for you both

Welcome to the world little Joshua! We can't wait to meet you.

Baby Joshua

The Happy Family

I absolutely love this picture.
What a wonderful little moment caught on camera.

The Proud Papa

Darker Days are Here.

Check this out:
I took this picture at 3:45 PM on Tuesday. Thats the sun behind those trees in the distance... I zoomed in for this shot to show how low the sun was.


I think about when I was younger and how wierd it would be as a kid getting out of school at 3:30 and having the sunset 15 minutes later. The sunset seems to be lasting about an hour. It's quite lovely to have the beautiful colors in the sky for so long. I've said this before, but I have to say it again. I honestly do not remember the sunsets being pretty here the first time we lived here, but my eyes are amazed at how many BEAUTIFUL sunsets we have seen. Perhaps its the position of our flat and that we are on the top floor?? Ya, I bet thats it. :)

It is cold. The air is quite frigid feeling. It's makes it hard for me to want to go outside! But the good news is, I have only had a few days where the darker days were effecting me, by giving me a lack of energy. I realize there is still 1 month to get darker but I think I can handle it just fine. Especially since the Christmas season is about to be in FULL swing!

First Snow

We had a blast on Saturday night. We went to the city and picked up our tickets and yup, you guessed it, went for a Guinness. Seriously we are addicted to the stuff. We spent as long as we could in the pub to stay warm. It was fun in there, lots of Irish tunes and singing going on. We left there and went to one of our favorite cafes for a bite to eat. I had a veggie/mozzarella sandwich and Michael had a chicken club sandwich. From there it was time to head to the front gates of Tivoli to wait to be let into the park to get to the theater. It was kinda cool to get a preview of Christmas in Tivoli because it was already decorated. Though this will be the third time we have been to Tivoli at Christmas time, there is something really exciting about seeing it again...and again...and again. "Around the World in 80 Minutes" was HILARIOUS!!!!! Just as good as last years...if not better. This years show lasted 3 hours. Last year, we were in there 3.5 hours! But it goes so fast! When we got there we got a couple beers for the show and were able to pre-order our drinks for the intermission! I thought that was a good idea. Michael just went out to a tent and found our drink number and just picked up our drinks and came back. Cool idea since the line at the bar was outrageous at intermission.The woman that writes the play is incredible. This year there were 3 scenes where the characters where in the US (California, the Great Plains and New York to be exact) So it was funny to hear them making fun of the US. Especially the part where everyone has a gun, because it is a topic of conversation that always comes up with our Danish friends. Then there is a character every year called, "Dr. van Helsingør from Elsinore" who is basically in the play to make fun of the Danes. This character is too funny for words. I know it is a year away, but I'm already excited for next years "Crazy Christmas Cabaret".

Michael at the Lyngby Train Station pretending not to be freezing

Mmmmm Both mine!

It was quite cold all weekend. Last night it started to hail a little bit...or so it appeared. I looked carefully at the hail falling but it wasn't really bouncing off the ground when it hit...so I opened the door and picked up some and it was the strangest stuff! It was clearly hail, perfectly round but it was so fluffy to the touch... soft hail perhaps? I went to see what Wikipedia had to say about it and I think it was Graupel more commonly know as snow pellets! If this is what it was, it only lasted about 3 minutes before it clearly turned into thick snowflakes. It only snowed for about 45 minutes to an hour and didn't leave more then a pretty dusting of white. Our balcony is still covered in ice.

Snow Pellets
If you enlarge the picture you can see that everything falling is in perfect little circles. As is the stuff on the ground.

We got brave and made feet prints in the snow. I really don't know why.

Dusting of Snow

I love the way the roof look out in the distance with a little white on them.

Around the World in 80 Minutes

You may or may not remember that last year for our anniversary we went to Tivoli to see the annual "Crazy Christmas Caberet". It is an audience participation play. (You get to cheer at the good guys, boo at the bad guys and more) Last years show was called, "Bored of the Rings" and this year it is "Around the World in 80 Minutes". We had talked about going on our anniversary again but the seats left for that day weren't so good The first show is tonight and and everything up till Christmas was almost sold out with only bad seats left. We did find some good seats on Saturday, so we will be doing that this Saturday and I'm quite excited about it. The show is always in English, and last year was HYSTERICAL! I'm sure this year will be no different. Tivoli does not open for Christmas until next weekend so that will take away from the experience, but since we have that wonderful year card, we will just wonder back once it opens for Christmas. :)

http://www.londontoast.dk/

But I don't wanna NOT go to the Gym!

Michael fired me from the gym yesterday for a week. :o( We usually take 1 week off every 3 months to let our bodies rest but I haven't taken my week off in probably more like 6 months. oops. Michael had a week off when he went to Japan in September but I just pushed through. The past 6 work outs I've only completely finished 2 of them without having to break in the middle or I start to not feel so great. That's generally the sign to take a break. :) The great thing is that usually after our week breaks we really kick butt in the gym when we start back. YEA! So here is the start to my lazy week!! (Though I'll still do my Tai Chi...I can't be COMPLETELY lazy)

Here are couple pictures from the pretty Danish trees this past Sunday. Already just a few days after these pictures were taken almost all the leaves have fallen off all the trees around here. I guess that means its about winter time! The weather forecast says it is suppose to snow on Sunday, but if it does, I don't think it will be anything more then some flurries. I'm thinking regardless if it does snow or not, it seems like it will be cold enough for a big pot of stew and mulled wine... YUM!

Halloween - The Party

There is a 100% chance that if I don't explain this news story from last winter you will not understand Michaels costume. I didn't bring much attention to this when it happened because we had just gotten here and I didn't want to freak out our families too much. We had only been here a couple weeks when the a big riot in Copenhagen broke out. We were living at the SAS Radisson in central Copenhagen at the time and the very few people who had heard about it emailed us to ask us if we were in any danger. It wasn't far from us, but we were not in harms way.

A few months later, another HUGE riot broke out. This time there was major destruction, including several cars being set on fire and bricks thrown at the police. In short the rioters were a bunch of punk kids trying to save their Youth House, aka Ungdomshuset. The Government had given them this house years ago and then decided to sell the house off. The kids were less then trilled about this and protested.

If you want to know the whys and exactly what the riots were about here is a link with information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungdomshuset
If you scroll down it talks about the protests and riots.


Pictures
You don't have to watch the whole video... Just a little bit.

So, for Halloween Michael was an "Undomshuset Rioter".
Brick, Flag, Pierced Ears and All.

And I was a Danish Soccer Fan

The Pates

We were excited to see what our guests would come as. Several of them told us this was their very first Halloween Party! HOW FUN! They started arriving at 5:30PM and it was about 2:00AM by the time the last people left. I hope that means they were having fun. The time change happened that night so it was nice to have that extra hour to sleep in and not feel like we slept the day away. We spent the evening eating, drinking and talking. The American candy seemed to go over quite well with most of our guests. I was surprised as I thought most of them wouldn't like it, because Danes always tell us how sweet they think American Candy is.

At the end of the night, I realized I didn't take that many pictures at all. Apparently I was either busy getting this or that ready, or talking and having fun. Those of you who know me, know that at events and visits I can't make myself put up the camera so I was shocked that I didn't take that many pictures. Jason, where were you when I needed a backup camera man huh? Here are the few pictures I did take.

Jens the Ghoul

Dorte the Witch and Karl Kristian as Dracula

Klaus - Matchstick Man

Jens the Scary guy from Scream and Hella as Shrek

Flemming the Ugly Woman and Maja the Mummy
We had a costume contest and "The Mummy" won.
She got a bottle of Casillero del Diablo Wine.
(Translation....Cellar of the Devil)

Helena the little prisoner.
She was adorable and belongs to the cross dresser and the Mummy.
The number on her outfit is Michaels TI employee number!! I asked Flemming if the number meant anything and read it out loud and Michael said, thats my a.i.d. number!

Scary characters on our couch

I forgot to post him with the decorations!
This is our Scarecrow guarding the bucket of candy. :)

Chatting
These two were brave enough to take the train in their costumes!!
They said they had many people looking at them.

Siblings

More Chatting

We are already talking about next year...and so were our guests when they were leaving!!!
So, just call us: "The Pates: Bringing Halloween to Denmark one Dane at a time" :o)

Halloween - The Preperations

Halloween in Denmark is a pretty new holiday. Halloween stuff is starting to pop up in stores, but in teeny tiny quantities, but it has a long way to go to get to the US of A. We have been having an annual Halloween party for the past few years with Mary and Jason and decided this year, even if they weren't here, we would still have a party....so we did! Most of our decorations came from stuff we already had and we made a couple trips to IKEA to get lots of black and orange decorations (candles, circular rugs, blanket and even a new orange shower curtain) to help set the Halloween mood. We had some American candy that you can't find here shipped to us along with some spider webs and other fun Halloween stuff. These pictures are all mostly taken during the day, but our flat looked so cool at night with all the candles lit. We had the AIM Halloween station playing all night long as well.

These are just some of our decorations, we had stuff all over the place.

Michael Carving a Pumpkin
Notice his earing's are back in his ears...its part of the Halloween costume.

Entrance
Window Sill
Candles You can see in the background our pumpkin and ghost candle holders glowing
Book case

And then there was our bathroom...AKA the Witch Kitchen
This took the longest because we had to make all the jars.

This is how we had it set up.

If any of our guests got curious and wanted to open the door to see what else was in there we stuck some more stuff in the other side. One of our guest told us she even checked in the shower to see if we had anything behind the shower curtain!
Our Witch Jars

Witch Warts

More Jars

I figured out what's wrong with the washer/dryer...apparently a ghost is living in it ;)

Drink/Dessert Table

The food all got to live in the sun room.
The plate and utensils table

And the food table
For dinner we had Chili, Crackers, Bread, Salad, Banana Nut Bread, and a Cheese Plate.
We had some vegetarians at our party so I attempted Veggie Chili. I just substituted my ground beef with lentils and actually turned out pretty good....(though not as good as the beef) :)

I had found these to make for desert about a month before the party. Then about 4 days before our party I saw that my "Cooking Light" magazine had put this recipe in their magazine as well. They turned out to be pretty sweet, but still managed to have a nice taste to them despite the sweetness.

Next post.....Halloween Costumes...