Thursday, January 27, 2011

Off tomorrow

Finished packing, more or less, and we're headed to Poland tomorrow. Our plane doesn't leave until 2, but I have the whole day off, which is so nice. It'll be good to be able to be home until the kids leave for school and be able to take it easy in the morning before we leave.

I'm charging the batteries on our good camera, so hopefully I'll have some cool pictures to post here when I get back. In the meantime, here's a silly iPhone pic to tide you over...

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Polska

So, Gaute and I are headed to Warsaw in a couple of weeks. Just a short weekend break from Friday to Sunday. We basically chose Warsaw because we got cheap plane tickets, but I'm pretty excited about the trip. I love travelling - and especially when I get to stay at nice hotels. And Poland is cheap compared to Norway, so we are staying at the Intercontinental. Nothing like a 5 star hotel to make me smile...

Sunday, January 09, 2011

Mmmm, Sunday evening


Another weekend is winding down. It's been a nice one. We were all pretty worn out on Friday - it's hard starting back to school after a two week vacation.

Yesterday Gaute went skiing for the 4th day in a row. Espen had two indoor soccer games (the first game was a tie, and they won the 2nd one). Anders, Johan and I headed to the mall to get some errands done. We delivered Espen's ski jacket to get the zipper repaired, took my 20 year old winter boots to the shoemaker to glue the heel back in place, returned a shirt Anders got for x-mas that he didn't like, and returned a lamp which wasn't working. And, bought some pencils and erasers for the kids. Lots of little things that I've been putting off doing, which I was very happy that I finally got done.

After that, we headed to the grocery store to do "big shopping". I always used to plan a week's menu in advance and buy all of the groceries I needed for the whole week. Since I've started working, I haven't been doing that, and our dinners have been suffering. When I get off work at 4 or 5 and I'm hungry, I often end up buying a frozen pizza at the store on my way home. But, if I know what we're going to eat and the food and the recipe are waiting for me at home, we actually end up eating a healthy, well-rounded meal. So far, so good in 2011...

Anders and Gaute went on a big cross-country ski trip today (I think they skied 43 km all together). Espen, Johan and I stayed around home. Espen's girlfriend came over for a while, and then he watched the big game between Manchester United and Liverpool (Liverpool lost...). Johan made a fort in the snow - it's been snowing like crazy yesterday and today. I've been enjoying having a day at home. Got lots of laundry done, cleaned up the house, made dinner for tonight, and got a start on tomorrow night's dinner. And for dessert I made a treacle pie. Haven't tried it before, but it looks good!

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Happy New Year!



I feel like I was just writing about how vacation was just starting and now tomorrow is the last day. It's been a nice vacation, though. I feel like I've had enough time to relax, and we've been relatively social, too.

Christmas Eve was spent at Kari and Grim's house, as usual. Kari made a nice traditional Norwegian Christmas dinner and Grim dressed up as Julenissen and came to the door with presents for the kids. It was a nice evening.









Later we went home and hung up the stockings. Anders and Johan each wrote notes for Santa which they left with the cookies. They don't really believe in Santa anymore, but they're not quite ready to take any chances.



Christmas day started bright and early. Everyone was thrilled with their gifts, but Anders and Espen didn't sleep much at all the night before, so they were pretty out of it by early afternoon. We had Kari and Grim over for a Christmas brunch, and after they left, we all pretty much passed out :-)

The next day, Sindre and his kids were in town. Sindre turned 50 on January 1st, and since he wasn't going to be in town on his actual birthday, he took us all out to a nice celebration dinner on the 26th.



I don't have photographic documentation of the rest of my vacation, but that doesn't mean we didn't have fun. On the 28th, my friend Sandra from Salt Lake came for dinner with her Norwegian husband and kids. They just moved to southern France from Salt Lake at the end of summer, and were in Norway spending Christmas with Bjorn's (her husband's) family. I haven't seen Sandra for 8 years, and it was really fun to have them over.

The last big event was New Year's Eve. We invited quite a few people over, but it was pretty last minute, and most people had other plans. We did end up having two people over, though, and it was a nice evening. Almost everyone in Norway makes a turkey for New Year's Eve, and since we didn't celebrate Thanksgiving this year, we made a Thanksgiving dinner for New Year's. Tasted delicious!

And now there's only one day left. The nice thing is that we start back to school on Tuesday, so this Sunday night isn't like a real Sunday night. It feels like we get a bonus day.

Happy New Year, everyone!