Weekend in the mountains

This weekend was another long weekend (I'm sure everyone in the U.S. celebrated the pentecost as well...), and the weather was supposed to be gorgeous. About 85 here in Oslo - and about 75 in the mountains. We decided to go for the mountains - and weren't disappointed. It was sunny and beautiful all weekend long. We left after dinner on Friday and got up there about 10 pm. It's LIGHT in Norway this time of year, and the sun was still shining when we got there, so the boys ran around outside for a while before it was time for bed.

On Saturday, we took a trip down into the valley to pick up supplies - one of our goals for the trip was to put in stairs down from our deck and stain the deck. We picked up what we needed and headed back up the hill. Then the whole family got to work. It's so nice having such big kids now who actually help out when we're doing things. Espen and Anders did at least half of the staining work and Johan helped Gaute with the stairs. The sun was bright and we were pretty worn out that evening, but Johan had arranged a little family relay race that we did after dinner. Jill and Anders against Espen and Gaute. I really let Anders down on the part where we had to run uphill, but I was fairly good at throwing rocks up and catching them in a net and at skipping stones. And I was super good at saying the American alphabet as fast as possible (Gaute wasn't quite so good on that one...). It was tied for a long time, but then Espen pulled through for his team and got some good skips in with his rocks. None of us really wanted to do this relay that Johan had planned, but it ended up being really fun! And Johan was very happy!

On Sunday, we put another coat of stain down on the deck, packed our backpacks and headed out. We climbed a peak near our cabin - Spåtind. We've done it before, but the weather has always been crappy, and we've had to take rain clothes and boots with us. This time, the weather was beautiful the whole way. We were in shorts and I had on a tank top - fun walking across the patches of snow in summer clothes. It was pretty windy at the top, so we had to put on some warmer clothes up there, but it was a great trip - 6 km each way.

Today, we ate breakfast, cleaned up the cabin and took off, but stopped at all of scenic spots along the way, so it was a nice trip.

The house was about 500 degrees when we got home, so the first thing we had to do was open all of the doors and windows and get some air in! Dinner was to be barbecued chicken, Greek salad and garlic bread, but halfway through the barbecuing, we ran out of propane, so it ended up being roasted chicken. Good regardless!

I took my camera with me on our hike up to Spåtind, but I forgot to put in the newly charged batteries, so I just took a few pics with my iPhone. Here they are: (I did take some pictures other days with my camera. I'll upload them when I feel motivated to go down and find my camera.)

On the way up...


Jill at the top


It's windy at the top