Day Seven

Today, our last day, we didn't really have any plans, because I wasn't really sure what we'd be in the mood for. Johan really wanted to see the Mona Lisa, though, so we thought we'd head over to the Louvre. But, alas, the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays :-( We did get a picture outside of the cool pyramid, though.



We ended up spending most of the day just wondering around the streets, looking in shops, which was actually a nice way to spend the day. It had been an intense week!



In the afternoon we headed back to the apartment to pack and get everything organized since our plane was leaving early in the morning. Then in the evening we found a nice outdoor cafe where we had a great dinner.



Then after dinner, we headed over to the Pont Neuf where we had a good view of the Eiffel Tower. At 10:00 every night, the whole tower sparkles with white lights for 10 minutes before they turn on the blue lights. It was so cool to see!! The weather was gorgeous and it was a perfect ending to our vacation.

Day Six

Disneyland! That's where we were today. It was a bit smaller than Disneyland in California - and far as I was concerned, that was a good thing. Shorter lines and the possibility of actually going on all of the rides we wanted to.

We took the train out there...



And we took a couple of trips on "It's a Small World" - and they were singing in French!!



Gaute and Johan went on this ride while the older kids and I were on Space Mountain. Space Mountain was much more fun when I was younger...Anders and Espen loved it, though.





The picture the automatic camera took of us on Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Day Five

Sunday was Tour de France day! The final is in Paris, and we were there on rue de Rivoli for many hours waiting... It was actually pretty exciting, but we probably got there a bit earlier than we needed to. It was pretty hot that day! But, the kids got these cool free things...









And finally - they were there!! And they made 10 rounds in Paris, so we got to see them ride by several times. And it was really exciting, because the whole thing was accompanied by tons of cars driving before and after the riders, and helicopters in the air.



Afterwards, we ate dinner at Hard Rock Cafe - and I think this picture does a good job of showing how worn out we were...

Day Four

On day four, we hopped on a train and headed out to Versailles. It had been raining during the night and early morning, but pretty nice by the time we got up and going. Due to the huge crowds (again), we decided not to go into the actual chateau and focus on the enormous gardens instead. We discovered a little tourist train/bus thing and decided to hop on that since we were all pretty worn out from the two days before. That ended up being a great idea, because it took us way back to the other end of the park, where we never would have ended up on our own. Much less people there, and really interesting stuff. The gardens were incredible.



It also took us to Marie Antoinette's house, a mini-castle which we walked though. The fascinating part, though, was walking through the gardens she had had made behind her house, which included all kinds of paths and ponds.



A grotto...



And an entire idealized farm village - it was like Disneyland!



With some hungry fish!

Day Three

Day three started with a trip to the Catacombs, a series of underground tunnels into which they moved bodies from the overfilled cemteries of Paris in the 18th century. Another long line, but hey, this was Paris in the middle of summer... We made our way down many, many stairs and ended up 25 meters (82 feet) under the streets of Paris. If one were so inclined, freaking out would be very easy... It was pretty dark and narrow down there, although it did get better after a while. It was actually incredible interesting. The area was originally a quarry, and the first part of the walk was looking at remnants of the quarry, before we came upon the skeletons. Thousands of skeletons, stacked neatly on top of each other!







After our trip down into the depths, we decided to go for something different and headed over to the Eiffel Tower. More stairs, as we walked up to the second level. I was pretty worn out after all of the stairs and bike riding we had done in the last day!!





When we got back down, Espen was hungry, and he got the world's biggest hotdog - served in a baguette! I don't have any pictures of them, but Anders and Johan lived on crepes with sugar on them the whole time we were in Paris. They serve them everyone, and the kids were in 7th heaven!



We rounded off the day at a touristy pizza restaurant on the Champs Elysée, right by the Arc de Triomphe!

Day Two

While Gaute and Espen slept, Johan and Anders and I went out in the morning to pick up some breakfast stuff. The apartment we rented was just one block away from the rue Mouffetard, a well-known market street on the Left Bank. Lots of good bakeries and cheese shops and stuff like that. Our first stop was a bakery to pick up a couple of baguettes. Anders and Johan insisted that I take pictures of each of them with the "long breads".






Later, after the sleepy-heads woke up, we walked up to Notre Dame.



After walking around a bit inside, we went out to wait in the long line to climb up into the towers. Luckily, there was free entertainment in a street artist wearing a wig who would go "scaring" people to the great enjoyment of all of us tourists waiting in line. Anders and Johan thought it was fantastic.




It was a long wait and then A LOT of stairs up to the top, but the view from the top of Notre Dame was incredible. Totally worth it!





After Notre Dame, we met up with the group for our biking tour of Paris. Another great choice. They ended up dividing us into two different groups, so our family got a private tour of Paris. Riding bikes, we got to check lots of areas that we would have never seen on a bus. The weather was gorgeous, and it was fun riding around. The tour was 3 1/2 hours long - fine for the older boys, but I think it was a good thing that Gaute and Johan shared a tandem bike. The shot below is of the boys with our American guide, Christian.



Since we had kids with us, our guide took us by a shop which was immortalized in the movie Ratatouille. It was a shop selling rat poison, and they had lots of dead rats hanging in the windows. The kids thought that was pretty cool, especially since they'd seen the cartoon version of it in the movie.

Back online

Yes - finally - the computer with all of the pictures is back online. I've missed my good computer.

So - here come the first of the pictures from our trip to Paris. The one below was taken the night we got there when we went on a boat trip on the Seine. I was a bit late getting my camera out, so I didn't get the shot straight on, but you can still see the Eiffel Tower lit up blue with the EU stars on it, celebrating France's current presidency of the EU.

Fantastic birthday

As I mentioned yesterday, Gaute had told me that he had made reservations at a nice restaurant. When he got home from work, he told that the restaurant was Statholdergaarden, one of the very best restaurants in Oslo. Gaute actually knows the owner/chef as they used to do orienteering together, but neither of us had been there before. It's not exactly the kind of place you just pop into on a whim. It was expensive, but the food was incredible. We really went for it and got the 6 course menu of the day with accompanying wines. It was a 4 hour meal, with new courses and wines showing up all of the time, one better than the other. It was so good and so much fun!

Gaute also showed up with a pair of diamond earrings for me yesterday. When we got married, he gave me some diamond earrings and I lost one of them when Espen was a baby. Gaute has always talked about replacing them, and now he did.

These were pretty big birthday gifts this year, but last week was our 15th anniversary, which we hadn't celebrated yet. Nor had my dear husband ever done anything to celebrate the fact that I got my 2nd bachelor's degree and a job. So now we rolled everything up into one big blowout!


But - that's not all... We also found out yesterday that the offer we made on a studio apartment was accepted! Gaute has been talking for years about investing in real estate, and now the time just seemed to be right. So, we put in an offer on a little 300 square foot apartment up the street from us, which we can rent out. We'll be taking out a loan to finance the purchase, but the rental income will pretty much cover the mortgage payment, and slowly but surely we will be building equity in it.

Birthday!

It's my birthday today! And so far it's been a great day. The last couple of years, I've been getting somewhat depressed on my birthdays, and I was worried that the same thing would happen this year, but so far so good.

I woke up and opened my presents (lots of great stuff - thanks!), played around on the internet for a while. Then our cleaning lady came to clean our house (something that always makes me happy). I did a few errands, looked in some shops, and then I went and had a facial (a gift from Gaute). It was sooo nice. One and a half hours, including a neck and shoulder massage. Just what I needed.

Gaute has told me that he has made dinner reservations for tonight. He won't tell me where, but he said I should get dressed up. Pretty exciting... Time to head upstairs and figure out what to where!

Kids off to Ørsta

Tonight the kids are heading off to Gaute's parents' cabin in Ørsta, on the west coast. They're taking an overnight bus with Gaute's mom. I'm not quite sure how that will go, but she keeps telling us that the bus trip is great (she's done it many times), and we don't really want to drive them up there - and plane tickets are really expensive right now. The kids are pretty excited. The cabin is right on a lake, and they have a little row boat up there and go out fishing every evening. And one of Gaute's cousins has a bigger fishing boat which they take out on the ocean, too. They'll probably be up there about a week - no definite plans at this point.

I start working on Monday! I'm excited - but a little bit nervous. School doesn't actually start until the 18th, so that first week I'm working will just be planning. Actually Monday and Tuesday, all of the teachers at the school will be off on an overnight course to discuss some timely educational issue. I think it should be kind of fun - a good way to get to know my new colleagues.

Liverpool won!

They won last night, 4-1. And Torres scored!!!

Liverpool game tonight - in Oslo!

As some of you may have heard....Liverpool is going to play a training match here in Oslo tonight. And they're playing against Vålerenga who are Lyn's biggest rivals. So it's pretty exciting!! Espen and his two best Liverpool supporter friends are going to head down to the stadium at 3:00 (the game starts at 7), because they want to make sure they're there when the Liverpool players show up. This is a really big thing for Espen and his friends!!

And the rest of us are looking forward to it, too. Although, we're not planning on getting there until 6:00...

Home again, home again...

We're back from a fantastic trip to Paris. We had such a good time, and I want to write all about it. But, while we were gone, there was a huge lightning storm right above our house, and now it fried the router to my "main" computer, which means that I can't get online from that computer. And I have all of my pics from Paris on that computer, so I'm going to wait until the internet is back up and running and then right about the trip with accompanying photos :-)

We got back on Wednesday, and the weather has been gorgeous here since then. Warm and sunny and sooo nice. But we woke up to rain this morning, with rain forecast for the next few days... It kind of sucks, but it's kind of nice to have an excuse to stay inside all day, too...

Tomorrow - Paris!

I just finished getting everything packed and organized before we leave for Paris tomorrow. I'm excited about the trip - even though I've been there a couple of times before, it will be so fun to see it through the kids' eyes. Gaute has never spent any time in Paris, either, so it will be exciting for him.

I spent a lot of time yesterday putting together a tentative plan for what we will be doing during the week we will be there, as well as making any reservations that needed to be made. I want to have time to relax and wander around, but it's good to have an idea of what we really want to prioritize, too.

Our plane lands at Orly airport tomorrow at 7 tommorow evening. If we have time, we might take an evening cruise along the Seine after we find our apartment. I know that we will want to get right out and do something, and they have cruises every half hour - the last at 10:30 - and the place to get on is close to where we will be staying (52 rue Lhomond for those of you who want to look it up on Google Earth).

On Thursday, the plan is to take it easy in the morning and just wander around. At 3 pm, I've reserved a 3 1/2 hour guided bike tour for all of us. The place has gotten great reviews, and I reserved a tandem bike for Gaute and Johan so that we don't have to worry about him keeping up. I think it will be such a fun way to see Paris - much better than sitting on a bus.

I think we'll head over to the Eiffel Tower later that evening. It's supposed to be less crowded in the evening, and beautiful when they turn on the lights.

Friday is Notre Dame and the Catacombes - both of which the kids are really excited to see.

Saturday I think we'll head out to Versailles and walk around there.

Sunday is the final day of the Tour de France when all of the riders take several laps on the Champs-Elysees, so we'll be standing there with the thousands of other people cheering someone on. Gaute is in to the Tour de France and watches it every day, but I've never really paid any attention. I'm sure we'll all catch the fever on Sunday, though!

On Monday, it's off to Disneyland Paris, about a 30 minute train ride from Paris. I already bought our tickets online, so that's one less line when we get to the park. I'm sure it will be packed, though...But, it will be fun...

No plans for Tuesday, our last day. Just going to see what strikes our fancy.

And then, we leave early Wednesday morning...

Smoky

A few days after we arrived in California, there was a big lightning storm which caused fires all over the state. From then on, smoke was our constant companion. Some days it was less noticeable than others (when Josh and his family were there, we bare noticed it at all). Other days, you could barely go outside, it was so bad.

This morning I put on a top that I bought in California and haven't worn yet (the off-white linen one, Mom). It smells like smoke!

Aaahhh...it brings back memories of my summer vacation...

Home again!

We're back in Norway. The flight home went well, but it's always so much more grueling to fly east than it is to fly west. A long day is easier than a short night. The kids slept quite a bit on the plane, though, and when they weren't sleeping, they were happily occupied with watching movies and cartoons on the inflight entertainment system. Virgin Atlantic is great when it comes to entertainment! The kid's meal was even good this time. Mac and cheese, string cheese, carrot sticks, raisins and Scooby snacks.

It was raining when we landed at Gardermoen yesterday, but it's fairly nice weather today. Partly cloudy and 66 degrees. Typical Norwegian summer weather...

I've spent the morning unpacking, but I still have a bit to go. The trick is finding space for all of the things I bought!

Happy 4th of July

For the last two weeks, I've been at my mom's house in California. It's been a strange two weeks. There have been hundreds of fires in northern California, and the smoke from them was intense last week. It looked like everything was covered in fog, but it was smoke. Hanging out in the pool has not been very appealing. But spending time in stores has been great.

This week has been much nicer, though. And just in time, because Josh and his family arrived last Sunday. We have had a really fun, busy time. Our kids have SOOO much fun together. I love being able to get them together.

Today is the fourth of July - lots of fun and games as usual. Right now there are 20 of us up here at Mom's and Jim's house. The musicians in the family (Josh, Dan, Jim and Denny) are jamming on their respective instruments and the rest of us are hanging out and enjoying being together. A big game of Catch Phrase is scheduled for later this afternoon.

Fun, fun, fun....

Cute pictures

I didn't take these pictures, the mom of one of Anders' friends did. They were taken at a football tournament Anders played in a few weekends ago. It was super hot that day, and all of the kids had been dunking their heads under water to keep cool. I love these pictures of them eating popsicles.

Street urchins

The kids' clothes are not looking great these days. I've been trying to put off buying them things, because I know that in California everything costs about half what it does here in Oslo. Thus, Anders is going around with big holes in his tennis shoes. Gaute decided to go all out with the white trash look yesterday when he DUCK-TAPED the holes on Saturday!



Espen has grown out of just about everything he owns, so he will basically be getting an entire new wardrobe this summer. I think I will scream if I see him in his black fleece sweatpants one more time! I tried to take a picture of him yesterday, but I all I got was, "Talk to the hand!"



Our warm, beautiful summer weather is gone. The huge amounts of sunshine we got the last few weeks, followed now by the rain has resulted in gorgeous flowers in the yard, though.

Goalie

Johan had a football game last night, and he started the game in his favorite postion, goalie. He was goalie in their very first game this season, and he did such a great job that he quickly became known as the best goalie in the 2nd grade :-). So now he makes sure that he's goalie at least one half of each game.

But, although I didn't get a picture of it, he managed to score his first goal of the season last night as well!!