The latest (and hopefully last) entry about Espen's eyes

Gaute and Espen were at the hospital for a checkup last week, and everything looked great. His one eye still has a tendency to wander every now and then, but he can correct it himself. They were very pleased with how things looked, and they don't want to see him anymore!! That is, I'm sure they'd like to see him again, but they don't need to. It is so nice to be done with that! And I'm pretty sure Espen is the happiest of all of us.

Real winter

This is what it should look like....

Bonjour!

So, I bought tickets to Paris...One of the discount airlines had cheap tickets available. We paid 3500 kroner (about $700) for the whole family. (That seems much cheaper in kroner than it does in dollars!) It's a really good deal! So we'll be there for a week at the end of July. And, as an added bonus, Gaute has discovered that the last leg of the Tour de France, in Paris, will be one of the days we are there! He was psyched, to put it mildly.

Finding a good deal on a hotel is proving more difficult. Rooms for 5 people are pretty much nonexistent. And getting two rooms is pretty expensive, as it's not exactly the cheapest city in the world. I'm thinking renting an apartment will be the best option. But how to know which property management places you can trust?? I'm sure I'll figure it out.

The most popular tourist destination in the world

Gaute is not going with us to the U.S. this summer. He only goes with us every other year, due to the fact that tickets are expensive and seeing my family is not as important to him as it is to me.

Because we're saving so much money on his ticket, we decided to take a family vacation with him after we get back from California. This morning while we ate breakfast, we had a vote to decide where we should go. Everyone named some places they'd like to go on vacation and then we each ranked them. The choices ranged from Legoland to New York, with a cluster of British cities (London, York, Liverpool (Espen's choice :-))). Paris came out the winner, however, so that's where we're going! I'm so excited!!

Winter Wonderland?

It's dark and raining and windy...Today on my way to school, a gust of wind came along and inverted by umbrella and destroyed it. This is not the winter weather I ordered!

Yes, I'm still alive....I just haven't been very motivated to blog lately. I had a really nice Christmas vacation and started back to school feeling full of energy. That lasted about one day. Then it was back to that good old stressed-out feeling. And I don't even have any papers due or anything right now. I just need to get back into a different rhythm - going to bed early and waking up early.

Other than me having tense shoulders, things are going very well here. Anders and Johan started a downhill skiing course that they go to with their afterschool program. It's once a week at one of the resorts here in Oslo.

Espen's football practice has started up again. It's twice a week now and they'll be up to three days a week starting February 1. The good thing is that he and his friends walk up to practice by themselves, so it doesn't disturb life for the rest of us.

Today, Anders and Johan and I went to the library to check out some new books. Although I'm a big fan of buying books, because I like to have them sitting there on my bookshelf, I know that it's also really fun to go the library and check out as many books as you want. Their school is having a big reading campaign right now, and they have to read for half an hour every day for homework, so they're really going through the books like crazy. Even Espen, the boy who "hates reading", has been reading. For Christmas, I gave him a biography of Lyn's coach, who used to play for Manchester United. He is really enjoying it, and I think it's renewing his interest in reading. Luckily, Anders and Johan love reading, so I don't have to try and come up with motivations for them.

We're taking the kids to see a movie in a few minutes - Enchanted. It looks like a fun movie, and they're excited. We don't get out much...

It's snowing like crazy today - Yea!

Action videos...

More fun from last week...

The video of Anders and Johan was taken the second time ever they were on downhill skis .

Romjul på hytta

As you can see below, we have been doing a lot of skiing the last week. Unlike Oslo, there was a lot of snow up at our cabin and great trails. It was so nice to be outside enjoying the winter. On New Year's Eve, it was sunny and about 25 degrees - the second two pictures are taken that day.

We're off to our cabin today. There's not enough snow in Oslo to go skiing, but apparently the mountains where our cabin is have gotten a lot. We're all excited about going skiing for the first time this year. And now everyone has downhill skis, too (well, Gaute has telemark skis), so we're going to do some downhill skiing as well as cross country.

The webcamera at our cabin has been having problems lately, but Gaute is going to fix it when we get up there today, so check back on http://langaas.net/nokia/nrc/glenna.php and you should be able to see what it looks like up there.

I wrote a lot about Christmas Eve, but I should say that Christmas Day was great, too. The kids stayed in bed until their official wake-up time of 7, and then we went down and opened the presents. Lots of good stuff - everyone was very pleased!! Santa brought a new flat screen TV for our new "rec room" in the basement, and Grandma and Grandpa Jim bought us a foosball game, so we are set now. The kids had a good place to set up the new Legos and Playmobil they got for Christmas, between playing with the Playstation and foosball game.

Kari and Grim came over about noon for a Christmas brunch, with buttermilk biscuits and bread and lots of good stuff. They stayed for a few hours, and the kids got to show them all of their new toys. The rest of the day was pretty relaxing - we were all pretty worn out!

And now we're off to the mountains. We'll stay there until January 2nd and celebrate New Year's up there like we have the last couple of years. New Year's Eve at our cabin is so nice. We eat fondue and the kids drink soda out of wine glasses. On New Year's Eve in Norway, people light fireworks, the cool kinds like bottle rockets and stuff like that. When it gets close to midnight, we can see that there are quite a few people up at their cabins, because the sky starts lighting up with fireworks - it's really cool!

Pictures from the 24th

Skating

Yesterday was one of the most beautiful winter days ever. We still had frost coating everything, it had snowed a little bit the night before, and the sun was shining.

We went ice skating on Sognsvann, a lake about 5 minutes from our house....

Christmas Eve

It's the morning of Christmas Eve. As usual, I'm up early, since sleeping in seems to be a thing of the past for me.

I just made my daily list of things to do, and, thankfully, it's not long. I've already made lots of the yummy stuff that we eat at Christmas - gingerbread cookies, candy cane cookies, pretzel cookies, Mexican wedding cookies (my absolute favorites!!), English toffee and fudge. I need to make the Rice Krispie treats, vacuum and wash the floors. I also have to make a quick trip to the mall with Espen, since he hasn't gotten gifts from more friends than he was counting on and has to buy a few more things. He and his friends are pretty in to getting each other things, but luckily that trend hasn't reached the 4th or 2nd grades. Although, he's paying for these gifts with his own money, so I shouldn't complain.

Today is the official Christmas day in Norway, but it doesn't start until the afternoon. It's acually a regular work day until 12:00. Gaute won't be going in, though, and most people who have somewhat flexible hours don't work today. Most people take the whole next week off. The week between Christmas and New Year's actually has its own name in Norway - Romjul. Both the 25th and 26th are official holidays. We're heading up to our cabin on Thursday and will be probably be there until January 2nd.

Today will be the same procedure as last year, and as every year. This afternoon, we will put on our party clothes and at 3:00, we're off to church. I am quite the hypocrite, I know. It's fun to go to church in Norway on Christmas Eve, though. They have three services, at 1:30, 3:00 and 4:30. Each neighborhood has its own local church - Norwegian Lutheran Church, the state religion. The church is packed on Christmas Eve with all of our neighbors, everyone all dressed-up. The service consists mostly of everyone singing Christmas carols, and it's a nice start to Christmas Eve.

After that, we will go up to Kari and Grim's (Gaute's parents), where dinner will be almost finished. Grim will take us down to the basement where we will be served glogg (a type of spiced cider, with and without wine) and gingerbread cookies. Then, it's back upstairs again for the special ribs most Norwegians eat for Christmas, as well as Christmas meat balls and sausages, accompanied by homemade sauerkraut, boiled potatoes and the BEST brown gravy, ever. I'm not a huge carnivore, so I usually eat lots of gravy with potatoes and sauerkraut. And the rice cream which is served for dessert. There's always a scalded almond in the rice cream, and whoever gets that gets a marzipan pig. Last year, Johan won! And he was happy, because, like Anders and me, he thinks marzipan is manna from heaven.

After that, it's time to start opening some presents. While Christmas Eve IS Christmas in Norway, the 25th is still the REAL Christmas in our family. So, on Christmas Eve, we just open the gifts from Gaute's family, and none of the presents that we have given each other. Also, the Norwegian Santa Claus, julenissen, stops by with some gifts for the kids. Unlike Santa Claus, julenisse shows up at the door with a sack of presents and personally passes out the presents to the kids. For some reason, the kids think julenissen, although he is wearing a mask, looks a lot like Grim. Not that they want him to stop showing up, though. The American Santa Claus, though, who comes at night, is real, according to Anders and Johan. Espen is no longer a true believer, however.

In between opening gifts and greeting julenissen, we eat a large number of the delicious cookies that Kari has made. Full is not an adequate description of how I feel by the end of the evening.

At around 10 or so, we head back home, so that the kids can get in bed before Santa shows up. Everyone opens their official X-mas eve packages. Pajamas every year, but exciting nonetheless. Then the kids hang up their stockings and arrange a platter of cookies for Santa (with a carrot for the reindeer). And, as they say, the rest is history....

Summer vacation, part 2

After a night in Spokane (and a great dinner at the food court at the mall (hey, it was great, really - they had a Taco Time)), we drove into Montana and down to the lovely town of West Yellowstone. We considered for a long time camping in the park, or in Grand Teton, but decided that it would be too complicated since we would be flying over from Norway, and we wouldn't really be able to take any camping gear with us. I had been in West Yellowstone as a kid and remembered it as a kind of charming little western town. So much for childhood memories... The town itself wasn't so bad, but the people staying there were pretty scary. It seems that West Yellowstone is the town to stay in if you want to go to Yellowstone, but you can't camp because they don't make a sleeping bag big enough for you.

The kids loved the never-ending supply of powdered sugar donuts at the motel breakfast, though.

We got into town in the late afternoon, and one of the first things we saw was that there was going to be a rodeo just out of town that same evening. Yee-haw! Taking the kids to a rodeo was one of my goals for this trip. It was just a little local rodeo, but the rodeo clown was pretty funny, and we had a fun time.

Summer vacation, part 1

I never got around to publishing my pictures from our summer vacation. I was looking through them recently with Anders and Johan, and we were talking about what an incredibly wonderful vacation we had. So now I'm going to try to get some of the pictures out there.

We flew into Seattle and spent the first night at a not-so-great motel, but we were so tired, that the condition of our hotel was absolutely not an issue. The next day, we got up and drove into downtown Seattle where we paid a lot of money to go up to the top of the Space Needle. It was worth it, of course. The Space Needle was pretty exciting for the kids, especially since it's a Seattle landmark that they see on TV a lot.

From there, we plotted a westward course. We were on a road trip, so we stopped at all of the cool places along the way.



The kids saw their first petrified trees.










Just across the river (the Columbia) from the petrified forest were these really cool metal horses.

Can you hide anything in your shoes that you cannot hide in your underwear?

Hmmmm, what a shock! A new report shows that there is no proof that all of the security measures that airline passengers have to go through make flying any safer.

But surely there's a reason I have to put my lip gloss in a ziploc bag...

Last Day of School

Today is the kids' last day of school before Christmas. They have two weeks of vacation - they start back again on January 3rd. They were pretty hyper this morning!

I took the boys to the mall last night so they could buy gifts for each other and for Gaute. I won't give anything away by saying what they bought, but I can say that they did a good job. I don't think anyone will be disappointed Christmas morning.

Winter Wonderland

A week of:

temperatures around 13 - 14 degrees Fahrenheit

+

relatively high humidity

=

Wasting time with a good conscience

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

More fun than a barrel of monkeys

This was just so much fun that I had to make one more, this time with me and Gaute...

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1534042112

Elfed

The Langaas boys bringing you some Christmas cheer....

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1516118336

Thanks, Midori, for sending me this link....