17. Mai!

The seventeenth of May is a special day for Norwegians… I don’t know, something about a constitution. But the important part is dressing up in your special clothes and walking around the city, visiting the king at his palace for a wave, and watching the city’s children in the children’s parade. It’s a great holiday… maybe my second favorite after (American) Thanksgiving.

This year we met the INN folks for a little brunch, then set off to the palace. We didn’t even bother trying to crowd in to see the king, or the parade. We just watched everyone dressed up in their pretty clothes and found a nice place in the back of the palace park to have our very-norwegian waffles and brunost picnic. It was a great day!

Yes, yes, I was trying to get those girls in their cute bunad in the shot.

Just like last year, I tried to slyly snap some pictures of passers-by in their special clothes. Just a shade purpler, and this suit would be pimp-worthy!

You see many, many more women than men in the traditional outfits. I think the men’s clothes are awesome, though! Check out the tassles on those knee pants!

Ruby actually prefers not to ride in the wagon, usually. And it’s all I can do to keep C out of it! (He’s so heavy to pull these days!)

I think 90% of the bunad outfits are adorable, another 9% are cute in a traditional way, and then there’s the sad ugly 1%. Please don’t hate me, Norway! It’s hard to tell, but it’s some kind of felted wool hoop-skirt kind of thing, with the skirt made up of a mini-pleated fabric, and the back of the bodice has this weird split fabric with a peek-a-boo patterend fabric underneath. And then there’s that head-ribbon thing…

I celebrated the Norwegian holiday by slicing brunost with a cheese plane (invented by a Norwegian, you know!)

He just got a haircut — so short!

I think he looks a lot like my dad.

Check out those cute kids in the background!

C took this picture of us. You can see Chris saying “point it a little higher!”

C took this also…

C took a lot of pictures of us. I only kept the ones that had someone’s face in it!

It was a rainy day Monday and C stayed home from school. I went to another SnB meeting, this time at Erin’s apartment. C received some early birthday presents and packages this week (from Mercedes and my grandma). I haven’t even begun to plan the party yet! Wednesday was the 17th of May. We went to the INN breakfast in the morning and schmoozed a little. Then we took our waffles to the palace park and watched all the Norwegians. We stayed on the other side of the palace from the big parade, though, so it wasn’t that crazy. C took this picture of us on our 17th of May picnic. We had a quiet game night with only Arne Martin, who won Entdecker. Friday Chris and C stayed home. They’ve been playing a lot of “the hat game” (as C calls it, because the icon is a helmet), Age of Kings. Chris enjoyed playing with the macro setting on the camera taking pictures of itty bitty things on Saturday. Sunday we went to the St. Hanshaugen park and played at the playground at the northern end. We gave C the big rubber mallet to walk around and bang stuff. Good to get some of that energy out! I’m still reading lots of knitting blogs and exploring new RSS feeds. I spent a lot of time this week searching for yarn and patterns for the lace project. The cotton top and the purple alpaca shrug are seeing some progress. Also, I finished reading the Alpha Centauri books. They were good. Sad. Weird. We’ve been watching episodes of Andromeda and Numb3rs.

That’s a pretty good picture that C took!

I took this one myself.

I could not get over how cute the children were this year!