Morning Portraits

We just out of the shower, and everyone was looking relatively cute. Ruby got ribbons in her hair, and C is wearing a matching turtleneck and sweatervest! Squee!

I’ve been looking through some of our oldest pictures and being very amused at the sizes of bows they put on little girls back then. And I guess I got a little inspired, too.

Hey, tying a good bow is harder than you think!

one of my favorites

My darling family…

The children were getting bored of being photographed, so Chris is trying to distract them with a good old game of where’s the pink panther. (Or “pink panter” as Ruby calls him.)

The camera angle was a little too low, otherwise this was a surprisingly successful timer-shot (usually someone is doing something wacky when the timer goes off.)

So, C was back at school this week (after last week’s vacation). Monday C had an “incident” with his friend Christian Andres, he smacked him in the face with a sled. Everyone was sad and upset, except C who didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong, and Christian Andres who told me “Det går bra!” (“it’s fine!”). Tuesday was normal, Chris has his phone meeting late so misses having dinner with us. Wednesday night was our first game night in a couple of weeks (Chris being sick), and it was just us and Johannes. Chris M. came over for dinner Wednesday, but he didn’t stay to play. We played the new game that Johannes got for his birthday called Goa. It was alright. It usually takes a couple of times before a person can get into a game, but it started to get fun near the end. I went to a farewell party for Aina, the woman from INN who helped us settle in and get oriented here in Oslo. That was pretty fun for me. I met some new people, and actually got to sit inside a bar, and drink some wine. Wow! Friday afternoon we planned a sledding picnic in the park. We had to make an emergency stop at the store to buy new boots, though, because C actually developed large holes in the bottoms of both of his old ones! We had a ton of fun sledding (but forgot to bring the camera of course) and Ruby even enjoyed herself somewhat. She’s been a little unsure about this sledding stuff.

C’s new Norwegian phrase: “Huska er ledig!” which (Johannes tipped us off) means “The swing is free.” C taught us this phrase at 6 am on Thursday. This whole sleep-learning things seems pretty effective for us. It seems I’m not likely to forget a phrase that’s been hollered over and over again while I vainly try to get a couple more minutes’ sleep. C also made up a very charming song this week, which he and Ruby have been chanting at ungodly hours of the morning. It goes like this: “Julemesse Sardine! Julemesse Sardine! Julemesse Sardiiiiiiiiine!” The tune is improvised each time.

Ruby tried hard to say the word “girl” this week, an elusive and cunning prey. “Gore. L-l-l-l-llll. Gore.” She just can’t fit that L in there.

C got a little sick on Saturday (slightly wheezy breathing, no appetite), but otherwise the weekend was nice. We visited -nille again, it’s becoming our favorite store. It’s kind of like a dollar store, but nothing costs a dollar here so we didn’t think they had those here. So we’ve been enjoying exploring what it has to offer. We bought a thermos and insulated mugs for hikes, some little tupperware, and more yarn, and mittens, and some bubbles for the kids, and a waffle iron!!! We had waffels for dinner. Sunday Chris and C got hair cuts, and we lazed around the apartment. We should have gone for a walk because it was very warm. But we are very lazy.

Flashes make people look plastic.

No, this is actually a wax model of C that I’ve been working on… pretty good, huh?

Flashes suck… where’s the motion-blur?! Dude, our kids aren’t just blurry in pictures; they really blur like that!