Well, Joe and Rich ended up getting sick but thus far the Messina women have staved off the bug. :o) Lily and I took our chance to get out of the house on Monday morning to play in the snow! We had an inch or two on the ground. Lily had never been in the snow before, so this was sooooo much fun. I decked her out in her Norwegian snowsuit (that the kids her age pretty much wear all the time here...no just in snow) and her snow boots. I put on a cute little mitten that I think had been one of my nieces' mittens and off we went on an adventure! She just kept smiling so big! I let her taste the snow...helped make a snowball for her and we made a microscopic snowman that was about 8 inches tall. (I didn't have much to work with and it was enough to impress her.) You'll notice in the pictures that the sun is just coming up...or it looks like it. It was 11:15 a.m. The days are getting pretty short around here. The streetlamps are on and it is really more dark than light by 3:30 p.m. and the sun really isn't up until 9:30 or so. That would be on a clear day. We haven't had many of those as of late...it's been pretty overcast, which also diminishes our sunlight. And by the way, she hasn't taken off that mitten (looks like a little bear or something) since. She sleeps with it on and has to have it with her everywhere she goes. By Tuesday, everyone was back at work and school. The boys had their choral concert Tuesday night. In the 6th and 7th grades here choir and band are required classes for every student. We'll go back for the band concert in two weeks. There were four choirs that sang. It was fun to see the boys singing on stage. We were told when joining the school that they would have to have button-down white dress shirts and black dress pants and black dress shoes for concerts. Everyone looked so nice! Tim was easy to spot as he was the only one with flaming red hair! The choirs sang in English, Spanish, Catalonian, and a variety of African languages, which was really very cool. The 6th graders stole the show with their enthusiastic personalities and strong voices. I think there are about 40 6th graders at ISS and they all knew the words to their songs and sang their hearts out. It was a wonderful evening. I am so excited to see the band concert! Wednesday night was the premier games for the boys JV basketball team. There are so many boys that have come out to play basketball this year between 6th and 9th grades that they have 3 teams. This is kind of a good thing as basketball is not at all a Norwegian sport and it is sometimes hard to find other teams to play against. This was an in-house game. Joe was on the white team and Tim on the red. Yep, they were against each other. Tim is a great defensive player...but a little timid. He should have plenty of time to get over that! Joe scored a couple of times and also fouled a couple of times...so he doesn't seem to have that same problem of being timid as Tim does. It was fun to cheer them on...and be able to cheer for each basket made...no matter which team scored. The girls team played afterwards. If men's basketball is rare here, women's is nearly non-existent. Even at ISS, there are only enough girls for a combined team...no JV or Varsity. So the girls team takes the court ready to go to battle with another team from the local area. All the parents are staring at the visitors bench. What we thought was the cheer section was their team....girls around ages 8, 9 and 10 years old. There was something lost in translation....girls in grades 8, 9, 10 vs ages 8,9, 10. Hmmmm....The athletic director was quick on her feet and had the ISS women's team scrimmage each other for 2 quarters and then went to another smaller gym in the school and had a 3rd and 4th grade team that was practicing for intramurals come over and scrimmage the visiting team for 2 quarters. It all worked out! It was something to chuckle over though! (That and Lily working the crowd by honking people's noses she knows with her bear-mittened hand!)
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