Kona has arrived!

After meeting her at only 10 days of age, we finally have her home with us! Kona came to live with us on Sunday, April 26th. We picked her up after lacrosse practice (which is why Lily and I attended in the first place). She is 8 weeks now and has quite a fun personality. Joe thinks she looks like a tazmanian devil...I hope that is not indicative of her future behavior! She is doing quite well and so far everything is going well. She and Cheyenne get along brilliantly and we are trying to get her into somewhat of a routine. Luckily, she walks for awhile outside with us and then crashes for two hours.
Tim left Monday morning at 5:50 a.m. to fly to Oslo for a two day 6th grade field trip. He'll be back Tuesday night. His only reservation about going was that he would miss the first few days Kona would be here. :o) He's supposed to be taking pictures of his trip, so I hope to post a few in the next day or so.

Lacrosse

As if we didn't have enough with baseball for each boy, track and field for Joe and rugby for Tim (don't have any pictures yet, but will...), Rich and the boys hopped back into lacrosse this past Sunday. Of course, per typical lacrosse in Norway, it was pouring. Lily had come down with a bit of a cold, so I kept her in the car with me...you can see what we did...we watched for awhile (it was 2 hours long) and then Lily praciced driving while singing to hits of the 1970's. No, I am not a disco fan. However, it has songs that she totally loves...'Lean on Me', 'Locomotion', and 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on it...and to top it off, it is sung by the Veggie Tales veggies. They are her new favorite...I have to be honest, I have to grab my throat everytime I listen to them sing...it has to hurt your voice to make yourself sound like that and belt out songs at the same time. She is always singing these tunes though...she broke into 'Funky Town' at dinner last night. :o)

Siddislopet

Joe didn't get to play his baseball game this weekend because he had a race in Stavanger. Siddislopet (the 'o' has a slash through it but can't find a quick way to do it on this blog) is a race around Stokke Lake....it is 8.2 km or about 5 miles. I told Joe I would just be happy if he finished. He ended up running quite well and finished at 41:30. Not bad! They had nearly 50 middle school and high school kids from ISS there and Joe was in the top 5 of the middle schoolers. The number one finisher for ISS was a ninth grader from France...a buddy of his from basketball season, baseball and now track. He finished in 29 minutes. Pretty good! They hired a professional physical exercise person to warm up the hundreds of runners that were there. She took them through a 25 minute aerobics routine! The music was American music and the ISS kids were up on a hill following her and singing at the tops of their lungs. That was so fun to watch! They all had a great time (despite running 5 miles!)

Week 2 in baseball for Tim

This past Saturday was not as beautiful as the opening weekend of baseball games the week prior. We sat in the cold, damp weather, trying to keep warm and dry. Tim got a chance to play catcher and enjoyed himself. The picture of the girl is a good friend of his from school, Marina. Her uncle is the team doctor for the Red Sox and the Patriots. Good New England family!
There had been a dog that seems to have lost his way home at the baseball game. Evidently, he had been there the night before for Joe's practice as well. Joe called him Bob and he was a Border collie. He was incredibly smart and obidient. I think that Joe might have convinced Rich to bring him home if we weren't going to get Kona the next day. He went home with a different baseball family. Bob sure took to Joe, though.

The Iron Age Farm

She appears to be smiling, but this ewe came right up behind her as she was sitting on a stone wall and bleated right in her ear. The result was her jumping down and forward as quickly as possible!







Lily and I met up with three other women and little boy on Friday, April 25th, to visit the Iron Age Farm about 10 minutes drive from here in Ullandhaugen. It was very interesting to learn about the people that lived here 1500 to 2500 years ago. We made bread over the fire and sat on the sheepskin bunks in the long, low sod houses. There were sheep and their lambs in the fields around it and we took some time to say hello to them. The water is Hafrsfjord.

A taste of spring in Norway

These are a few pictures I took at the base of our driveway. Lily had been picking "flowers" (dandelions) and I had to take a few pictures. The daffodils are in full bloom all over the place here and the tulips are also starting to bloom right now. I have a similar picture of the boys when they were younger...maybe 4 and 6 years of age, with fistfuls of dandelions for their mommy.
The cute spring outfit was from Grandma and Grandpa Neitzke for Easter. We are hoping to get warm enough weather at some point this summer that she won't have to wear a turtle neck under it!

Pictures at the Three Swords

The Three Swords is a monument to the last great battle in Norway (between Norwegians) in the 900's. I go by the monument everyday. We stopped and took some pictures since it was sunny outside. There is a family of swans that live there. There were two women riding horses that kept splashing in the water as well. It was a nice day.