Christmas fun

Here's a quick picture of me going to a formal Christmas reception at Sola Sjø. It was hosted by the Norwegian National Headquarters and the NATO Joint Warfare Centre. I love going to this function each year because at one point we sing "Silent Night" in Norwegian, German and then English. Then once we have sung it in each language, we all sing it in our native language at the same time. Kinda cool. We had a guest speaker there that was an 89 year old Norwegian man. He had left Norway in a cutter boat in 1941 to flee from the Nazis. He made it to the UK and joined their military. He was later reinserted into Norway and managed to disrupt the Nazi plant that was working on the atom bomb near Oslo. It disabled their plant and well...the rest is history. He was a very gracious man and a great hero to the Norwegians....well, and to anyone who has ever heard his story. Evidently the story well known and made into a 1965 movie starring Kurt Douglas called "Heroes of Telemark", portraying the Norwegian underground. It was very moving just to be in the same room with this great hero.

Miss Lily Su Grace

Lily took a spill down the stairs recently...and got quite a bruise on her chin. This was actually before it got really dark and nasty-looking. I can say that within a week it was gone and she never complained that it hurt. It just looked really bad. So we accessorized by matching her dress to her chin...deep purple! Her Grandma got her dolly a matching outfit for Christmas.

Middle School Dance

The first Middle School dance was just a week or so ago and here are some pictures from the event. I was there handing out treats for the kids. Parents are prohibited from entering the student dance area, but each student that attends has to bring either a drink, sweet or savory dish (depending on if you are in the 6th, 7th, or 8th grade). I was manning the tables with the food to make sure no one had low blood sugar during the three hour dance. The attire is semi-formal (as it is for all middle school dances at ISS). The boys have to wear button down shirts, smart trousers, no trainers. The girls are usually quite decked out in their slightly more than semi-formal dancewear. The PE department has the entire class body doing dancing lessons for the two weeks leading up to the dance so no one can say they don't know how to dance. The teachers get them started with a warm-up dance and it just goes from there. The etiquette for the dance is you have to accept a dance from everyone who asks you...so the nerdiest guy in the 6th grade can actually have a dance with the hottest 8th grade girl if he is so inclined to ask her. She has to accept at least once. Pretty good deal.
As you can see...Joe does fine with the women. :o) He is not interested in any particular gal though...still more concerned with basketball than girls at this point. He just has a lot of friends. Tim is quite the dancer. I am amazed that this once very shy kid gets out on the dance floor and just lets it all hang out. He even tries his hand at breakdancing...and isn't too bad at hiphop. That semester of ballet and tap as a 5 year old must not have scarred him for life after all. (I was kinda worried about that!)

Barcelona

Tim got the experience of living in Barcelona, Spain for 9 days with a host family. Around 25 Spanish class students from here at the International School of Stavanger, traveled to Barcelona on Nov 22nd and returned Dec 1st. Here are some of the pictures from his exchange family and his teachers. I hope to get some pictures directly from Tim one of these days. His exchange partner will come to spend 10 days with us in May. Joe did this last year as well. It is a fabulous program! They got to see and do quite a bit...learned some flaminco dancing (still waiting for Tim to demonstrate for me) and saw lots of Gaudi's greatest architectural feats. He also got to go to a professional fotbol game...ended in a tie but he was in a VIP box with his host family and LOVED every minute of it!

Misc....

I wanted to post these pictures from a beautiful double rainbow behind our house yesterday.
I also wanted to add in this bit of random information....Tim has been working on a project about Shaquille O'Neal (the famous basketball player) and created a mock up of one of his size 23 footprints for a report. That's the length of Lily's leg! Lol!

Last Lillegym for Lily

Monday, Dec 8th was Lily's last Lillegym class at the British International School in Stavanger (BISS). She is aging out of the class...getting too old. They had a special holiday themed hour of fun. They even had a huge blizzard inside with scraps of newspaper. There are moms and children from all over the world at the class, and it is a nice way to spend your Monday morning.

St.Svithun's Nativity Play

On Sunday, December 7th, we had a Nativity play at our church, St. Svithun's. Lily was a donkey, Joe was a cow and Tim was a reader and a back stage sound-effects guy. It was a lot of fun and I think the kids and the parents really enjoyed it! I was helping to get everyone where they needed to be so I didn't get many pictures. However, I will be getting a few pictures from some friends. I'll post them here when I get them.