After a rainy weekend, we've had three beautiful sunny days.

World's longest hopscotch arena.  Numbers were added later to the squares.  By the time we brought the kids in for bed, the neighborhood kids were up to over 250.

Dave called home on Tuesday to report the unusual walk he had to his office.  It required stepping over duct-taped students wriggling on the floor of the central building at the university.  It's part of the initiation ritual for the first year students at the university.  They start out in the main lawn, have their ankles duct-taped together and their hands duct-taped behind their back, and then they need to roll/crawl/writhe their way across the lawn, up the steps of the main building, through the long hallway, and into the cafeteria.  Some of the students were taped together.  And it was muddy.  This is what we could have in the U.S. if we didn't have anti-hazing laws.  :)

Our big kiddos walked home from school alone yesterday.  The rotors are starting to come off of this helicopter parent, and it's a great feeling.

Happy 100th Great Grandpa!

It was a rainy Saturday.  The kids took advantage of the warm weather and rain to jump on the trampoline in their swimsuits.

Check out that jump by Katie! 

Grace wasn't interested in bouncing, but she was totally into the swimsuit idea.

Today in Omaha, Nebraska was the celebration of Dave's Grandpa Quest's 100th birthday.  The kids were excited all week about Skyping with Great Grandpa at the party.

Katie helped me make a Norwegian cream cake for Great Grandpa.  (The last time I had one of these, it was made by the mom of my favorite Norwegian family, Tordis Hammer, in celebration of my Ph.D. - that one had alcohol to soak the layers though, not apple juice.  :)) 

Grace and Isaac enjoying the rain. 

At 9pm, we skyped Great Grandpa at his party.  He was so moved, he was crying.  Grace was our best skyper, not shy, and full of greetings for everyone.  She and Isaac had practiced their "Happy Birthday" singing all day.

Sharing Great Grandpa's 100th birthday cake

There are lots of electric heaters around the house.  But in the area between the entryway closet and the stairs, there are two.  One is standard looking, and then there is this one right next to it.

We were perplexed as to why there would be two heaters right next to each other.  My Friday was made complete by figuring out what the "octopus" heater is for - it's a boot heater/dryer!

That knowledge paid off, as it started raining last night before Dave's shoes (which had gotten soaked during his orienteering race) were able to dry outdoors.  So he cranked up the octopus.

I was able to join Dave for lunch on Friday.  There is a super view of Trondheim from the 13th floor lunchroom of the mathematics building at the university.  (And free coffee - I probably shouldn't mooch, but I can't resist.)

Dave in his office.  In the corner, notice the cross-country skis the previous user of the office left for Dave.

Isaac at the barnehage

Isaac is spending his weekdays at his barnehage (translates to kids' garden a.k.a. kindergarten).  He is a tough dropoff, as he's always been, even back home in Texas.  His teachers are very good about texting me throughout the day to let me know how Isaac is doing.  He loves it once I leave.

Last week he started napping at the barnehage.  He didn't want to nap on the mattresses inside, but he slept great in his stroller outside.  So he was in the line-up of kiddos sleeping out on the porch in his vogn (stroller).

This week, he made friends with Maria from his class, who is his age and who had been on holiday the previous week.  He started sleeping on the mattresses, holding hands with his new friend.

Isaac likes the brown cheese on his bread at lunch time.

Playing with the airplane he built

Focus!

Happy boy 

On Thursdays, his class goes out on expeditions.  The last two weeks they have gone to feed the ducks at a nearby creek.  On Fridays, they cook and bake.  This week they baked bread. 

Living here without a vehicle is great for me.  Dropping off and picking up Isaac and Grace at school each day is 7 miles of walking.  None of the walks are very long - it's one and a half miles to Isaac's barnehage, and I can walk most of it along the river.  The walks will get a bit more interesting when winter sets in! 

There was no rain this week and the locals made the most of it.

Look closely and you'll see the swimsuit clad folks out on the lawn in the park.

 Thursday, I picked up Grace from school an hour early so we could have some solo time.

Super swinger

On the walk home from school, we walked through this group of teenagers who were launching kites they had built.  They were awesome and huge.  There was one kite the shape of a tetrahedron that was at least 10 feet tall.

Sam took this picture of a crew carrying their space shuttle kite up the hill for launching.  Sam forgot his homework at school, so he had to walk back, and he got to see the shuttle in flight.

Katie is super proud of herself for finding her way home from school by herself twice this week.  It still feels odd to see little kids out on the street walking by themselves, but it is commonplace here.

Dave ran his first orienteering race.  He came home covered in mud (and with his map in hand).  He had a good race, except he thought he was more clever than others and took a "short cut" to the second check point and got lost.  That added 20 minutes onto his race time.

In this picture you can see another goofy thing about the geography of where we are living - the TV satellite dishes point DOWN!

Here are the homeroom groups outside in the morning.  Watching them out in the field makes me think of Lord of the Flies.  In a good way, not the part of the book when everything goes bad and the kids start doing each other in.  

It's just good ol' fashioned fun - they play tag, do relay races, chase each other up and down the hill, etc.

The students always enter the school through the bootroom.  There, they each have a cubby where they keep their inside shoes, which they swap out with their outside shoes.  With all the rain and snow they get here, it's pretty essential to keep the floors clean.

Grace eating apples and pears out in the play yard with her class

Grace is doing great.  She has one particular friend who she likes to play with and ride trikes with - Lily.  Grace will even say her name.  Grace is talking more and more.  Well, she's always talked a ton, but more and more of those words are intelligible.  She especially loves all the outside time they have in preschool.

Inviting herself into a game of ping pong

Sam and Katie hanging out after school

First day of school

Monday, August 22 began the first day of school for children throughout Norway, ours included.  School for Sam and Katie runs from 8:30 to 2:45.  Their international school has one classroom for each grade, starting with preschool and going up through 10th grade.  

The kids all ready for their first day.  Katie was actually excited, she's just not showing it.

Sam and Katie both have teachers who are originally from the US.  Katie also has a student teacher in her class who is from Luther College in Iowa.  It's really a small world here.  The librarian is from Minnetonka, MN and her husband (Sam and Katie's homeroom teacher) is from Iowa.  One of the parents of a child in Grace's class taught chemistry at St. Thomas in St. Paul where I went to college.  

Here's Katie in the gym with her class, waiting to be divvied up into their homerooms.

The kids start each day in their homeroom for a half an hour.  Each homeroom has a kid from each grade, and families are kept together, so Sam and Katie are in the same homeroom.  The grade 10 student in each homeroom leads many of the activities - three days a week they are outside, doing calisthenics in the grassy field between the school and the fort.   The kids then go to class awake and ready to work.

In the hallway waiting to pick up the 1st graders.  1st grade is the first year of school for Norwegians kids, so it's akin to the first day of kindergarten for folks from the US.  Since Katie already has her kindergarten year under her belt, it was no sweat for her.

Walking home with a happy girl.  That's "the fort" in the background.

About 2 minutes after the previous picture was taken, Grace was asleep and snoring in my ear.  School wears her out, in a good way.

Grace attended the birthday party of her classmate Alexander that evening.  14 three and four year olds.  Grace had a good time, and I enjoyed chatting with the other parents.  Though it's pretty common for parents to just drop their kids off at a party, even three year olds.

Cutting the cake

Playing with bubbles in the backyard

Having a picnic in our backyard - Katie's specialty

Grace was pretending to be her teacher

Harvested some of the rhubarb in the backyard.  Made rhubarb crisp.

Dave's assessment - best crisp ever made 

Isaac sampled and pondered

And the verdict - good stuff

Norway tidbit:
When driving, there are no right turns on red.  And when you are driving down the road, you must always yield to someone approaching on the right (unless you are on a highway.)  So the neighborhoods have no stop signs or yield signs, because drivers are conditioned to always yield to the cars approaching from the right.

Saturday evening, we had a delightful time at the home of some friends: Pam, Mike, and their kids.  It was raining, so Mike nicely picked us up in their Trollmobile to drive us.

Grace reliving her glory days of riding the bus to afternoon preschool

Grace got into Anna's glitter.  Isaac was entranced with her glitter coating.

We had a great meal of homemade pizza, followed by a fun game of Blokus.  

The game players

Grace and Isaac couldn't get enough of the kitty.  

The impressive fjord view from Pam and Mike's living room

Playing under the apple trees in the backyard

When we were dropped off, Sam and Peter pulled a fast one on us.  They were both riding in the back of the van.  When the Jorgensens all departed the van at our home, Peter snuck out with Sam, and they headed for the trampoline.  Sneaky kids.