This past week was ‘Theme-Week’ in Anna’s school, and this year’s theme was ‘Cities’.  So the kids went and recreated lots of cities/city-icons over the span of four days.  Then on Friday everybody was invited to see the fruits of their labor, and it was really quite cool!  I stupidly left my good camera at home, so I hardly took any pictures, except of the awesome ‘London Bus’, aka the master stairs.

So very very cool! They'd constructed a wooden frame around the stairs and then draped it with red plastic. The kids added passengers, a flag and some wheels, et voila - A London Bus!!

The inside of the bus.

It’s been one of those ridiculously snow-heavy winters.  Yes, Spring has made numerous attempts to emerge, but Winter keeps slapping it back with a ground-covering sheet of snow, and I’ve lost count of the Yule-tide-worthy displays of slowly falling snow of various flake-sizes (one of which is currently in progress as I’m writing this).

To help the little critters/birds through it all, we’ve taken to leaving a piece of bread-roll out on the back-patio.  It’s been pretty popular with both birds and at least one mouse, but today was the first time that we saw a bird AND a mouse visiting the lump of carbohydrates at the same time.  And so I whipped out my camera…

The mouse making its way to the bread...

A bird, a bread and a mouse.

Bird gone, mouse probably thinking 'Mine, Mine, aalll Miiiine'!!

Cute mouse on bread.

This day belonged to Spring, with very little snow on the ground. Winter was miffed and dumped hail on Spring later in the evening.

The ever popular bread still getting pecked at. It was all gone the next day.

Hi there blog, it’s been a while.  I’m just checking in a week late to mark that I’m now officially Thirty-Five Years Old, which in some circles makes me officially Middle Aged.  Happily I’m not the only one with a birthday during this week.  Finnur’s littlest sister turned Twenty Eight the same day I became Middle Aged, my littlest brother turned Fourteen a day later, Finnur and I were married for Twelve Years a day after that, and Finnur’s oldest sister has turned Forty-Five two days after that.  That’s a lot of numbers in One short week, and this isn’t even counting everybody I know of!

Not much else to report really.  We celebrated our Wedding Anniversary by planting the kids with their grandparents for 24 hours and going out for an expensive dinner, aka Food Theater.  It was quite lovely.  A few small sporadic attempts were made a celebrating my birthday, but it’s not summer-time so no big blow-out was held.  The weather continues to be a display of the ongoing battle between Spring and Winter.  Right now Winter’s on top, having just dumped a couple of inches of snow on the ground after a mild weekend.  We await Spring’s next move.  And that’s about it!

For some reason I’m much less inclined to take pictures outdoors when there is little to no snow.  So it would appear that it’s been snowing ALL winter, which isn’t entirely true, but none-the-less close.  So here are a few more snowy pictures.

Bjarki exiting our car by his daycare. Anna's school is in the background.

Looking down the daycare yard. It's pretty big!

Bjarki in the coat-area. This is what California kids need: proper outdoor clothing so they're not kept indoors when it's wet outdoors.

Finnur being lit by the early-ish morning sun.

This is where Finnur spends his days.

This was a day where the sun glimpsed through the cloud cover every now and then and cast a lovely light over the city.

These 'small' trees are poplars that have been trimmed down a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if their roots start wrecking havoc on the surrounding parking lot and walkways soon. In the meantime they're kinda cute!

Our good friends, Kata and Jói, swung into town this week (they live up north by Akureyri) with their girls, and we invited them all over for a Sunday Brunch.  Being the lazy sods we are, brunch consisted of stuff from the bakery and various toppings, but it all seemed to go down well enough.  It was fun having them over, and we’re very optimistic that we’ll be seeing them again in the very near future!

Jói and Finnur became friends when they were doing their associates degree in computer science, way back when. They were also coworkers for a number years.

I'm not the only mother that takes a lot of pictures!! Note that there is no snow outside!

Kata and Jói with Þóra, their eldest.