I Keep Reminding Myself That I Like Rain
This summer has been very dry, much like the summer last year. But this weekend has been wet wet wet. And I routinely need to remind myself that one of the things I didn’t enjoy so much about CA was the eternal non-rain during the summer months. Yes, indeed, I like rain! Or at least I better do so now that we’ve deserted the desert. (For the non-CA people: Any and all grassy flats need to be constantly watered during the CA summer, or they go brown. In fact very little of the plant life that you see in the Bay Area cities would survive for very long if it wasn’t watered all the time.)
Anyway, the past week flew by with us at work (my highlight: my first ever teaching-plan, or which-part-of-the-books-will-I-attempt-to-teach-when list) and the kids in full time care. We spent most evenings opening up boxes and putting/throwing/giving things away, and now we’re mostly left with books and toys, both of which we have too many of. (Oh, and then I went and bought another book last week. I’m hopeless!!) It is conceivable that by the end of this week to come, most of the boxes will have been taken care of – somehow.
Desperate for a change of scenery (preferably to one without boxes) we took off for the summer-house in Laugarvatn this weekend. We managed to rope Guðrún and her daughter Sif into joining us, but Snorri and Baldur had fishing plans far far away so they were unavailable. We had a pretty good time, but the rain and constant wetness limited the time spent outdoors so the kids played loudly inside instead. Ok, maybe it’s unfair to say that they played loudly – it’s more that they are Loud By Nature! And we were indoors in a small space a lot. And now my ears could do with a nice relaxing vacation.
After driving home in the pouring rain and through a thick cloud (2-3 road markers visible at any given moment) we made a quick pit stop at home before taking off to my mom’s place. There we cooked dinner (our kitchen is still a mess) and then assembled our old crib from the US which we figured Nökkvi’s daughter could use, and then later Pétur’s baby-to-be, instead of having the crib languish in our storage room.
Once assembled, the crib turned out to be much larger than I remembered, probably because we had such a huuuuge master bedroom in CA in which the crib lived happily in one corner. Since my mom’s place is low on space, we’ll pack up the crib later this week and wait until Pétur and Signý manage to find some affordable housing in the hopefully not-to-distant future.
And with that we returned home, quite exhausted. The kids were at that point delirious with tiredness, but still operating on 11, as they do. We managed to put them quickly to bed and then chowed down on some much needed chocolate to survive into the evening, because, by golly, we needed to surf the intertubes to feel slightly human again. And blog. Like one does. 🙂
With Guðrún and Sif at Laugarvatn
I suffered from photo-fatigue and only took a handful to document that we were really there!
Anna and Sif all geared up to go pick berries (except Sif didn't have rain-boots, ooops!). Berry season is aaalmost upon us, so there were rather slim pickings still.
The obligatory awesome dinner on Saturday night, followed by a good game of Settlers.
The girls had a great time jumping on the soaking wet trampoline in the backyard. It wasn't really raining, but misting, and warm, so they didn't get cold at all!