New Years Eve
As we have done before, we said goodbye to the old year by first joining Finnur’s family for a large dinner, and then moving to my family to shoot some fireworks, watch the Annual Retrospective Comedy Hour, before hiking up onto a tall hill to enjoy the view as the entire population of the capital area goes absolutely stark raving mad and shoots fireworks up into the sky like there is no tomorrow…
Steinunn with her brand new baby boy and Finnur, proud uncle!
Presents, visitors and a party
We decided to leave almost all the Christmas presents behind, and open them once we’d returned from England. As soon as the kids got up (which was thankfully late, since we’d landed around midnight a few hours before) they spread out all the presents and got to work opening them. Later that day we got a visit from Logi and Tassanee, who were kind enough to include us on their whirlwind Christmas visit of Iceland this year. We were thrilled to see them, but also felt sympathetic because we know these whirlwind visits, and just how fun yet tiring they are! To top off the day, we then went to an annual dinner-party.
The kids by the presents-left-behind. They were so happy to get to open even more presents!!
In England
Somewhat shockingly, we haven’t visited my dad in England since before Anna was born. Instead, Dad and Anthony traveled to Iceland and to California to say hi. To remedy this situation, we decided to spend Christmas in England this year. Little did we know that we’d have more snow (well, for longer anyway) than Iceland did!
21 December 2010: The day of our arrival was the first day that Heathrow was fully opened after being shut down due to a little bit of snow. Here is the snow in dad's backyard later that day.
Anna’s birthday parties, 1-4
The weekend of December 18-19 saw us celebrating Anna’s 7th birthday no less than three times! The first was a “classmates” birthday party, the second was a “Finnur’s family pre-Christmas/Anna’s birthday”-bash, and the third was a “Hrefna’s family and a few friends”-bash the day after. The fourth and final birthday celebration was held on Christmas Day itself in England with Gunnar (my dad), Shirley (his girlfriend) and Anthony (my brother). Here are pictures from all FOUR celebrations!!
18 December 2010 – Birthday Celebration #1
The girls from Anna’s class
We discovered early on this fall that Anna shares a birthday with one of the girls in her class. We therefore joined with the other family in hosting a birthday party for the girls in class at the local 'jumping castles' place. Having been to a number of these places in the USA, I must say that the big difference is that there is one (count em!), yes one, employee on site, and she spent the entire time sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper. This is a "enter at your own risk" place if there ever was one!
Emerging from survival mode…
The past two weeks have been mad, crazy, nuts, with heaps of fun, frustration and stress sprinkled in between. But finally, things have calmed down enough that I have enough mental reserves to resume blogging, which must be a good sign!
So, what happened? Well, the final wasn’t an abysmal failure, but I heard that it was very long and difficult. Perhaps a bit soul-crushing even, but I believe/hope the students are young and resilient enough that they won’t be too scarred. Also, as I mentioned before, I had included two difficult ‘nuggets’, which indeed proved to be very very difficult – so difficult in fact that they exposed a matter I can’t comment on in public but has been the source of much stress and frustration, and is not over yet.
Anyway, back to the story of the past two weeks.
Pictures from California
Here are some pictures from my week-long trip to California.
Friday 10. December 2010: While in the Keflavik airport in Iceland, Icelandair stewardesses all of a sudden started singing holiday songs in the main departure hall. Later on they moved to the more crowded (badly designed) US departure lounge. It was most definitely stress-reducing. It's hard to be in a bad mood when people are singing lovely songs!
Shouldn’t I be more frantic now?
I’m traveling to California on Friday, and will be returning the Friday thereafter, leaving Finnur (aka The Hero) in charge of house and kids. I have a TON of stuff I need to get done before the week is over (grade a final, assemble a poster for a conference, choose a book for nextRead more
Fannar Hrafn Pétursson
Today, Pétur and Signý christened their 2 month old boy Fannar Hrafn Pétursson (which kind of translates to Snowy Raven Son of Peter). It was a beautiful frosty day, and we all had a great time. I took (too) many photos, although sadly a lot of them are quite blurred since my camera, flash andRead more
Aaaaalmost there!
It’s December!! Yikes!! But also Yay because teaching for this semester is all but over. My last ‘lecture’ was on Monday (it was an unprepared review) and that’s also when I gave the last homeworks back. This week I need to write a final for December 7th, and then a sick-test for December 20th orRead more