Bowling, Skiing & Furniture Building

2020-03-01Us Standard

[Photos taken 01 – 13 March 2020, posted online 13 August 2020. We’re dog-sitting!]

March was a bizarre month. Due to the looming Covid-19 threat my birthday and our 20-year wedding anniversary were relatively quiet affairs.

I somehow managed to take the kids skiing during the 2-day winter school break (Finnur had injured a finger in February, and wasn’t up to hazardous adventures) a couple of weeks before the ski lifts were shut down. Anna also began learning how to drive.

As more and more covid cases were diagnosed as Icelanders returned from ski-and football trips from abroad, my workplace began dividing up areas to reduce the number of people needing to quarantine. The call also went out for people to work from home if they could, so I set up a small home office. (65-ish images total)

Sunday 01 March 2020

Oh look, snow!
Feeding the birdies
Spring? What spring?
The kids asked to go bowling, so I took them (Finnur had a busted finger).
B-boy!
Emma cheering Anna’s ball on.
The scores.
Group photo!
It was my birthday after all! 🙂
The older ones.
This photo popped up on Facebook, and I took a screenshot. That’s me as a yellow blob with mom and dad looking on. 🙂

Monday 02 March 2020

The first hand sanitizers popped up at work.

Tuesday 03 March 2020

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…. Picking Emma up from school to drive her to football practice.
Snow slowly meandering off of the roof.
20-year wedding anniversary flowers, awww!

Wednesday 04 March 2020

The birds getting more apples.

Thursday 05 March 2020

Emma giving me the death stare for doing something wrong. But, we’d managed to rent skis from a ski rental in town, and finally got to use the funky hole-feature in the back seat.
Feeding the kiddos before taking them to a ski-lesson!
Emma in pink, Bjarki in the blue pants. This small ski area is a 10-minute drive from our house, within the city limits. It was their 50th open day this season, and to celebrate, they offered free one-hour ski lessons. Little did I know though that the instructor was English, and he only spoke minimal Icelandic.
Doing one legged exercises. He spent quite a bit of time getting everybody comfortable putting skis on and taking them off.
It was a cold-ish day, I was happy to have my big coat as I stood around and tried to help where I could.
Celebratory balloons!
Once the lesson hour was up, both Emma and Bjarki wanted to take the lift up the slope and go down. Bjarki didn’t have any trouble (he’s skied before) but Emma ended up getting help taking her skis off, walked half-way down, where I met her and helped her slide down the remainder.

Friday 06 March 2020

Getting snack supplies for the upcoming real ski-trip.
Anna made sandwiches.
Very useful snack-boxes.
We drove to the nearby Bláfjöll (Blue Mountains) ski area. I was a little nervous how much car battery got eaten up going up there, but we made it with lots to spare on the small car. It’s only a 30 minute drive. Anna and myself were still missing skis, so we hung out in the ski-rental line for probably half an hour or so.
Passing the time by putting on Anna’s cool glasses.
Finally inside the rental room itself, almost our turn!
Yay, they had helmets for all!
By 4 pm we had finally managed to get skis on everyone’s feet. Anna and Bjarki took off on their own adventures, while I began trying to teach a mildly terrified Emma how to ski. This magic carpet wasn’t super helpful, because it kept stopping for long periods of time.
Obligatory selfie.
Anna trailing Emma. I finally got Emma to start pizza slicing by holding her in front of me. She wailed for a few runs before starting to get the hang of it.
The view up the big hill. Anna went up there, but it was too windy for her liking.
The view from the top. You can spot the car-park down below.
Getting in line for the magic carpet.
Fed up by the ever-stopping magic carpet, we decided to move up a level.
Going up “Amma mús” (Granny Mouse). There was a pretty sharp cross-wind, so it was good to have a face-cover. Emma is in front of me.
Happily the lines were generally shorter than this, and moved fast.
After about an hour of skiing, we made our way to the cabin, and just barely found a table on the upper floor.
Back on the skis.
I held Emma’s hand going down quite a few times, letting her go higher and higher up the slope.
By the end of the day, she made it down all by herself! Success! (That’s Bjarki skiing past her)
Pretty sky!
By 7 pm we called it a day, returned our rented skis, and drove (rolled down-hill) home.

Saturday 07 March 2020

What’s that white car, with a sign up on top?
It’s Anna learning how to drive!

Sunday 08 March 2020

The birds got some pears.
This strip will forever live in infamy. Translation below.
But, why don’t you want to paint the living room?
The strip links directly to this poor Ikea LACK table, which has been nearly falling apart for about four years now. It’s been glued and taped on most sides, but I never found a good “adult” replacement, not for lack of trying though.
After much hand-wrangling, and buying and getting rid of two Ikea alternatives, I decided this Hemnes table would do the trick
Not terrible.
Feeling extra industrious, I even finally took the pallet left over from the bathroom renovations to the recycling center, in creasing the garage floor space significantly.
Better but still ugh.

Monday 09 March 2020

With covid cases increasing fast, the cafeteria began serving food onto plates.

Wednesday 11 March 2020

Bjarki pretty happy with his sugary snack in-between his guitar practice, and his gymnastics practice. The past few years Wednesdays have topped the list as the most insane days.
Sort-of-Covid-shopping, lots of cereals.
Emma in her art corner.

Thursday 12 March 2020

Checking out the monitor connector at work, as I was about to move one of my two monitors home. After looking for this connector at the store for a silly long time, I went and looked at the monitor ports themselves, and discovered I already had the cable I needed.
Voila, a home office…! It was a good thing I’d finally sorted out the front room!

Friday 13 March 2020

The elementary school closed the cafeteria (it had actually been closed before due to the cleaning workers striking) so the kids got a packed snack. Finnur was the snack pack hero!
Driving home, had to take a photo of the pretty sky.
Ugh…