Gully-Walking, Bowling & Movie-ing

2021-04-21Friends, Us Standard

[Photos taken 21 – 30 April 2021, posted online 28 July 2021. The weather is silly gorgeous, and we just had an exterminator over to kill a wasps nest by the BBQ.]

By the end of April, the days had become quite long, and it became a battle to get the kids to sleep. I began having to wake the kids up pretty much every morning… that’s no fun for anybody.

We scored an extra public holiday in the First Day of Summer, and hung out at house #2 with friends (more impromptu planning). The two matriarchs went on a walk, and ended up scrambling down a long gully.

Restrictions were also lifted somewhat, so we went bowling and to the movies! Anna also tended to her plants and baked fancy cookies. (60-ish images total)

Wednesday 22 April 2021

A couple of horses in a fence next to the music school. It really is out in the boondoggles!
I decided to walk along the river bank this music lesson round. I vaguely recall that this “oil-slick” thing-y is actually not oil, but something that happens naturally. Could be bog iron?
Fancy colors.
Animated gifs are fun! 🙂
A cute couple.
The next day was a public holiday (First Day of Summer, go figure). Due to planning reasons, we ended up going with friends to house #2 for one night, yet again on super short notice. Thankfully, online meetings were still all the rage, so I could remote log into an information session on Bjarki’s gymnastics group.

Thursday 22 April 2021 – First Day of Summer

The two matriarchs decided they needed to go out and walk about a bit. I decided to revisit the forest I’d visited less than 2 weeks prior.
Very un-Icelandic, but pretty.
Nice views as before.
Going higher up.
Again, above the tree-line.
We thought we saw a path along the hillside, so we trundled along it.
It got muddy in places. At some point a car or some machine had ridden that path, but it had obviously been a long while ago.
So… to recap… We started out at the green dot, walked up the hill, took a sharp right turn, and followed that road as it swung up the hill. Instead of going back down, we walked along the hillside, and as the path turns blue, the path became lousier. The sharp left turn down the hillside was when we hit a gully, which we either had to scramble down, or retrace all our steps, as we hadn’t spotted a formal down-path at all. We decided to brave the gully…
Wondering which way is the safest one down.
Looked quite innocent, but took a long while to navigate, especially further down.
Holding on to some hardy birches to avoid tumbling down the steep gully-side.
Path? What path?
After walking along the trees for a bit, we reached a point we couldn’t figure out how to pass. Thankfully my fellow traveler noticed that the forest away from the river looked a lot lighter than before, which…
… was because the forestry service had chopped off a bunch of the low-growing branches, and taken down some trees, leaving the area walkable. That’s a sight-for-sore-eyes road a little further down.
Looking back up the river, we concluded that last part was in fact pretty unpassable.
Yay, we made it!
Back at home base!
This was in “awww, isn’t our prime minister adorable?” news. Also, I was unaware she lives in an apartment block.

Friday 23 April 2021

Fridays can lead to good game-nights.

Saturday 24 April 2021

The locker rooms at the gym re-opened!
“Summer”.
Celebrating restrictions being re-lifted, we decided a trip to the bowling hall was in order.
Bjarki hit some really sweet shots.
Emma slowly stopped using the launcher, and just threw the ball herself.
Shakes to go with the bowling.

Sunday 25 April 2021

Sleeping in is a very rare occurrence for me these days, so I found myself at a café downtown before noon.
One of the streets down-town is being redone.
Sibling lunch with mom.
I was there!
Masks still required away from tables.
I stopped by the library, and they have these old maps of Reykjavik hanging in a stairwell. This is from the year 1801, and that water feature is The Pond (Tjörnin).
A slightly more recent map from 1947. Now The Pond is surrounded by houses on the upper left side of the map.
There was finally a new animated movie in town, and I dug out the movie theater gift cards we owned. They had all expired, but because the movie theaters have been more or less closed, and hardly any new movies have arrived, the theaters were kindly accepting expired tickets.
In. A. Movie. Theater!! Raya and the Last Dragon was fun!
Goodbye studded tire, you served us well. See you in a few months.
I went out to photograph some buds in the dusk.
I keep meaning to print new photos to put on the living room walls, but it just hasn’t happened yet.
Anna and Bjarki had gone out on a sibling-chat-drive.
Still chatting as the sun went down shortly before 10 pm.

Monday 26 April 2021

It was still cold outside, but we thought it would be a good idea to get the newbie plants used acclimatized.
Out for a slow jog, the path was popular as always.

Tuesday 27 April 2021

Oh look, it’s an actual birthday party!!
On the home front, a bean plant was happy.

Wednesday 28 April 2021

Summer beginning to look like an actual possibility!
The lake and myself.

Friday 30 April 2021

What in the world is going on?!?!
Ah, Anna was baking.
Who says fractions aren’t useful?
When I was totally lost, she informed me she was making Ranboo cookies.
Yellow!
Oh look, plants!
Beans! Plural!
More green.
Assembly.
So cool!
Sliced.
Baked!
They began disappearing, one by one… Yum!