Influenza, Flooring & Apples

2019-02-01Friends, Us Standard

[Photos from 01 – 19 February 2019, posted online 28 July 2019. We’ve just spent a week at House #2, but are back in town.]

For the first time ever, we had planned to take a long winter vacation around the 2-day-long school winter vacation. We chose Florida as the destination, 19 February as the departure date.

February was thus spent waiting for 19 February to arrive, but in the meantime … Finnur visited House #2 twice, and even managed to get started on finishing the guesthouse, I visited an art museum, the northern lights made a showing, birds got apples, hair was cut, and parent-teacher conferences were attended.

Most but mostly Emma was felled by influenza, and thus her 6th birthday was super quiet, and all partying was postponed to post-Florida. Poor girl! Here are 75-ish photos to celebrate that we survived!

Friday 01 February 2019

The icicles almost all melted away one night, but the sheet of ice kept sinking down off of the roof.

Saturday 02 February 2019

Oooh, daylight at 11 am!
Finnur had taken the girls to House #2, to make sure all was in order after a plumbing issue was found and fixed in January. He arrived to find that the heating had accidentally been shut off, so the house was about to freeze up. Thankfully, they arrived just in the nick of time before anything got damaged, but spent the day under the covers as the house ever so slowly heated back up again.
Meanwhile, I somehow convinced Adda to go to an art museum with me.
Contemplating art. She is more of a music person.
Yes, we stopped at the cafe for some sustenance. But then we left.
Silly selfies are the best! This is our alternative to Duck-facing.
Oops!
That night Bjarki introduced me to various one-hour long versions of popular songs on YouTube. There is also apparently a whole subculture which overlays rain-sounds onto tracks!

Sunday 03 February 2019

This contraption is quite fantastic. It takes the slightly-foul-egg-smelling warm water we get delivered, uses it to warm up the fresh cold water, so the warm water in the house is just heated cold water, sans the smell. Both our houses are equipped with this, yay!
In town, snow was coming down thick, and I worried about the driving conditions to town.
The laundry didn’t care about my worries, it just wanted to be sorted and folded.
Towards the very end of the day I found myself downtown at a cafe, as I’d just dropped Anna off for her first baby-sitting stint, and I wanted to be close by for a bit, just in case.
Snowy bikes. It’s a little unusual for snow to fall in Iceland without accompanying wind, but it happens.

Monday 04 February 2019

The view from the coffee counter corner at work.
Emma kept insisting I get her name written on her football shirt, so we went and got it done after daycare. She was thrilled!
Who says social media is all bad? Somebody posted this idea to feed birds without leaving food on the ground, and since we had a bunch of apples that had passed their prime, the birds got lucky.
Bjarki with a new Artemis Fowl book, which were his read-out-loud-at-home-for-10-minutes books this winter.
The old ones kept playing the Witness computer game, slowly but surely.

Tuesday 05 February 2019

Bjarki got a haircut!
Siblings with post-haircut candy.
I managed to somehow bribe Bjarki and his friend to play with Emma for a bit before she was due at football practice. I can’t remember the price anymore, but it worked!
Siblings by a completed puzzle.

Wednesday 06 February 2019

We went to a parent-teacher meeting with Anna, where we went over how she should enroll into the next school level.
Meanwhile, Emma answered questions about daycare. Q: Who attends daycare? A: Me and the kids. Q: Why are we in daycare? A: To learn. Q: What do the kids do at daycare? A: Play together. Q: What do we learn at daycare? A: The letters, sounds, and being friends.
Clearly a good night to fire up the BBQ!
Waiting for the snow to melt…

Friday 08 February 2019

Finnur took off with our good and very handy friend Óli to work at House #2. While they were driving, the Northern lights came out in full force!
They were not quite as impressive in town, because of all the light pollution, but they put up a good show nonetheless!
This photo is taken 8 seconds after the previous one.
In the other direction, it sort of looked like a whale was about to fall off our roof!
The guesthouse at House #2 measured with a cool gadget!

Saturday 09 February 2019

At home, the birds had obviously found the apples.
At House #2, the first order business was to reattach the siding we’d removed to check for moisture.
The other half of the room.
Sealing the floor drain. It’s possible this was supposed to be a sauna…
Edges sealed.
Flooring time.
Óli’s spouse, aka Holla, kindly drew up a pipe-layout for the floor-heating tube. The boys mostly adhered to it.
Óli found an impressive icicle!
Finnur made sure to feed the tired worker(s) well!

Sunday 10 February 2019

Óli kindly also cut out window-sills from wood the previous owners had left behind.
Hard at work!
Meanwhile, I’d restocked the tree, and a bird showed up.
Bird-stalking.
They have such crazy tiny feet!
That was also the day when Emma got the flu. She was out ‘cold’, but actually very very warm.

Tuesday 12 February 2019

Poor Emma was still doing very poorly on her 6th birthday. Being stuck at home, and emotionally drained (I would be a very poor health worker!), I hadn’t managed to go out and buy presents, but she already had one from my brother Pétur and family, which she happily opened.
Back in bed and playing with her present.
What a birthday meal: Gatorade and bread with butter and ham.
Emma playing on the chromebook to while away the time between naps.
Happily I discovered that there is a web-store in Iceland that delivers same-day if ordered early enough, so by dinnertime Emma’s presents were delivered and all wrapped up.
Emma with her birthday muffin by Anna.
Present opening time!
The big present was a Paw-Patrol blanket, which came out a bit creepier than I’d anticipated with that huge eye! 🙂

Thursday 14 February 2019

Emma still unwell. Sigh.
I did make it to work for a bit, and used the opportunity to print out this Rubik’s cube solution guide for Bjarki. I think it took him a few weeks, but he mastered it in the end.
This was a busy day, as I attended a parent-teacher conference with Bjarki and had a hair-cut appointment! For some reason we only had one car, so I had to walk! I met Bjarki on the way to school, as he’d just finished his guitar lesson.
Cute kid!
The teacher knew Bjarki was about to miss six days of school, so he got homework. I think he managed to do most of it…
Bjarki walking off with a friend of his after the meeting.
Post-hair-cut, but still rather emotionally drained after looking after Miss Flu.
Emma had seemed to rally, but then she reported seeing double, so we took her to the after-hours health clinic. The doctor proclaimed that she had the flu, and that sudden jumps in temperature can result in double vision. Now we know!
Ugh, for the 5th day running.

Friday 15 February 2019

Three birds in a tree. 🙂
That morning I took Emma to see the third doctor in three days, just to make absolutely sure she hadn’t developed some secondary infection. The doctor examined her thoroughly and ran a test or two before proclaiming that this was still the flu, but that she really ought to start getting better the following day. Just in case, he kindly wrote a letter to the children’s hospital with details if his prediction would prove false. Thankfully he was correct though!
The flu diet moved to frozen peas and cookies, with a side of gatorade.
Asleep again…
A little later I made a deal with Anna to watch Emma while I went on a sanity break. Sun-lollies were used as bribes.
Sanity break in action!
Google Photos automatically pulled together this collage and Anna and Emma (mostly).

Saturday 16 February 2019

By the end of Saturday Emma’s fever was finally gone, but instead Bjarki spiked a fever, and was looking a lot worse for wear. Fearing the worst (another week-long flu) and about to depart for Florida in three days, we rushed to the after-hours clinic and received and filled a prescription for Tamiflu. Happily, Bjarki felt a lot better the next day, he wasn’t 100% ok, but not feverish.
The clinic is very first-come-first-serve. The good news is that it’s free for kids.

Sunday 17 February 2019

Emma woke up that day complaining of an ear ache, and thus our third visit to the after-hours clinic in four days was a reality. Sure enough, she’d developed an ear infection and since she was about to go on an airplane, she got medication. At least she was vertical. Good times!

Monday 18 February 2019

I think both Emma and Bjarki stayed at Finnur’s parents’ place that day to give their systems rest before the big flight the following day. I managed to yank down the yuletide lights at the end of the day, as the days were getting noticeably longer, and would be silly be the time we returned from our trip.

Tuesday 19 February 2019

Emma finally went to daycare, mostly just so they could celebrate her birthday! We picked her up early though, since we were about to board a plane to Orlando, Florida, USA!
To be continued…