Darkness & Yellow Weather

2020-01-02Us Standard

[Photos taken 02 – 31 January 2020, posted online 20 July 2020. We’re officially on summer vacation, yay!]

This winter was harsh in multiple meanings of the word. The darkness was to be expected, but there seemed to be endless yellow weather warnings, as low pressure area after low pressure area swam by Iceland. We hunkered down and tried to make the best of it. (80-ish images total)

Thursday 02 January 2020

Oh look, it’s windy and snowy outside. What a surprise!
Emma inside where it was warm, busy building a lego castle from Chrismas.

Friday 03 January 2020

After work, I drove one town over, to Hafnarfjörður, to try cross-country-skiing. I’ve been sort of meaning to buy some cross-country-skis, but wasn’t sure my previously troublesome Achilles tendon could take the strain.
Adda had recently bought a kit, and went ahead and laid town a track.
Heading my way.
Proof I went skiing! It went surprisingly well, and my tendon kept quiet, which was a good sign!
Picking Bjarki up from gymnastics practice. It was frigging cold outside, -11C/12F!

Saturday 04 January 2020

This was a busy day. Morning: gymming!
Afternoon: Ice-skating! (That’s Emma in the pink and black suit.)
Bjarki still getting his footing.
Can I have candy now?
Late afternoon: I cut Finnur’s hair! I used to do it all the time when we lived in the US, but got tired of the clean-up, and mostly quit. We were headed for a party that evening, and he’d been unable to get a haircut, so I agreed to one more cut. Little did we know this would serve as warm-up for a Covid-19 hair-cut…
At a new year’s party! I got Anna do to my eye-shadow. 🙂

The Thirteenth – Monday 06 January 2020

As is customary, we visited Finnur’s parents after work, for some food, and to shoot up the remnants of the fireworks.
No cars were hurt during the production of this image.
At home, it was almost time to take down the Yule-tree, as the city would be removing discarded trees in the following days. Looking at the windy weather forecast, we realized we would be getting a few extra days to get it outside…
I’d totally forgotten to take photos of the new ornaments. I also couldn’t be bothered to get the tripod. Maybe next year.
They fit in nicely.
After much impatient waiting, we finally gave the kids the green light to smash and eat the ginger-bread house, after I’d taken a photo of them by it.
Very satisfying!
The shards didn’t live long, they sure were yummy!

Thursday 09 January 2020

Oh look, snow and wind! Lovely!

Friday 10 January 2020

The next day a good portion of the snow had rained away.
That evening I had dinner with the EEs that graduated in 1999 with BS and CS degrees. Attendance was excellent! (The third female was awol in Spain!)

Saturday 11 January 2020

A nice day to put away Yule-tide decorations.
Goodbye tree! Thank you for letting us enjoy your last moments.
We filled the hot-tub as we would be having guests over for dinner, with hot-tub-happy kids in tow.

Monday 13 January 2020

Back at work, enjoying watching one of the custodians clear the emergency exit stairway of snow. Yes, more snow.
Very typical of this winter, yellow, yellow, yellow. As it happened, we discovered our neighborhood was mostly sheltered from that particular wind-direction, and Bjarki agreed to be Emma’s “guardian” and they walked themselves to school. My family in the west end of town however were blown all over the place.

Tuesday 14 January 2020

Weirdly cheerful after finding a container that looked quite nice and could hold random stuff in our new bathroom cabinets. Yes, we were beginning to slowly move in to the newly renovated bathroom.
Adorable example of “modern technology” in Emma’s reading book. It’s important to know what an SMS is! Of course it contains a cat-pic!

Wednesday 15 January 2020

The carpenter arrived that day to modify the backside of the drawers, so that they could finally close around the plumbing under the sink. He did a very nice job!
Finally, there would no longer be a gaping hole on the front of the cabinets.
Now we were just missing the tile-expert to put up a toilet paper holder, and a towel rack.

Saturday 18 January 2020

After Emma asking me yet again to buy new colored pencils, and refusing to believe me when I told her we had ALL THE COLORS, I finally caved in and sorted through our same-age-as-Anna bucket of colors and pens.
I should have taken a photo before I began. Yes, this bucket was full of colors, but apparently not up to Emma’s usefulness standards.
Be still my OCD-heart! Yes, we sorted the colors into trays by color!!
January’s big achievement, for sure!
The gymnastics association held an open practice for boys that Saturday, with all the national team trainers. Bjarki went, and had a blast. That’s him in the red shirt running and jumping on the small trampoline. (Animated gif, wait for it to load)
The trainers getting a group photo for Facebook and Instagram.
They were really happy with how many boys showed up.
But that wasn’t the end of the day at all! After picking Bjarki up, I went top-hunting, and even bought a couple. Finnur keeps complaining that I look so grim in my should-I-buy-this? images that I tried very hard to be less grim. I still hate shopping though!
We topped off the day by driving to Hveragerði, about a 35 minute drive, to eat dinner with Guðrún and Snorri, who were staying there on a mini-weekend-break. Dinner was lovely, but the drive back was a bit stressful, as YET ANOTHER YELLOW weather system bore down that evening.

Tuesday 21 January 2020

I volunteered as a room coordinator for Bjarki’s class, and organized a trip to the Rush trampline-park for his class. I’d never been there before (just dropped kids off) and was impressed with the layout.
Bjarki dunking.
Mr. Cool as the event wound down, and kids headed home.

Wednesday 22 January 2020

Morning lifting!
At the other end of the day, I lounged (hid) in the sofa on the second floor of the gymnastics hall, waiting for Emma to finish her gymnastics practice. The practice is only an hour long, so going home and there again feels like a waste of time.

Thursday 23 January 2020

Impressive snow-frost-wind-blasting!
Google photos is getting really good at picking out interesting old photos to highlight.

Saturday 25 January 2020

Sending Anna this shirt suggestions, as she was in some other part of the store. Yes, it was January sales time! (The shirt was deemed uncomfortable)

Sunday 26 January 2020

Bjarki practicing on his guitar, rock-legend style.
I finally got my hip to tolerate 30 minutes of stair-walking! It was giving me all sorts of “you sit down for too long at a time” grief this past winter.
Nökkvi suggested we (the siblings) take mom out for a lunch-date, since we were finally all now in the same country. It was fun! 🙂 (Photo from mom’s phone.)
Documenting. That restaurant has been there since I was a kid!
Photoing the bros.
Later that afternoon I went to pick Emma up from a gymnastics-themed class-birthday-party. There are about 40 kids in her class, and every month all the birthday kids host a party of some sort. It’s a great system!
The day ended at yet another party, this time with Finnur’s dad’s foster family.

Monday 27 January 2020

Not the sight I was expecting to see when I left work that day.
Anna’s annual ball was coming up, so we went shopping. The was Gadsby themed, so to the Gadsby store we went!
The dress she went with.
Oh look, snow and (mild-ish) wind!
My feelings exactly on the snow and wind!

Tuesday 28 January 2020

Bjarki with a fresh hair-cut.
Indulging his mother by posing in front of the new building.

Wednesday 29 January 2020

That afternoon, I went with two Marel colleagues to the presidential residence, Bessastaðir, to witness the annual awarding of the presidential student-innovation-awards. Marel supports the award, and thus gets invited to fill the room at the ceremony.
After entering the main building, we went to hang up our coats, and then we stood in line to write our names in the guestbook.
After signing the guestbook we entered a small room (“holding cell”) that slowly but surely filled up with people, and got a little low on air. I was happy to recognize a few friendly faces.
At the designated start-time, a door was opened into a conservatory, where the President of Iceland, Guðni Jóhannesson, was standing to greet guest. One person was invited to enter at a time to shake the president’s hand, and then enter the next larger room. That’s the President standing at the front of the room, giving a short speech. He was a historian in his previous life, and he had an interesting and knowledgeable view on innovation of the past century or so.
The view out the windows was gorgeous.
Getting his photo taken with some of the runner-ups. That bird/woman painting on the wall was painted by Jóhannes Kjarval. (That’s about all I know about Icelandic art.)
Afterwards, servers walked around with some drinks, and coconut tops, and then we were told we could walk around and look at the building (1st floor only). It’s funny to see furniture that sometimes features in newscasts in the flesh.
Obligatory (?) photos of various kings and queens, mostly Scandinavian.
Outside, about an hour after arriving. We’d entered through the door on the left, waited in the room on the left side of the conservatory, then gone into the room/building to the right. It’s not a large house by any means. I’m not sure where exactly on the grounds the family lives, as they have a few young kids.
It was one of those gorgeous days!
Looking back as I walked back to my car. The family probably lives in that back house.
That gate is all that stops people from visiting. It does look like there’s a camera posted on a tower a little further on.
The view from the car-park.

Thursday 30 January 2020

Anna, all Gadsby-ed up, on her way to her school’s annual ball.
We were running a little late (a small who-does-what misunderstanding on the hair-do side of things) so a quick outside photos was all I was getting, photo-wise! She had a good time!

Friday 31 January 2020

Anna hiding behind a reading log book!
Emma, shortly before bedtime.
Bjarki, sort of granting his mother a bit of attention.
Emma’s yule-tide presents to the parents, a bowl she made at school.
The month of January ended with a bunch of earthquakes hitting not very far away from the capitol area. As of July, there have been quite a few earthquake-series in that area, and one is currently ongoing.