Influenza, Flooring & Apples
[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
Soccer, Snow-Play & Icicles
[Photos taken on 14 – 30 January 2019, posted online 19 July 2019. I seem to be entering perimenopause: insomnia after sleeping for 20-40 minutes is my new nemesis. This is written on three hours of sleep.]
The latter half of January sported enough snow that the sleds got pulled out on a regular basis. Emma also decided that she’d like to start going to football practice, in part because all of her friends seemed to be going to one practice or another on Tuesday afternoons, so there was nobody to play with! Remarkably, Anna also started a new sport, “gymnastics for all”, which she thoroughly enjoyed.
The latter half of January also turned into the exciting icicle watch, as the snow slowly made its way off of our roof! (60-ish photos total)
Monday 14 January 2019
2019 Begins, Yule Ends & People (Un)Socialize
[Photos taken 01-13 January 2019, posted online 18 July 2019. Lovely weather today, warm by Icelandic standards. Happily there’s been enough rain lately that the plants have mostly recovered from the 6-week drought earlier this summer.]
January began with lots of people gatherings, but I was also pretty good about ungathering. We went back to work, the kids back to school, sport practices restarted, and the gingerbread house was demolished and devoured as Yule came to a close. (35-ish images total)
Tuesday 01 January 2019
New Year’s Eve 2018-2019
[Photos taken on 31 December 2018 – 01 January 2019, posted online 08 July 2019. As this is being written, we’re formally on summer holiday, yay!]
New Year’s Eve was a customary one, with us hanging out with Finnur’s family at their big party. (I just checked, and apparently I spent the day blogging about Bjarki’s 11 year old party, which is funny as we just celebrated his 12th yesterday!)
The evening was fun as always, and all talk of fireworks being a silly waste of money drowned in a shower of fireworks…! (45-ish images total)
Calm Days Between Yule and the New Year
[Photos taken on 26-30 December 2018, posted online 30 June 2019. We’ve finally got some rain and clouds, but there’s quite a bit of yellow grass around still.]
We were all on holiday between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, because there were only two working days separating the two.
We mostly took it veeeery easy, there was one family gathering, we played computer games until late at night, went swimming, I did make it to the gym a few times, and all in all it was quite nice. (15-ish images)
Wednesday 26 December 2018
Anna’s 15th Birthday / Christmas Day 2018
[Photos takend on 25 December 2018, posted online 24 December 2019. It rained last night, here’s hoping the burn grass feels better.]
Christmas Eve rolled into Christmas Day, and thus Anna’s 15th birthday!
It was a fairly typical 25 December. We made desserts to take to Finnur’s parents’ place and then Anna opened her presents. The party was well attended, the food was excellent as always, social whist was played, dessert was eaten, and Anna even got some more presents!
All in all, a very good day! (40-ish images total)
Christmas Eve 2018
[Photos from 24 December 2018, posted online 23 June 2019. The still no rain for realz since early May. Also, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite came out today.]
Yule-day came and went pretty much as expected. We had my mom and one brother over for dinner, Finnur was master chef as usual, the kids managed to not go quite crazy, and I think I didn’t land my self in a need-to-finish-at-the-last-minute job like the last two previous times. All in all, a highly lovely yule!
Gingerbread Houses – 2018 Edition
[Photos taken on 23 December 2018, posted online on 22 June 2019. Such a contrast between these images taken in the rampant darkness, and the never-ending cloudless brightness at this time of year!]
I’ve mostly given up on the Instagrammable house-life (there seems to be a Conservation Law of Disarray at work in our house), but I do hang on to making a gingerbread house from scratch for yule. The kids also make sure to remind me, still remembering the horror of the no-gingerbread house yule a few years ago.
It’s almost a custom by now that we rope Holla and Óli into the ginger bread madness, and this year was no exception! (30-ish images total)
Triple Birthday Party
[Photos from 20-22 December 2018, posted online on 13 June 2019. It’s been crazy sunny lately, and not a drop of rain for 3 weeks. Weird.]
Like in previous years, we held a joint birthday party for the three cousins, Anna, Ylfa, and Iðunn. It was just a quiet family affair, as the big event of Christmas was looming right around the corner.
The following days were the calm before Yule-day. Sort of… (25-ish images total)
Thursday 20 December 2018
Annual Photo Shoot – December 2018 Edition
[Photos from 16 December 2018, posted online 09 June 2019. We’re having such a fantastic summer that it’s getting eerie.]
This year’s annual photo session of the kiddos went surprisingly smoothly. Maybe it helped that they got a lot of warning, I got lucky that the set-up worked fairly well from the get-go, but they at least managed to play along for about 10 whole minutes, which was all that I needed. (20-ish photos total)
