July Warmth = Jog, Tub, Sunsets & Horse Camp
[Photos taken 02 – 07 July 2023, posted online 14 April 2024. I have resigned from my current job! Still have a few more weeks to go until leaving for good. Hard to leave excellent coworkers, but brain wants a change.]
July rolled around, and with it some lovely weather-days. I went out for a jog, and even cleaned the hot tub in the backyard, which rarely gets used. The sunsets were of the “are-you-kidding-me”-type evening after evening, we starting subscribing to fruit deliveries, the earth rumbled, and Emma finished yet another horse-camp session.
Sunday 02 July 2023
Outdoorsy-Days of June, Gym & Graduation
[Photos taken 16 – 24 June 2023, posted online 15 March 2024. Still in Brussels, still no eruption in Iceland.]
I guess our lives have settled into a deep groove at this point. With the long, lovely days of June came the usual: e-biking, weeding, summer-housing, gymming, horse-camp, and attending a university graduation party!
Friday 16 June 2023
California Revisited
[Photos taken 01 – 03 June 2023, posted online 17 February 2024. There’s been another eruption since my last post! This one took out the hot water pipe to the Reykjanes peninsula, but it was fixed by building a road on top of days-old lava, and reconnecting a new pipe on top of it!]
June was a busy month. It began with Bjarki departing on a multi-day trip with his graduating-class to celebrate the end of their journey together. Trips like these came about to stop 10th-graders going on drunken binges downtown to celebrate finishing their compulsory education!
Then I was off on a whirlwind-trip to California to attend a memorial ceremony for Professor Len Tyler, who’d passed away a few months earlier. It so happened that I also managed to wrangle together a meetup with lots of old friends, as well as inviting myself onto the campus of a company that I’d had remote meetings with for months. The biggest drawback was that I missed Bjarki’s graduation ceremony, but the boy did good, and passed all his classes!
Thursday 01 June 2023
Chef-lings, Graduation-Season, & Outdoors-ing
[Photos taken 20 – 31 May 2023, posted online 14 20 January 2024. An eruption started early this morning last Sunday just outside the town of Grindavík. Three houses were burned down as lava entered the town itself. The protective wall successfully diverted most of the lava past the town, look for insane footage of the machines being rescued off of the wall as lava surrounds it, and then later in the day closing a wall-gap where the main road was. The ground is all cracked as parts of the town sunk by 1 m, and it’s very dangerous being in town. One road worker died as the ground collapsed under his feet a few days before the eruption. The town remains evacuated, and will be for the foreseeable future.]
Finnur transitioned from a soccer-group-trip to Scotland to working from London the following week, getting the royal treatment at my dad’s & Shirley’s! Meanwhile, I assigned-dinner making to the kids, one dinner each, as Mon/Wed/Fri afternoon gym-class cuts into dinner-prep time.
We all survived the lack of true-chef, and then transitioned over to attending junior-college graduation parties. All this was mixed in with some outdoors-ing.
Saturday 20 May 2023
Confirmation Season Continues
[Photos taken 01 – 08 April 2023, posted online 16 21 December 2023. The start of this blog post was written in a cafe in Dublin, Ireland!]
The confirmation season continued in full swing, as Easter vacation began. We attended two confirmation parties,
Saturday 01 April 2023
Waterfalls, School Visits & Confirmation Parties
[Photos taken 18 – 31 March 2023, posted online 02 December 2023. Frozen days ahead of us, but little snow predicted, hardly any snow this season so far.]
We actually went on an outing to the lavafield-waterfalls (Hraunfossar) from the summer house with friends who like sight-seeing. The rest of the month passed in a blur of confirmation-related events, junior college school visits with Bjarki, hosting dad & Shirley for an evening, Anna’s school project, and gymming.
Saturday 18 March 2023
Cross-Country Ski Lessons, Socials & Gymming
[Photos taken 14 January – 01 February 2023, posted online 16 September 2023. Low pressure area spreading rain and wind this weekend.]
I managed to squeeze myself into beginner’s cross-country-skiing lessons on short notice (somebody dropped out). Three of the lessons happened on time, before the weather turned, and I missed the later two when the finally happened.
Aside from that, we attended a fun sewing-club new-year’s-party, there was baking, gymming, more gymming, a date night, a birthday cafe, a minor eye operation, and a trip to the summer house, among other things. There was also snow, rain, wind, aka the usual.
Saturday 14 January 2023
Do. All. The. Things. Part. Halloween.
[Photos taken 27 – 31 October 2022, posted online 02 July 2023. Seems like we’re about to get a whole week of no rain!]
Learning from last year’s fiasco of no-pumpkins-left-on-the-day-before-Halloween, I went out and got some a few days earlier. Finnur returned from the UK, Hannah Gadsby’s show finally happened, we went to the summer house with guests, and then had a lot of fun cutting designs into our pumpkins.
My upcoming new workplace sent a message asking for a profile photo, and I got to set up my work account a few days early and start poking around. I quite liked that.
Sadly, the Do. All. The. Things. mania petered out with a whimper, and I found myself returning a chunk of stuff back into the closet with the doors, having exhausted my decision muscle. But, some stuff got done, and I could finally cross it off my chronically ridiculously-long to-do list.
Thursday 27 October 2022
79th Birthday & Active Volcano Visit
[Photos taken 15 – 18 August 2022, posted online on 01 May 2023, yet another gorgeous and cold day.]
After our vacation in the US, the adults returned to work, Emma tried out a nearby tennis camp (wasn’t great), Bjarki roamed free with friends, and Anna began studying biomedical engineering at Reykjavik University.
Later that first week back, I lucked out and got to tag along with some hiking buddies to the active volcano that had started erupting at the beginning of August in Meradalir.
We were just in time, because just the next day the volcano quieted down at lot, and the day after that no fresh lava was visible, and that was the end of that eruption!
USA 2022 – Colorado Lounging, Climbing & Splashing
[Photos taken 07-10 August 2022, posted online 22 April 2023. I’m officially ridiculously far behind on my blogging!]
We flew from Spokane, Washington, to Denver, Colorado, picked up our rental car and made our way to Sarah and Augusto’s place. En route we were given a glimpse of the mad downpour that can happen in the area, with multiple cars simply driving to the side of the road and waiting the rain out rather than continue onwards almost blind.
Our Colorado days were calm in comparison to the first week of our US stay. We literally spent the first whole day lounging, although I did manage to get our travel insurance to OK Anna getting an x-ray of her ankle (not broken). The following day, most of us drove into the mountains to play in an elevated obstacle course, splash in some fresh river water, and check out flood remnants.
The following day we split up, with some of us shopping ’till we dropped, and others doing more relaxing things!
Sunday 07 August 2022
