November 2017 – Snow, Sledding, and Friends
[Photos taken on 03 – 25 November 2017, posted on 15 July 2018. This post is being written at the Javastop in Longmont, Colorado, USA!]
November, November…! A wall got painted in a complicated way, we visited friends, there was snow, sledding, and coffee house trips. Bjarki competed in group-gymnastics, and we happily attended a Thanksgiving feast with other ex-Californians! (70 images total)
Friday 03 November 2017
Once Emma got a pink wall in her room, Bjarki requested a blue one in his room. I went to get some samples (many weeks prior to this), and painted three large swaths of them on his wall. He couldn’t decide between the the colors, instead deciding that he wanted all of them, in large stripes!! This Friday I finally got going, using a slim wooden stick, 1/6 of the wall length, and a pencil, to make guidelines.
September 2017
[Photos taken on 13 – 30 September 2017, posted 27 May 2018. It’s muggy out there. May’s been record-breaking wet.]
I had barely returned from my work-trip to Northern-Ireland when Finnur took off for Japan and California for work. Here are photos from life which still went on, somehow. (71 images total)
Wednesday 13 September 2017
Me in downtown Reykjavik, at 18:51. The days had started to get shorter. I vaguely remember being downtown to eat dinner with some work-related visitors from abroad.
August Becomes September
[Photos taken on 20 August – 5 September 2017, posted 10 May 2018. The erratic May snow/hail/wind weather lasted for a whole week, but now we’re back to spring. Yay!]
August brought with it birthday parties, the start of the school year, lovely calm weather, walks, and football (soccer)! Life went on, and started settling down into the schedule that would extend through the winter. (55 images total)
Sunday 20 August 2017
The weather played nice, while Anna and I played Pokemon Go… Some raid or other brought us to a church in Garðabær! Then we had to wait for others to arrive.
A Tale of Two Projects
[Photos taken on 31 July – 13 August 2017, posted 06 April 2018. Big fire next to Marel yesterday, no casualties. Pretty crazy stuff. 14 April 2018. This post turned into a bigger monster than I anticipated.]
The remainder of our summer vacation was spent with Finnur and I fulfilling our stereotypical roles to the max.
He took off for the summer house by Laugarvatn to build an extension to the deck behind the house (very manly!) while I stayed at home, stained the deck, tidied, and totally overhauled three rooms which were in dire need of help (very womanly!).
To make it possible to get any work done on both ends, Finnur first took Emma with him for a few nights, then swapped kids and took Bjarki for a few nights. His parents and a rotating gang of his siblings and their significant others also came through, so it was a whole team effort.
On our side, I sort of recall Bjarki also having a sleepover or two with some friends of his during this time, so it was just me and Anna for a couple of nights, which was admittedly weird! (120 images total !!!!!!!!!)
Monday 31 July 2017
As is often the case at the end of July, the weather was gorgeous for a few days, so I finally managed to stain our deck. Complicating matters a bit was a beehive that had formed under the deck close to the house, which was scary to stain on top of, but neither myself, nor the bees were harmed during the staining.
Summer House in Úthlíð
[Photos taken on 21 July – 28 July 2017, posted 29 March 2018. Looking like spring out there. Contemplating whether to continue blogging or not to continue blogging. Blergh!]
In Iceland, unions and employee associations are mostly just big summer house rental operations. As an employee (or union member) you pay a small amount into a joint fund, and then get rights to rent a summer house for a week for a low fee.
This summer, Adda and Halli were super lucky and got to rent a really nice new summer house in Úthlíð, a hop and a skip away from the Geysir area in Haukadalur. They kindly invited us along, and we had a lovely time, even may have returned home somewhat rested! (98 images total)
Friday 21 July 2018
This summer house in Úthlíð that was ours for a week. It belongs to the employee association of Halli’s workplace.
Day #9 in St. Brieuc – Mont St. Michel og St. Malo
[Photos taken on Monday 17 July 2017, posted 31 December 2017 4 January 2018. I can see daylight!]
Our only “proper” tourist day had us visiting the medieval-ish sort-of-island fortress of Mont St. Michel, and the old town of St. Malo. This also happened to be the warmest day of our stay, which made for an especially sweaty day. (85 images total!)
Family photo in front of Mont St. Michel, as we were leaving, and the younger two were completely out of energy!
Day #8 in St. Brieuc – Calm Day
[Photos taken on Sunday 16 July 2017, 28 December 2017. Die Hard is on.]
After the trip to the beach the day before, we decided to lay low, and hang out in town. We went walking about downtown with our friends, checking out a playground or two. We hit a small snag in that almost everything was closed, so it took a while and a fair bit of walking to find an open bakery, but we succeeded in the end! (8 images total)
When in France, buy macaroons in bulk!
Day #6 in St. Brieuc – Tree Climbing Adventure Park
[Photos taken on Friday 14 July 2017, posted online on 18 November 2017. We’ve had snow on the ground for a week now.]
As is by now a custom, we located a tree-climbing adventure park near our house.
Even though 14 July is Bastille Day, we were happy to find out the park was open. This one even had activities for small children but only with supervision, which suited us very well, since Finnur was unable to climb due to his recently broken collar bone. (31 images, 2 gifs, 1 video).
By the gear-station.
Day #4 in St. Brieuc – Rennes
[Photos taken on Wednesday 12 July 2017, posted online on 12 November 2017. The trees still have snow on their branches. Love the windlessness.]
This wednesday the weather forecast for St. Brieuc called for thunder and massive rain. We therefore decided to drive inland to the city of Rennes, to shop for clothes, and visit a kid’s science museum.
Sadly, we misunderstood the directions on the website, and instead of getting to enjoy the funnest part of the science museum, the group got stuck watching a film about stars in the planetarium because the science museum (“Merlin’s laboratory”) was sold out that day. (Anna and I missed the whole kerfuffle, as we were shopping.)
Afterwards we tried to find a place that was open for dinner at 6 pm. Thankfully, Óli found a pizza place that was open, and it had great pizzas! (9 images total)
At the entrance to the science museum. It took a long while to figure anything out, in the end tickets to the planetarium were bought.
Day #3 in St. Brieuc – Paimpol
[Photos taken on Tuesday 11 July 2017, posted online on 11 November 2017. Second proper snow-day of this winter in Iceland today.]
The weather forecast for this day wasn’t very appealing, so we opted to just drive to a nearby town, walk around for a bit, stop at an old abbey, and then pretty much just drive back home!
Sometimes calm-ish days are the best. (38 images total)
At Paimpol. They have a large harbor.