Dagbók Hrefnu og Finns

Garden Chairs

2012-06-01Uncategorized Standard

I’m breaking away from the California-retelling to bring you news that are less than a week old! Yes, recent stuff! And what is it? Well, we bought garden chairs! Why? Because the weather in Iceland stayed bloody brilliant for a whole week, and I coveted a lounger to lounge on in the backyard.

Here are some pictures taken from inside the house and in the yard.

This spider lives outside one of our living room windows. At one point I noticed that the slowly setting sun was hitting it through another window, so I snapped a photo. A moment later the sun was gone, but the spider stayed. Since the spiders mostly stay outside, I prefer them to the flies.

Why so quiet?

2012-05-28Uncategorized Standard

Sooo… we just returned from a 2 week holiday/work-trip to California! 🙂 It was just what I needed after the winter doldrums, and we had a great time. I plan on putting pictures up over the next few days… 🙂Read more

The Woods and The Children’s Discovery Museum

2012-05-25Uncategorized Standard

One of our last stops on this nostalgia-tour of California was the kids’ old Google daycare, The Woods. There we met some of our old teachers, and there were lots of hugs, the occasional tearing-up, and much laughter. Boy, how I miss those teachers and that campus!

Bjarki with Amy, one of his old teachers.

This-and-That Day

2012-05-24Uncategorized Standard

Our last Thursday in California was spent doing a few different things. First off, we all went to eat lunch at the Google main campus, which is an absolute necessity, just to feel insanely jealous of the awesome food, yet happy not to be there on a daily basis or I’d be fatter still. After lunch, I took the kids to the Menlo Park swimming pool (they have a really warm instructional pool, where Anna used to go for weekly lessons) and afterwards we hung out on the adjacent playground for old times’ sake. Around 5 pm we went to visit Katie and Dirk for the third and last time (no photos taken) before heading to home-base after dinner, where some of the old Stanford poker-crowd got together for an evening game.

Previous photos from the Menlo Park swimming pool: With CCSC families in 2006, swim lesson in 2007, swim lesson in 2008.

Sarah and Clarissa enjoying a morning chat-session with Sarah's family, showing off Clarissa new-found crawling-skillz.

Lunch at Google! 🙂 This is Charlie's (that's the name of this particular cafeteria).

Icelander-Potluck

2012-05-23Uncategorized Standard

We lay-low the day after visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium – no need to overexert ourselves!! The kids watched too much YouTube, and I went to have lunch with some of the Stanford girls (Sarah was dizzy and effectively comatose from sleep-deprivation, and couldn’t make it) while Augusto manned the fort. At 5:30 pm we headed to a nearby park to meet a group of Icelanders for a potluck. We still know quite a few Icelandic families in the area, but didn’t have time to individually pay them a visit – so we just asked them all to come to us! The Lottas, Siggas, Sólveigs and Svavas showed up and we had a lovely time. By the way, that same park was the scene of our goodbye potluck some two years ago.

Arnar and Sólveig brought their three kids, so much bigger than the last time we saw them!

Monterey Bay Aquarium

2012-05-22Uncategorized Standard

On Tuesday, we continued our ‘greatest hits’ tour from ‘times gone by’ by visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium. All of us drove down south in the minivan, except Finnur who went to work up in the city like the diligent worker that he is. Our previous visits to the aquarium include 2001, 2004, 2006. Finnur dove from McAbee beach (pictured below) in okt 2003, nóv 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006.

Walking down the hill from the parking lot to the main street. That building is a bit of a landmark. 🙂

Ivan and Margo

2012-05-21Uncategorized Standard

Monday was beautiful like all the other days in California in late-May. After all the weekend-activities, we mostly lay low and didn’t even leave Mountain View! Anna picked lemons from Sarah and Augusto’s lemon tree, we made some too-sweet-lemonade, I got my eyes measured so that I could buy contacts, I took the kids to yet another familiar park, we then went to Whole Foods (this time beginning at the bakery), and then ended the day at Ivan and Margo Linscott’s. (Ivan Ph.D. advised Sarah and me. Examples of previous dinners at their house: 1, 2, 3 🙂 ).

A proud Anna with the lemons she picked. Boy, that brought back memories of when we used to have a hyperactive lemon-tree in our backyard back in the day…

I(c/r)elanders

2012-05-20Uncategorized Standard

On this bright and beautiful Sunday we a) went to Fry’s and acquired a cheap android tablet, b) visited Lotta and Úlfar (Icelanders), and c) visited Imelda and Stuart (Irelanders… okok, Irish). 🙂

Anna playing on one of the display-tablets at Sunnyvale-Fry's. For some reason, most of them were off, and un-playable-with.

Natural Bridges State Park

2012-05-19Uncategorized Standard

During our first ever Christmas/solstice vacation in California, our good friend Kerri (okok, her personal website is here) was kind enough to lend us her car while she went back east to visit her family. At the time we hadn’t bought our own car yet so this meant FREEDOM! We drove all over the place, and on one excursion we randomly stopped by the side of the main road north from Santa Cruz after seeing a sign for something (we suck at planning). A short hike later we stumbled onto a path that led us to a glen full of monarch butterflies, which was awesome. Sadly our camera equipment at the time was, erm, sad, so we did not get good pictures at all, but this should give you an idea.

We kept on walking and found a lovely beach with a holed-out rock off in the ocean, and it was awesome. Yes, somehow we’d stumbled onto Natural Bridges State Park, and as the years went by, we kept coming back for more. A quick search gave me these trips: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Fast-forward some eleven years (!!!) and we decided to visit the beach again, this time with Sarah and Augusto in tow.

Kids checking out the beach. It was warm out but a pretty cold breeze was coming off the ocean.

Happy Hollow

2012-05-18Uncategorized Standard

Today’s kid-friendly excursion was to Happy Hollow, a fun-park/small-zoo down in San Jose. Back in the day, I only visited the park two times, and it wasn’t terribly exciting, but I decided to give it another shot.

As it turned out, the park had been almost entirely redone since I last visited. Sadly, we again arrived at the same exact time as a bunch of playschool- and daycare groups, so the vast majority of the morning was spent waiting in line for the a) small carousel, b) tremendously jerky mini-rollercoaster, c) very slow dragon-open-bus-thingy, with a stop at a very large climbing castle/structure.

After lunch the crowd grew much much sparser and the kids could start doing the same thing over and over again, without standing in a 20-30 minute line, which made everybody happier. Due to this, we never made it to check out the animals because the park closes at 3 pm.

Ah well, at least a good time was had by all after lunch! 🙂

Some pictures from the day:

Anna and Bjarki finally on board the rollercoaster.