Anna and Sproti (and a wee bit of ‘art’)

[Written on 14 August 2012]

Back in June, Anna asked if she could go on a horse-riding course.  These things run in June and July, and are generally fully booked long in advance.  Lucky for us though, there were openings in July, so on 9 July Anna began her week-long course.  Right off the bat she looooooved it, so we quickly booked the next week too.  The course ran from 9am to noon, Mon through Fri, and was run by Viking Horses, which happen to be located about 7 minutes away from us by car.

On the last day, 20 July, Finnur went to pick her up, and arrived early enough to see her arrive on ‘her’ horse, Sproti (she had the same horse the whole time except for the first day).  Here are some pics:

Arriving at a slow pace. The stables are by the edge of Kópavogur – you can see houses under construction in the background.

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Quasi-Canadian Visitors

[Written on 13 August 2012]

Back when we lived in California, Finnur had three Icelandic work colleagues located in Canada.  One has now relocated to Iceland, another to Sweden, but the third has remained in Canada, and we generally refer to him as Canada-Siggi. 🙂

Canada-Siggi and his family were in Iceland this summer, and we invited them for dinner, because we hadn’t seen them in so many years!  (Past encounters here (2004 in Montreal), here (2005 in CA), here (2005 in CA), here (2005 in CA), and here (2006 in CA).)

The camera came out way late, or just as they were about to head off.

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Hot Tubbing and Tidying Up

[Written 10 August 2012]

The news that we had an operational hot tub spread, and Pétur and Signý came to take a look.

Poor Pétur didn’t get to go into the hot tub until he’d allowed me to cut his hair. It had just gotten ridiculously long, and he was waiting until school started to get it cut because they’re two broke students. As it happens, we were once also penniless students, so I got fairly good at cutting Finnur’s hair way-back-when.

A hiding Anna, shaggy Finnur, newly-shorn Pétur, and suspicious Fannar in the tub. 🙂

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Fence-Washing

[Written 10 August 2012]

July 16th was YET ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY in a summer of fantastic days.  I believe this may be the sixth summer running where we ‘steal’ all the nice summer weather away from the UK. 🙂

Our yard, looking very green. Anna is tending to some seedlings which we got started way too late, but it’s fun for her anyway.

Did you notice all that wood in the previous image? Well, it has to be stained every now and then, and by the looks of it no staining had happened in a few years. Thus algae and stuff had started growing on it, so Finnur brought out our high-pressure-washer to clean the wood. Bjarki really wanted a go too!

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New Neighbors!

I’m too lazy to fetch the big camera and upload pictures from it (via a CABLE!) so here’s a photo from my phone taken today.  Yes, my lovely phone automatically uploads pics to Google+ when on a WiFi connection, and I’m contemplating holding off on upgrading my Canon beast until it can do the same!Read more

Hot Tub Operational and Curtains Part 1

[Written 10 August 2012]

Hey look, we have a functional hot tub! 🙂

Anna, Bjarki and Eyrún try out the hot tub. They seemed to like it! 🙂

While Finnur kept an eye on the kids, my cousin Ríkey and I got started on making curtains for the living room. I’d bought a thin fabric that measured 3 m tall by 8 m wide (about 10 ft by 26 ft) and it needed to by cut in half (2 x 4 m) and then shortened to 195 cm. Thankfully the bottom edge was already ‘done’, but wrangling so much fabric was non-trivial!  Here Ríkey shows her apprehension as she’s about to start cutting it in half.

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Back Home

When we arrive home we found a new patio in our backyard! P.s. On Monday morning Anna started on a horse-riding course (three hours every morning all week) which I’ll blog about later.Read more

Cleaning House

We all felt our week in the north went by really quickly, and all of a sudden it was time to pack our stuff, clean the house, and leave!  I realized I hadn’t really documented what the house looked like on the inside, so here are a few (too many?) pics for that purpose.

Starting to empty out the kitchen. Trying to remember what foodstuffs had been left behind by others, and what was ours was a little tricky.  The dishwasher is hidden next to the sink.

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North of Akureyri

Hildur Sif shook her Wednesday fever overnight, but acquired trunk-wide rashes instead.  Bjarki also joined in on the rash-fun but since neither of them looked terribly sick or seemed at all bothered by their rashes (flea bites?  hot tub gunk reaction?) we decided to head out anyway, and explore the area to the north of Akureyri.

Make sure you know how to drive on gravelly roads if you ever plan on driving in Iceland. 🙂

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Fever!

On this Wednesday, we had initially planned to drive all the way to Mývatn, a picturesque lake almost two hours away.  When the day dawned, we discovered that Hildur Sif had a fever and was acting rather sluggish.  We therefore cancelled our plans (the lake isn’t going anywhere any time soon) and we (the fourRead more