My oldest brother, Nökkvi, and Jóhanna, his spouse of about five years and mother of his two children, got married today! 🙂 It was a lovely day, warm-ish and sunny, and I had the pleasure of taking photos for the event. UPDATE 14 June 2012: There are now two Google+ albums with photos from thatRead more
Posting out of order ensures chaos. Anyway, I did it again – here are Ivan and Margo.Read more
I (Finnur) hastily left work at the end of today to pick up my 4yr old son from daycare. The reason for the rush was that I had been assigned the duty of driving him to a birthday party of a boy who lives in our neighborhood. I must admit, I feel a bit guiltyRead more
Our yard has a wood fence and wood patios and we even have a wood balcony! All this wood needs regular painting (oiling?) staining or it will turn very dull and gray and dry. Finnur had painted stained the balcony the day before, and we painted stained a second round on this Sunday, but then I also painted stained a portion of the main patio, at which point the following images were taken.
The wood had essentially turned gray, so we covered it with a more reddish-tinge. (I'm drawing a blank on what the proper word for this is, it's not really paint is it?… Thanks Torie: It's 'staining'.)
Hrefna working.
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.
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
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.
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).
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!
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. 🙂