… the adults go out to play! Yes, both kids got swept away on sleepovers earlier today. Anna headed to her classmate’s before lunch and will not be returning until tomorrow. So that Bjarki wouldn’t be bored to tears in the meantime, Finnur’s parents agreed to take him on for the same amount of time.Read more
As usual, the week between Christmas and the new year is full of fun feasts. On the Second day of Christmas, Arnar and Magnea invited the family over for delicious food and good company. Here are some pics. 🙂
Mmmm… lovely lovely foooood! 🙂
Anna Sólrún is now EIGHT years old!! How time flies. 🙂 As is customary, we spent the day with Finnur’s family. We arrived around 14:30, and began by eating a chocolate cake in Anna’s honor. She then got to open some presents (Icelanders open the Christmas presents on Christmas Eve) much to her enjoyment. 🙂
After the ‘birthday-part’ of the day was over, the adults sat down to play whist while the kids watched some tv. After we’d played 12 rounds, it was time for Christmas Dinner, after which the whist-trophy was awarded to the top scorer, and some playing cards were given to the lowest scorer.
All in all it was a lovely Christmas Day, and to make the day even more lovely we had snowfall pretty much the whole day, making the view extra Christmassy. 🙂
Here are some photos from the day.
The standard-issue chocolate cake, with too many colorful smarties to be readable. It should say "Anna 8" 🙂
The (half) happy family. 🙂
Begin info dump: Icelanders celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. The celebrations begin at 6pm with a fancy meal, followed by the all-important opening of presents. End info dump.
Christmas (Eve)/Yule/Solstice arrived in a flurry of snow. The trickiest part of the day is keeping the kids sane, because, duh, PRESENTS!! We somehow managed to convince them to go outside, just as a blizzard descended, and
The kids out in the backyard as snow is beginning to fall.
Merry Christmas! Gleðileg jól! Happy Solstice! Gleðilega sólstöðuhátíð! 🙂 🙂 🙂 All in all – HAPPY HOLIDAYS! 🙂Read more
We spent Christmas 2010 in England, and therefore never bothered to buy a Christmas/Yule-tide/Solstice tree last year. This year we were planning to cut down a tree in our own back-yard, but when the time came it was already dark out, the tree wasn’t that pretty, and we were feeling lazy. End-result: Finnur drove to the nearest tree-depot and bough a tree.
It is customary in Iceland to put the Christmas tree up on the evening before Christmas Eve, so that’s what we did. As it happened, Bjarni and mom were delivering presents at the same time, so we got them to help out.
Anna and Bjarki walking aroud the decorated Christmas tree stand…
On 16 December 2011, my brother Nökkvi and his spouse Jóhanna welcomed their second child! She was in a hurry to get here, and measured 53 cm (20.9 inches) long and weighed 4 kg (16 ‘merkur’, 8.8 lbs) on arrival. All were healthy and happy and they went home later that day. Since we wereRead more
Once I found out that I’d be all done with final exams on December 5th, I went right ahead and bought tickets for us to spend 10 days in the UK before Christmas with dad et al. It’s always nice to change scenery, and get a little extra daylight over the darkest bit of the year in Iceland. So to England we flew, and spent the days mostly just hanging out at my dad’s, oh and I did a bit of shopping too. 🙂
Friday 9 December 2011
The stewardesses of Icelandair have this lovely custom of coming out into the main waiting area and sing happy Yule-tide songs before heading to the planes (which all depart around the same time). They're really quite good!! 🙂
After biking pretty much daily to work in the balmy fall weather, frost and snow hit us like a brick in the latter part of November and nobody has stepped forward to remove the brick yet. I was all ready to keep biking, but for some reason my schedule became such that I’ve been car-riddenRead more
While living in California for ten years, we were incredibly fortunate to meet and befriend other Icelanders who lived in our area. Many of those ended up moving back to Iceland (as one does!) and we still keep in touch with many of them. Out of the ‘large’ group of friends, a small ‘core’ emerged, and this group meets up once per year to celebrate Thanksgiving – because who else would give a damn in Iceland?! 🙂 (This year the feast got delayed a bit, so it almost merged with Yule-tide – hence the decorating of ginger bread houses! 🙂 )
Our hosts this year were Soffía and Ágúst in their newly built house, and just like last year, Finnur missed the party – this time because he himself was in California on a work-trip!
Happy chit-chatting by the kitchen-island. 🙂