Dagbók Hrefnu og Finns

12th Birthday / Increased Daylight / UK Winter Break

2025-02-12Birthday, Hrefna's family, UK, Us Standard

[Photos taken 12 – 21 February 2025, posted online 13 September 2025. It’s bright but windy day, the leaves have begun turning although the air temperature has been unseasonably high.]

Emma’s 12 birthday finally arrived, much to her joy! We had a mini celebration at home on the day, and she invited a few friends over a few days later. Further celebrations had to wait as a) I got sick and, b) we were headed to the UK for a school winter-break visit.

In the meantime, the days kept getting longer with the sun higher in the sky, which meant taking down yule-lights, and cleaning windows.

Wednesday 12 February 2025

Gifts ready for when the birthday girl arrived back home from school.

February Feasts / Knitting / Weather-Whiplashes

2025-02-01Friends, Knitting, Us Standard

[Photos taken 01 – 11 February 2025, posted online 07 September 2025. Having a relatively quiet weekend, and am a little shocked that it’s September already. Starting to repaint and reorganize Anna’s room in her absence.]

For some reason, the weekends in the new year were densely packed with meets and greets. I will admit that the pressure of starting a new job in January plus all the socializations left my mental batteries stretched somewhat to the limit, so much so that I had to start postponing non-essential things. Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoy meeting people, but it’s exhausting at the same time!?

Live and learn, I guess.

Saturday 01 February 2025

On my way to the summerhouse for an overnight stay. This is what happens during serious melts! The original plan was for this to be a buddy weekend for Finnur, but as most of the buddies couldn’t make it, it got turned into a three-couples weekend. They were lovely!

All. The. Snow / More Social Gatherings / Concerts

2025-01-16Concert, Friends, snow, Us Standard

[Photos taken 16 – 31 January 2025, posted online 03 August 2025. First Born is moving to Denmark tomorrow to finish her MS degree in biomedical engineering at DTU. I’m working on not freaking out too badly.]

January kept on being January, with weather-whiplashes, and more social gatherings. At some point I realized I needed to attempt to recharge after seemingly non-stop events and fun-times on top of a new job, so there were some solo mental health walks, in between more events and fun-times, and the new job.

Mostly though, there was snow.

Thursday 16 January 2025

All the snow completely gone, replaced by rain.

The Thirteenth / New Job / Social Gatherings

2025-01-06Us Standard

[Photos taken 06 – 15 January 2025, posted online 02 August 2025. This is a big travel weekend in Iceland, as Monday is a public holiday, and so far it’s been very heavy rain and high winds.]

With our US visitors gone, the house was suddenly very empty and quiet. We put all the decorations away, and the following day I started a new job!

Life then resumed, with the addition of social gatherings which snuck onto the calendar in large numbers.

Monday 06 January 2025

This was my last day of unemployment, as I would start a new job the following day. Of course I started the day at my usual cafe, which had a cheerful “Happy New Year” sign, and some tasty tasting bits.

US Visitors @ Grindavík / Aurora / Departure

2025-01-03Uncategorized Standard

[Photos taken 03 – 05 January 2025, posted online 01 August 2025. Been a quiet couple of weeks on vacation, minus a weekend trip to Vík with a group of lovely ladies.]

We recruited good friends into guiding us around the western part of the Reykjanes peninsula. The first stop was the mostly deserted town of Grindavík, then we went to look at some interesting coastline features, followed by walking to a hot spring area, before enjoying some wonderful refreshments at their home.

Their last whole day we went to Flyover Iceland, did a bit of shopping, lit some leftover-fireworks, and then went aurora-hunting again. Their last day was more shopping, before heading to the airport. We were sad to see them go, but should see them again soon, as there’s a full solar eclipse in Iceland on 12 August 2026, and they’ve already reserved beds with us!

Friday 03 January 2025

Ready to run at a moment’s notice if the evacuation alarms went off in Grindavík, while also looking at photos from the past few months of madness.

New Year’s Swim / Sopaipillas / Wool Stores

2025-01-01Friends, Us, Visitors Standard

[Photos taken 01 – 02 January 2025, posted online 24 July 2025. This past month has been ridiculously busy, so absolutely zero progress in blog-land. So weird to be revisiting January in July!]

Most everything was closed on 1 January, as it was New Year’s Day. However, one of our town’s swimming pools was open so that’s where we headed. It was -7 to -10C / 20 to 14F outside, and I was thoroughly misunderstood when I told our US visitors that yes, “there is an indoor pool”. Of course, nobody really actually stays indoors, it’s all about the outdoors hot-tubbing!

The evening was the big sopaipillas-dinner (our visitors had brought special ingredients!), but the following day was a slow one. Mostly everybody just lounged, although the moms did manage to head out and visit a couple of wool-stores.

Wednesday 01 January 2025

The solar storm was still going pretty strong, and this was the view outside our house that evening.

New Year’s Eve / Party / Bonfire / Aurora / Fireworks

2024-12-31Finnur's family, Friends, New Year's Eve, Us Standard

[Photos taken 31 December 2024 (into 01 January 2025), posted online 14 June 2025. We’re getting more really nice weather, it’s like a “summer”??]

New Year’s Eve is always a fun day. The day began with Anna making yet another batch of the ever popular “horns” for the potluck-party that evening. It’s a “newish” twist on tradition that Finnur’s sister now invites the family to celebrate the new year, and we got permission to invite our US visitors along.

Earlier that day I managed to convince two hyperactive souls to join me for some frisbee golf in the baby-sized forest up the hill (Guðmundarlundur). By the forest we ran into a lost shivering cold dog, which we pulled into our car. The magical powers of Facebook (advertising lost animals is about the only thing it’s actually good for) had the dog reunited with its owner in half an hour.

Our US visitors were very keen to see the northern lights, and had been following the expected conditions. The forecast for the evening was excellent, following a solar storm ejection two days prior, so they planned on driving out while the Icelandic “annual comedy hour” was in progress to go hunting for lights.

At the last minute, I decided to join them as a guide in the hunt so they didn’t get hopelessly lost, or drive too far afield to make it back for the insane fireworks at midnight. Let’s just say that we got very lucky in the aurora deparatment!

Happy 2025 Everybody!!

Tuesday 31 December 2024

US Visitors @ Summer House / Games / Fireworks

2024-12-27Friends, Us Standard

[Photos taken 27 – 30 December 2024, posted online 07 June 2025. We’re on the other side of a stormy few days, and the nights have been cold. Some plants sustained damage, but most doing ok.]

We decided to move everybody up to the “summer house”, as we’d have more actual beds there for our US visitors. The conditions were mild enough for the “middle”-big car to make it up to the house.

As luck would have it, we discovered upon arrival that our “big” electric car was refusing to charge, which put a serious damper on any sight-seeing plans as the car had just enough charge to get back to town. In case it was just a case of cold, we got permission to park it inside a nearby barn to thaw overnight, but no luck.

After marathon game-sessions, and a snowball-y walk to the lake and back, we drove back to town a day early. That meant we could go watch the nearby “official” search-and-rescue squad fireworks show nearby. Our visitors then spent a day visiting museums, while the rest of us rested!

Friday 27 December 2024

Cheating a bit, this is a photo from the following day. We arrived when it was dark, so there was nothing much to photograph.

Christmas Eve+Day+2nd Day / Anna’s 21st Birthday / US Visitors!

2024-12-24Christmas, Friends, Us Standard

[Photos taken 24 – 26 December 2024, posted online 01 June 2025. Pouring rain today, and strong chilly winds predicted tomorrow after the absolute beauty of a May weatherwise. All the plants are fully green (way ahead of schedule), and here’s hoping they survive the next few days…]

Christmas Eve passed in a traditional manner… Finnur was in charge of the kitchen, while Emma and I went on a hike up to the overlook point, and mostly everybody stayed out of Finnur’s way.

Similarly, Christmas Day was as tradition dictates with Anna’s 21st birthday, her making “horns” and desserts for Finnur’s family gathering at his parents’ place, us going there, eating and playing the social-whist tournament (I won!!) before preparing for visitors at home.

The second day of Christmas (aka Boxing Day in the UK) saw our US visitors arrive bright and early. They got to sleep for a few hours, and then they got dragged to the outdoors swimming pool/hot-tub/slide-extravaganza up the hill. The five of us went to a lovely late-afternoon family-gathering on my side, before spending the evening playing games, and then some more games!

Christmas Eve – Tuesday 24 December 2024

Happy Yule! About the only time we deck the table for dinner.

Annual Ginger Bread House / 2PRs on 1-Rep-Max-Day

2024-12-23Us Standard

[Photos taken 23 December 2024, posted online 24 May 2025. We’ve returned to more normal May weather after a bonkers run of 10 sunny days with ridiculously high temperatures. It’s bizarre to blog about December at this point.]

The annual ginger bread house making happened on Thorlak’s mass day. That day we also had a 1-rep-max day at the gym of the three big lifts, and I set two personal records (PRs)! There were no judges around, just a fun group of people having a blast, so it’s not official. (Note on lingo: UK English apparently uses PB rather than PR, for Personal Best, but that’s peanut butter in the US, and others write 1RM for One-Rep-Max!)