[Photos from 14-19 August 2016, posted online 18 October 2016. October so far is balmy warm, with intermittent storms.]
The last work-week before school started. The big kids were at horse camp, the little kid was at daycare, and the big folk were at work. A few photos got taken nonetheless. (13 images total)
Sunday 14 August 2016
The adorableness is strong with these. Emma’s out there in front.
[Photos from 13 August 2016, posted online 07 October 2016. This post took two coffee house visits!]
Earlier this year, after a funeral of a member of my mother’s extended family, the idea was floated to have the descendants of my maternal-great-grandparents meet up outside of the funeral context for a change.
My great-grandparents, who lived in Engjabær, which was located where the farm animal/family park in Reykjavik is now, had 12 children (sort of standard for the time), all of which made it to adulthood, but only five of which had children of their own.
One cousin offered up a fishing hut/camping site that he runs at Minnivallalækur. Since the five of us still don’t have the equipment we need to camp overnight, we instead drove there on Saturday morning, spent the day (fake-camped our small tent), and then drove back in the late evening.
A good time was had by all! Also, the whole photoset can be seen here. (32 images below)
Group photo of (most of) the attendees. Click on the image to see a larger version.
[Photos from 05 August – 12 August 2016, posted on 03 OCTOBER 2016. Tried a new cafe this evening. Not bad!]
The last weekend of our summer holiday, and the first working week, went by in a flash of snapshots.
Emma was adorable, we met a new human, we had dinner bracketed by handyman-jobs, I stole quiet moments where I could, the big kids returned to horse camp, and I attended a 40th birthday party! (27 images total)
Friday 05 August 2016
Emma pretending our MiFi gadget is a phone. Photo by Anna.
[Photos from 03 August 2016, posted on 02 OCTOBER 2016. There’s a storm outside, so let’s pretend it’s still summer!]
I was just done with painting after finishing the outside of the house, so to give Finnur peace to continue the seemingly endless task of staining wood, I took the kids to the farm-animal/family park in downtown Reykjavik.
While we were there, a reminder popped up for a trip to the Fákasel Horse Park with some of our Icelandic friends from California. Finnur wanted to keep on working, so I took the kids, and we had a grand time! (21 images total)
Emma at the end of riding in a large circle on horse-back at the farm-animal park.
[Photos from 27 July to 4 August 2016, posted online 17 September 2016. The crowning achievement of our summer vacation.]
This spring, we made the mutual decision with our neighbors to paint the house and stain all its woodwork this summer. The woodwork up by the roof was dehydrated and getting damaged, and the sun had burned through the paint on the back side of the house.
The original plan was that Finnur and I were going to get quotes from contractors for our half, because it looked like a lot of work, and we didn’t think we could do it. Our neighbors, on the other hand, were fully committed to doing their own side by themselves.
Over the summer, however, we started hearing that getting contractors was becoming very difficult, and the quotes were astronomical. So… after finally deciding on a wall color, we decided to just wash, paint, and stain our half ourselves! Finnur took on all the woodwork, while I did the vast majority of the actual painting. My brother Bjarni also came over to help out when he could.
Here are photos to document the days as they went by… (53 images total)
Wednesday 27 July 2016
Bjarki testing the high-pressure washer. You can see the stripes on the wall after Finnur washed it. Also visible are the numerous paint samples we tried while deciding on a color. It turned out our house wasn’t really blue anymore, but more of a washed-out gray with a blue undertone!
[Photos from 24-26 July 2016, posted online 11 September 2016. Baby steps.]
It was “our week” at the summer house Finnur owns with his siblings, so to the summer house by Laugarvatn we went! With us were Adda and Halli, plus kids, and a lovely time was had by all (we hope). We visited a small petting zoo for the first time, there was more jogging, and on the way back, we stopped at various places to hunt Pokemons. (23 images total)
Anna and Finnur at the overlook point by Þingvellir, as they hunted for Pokemons on the way back to town.
[Photos from 21-23 July 2016, posted online 10 September 2016. Back at the coffee house I like to blog in. Need a coffee house closer to home!]
After we returned from Sweden, we lay low for a little bit. I went out for a couple of slow jogs, a friend dragged us (in a good way) to a jazz concert downtown, and uh, then there was more jogging!
Be warned that the image for Friday 22 has a close up on a small wound on Emma’s face, that she got when she fell face-first on the edge of a table. :/ (18 images total)
p.s. I rearranged the blog posts into the order they happened, as I was getting confused.
Thursday 21 July 2016
Was feeling jittery so I went out for a jog. Warmed up by walking up to the stupa above our house, where somebody had left flowers.
[Photos from Wednesday 20 July 2016, posted online 10 August 2016. In the middle of an allergy test for antibiotics.]
After a lovely time in Sweden, it was time to head back home. Happily, the flight back was in the middle of the afternoon, so it was a relatively low-stress day… if you discount the fact that we managed to mess up getting onto the correct highway, causing a small delay… oh, and due to a misunderstanding, one of the handluggage bags got left behind in the check-in area, and had to be reclaimed from lost and found. (7 images total)
Goodbye pink house!
[Photos from Tuesday 19 July 2016, posted online 9 August 2016. The adults are back at work. Goodbye summer vacation!]
On our last whole day, we opted to visit something called the Tom Tits Experiment. It’s essentially a science museum, and unfortunately shared a lot of things with the other science museum we’d just visited a few days before, so it felt less special than it could have. But there were also neat new things to see, and do, so it wasn’t a total loss. (24 images total)
When we arrived, there was a show going on. As we sat down (see Finnur and the kids in the middle), he was just finishing juggling regular stuff, and then went on to swinging around things on fire. Like this huge ball!
[Photos from Monday 18 July 2016, posted online 7 August 2016. House finally painted and woodwork stained. Phew!]
Finnur had some business to attend to at the Stockholm Google office, so we all went there, and ate lunch.
Afterwards we decided to visit the Junibacken, a unique place where locales and characters from Swedish children’s books (many of which we’ve read) have been made real. It’s not big, but packed with stuff. (50 images total, some taken by Finnur)
We parked underneath the Google building, and had a little trouble finding the way out and up and back into it!