[Written 26 May 2014] Finnur’s twice-yearly trip to California is upon us. He left early Sunday morning, flying through Boston. He sent this little message back once he’d gotten through immigration and customs: They let me in through passport and customs control here in Boston. The experience with the former was a bit uncomfortable asRead more
[Written 26 May 2014] Dang, we’re getting old! This past Saturday was Finnur’s 20 year graduation anniversary from the Reykjavík Junior Collage (Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík, MR for short), and he attended a reunion to celebrate. His old pal and classmate, Ragnar, came to give him a lift, but I insisted on taking a few photosRead more
[Written 26 May 2014]
Anna’s totally fallen for Japanese manga books, and we visit the library at least once a week to fetch new ones. Bjarki’s also pretty taken with them, so they make quite the reading team. Emma, of course, doesn’t want to be left out so she “reads” them too if given the chance. (10 images total)
The readers, with Bjarki somewhat patiently looking up.
[Written 24 May 2014]
The Multimedia School (Margmiðlunarskólinn) had its annual final-projects-show in a proper movie theater the other day, and among them was a project my brother Pétur did.
I juuuuust missed seeing it because I was busy shuttling the kids around, but I met up with the gang anyway, and we ended up going bowling! (3 images and 2 videos total)
Pétur, Signý, Bjarni, mom, and Nökkvi at the movie theater where all the projects were shown.
[Written 23 May 2014] I took Bjarki to the barber shop to get a haircut. He exited as TinTin, with a lollipop for a prize. Not bad! 🙂Read more
[Written 23 May 2014]
This past weekend, we drove a little over two hours to a small farm/guesthouse called Steig in the south of Iceland.
We were there to meet up with descendants of three brothers, enjoy each other’s company, enjoy the view, enjoy good food, enjoy the animals, and yeah, just enjoy life.
One of the brothers was a farmer at Steig, and both Finnur and his dad spent time there working in their youth. The family still owns the farm, to which they’ve added a 16 room guesthouse.
The weather kept improving throughout the weekend. We drove there in intermittent pouring rain on Friday, Saturday saw lots of drizzle, and Sunday was gorgeous.
This page only has a subset of the photos. You can see all the SATURDAY and SUNDAY photos by clicking on the days. (72 images and 3 photospheres total)
Friday 16 May 2014
We left pretty late in the day, so we stopped in Selfoss (45 min drive) for dinner.
It was wet out when we arrived home after the usual massive Tuesday-afternoon activities pick-up, which meant Emma couldn’t really play much outside, even if she really wanted to. (Well, I could have dressed her up in rain gear, but she’s been sick and teething and fussy and short-tempered lately, so it I figured itRead more
Emma’s getting to explore more areas of the house now without constant adult supervision.
Sure, we keep an ear out for her, and close some doors so she doesn’t get herself into too much trouble. But, we’ve noticed that she’s getting pretty good about not eating everything in Bjarki’s room, so we sometimes let her roam in there for short periods of time while we’re in some other room.
Today, I meant to quickly go downstairs to fetch some milk in a cup for her nap, but ended up needing to wait 10 minutes for the dish washer to finish because we were out of sippy cups. Something on the computer caught my attention, and in my brain I heard “oh, I can hear Emma, she’s fine”. A few minutes passed, and then … all was quiet upstairs.
I quickly filled her cup of milk and headed upstairs to find… (2 images total)
Emma, very happy having demolished half a toilet roll. Finally!
Animated gif of the proceedings follows…
[Written 5 and 6 May 2014]
This weekend’s FFF outing was super short, because yet again, the schedule was full. (The big kids practice three sports between them, and ALL THREE had meets this weekend!!!)
Once Finnur and the kids returned from the Saturday football and team handball meets, I basically grabbed the camera and ran out the door with Anna in tow, because she’d begged for a trip to the main Reykjavik library to get more manga books. We had about an hour before Finnur needed to be out the door for his own thing, so we had to be quick.
Once inside the main library, we discovered we’d inadvertently stumbled upon a small art-show opening, so we stuck around and checked it out. Once we’d satisfied our curiosity, we ran next door to Hafnarhúsið (the outing’s main target) where the current crop of Iceland Academy of the Arts graduates were showing their work.
The “elf books” at the library were adorable, and the Arts Academy show was hit and miss as usual. Incidentally, I realized belatedly that I’d seen elf-books during last weekend’s outing, on the walls of Cafe Loki. Small city! (33 images total)
The books Anna was returning on the self-serve counter, but what was that party in the background?
[Written 3 May 2014]
This week was so busy that I never managed to do a recap of last weekend’s FFF outing, but here at last it is!
The main goal (heh) this time was to visit the The Museum of Einar Jónsson, which is yet another place I’ve driven past a thousand times, but never actually entered. Happily, the museum is right next to the church of Hallgrímur (famous poet), which is always fun to take photos of, especially in nice weather.
It turns out this Einar guy was Iceland’s first (modern?) sculptor, educated in Denmark around 1900. I hadn’t realized, but I’ve seen his work all over the place – he’s responsible for many of the ‘main’ sculptures found around town.
Now, having walked through the museum, I’ll grant him that he was a really good sculptor, but not really my cup of tea. (Too religious, and dramatic.)
On to the photos! (83 images total, eeek!)
The museum building. From the museum website: “In 1909, Einar Jónsson offered all of his works as a gift to the Icelandic people on the condition that a museum be built to house them. This gift was not accepted by the Icelandic Parliament until 1914, however. The Parliament contributed 10,000 crowns to the construction of the museum, while a national collection yielded 20,000 crowns in private donations.”