Celebrating Anna’s 10th and Iðunn’s 2nd Birthdays (aka Anna’s Birthday Party #1)

Jóhanna (my brother Nökkvi’s wife) and I, decided to co-host a birthday party for our girls who have birthdays in December.  

This turned out brilliantly, a) because they live in student housing and therefore have access to a big party room, and b) it meant less food prep for both of us.  In attendance were relatives on my mother’s side, as well as Jóhanna’s family.

Still, we were both up until late in the night the night before, decorating cakes.  Here’s my effort: (29 images total)

Yet another chocolate birthday cake. This time I opted for something smaller to write the letters with than the colorful smarties. This was both good and bad: The letters fit better, but they took a lot longer to make. Bedime: 2 am.

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Emma with Granny Ásdís

We try to have granny Ásdís over every week for dinner.  And this time I got a few pics of her and Emma. 🙂 (4 images total)

Sitting in the kitchen.

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Gymnastics Advent Meet – Bjarki

Bjarki spent the night at his grandparents’ house, and they shuttled him to this year’s gymnastics advent meet.  (Here is the blog entry from last year’s advent meet.)

Us girls met Bjarki there, and watched him being put through the ropes, so to speak.  He did pretty well, considering he’s nothing but hands and legs! 🙂 (14 images total, 1 video link)

The start of the meet. There were fewer groups this year – four girl groups and two boy groups. I saw on Facebook that they were expecting 650 kids over the weekend, meaning they must have split the groups down into lots of slots. The hall was certainly more peaceful than last year!

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Frozen

Some arctic air got pulled down to our lovely shores, and today is being billed as the ‘coldest day of the year’.  

It’s not so bad though, our outside thermometer was at a paltry -10°C/14F and there is no wind to speak of, so it’s just kinda… crusty out there.

But I figured I should take a photo of the thermometer so I ventured outside for a bit, before taking a few selfies of me and Emma.  Yes, it’s a slow day, and we’re spending most of it indoors. (11 images total)

Obligatory thermometer picture.

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Do I Dare Jinx This?

First:  How is it DECEMBER FORTH already?!?!? Anyway.  The jinxing.  By saying stuff out loud.  Goes as follows: Emma has slept from 7 pm to aaaalmost 6 am three nights in a row now.  No drinking, no serious waking up screaming. It kinda happened by accident.  a) Finnur left for his biannual two-week-long work-trip toRead more

Wasgij? #9 Completed

When I went to put Wasgij #13 away, I stumbled upon an unopened Wasgij? box, which promptly got opened. I think I worked on it some in June, and then it got moved into the front room, where it languished for a few months. It was only this November where I got my act togetherRead more

Sleep at the End of the Tunnel?

Soooo…  This household has been pretty beset by viruses and bacteria for over two weeks now.  Thankfully it hasn’t been all illness all the time, more like 2-3 days of somebody getting something, and then a 3-4 day break before the next victim would fall.

Things came to a bit of a head though going into Friday this past week, when Bjarki came down with Emma’s cough-virus from a week earlier.  

He woke up at 1 am with a fever and had a hard time breathing.  I dug up an expired can of ventolin (asthma medication) and then held him in front of a warm shower for a good long while to try and moisten up his unhappy airways.

Between attending to Bjarki and then Emma (who woke up at 3:30 am, and 5:30 am-ish), I woke up every hour during that night – and spent a good chunk of it on Bjarki’s tiny Ikea bed (Which didn’t break!  I was amaaazed!).

One night like that would have been ok-ish, except the following night I again woke up during every am-hour on the clock (except 2 am).  Ouch!  (I really, really, really hate illnesses that compromise breathing.  Really.)

I should have spent Saturday in bed sleeping, but Anna had a team handball meet, so she and Finnur were out of the house from 10 am to about 4 pm.  (Anna’s team won one game, lost three.  Which would have been fine if they’d doled out participation medals like they do in swimming, but there were no medals, which bummed Anna out more than anything.)

After all this, I basically threw in the ceasefire-towel, and once Emma’d had her midnight drink, I crawled into the bed we have in the ‘office’, and fell asleep.  (The ‘office’ is the fourth room on the upper floor, but it doesn’t have a door, so it’s not really a bedroom.  It’s called the ‘office’ because there used to be a desk in there, and that’s where the bookshelves live.)

Finnur valiantly fielded Emma during the night, but found out the hard way that if you let her up onto the big bed, she’ll try and crawl on top of an adult every hour or so.  I regained consciousness around 5:30 am (having heard the screams through the night) and saved Finnur.  We then tag-teamed through the day, but there were two pretty grumpy adults stomping about the house throughout Sunday.  (But Finnur did manage to help Anna clean her room, finally!  Oh, that was a relief!)

Last night we repeated the mom-sleeps-in-the-office and lo and behold, Emma drank at 1 am and then I woke up at 6 am and could hear her waking up in the other room.  Finnur had made the smart decision to leave her in her crib no matter what, meaning neither of us was in a mood to wake up to her fussing, so we don’t really know if she did or not.

So here’s crossing our fingers that we’ll have another five hour stretch of sleep post-midnight tonight, and that I can move back to my bed before too long.

(Yes, the smart thing to do would be to move Emma into the office, but I have issues with that.  And there’s no door.)

I leave you with some pictures of Emma: (4 images total)

24 November: Emma gleefully chasing after the camera. Funnily enough, she’s most interested in the camera strap, not the camera itself!

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November Snow

We got 2-3 days of snow finally! (4 images total)

As is now ‘customary’, the kids built a snow-“house” on the front patio on 17 November.

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Ginger Bread Houses – 2013 Edition

We’ve had a great time making ginger bread houses and decorating ginger snaps in the past.  Here’s 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007 (2007 longer version), and 2009.

Anna reminded me not so long ago that I’d failed to fulfill my promise to make a ginger bread house last year, so I felt extra inspired to do it this year.  And since Emma fell ill, we were kinda forced to have a quiet inside day anyway, and what better way to spend it than in the kitchen? 🙂

We invited Holla and her girls over to lend us a hand… Óli is far far away up in the highlands somewhere on a job, so he missed out on all the fun.

Mindful of the information from 2007, I made two kinds of dough for the ginger snaps, namely Piparkökur 2 and Piparkökur 4 (pipar = pepper, kökur = cakes, aka ginger snaps).  We used the #4 dough to make the cookies, and the #2 dough to make the houses.  Opinions were split on which one tasted better, #2 was a little softer (stickier?), while #4 was crumblier and more sugary? (14 images total)

Just getting started.

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Day Two of Feeeever

Emma continued being a sick little chickling for a second day.  She had a non-productive cough and intermittent high fever (when the fever-reducers ran out). (Thankfully, the fever went down the next day, although a lingering cough remains.)Read more