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

Emma Sick

Emma woke up with a high fever this morning and stayed pretty comatose throughout the day.  I took her to the doctor in the afternoon because she’d had a cold for a while before this, and sure enough she has a nasty ear infection, but also a nasty viral cough. The doctor decided to giveRead more

Ceasefire

Emma and I have made a temporary truce in the nighttime.  She gets yanked onto the big bed at her first complaint, drinks every now and then, and I’m too tired to really notice.  (She was probably on a two-hour schedule last night.  Who knows.  Oh, and on the too-much-information front-especially-if-you’re-male: we’ve worked out aRead more

Attempted Murder via Sleep Deprivation in the Master Bedroom

Emma did her darnedest to finish us parents off last night.  If memory serves the timeline looked something like this: 23:00 – Emma gets her ‘midnight’ drink ostensibly “for the night” 00:00 – Parents asleep. 01:30 – Emma wakes up crying and standing in her crib.  Mother too tired to do more than yank herRead more

Emma at the Lumber Yard

Emma and I went shopping for timber today so we can install safety gates on the stairs. The plank we got was 2.55 meters long, so I got to handsaw it into three pieces so that it would fit into the car.  The guy who brought the plank graciously steadied the 4.5cm x 9.5 cmRead more

Achievement Unlocked: Standing Up by Things

Emma’s fully on board the train to walking now.  She’s become a pretty speedy crawler, has been practicing straightening her feet with her hands still on the ground, and now she’s started pulling herself up to stand. Getting down again is a somewhat unsolved problems still though! In other news, Finnur just returned from aRead more

Happy Halloween!

We failed at pumpkin carving this year (the only ones that Finnur found were tiny and/or flat-ish), but some of Anna’s friends hosted a Halloween party so not all was lost.Read more

Achievement Unlocked: Crawling

Not much to say that an animated gif doesn’t say better:Read more

Google’s London Victoria Office, Regent’s Park, London Zoo

[Written 13 November 2013.  There are always a post or two from trips that are so big that I refrain from writing them.  This is one of them.]

Anna injured her heel in the beginning of October, and the big carrot I dangled in front of her to keep her off her feet so she’d get better, was promising her a trip to the zoo (which she’d need to be able to walk around).

So, around 10 am on a Wednesday morning, two hours after Finnur had already left for work, dad drove the rest of us to the train station in two trips, to board a train to London.  (60 images total.)

At the train station, waiting for the train to London Victoria which was a little late.

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