Rocking Out

Here's another video of Avery singing, this time you can actually see her!

Rocking Out

Sorry for the dark lighting, I could not get our apartment light enough for the camera video to show it clearly. I still thought it was pretty cute. When she gets a guitar, Avery loves to make up songs. Her latest favorites have been about the baby or a song I particularity like titled , "I love Mom and Dad." This kid cracks me up!

Winter

I cannot even begin to describe how sick I am of winter. It just keep going on and on like the energizer bunny! Actually from what I have been told my winters in Trondheim have been "good" winters. The temperature has stayed cool enough that they have not gotten much rain or sleet and I am told during most winters Trondheim frequently gets both. The weather has generally kept in the 20s which by Montana standards feels pretty damn warm. The problem I am having with winter in Norway is the darkness and the dreariness. We are up to about 7 hours of daylight which is a huge improvement over the 4 hours we had in December, however, the daylight hours have been filled with overcast dreariness making it feel like I'm living in perpetual gloominess. Enough already! I guess the good thing about all these dreary days is that when a day comes where the sun shines, one really appreciates it and gets one's ass outside! This happened last week so miss Avery and I bundled up headed out.

In a park close to our apartment.
The amount of snow we have. This is even after it has melted some. These are Avery's new ski poles.
Testing out the poles. You can almost see the nice sheen of ice that covers everything. It has been heating up just enough to melt and then freeze again. Makes for interesting walking conditions!

Waffles

I have been wanting a Norwegian waffle maker since we came to Norway, yet for some reason paying $70 for a waffle maker just seemed insane. Every time we would go into a store that sold the makers I would look at them, contemplate buying one and then invariably leave the store without a waffle maker. Then the other week my darling husband came home with one that he found for about $50 and without even asking he bought it! Let me just say, I was pretty damn excited. We have been having waffles a lot since said purchase and I am loving it! The machine!!
Yummy!

Norwegian waffles are sweeter and less crisp than the American version. Traditionally they are eaten with brown cheese or fruit compote and sour cream. They can be folded in half and eaten with ones hands. To many Norwegians horror, I actually doused mine in maple syrup ;) Avery had apple pie filling on hers. Here is the recipe that I have been using.

Norwegian Waffles

500 ml plain flour (about 1.5 cups)
2 teaspoon baking powder
100 ml sugar (about 1/2 cup)
500 ml milk (1.5 cups)
2 eggs
50 ml melted butter ( about 2 tbs)
drops of vanilla essence for flavor

Method
Make a smooth batter with the flour, baking powder, sugar and milk. Beat in the eggs and butter (and vanilla). Let the batter set for 30 minutes before cooking in a waffle maker.

A new surprise!

For those you of you that I have not told yet I think it’s time to tell the blog that I’m pregnant. I am currently about 13 weeks with a due date of July 27^th. I have never been happier. The excitement of knowing we will be welcoming another member to our family is intoxicating! When we found out two years ago that we would be moving to Norway I had baby fever bad, yet I decided at that time that it did not make sense to get pregnant with out lives so up in the air. So I sucked it up and choose to wait until our lives calmed down. A few months ago it seems for the first time in two years our lives made sense again and the thought of bringing a new baby into our family just felt right. Once I found out I was pregnant it is amazing how content I felt. This yearning to have another baby was playing more with my mind than I had even let myself admit. Honestly I can say that for the first time in two years I am content with life. We are getting into a groove over here, maybe not the same groove we would be in living in the States but still a groove.

My days with Avery have started to become enjoyable not just days to get through while I yearned to have a career again. It also helps that for the first time I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Jeff only has at most 1.5 years left on his PhD. This next year is going to be a whirlwind. I want to get as much living in Norway done as possible since I am not sure if we will be here again once Jeff is done. We need to drive to Sweden and we need to go camping up north and down south and spend a day in Amsterdam. I want to see Oslo and Bergen and take the ferry to Monkholm Island and on and on. Suddenly, there is so much to do and not much time until the baby come. We have a trip planned this spring to Spain which I am very excited for. It just seems like we had all these plans for seeing Europe and exploring Norway and we have not gotten to many of them. The next year is going to be crazy and fabulous and I can’t wait to live it and share it with you all!

Great Cookie Recipe

Jeff and I have an ongoing fight over the right way to make chocolate chip cookies. He believes in adding oatmeal and I am a purist, ie no oatmeal. I found this recipe online. It is a copy cat recipe of the Double Tree Hotels famous cookies and yes it has oatmeal in it. As you can see by the picture, I almost ate an entire one before I could get the camera out. They are really that good. I might even change my mind about the addition of oatmeal to chocolate chip cookies!

Double Tree Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yield: approximately 4 dozen.
1 1/2 C. butter — softened
1 1/2 C. granulated sugar
3/4 C. firmly packed brown sugar
4 eggs
2 1/2 tsp. Vanilla
1 tsp. lemon juice (I left this out since I did not have a lemon)
3 C. all-purpose flour
3/4 C. old-fashioned oatmeal — uncooked
3/4 tsp. Baking Soda
1 tsp. Salt
1/4 tsp. Ground Cinnamon
3 C. Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips — Ghirardelli
1 1/2 C. chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Place the butter in a large bowl and cream lightly with an electric mixer. Add the sugars and beat on medium speed for about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla and lemon juice and mix well. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, oatmeal, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Add to the creamed butter mixture and stir well to blend. Add chocolate chips and walnuts and stir to combine. Using a 1/4 cup measure or a 2-oz ice cream scoop, drop the batter on the parchment-lined pans, leaving 2 -3 inches between each cookie. Bake for 13 – 15 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. Remove from parchment and cool on wire racks

Tom Boy

Jeff and I thought that it would be a great idea if Avery got visited by the Norwegian Santa or julenisse this year. We had a plan to have a gift ready for when she walked in the door after getting off of the airplane. A few weeks before we left for the States we took her to Toys R Us and watched what she looked at. We decided to buy her this...She has played with it a total of three times. She would much rather play with these...
She has played with these about five times a day since we got back. Next year I'm just going spend about $10 on dragons, dinos and guns, that seems to be all she's interested in these days. Oh and I think the dinos are in t a meeting since they all keep talking to each other, the outer dino seems to be the leader.

Immigration

Every January that we are here in Norway, Avery and I have to make the trek downtown to the Police Station and deal with getting our Visa's renewed. A harrowing stress filled process that I was not looking forward to. I have been emailing people at UDI (Norwegian Immigration) and at the Police Station to try to figure out what all we needed to turn in this year since the website is entirely too vague. Jeff is set, his Visa does not expire until the end of 2012 but for some reason, Ave and I have to renew ours each year. Maybe the don't believe Avery is Jeff's child or maybe they think we'll get a divorce, who knows, but it is a pain in my ass.

When we came last February we had to report to UDI at the police station within 7 days of our arrival in Norway. So the Monday after we arrived, still jet lagged we took the 5:30 a.m. bus downtown. Luckily my Mom was in tow since we had to stand for two hours in a vestibule outside the doors of the police station before we could even get in to take a number. Luckily we arrived so early since by time the doors opened there were at least 100 immigrants waiting in line. I think we were like #15. Once we got our number we had to wait another hour until immigration opened and then continue to wait until they called our number.

After such a crappy experience at Immigration the first time, I was completely set for the same experience this time. We decided to go on a Tuesday, thinking the weekend rush would go on Monday, we also decided to just show up at 8 am and if we had to wait longer so be it. To our astonishment we got there a little after 8 and were only # 10 in line!! We were out of Immigration by 9:30. It was amazing how different of an experience it was. Everything is chance, some days are just as packed and crazy like our first trip and other days are slow, this time the Gods smiled upon us. All our paperwork got turned in they took more copies of our passports (they have like six of these now) and new applications, so now we just have to wait for the decision at which point we will have to go again to UDI to get the Visa's in our passport. Fun stuff but I've learned that if you go with no expectations and go prepared with toys, food, juice and an ipod it is not that bad. Ah the joys of being an immigrant!

Godt Nytt År!

Love, the Klines!

Christmas back home!

We made it back to Great Falls after two days of travel. Our flight got diverted when Minneapolis Airport closed so we had to spend a night in Detroit. Luckily we caught a flight the next day that got us in at four. We spent a little over two weeks in Great Falls and enjoyed every minute of it. I ate out every day, sometimes twice a day, mostly Mexican and I shopped until I was sick of shopping. I managed to get all of my Christmas shopping done in about two days. It was so nice to see everyone and Avery LOVED hanging out with all her cousins, she even got to see Ronnie and Rhiannon who came down from Kalispell with their Mom and Dad. It was hard to say goodbye but after 24 hours of travel we made it back to Norway with 5 suitcases packed to the max. We now have refried beans, coffee mate and taco treat hot sauce to last us for a few months! I just love going home!!The princess on Christmas Eve.
Getting ready to hot tub with cousin Shayden.

Being silly with Grandpa Bubba.
I love how Avery is trying to sneak her dinosaur in the picture. This is before her first Christmas with Grandma Lori.
Santa came to Grandma Lori's. The kids where in awe. This was the first year Avery really believed in Santa and she got so into Christmas, it was amazing.
Christmas Eve at my parents with her cousins Michael and Yoshi.
Opening yet more gifts, the kid got totally spoiled!
Cousin Hayden on Christmas Eve, he is so freaking cute and we were lucky enough to have his Daddy James, who just got back from a tour in Afghanistan, spend the evening with us.
Christmas morning, she got her bow and arrow and shooting gun! Santa hooked this girl up. So much so that she asked me when we got back to Norway (where Santa came yet another time and left more gifts) if Santa was coming again tomorrow.
The nerf shooting guns. Although I think her Daddy has enjoyed playing with these as much if not more than Avery.

We had such a great holiday. Thank you to all our families for sharing time with us!

Thanksgiving

We managed to have a fairly traditional Thanksgiving in Norway, except we celebrated on Friday instead of Thursday! When I was home last summer I brought back a few ingredients that I knew would be hard to come by over here, my Mom also mailed me a few more and the rest we managed to either find in the store or improvise. We invited over two of our Norwegian friends that had never eaten an American Thanksgiving and it was a fun a night. The cool thing about sharing a tradition with people is giving them a chance to see how another culture does things. Some of the foods that the Norwegians had never eaten included; homemade mashed potatoes, stuffing, cheese sauce and pie! They enjoyed trying all of it. As a host gift we got a bottle of rum from none other than Cuba! How cool is that.
The biggest turkey we could find was about 13.89 lbs which was just about perfect. Anything bigger would not have fit in our tiny oven.
Avery all dressed up and the table set!

Halloween Party

I realized how far behind I was in posting when I noticed I hadn't even put my Halloween Party pictures up yet. So I am playing catch up. We planned a Halloween party with Elisabeth's family that ended up getting postponed until after Thanksgiving due to sickness. When we finally had the party, however, it was a blast. The girls had never been to a true American Halloween party and I think they really enjoyed it. Elisabeth said she loved it and it made her more willing to embrace Halloween when she saw that it is not a holiday all about scaring people and getting candy. We decorated sugar cookies shaped like ghosts and bats and did a craft project. My Mom had gotten bags and filled them with stuff from the dollar store that she brought over with us, so each kid got a treat bag. The girls dressed up and played, it was great fun.

New Year's Promise

I’ve been a total boob about blog posting lately. I’m not sure why, well actually I have a million excuses as to why, but I think it boils down to the fact that I’m just not in the mood. So many things have been happening to our family over the last year and often I sit in bed at night and think up wonderfully long blog posts that would be perfect to post about our day and about my thoughts. Yet morning comes and a day of being a stay at home Mom in a foreign country starts and some how the time never comes for me to get my thoughts down on paper. I am going to try to get better about my posts. I love writing and posting has always been somewhat medicinal for my mind, however, whenever I am stressed out I tend to drop things that require too much thinking. The entire nine months I was pregnant with Avery I did not read a single book, my focus was just gone. I think it is the same with blog posting. This year has been such a whirlwind, both good and bad, and there has been plenty of stress, thus my blog posts have suffered.

This next year, however, I am hopeful that my outlook on life will improve. Living in Norway for a year now has helped many of my initial stressors to go away or at least calm down. Now I can navigate the grocery store, the Dr. and I am actually beginning to believe that everyone will speak English to you if you ask, even on the phone. It’s amazing how much stress I would put on myself about making a stupid phone call, always worrying about being the stupid English speaker on the other end. I can say that finding friends over here has helped so much and for that I am so thankful. I now know that I can go six months without seeing my family and I will not totally fall apart and a 20 hour plane ride, while it sucks, is totally doable. Also I am starting to figure out how to be a stay at home Mom and am starting to enjoy it, most days. I don’t think I’ve screwed the small one up that much.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that my goal for 2011 is to start blogging more often. Some day it will be so great to go back and read about my thoughts and feelings during this time in my life. Hopefully the addition of another Kline won’t totally derail my new plan, but I can always hope. So I will try and you have my promise for more updates, pictures and thoughts as another crazy year in Norway begins.

First stop this year, the police station to renew my and Avery’s resident Visa’s (should be interesting) but hopefully less painful that last year! Wish us luck.