Averyisms

Avery is hilarious. Every day she makes us laugh and her imagination is magnificent. Some days she is a kangaroo, a dog a dinosaur or a bird and most days she is a rock star which by the way is what she is going to be when she grows up.

She loves to sing and singing to her brother is one of her favorite activities. As she recently told my Mom, "when Mom stays in bed in the morning and Anders is awake, I sing to him to make him happy." Yes some mornings Mom tries to eke out an extra half hour of sleep while the little man talks to himself.

Toffee (see the Christmas post) has turned into a girl and has been pregnant lately. There is a pouch where his batteries go that is in his belly. She likes to shove her little pet shop or miniature horses into it and Toffee gives birth. Zac the zebra is the father.

The other day she told me, "Anders likes me because my hair is so beautiful."

She tries to con her Dad into staying home from work every single day by saying she does not feel good. We have tried to explain, never cry wolf, to her but it has not sunk in.

All curse words are the F word. If I say hell she tells Dad that Mom said the F word.

Jeff has been teaching her molecules. Each morning he puts one up on her white board. Her favorite and the only one that has stuck is H2O. She gets really excited when Dad puts a new molecule on the board.

Six Months

In a few days our little man will turn six months! Wow where did the time go. Anders has been such a joy. He is usually a happy little camper who loves to smile. I say usually because right now he is teething and you all know how that goes. Most nights he sleeps pretty well and he has been getting into a routine of two naps a day. One of them usually last 1 -2 hours, hooray! He is rolling over both ways and he loves to spend time on his back rolling around. His jumper is also a favorite. Some days he'll spend an hour in this thing jumping his little heart out. He has also just started recognizing his name. He adores Avery and smiles every time she talks to him. I've started calling him my little marshmallow since he is so soft and squishy! This last month he just started grabbing his feet and he loves blueberries in his cereal. Anders has been such a great addition to our family his smile lights up my days.

Happy Holidays ( a little late)

As they say in Norway, God Jule! In the background you can see our Nisse's. They are sold all over Norway around the holidays. I love them. They are not Santas but more like little elfs. Here is some information from another blog http://mylittlenorway.com.

The Barn Elf (Fjøsnissen) is a creature from Scandinavian folklore. He was often described as a short man, “no bigger than a horse’s head”, wearing grey clothes, knickerbockers and a red hat similar to what Norwegian farmers would wear.

As the name suggests, the Fjøsnisse lived in the barn. Of course, he was so shy that he was hardly ever seen, but he was a good little helper on the farm as long as the farmers treated him well. Especially at Christmas he would expect to get a large bowl of porridge and homebrewed beer, in return for looking after the livestock. Often the farmers would also leave the leftovers from Christmas dinner on the table so the Nisse could help himself. But if farmers failed to keep him fed and happy, the Nisse would do mischief or harm to both animals and people.

Christmas in the Falls

This year we were lucky enough to get 21 days in Great Falls with our families. It was wonderful. Jeff and I shopped and shopped and shopped some more and then ate and ate and ate some more. By time we got back we were sick enough of eating out that I think we'll be sustained until we go back this summer. We brought 6 suitcases and 4 carry ons back stuffed full of groceries, items we had bought and Christmas gifts. It was so fun to unpack. We are still enjoying the granola bars and boxes of cereal (two of the things I miss the most are the American versions of these two things.) We also had an ample supply of lipton noodle soup and corn meal(both items are not sold here.) My Norwegian friend Elisabeth likes to tease me and asks when I am going to start shopping in Norway :)
The kids got lots of Grandparent time and LOVED it!! We loved having babysitters for the kids.



Toffee went everywhere with Avery.
The story of Toffee:
So an add came in the mail while we were in Norway from Toys R Us that had this stupid horse on the back of it. He was like 700 Kr which is over $100. Ave decided he was what Santa had to bring her and Toffee was all she talked about for days. We looked up his cost on Amazon and in the States they wanted $200 for a freaking toy horse. That is when we decided Santa would not bring Toffee and broke the news to Ave that he was too expensive for Santa and that Santa might not have time to make him. We had her convinced she was getting this other cheaper horse. Then I got the bright idea (yeah I'm brilliant) to check out Amazon UK since Jeff said they were made in England. Believe it or not they were selling Toffee for much cheaper. We got this bad boy for $71 with shipping. They shipped it from England and within two days we had Toffee waiting for us back home. She was REALLY excited. Toffee has been sleeping with her every night since.
Meeting Great Grandma.
Dave let Ave drive the lawn mower. She was thrilled.

Random

Here are a bunch of random catch up pictures from before Christmas. This was taken around 2:30 PM and it was already starting to get dark. It only snowed for maybe a week before we left for Christmas vacation in the States. Jeff and Ave decided it was perfect snow man snow.
This was at the beginning of November. We decided to hike back to a lake that is within walking distance of our house.


This was the view one morning on Jeff's walk to work. It was around 9 am and the sun was just starting to rise.
Avery's first coconut. She did not really like it but she thought the shell was super cool. She saved it and uses it as a house for her animals.

First fishing trip for Ave

I'm still catching up on pictures. These are from November. We had nice weather in Trondheim so we decided to let Avery try out her new fishing pole. We drove down to the fjord and let her cast a few times. Learning the ropes.
Getting the hang of it.
We ate our lunch in the red boat house while it rained outside. This was a beautiful area and we had a really nice day.

Halloween 2011

Ave was a horse tHis Halloween.