Our Norwegian Pad

Here are a couple of pics of our place in Trondheim. Just to let you all know it's costing us 6500 Kr a month with is about $1100 with the current exchange rate. That includes roughly 900 square feet of space, cable and internet. And this is "cheap" faculty housing. To get a similar place on the open market we'd be paying closer to $2000 a month - yikes! We have a one year contract which means in a year we'll have to move but at least we have a year to figure that out. We're hoping to get into married student housing next year but we'll see. Our place is about 2.5 miles from the University and from Downtown shopping and from Trondheim Fjord. Not a bad location. It's going to take some getting used to, us living in an apartment again, but it's a challenge I'm ready for.

The McGrath's Wedding

I'm still trying to figure out how to load pictures on blogger from my new camera. For some reason blogger hates my camera. So after many failed attempts to get these pics on here I resorted to re-saving all my pictures off of FB and then putting them on blogger. Don't ask me why but that works? So here are pictures of our dear friends Jeff and Teresa's big day. Jsut a little background. Jeff and Teresa have been together for something like five years. They have a four year old son, Lucas, who is such a cute and funny little kid. We've all been waiting for these guys to make it official but like everything life kept getting in the way. Yet they finally decided it was time and had a beautiful wedding in August. Jeff, Ave and I along with my parents attending and we had a great time. The bride was beautiful, the groom oh so handsome and Lucas was Wolverine or thought he was. He danced all night with crayons in between his fingers which we were told were his wolverine claws! Such a fun night and it was so great to share in the big day with our bestest Buttian friends! I even got to do a reading. Mostly I told Teresa I wanted to be a part of the ceremony and forced my way in ;) My parents took Ave home and put her to sleep while Jeff and I partied on. We even stayed the night at the Finland which was pretty sweet!


check out Wolverine in the back ground (brown shirted cute kid).

Painting

What I learned last weekend, never paint your own house unless it’s one story and very small and even then think twice about it because painting sucks!

After months of prep work and roughly 15 hours of painting the house is done, ha ha, I wish but at least we’ve got a good start. Here’s a sneak peak at the progress. The back and other side are still white but this picture makes me feel better about the whole project. There is a dim light at the end of the tunnel.

Jeff’s Dad, Larry, came over Sat and helped the whole weekend. On Sunday Grandma Lori came to watch Ave and help. Thanks you guys, we couldn’t have done it without you.

On Sat since we didn’t have anyone to watch Ave she spent some of her day watching movies in Grandpa Bubba’s rig. She actually did really well but kept yelling out the window, “You alright guys.”

Before Grandpa showed up that morning we had Ave inside watching movies and playing. We set up a step stool at one of the windows so she could look out and talk to us. At one point she was saying, “Mommy Daddy I need help.” So Jeff went inside and discovered she had stuck both her legs through one side of her underwear and couldn’t figure out how to fix it. Those undies can be complicated. Then once she figured out saying I need help got us inside she started coming up with all sorts of reasons for needing help.

Jeff is home right now painting more and I plan on working on the trim for a couple hours each night until it’s done. Jeff leaves for a Norway trip on Friday and is gone until the following Friday so we are in a little bit of a time crunch but I think if we both keep at it we can get it all done. Wish us luck.

FINALLY!

The small one is growing up and turning into a little girl right before my eyes. Sometimes I just stare at her when she doesn’t know I’m looking and marvel at this perfect little creation. I’ll have to say hubby and I do good work. It kills me what a little personality she has. She is so sure of herself and I love that, I love her spice and I love the fact that she’s growing up.

Over the past six months we have been actively potty training the little runt. There were many times I thought about saying screw it and putting her back in diapers but I never did, I persisted determined that we would achieve success. Really I had no idea it would take so long. I remember thinking, my child is a genius; surely she’ll be the kid that gets it in a few weeks. Yeah right. Over the last six months, I made it through accidents on my floor, our bed, our couch, our carpet, you name it and it was probably peed on at some point. Luckily she only pooped on the floor a couple of times. It was rough and we were all tired of it and then just like that out of the blue, she got it.

All the cheering for poop and pee and waving good bye to the potty and cleaning up the messes has finally paid off! I’m almost afraid to admit it, my luck she’ll revert. Yet for now I will relish the past week of no accidents and no diaper changes. I feel so free. I never thought having a child use the potty would make me feel this way, like I’ve accomplished something great. Maybe this is the way parents feel when their kids graduate from high school or college.

There is nothing better than the smile Ave gets on her face when she runs to tell me that she went potty. My favorite is, “Mom I pooped.” You probably have to be there but it is FANTASTIC! I’m so proud of her and she’s so proud of herself. Life is good.

Home Remodeling Rant

Things are crazy around the Kline household these days. We’ve got a goal to paint the house this weekend. This means we have to scrape every night for 1 -2 hours. That might not seem like much but when you combine it with working full time, wrangling a toddler and trying to maintain some semblance of cleanliness in our house, it makes for pretty crazy nights. We’ve been doing this schedule for almost two weeks now. Before we hit end of summer crunch time we’d take an occasional night off or stop scraping after a half hour, however, not the last two weeks. We have stuck to it. Last Saturday my parents and Jeff’s Dad came over to help. I scraped with my Mom and Dad for about four hours while Jeff and Larry worked on the kitchen. Needless to say, I’m sick of it! I’m sure you’re all filled with pity for me since many of you have experienced your own home remodeling horror, but I need to vent. I think the thing that’s bothering me the most is that we have to dedicate so many weekends to fixing everything up and we’re missing out on spending this time with family and friends. What’s more important? Having the house fixed up so we can make a good profit or hanging out with people that for the next three years we won’t get to see very often. I’d love to say the people but we all know money talks and if we can’t sell our house for a nice profit we’ll be stressed while in Norway because we won’t have extra money to say, buy plane tickets to come home and visit these people. YUCK! So I apologize to all the family and friends that we’ve neglected recently or put off to hang out on a weekend “this Fall”. I’m really hoping that everything will be done by the mid October so we can spend Nov and Dec just hanging out with the people we’re going to miss so much when we’re gone. There are times in our lives when life, well sucks and this is one of them. I have to keep reminding myself that once I’m in Norway I won’t have a house to remodel and I’ll probably miss it. And remind myself that I’ll get to come home for large chunks of time where I’ll get to spend every minute hanging out with friends and family. So I guess it’s short term suckiness for long term gain, or something like that. Here's to hoping the house gets painted this weekend. I'll post pics as soon as it's done!