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.

Catch Up

I have been a total slacker about posting lately. One reason is that we just moved and I spent a couple weeks packing and then a week moving and then unpacking and before we even moved we were spending time tracking down an apartment. Apartment hunting in Trondheim is a little different that in any other town I've looked. Here there is a shortage of apartments so it is not unheard of for a renter to get 50 applications for one apartment. The land lord's choose who they want to come see the place and they set up a viewing on one night. You go to the viewing, talk to the land lord, hand in references and then keep your fingers crossed that they liked you. We lucked out, we got the second place we looked at and really it was just luck. The land lord's daughter talked to us and had a gut feeling we would be good renters. We are loving the new place, we have a wood stove and it is two levels such a better feel than the last apartment. Here are a couple pictures.
The entry and stairway up. Both bedrooms and the bath are upstairs.
The kitchen, not the fridge is a lot bigger than our old one.
Once we got into our new place instead of putting the Christmas decor away we decided to just put it up. This is a Norwegian Santa that we bought.
Halloween in Norway was interesting. We managed to find a pumpkin that we paid through the nose for but I was so thankful to find him that I might say it was the best pumpkin ever! Kids here do trick or treat. I noticed that not many if any little kids trick or treat it seems to be more of an elementary aged thing. We ended up with about 20 trick or treaters which made us happy.
Ave has a bunch of costumes for dress up and she wore most of them that day. This was my favorite look.


Last month before the snow came it rained and rained and rained. In Trondheim, however, you go outside no matter the weather since it could rain for a month. Elisabeth and I took our girls down t0 the creek by our old apartment on rainy day so they could splash in the stream. The girls each have waterproof suits and boots, Elisabeth's girl's even have waterproof gloves! Everything was going great until the girls all decided to hike across the stream through a deep section to the other side. Everyone ended up getting water in their boots. It was still a fun day.

Presents from China

Sorry it has taken me so long to post more about Jeff's China trip. We have had some sickness in the family and a few other things have come up lately that have kept me from blogging. Kept might be a strong word, I just haven't felt like it lately, however, I am vowing to get back into my posts and thought I better get a little more of Jeff's China trip up. I would like to post pictures of the World Expo that is in Shanghai but that requires Jeff telling me about each picture and to be honest, I'm not sure when I'll get my shit together enough for that to happen. Instead I've decided to post pictures of the loot that Jeff brought Avery and I back. When Jeff left I wrote down a list of things I would like him to buy. Lucky girl that I am he managed to pick up almost everything I asked for and then some. In the group that Jeff went with they were lucky enough to have two Chinese PhD students. Sarina went off shopping one day while everyone else went to the beach and Jeff tagged along which was wonderful since he had a translator and someone that could help him bargain for things. Here is a glimpse of the goods.

A paper fan with masks painted on it.
Avery's silk outfit. It cost around $10 USD.
One of the three fans he brought back. This one had panda bears on it and it for Avery.

A silk fan.

Chop sticks. I think Jeff said he paid around 2 USD for all of these.
Chocolate from the Russian airport. Such beautiful wrappers, such awful chocolate, like so bad I threw it out.
Porcelain tea set. He spent around $10 I believe for this.
Hand carved wooden tea set. This is my favorite. It is beautiful.

Jeff also brought back chinese tea, sandals and crocks for Avery that he got dirt cheap and a T shirt for himself. He said that some things were very cheap and some things were expensive. I was very pleased with what he brought me and I will cherish all of it. I have always liked to incorporate Asian pieces in to my decorating and these things fit beautifully. Such a lucky girl to have such a great husband!