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.