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!