Light

Last Sunday we decided in the late afternoon that we needed to get out of the house. We have a sled hill close by so we trekked on over to let Avery sled. This time of year in Trondheim the light is starting to come back. It goes down now around 5:30 pm, a huge improvement over the 2:30 pm sunsets we were experiencing a month ago. I am not sure if it is because we are so far up North but the sky glows at night. Sometimes the entire night there is a glow outside.

Winter 2011

We are ready for Spring, however, as long as Spring is still a few months away we have been trying to make the most of winter. The last couple of weeks have been very cold in Trondheim. I happen to like the very cold better than the slightly warmer and raining but it is all getting old. Last weekend we decided to go to åpen gard (open farm) at Voll farms. Voll is about a ten minute walk from our apartment so when Elisabeth called to see if we wanted to meet her family there we jumped at the opportunity. It was a fun time. The baby goats were out and boy were they cute.
The kids taking a sleigh ride.
Avery got to ride around on a horse for the first time ever.
She was pretty proud of herself.
We needed something to pass the time indoors so we decided to get Avery Nickolodean Wii Fit and the Wii kids remote. It's great, Ave gets exercise led by Dora, Diago, The Backyardigans and Kai Lan and she doesn't really even realize it's all about the exercise.
We walked to the woods by our house and made a snow person.
Avery got pulled most of the way.
What happens when a small person gets a hold of the camera while Mom is not looking. We ended up with about ten pictures of dinosaurs and random pictures of our rug, Jeff and I had a laugh.

So we are making the most of the winter blahs. In two months we get to go to Southern Spain so I really should not complain. My ultrasound is in a week and a half and next month we celebrate Avery and Jeff's birthdays. Having things to look forward to happens to be my best method for beating the winter blues. I hope you are all finding your own ways to get through the next few months.

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!