vacation Monday (June 15) part 1: swim and sauna

Good morning breakfast!  I think I mentioned it earlier, but now you can see the items.  The brown cheese in the upper left and the dried raspberry ball in the bottom right.

After breakfast we went back to the swim & sauna, this time with goggles.  This isn't a great picture of the boat, but it's the best one I had for the outside.

Inside there were two rooms.  A changing area/viewing room and the sauna.

We could also go upstairs, but the stairs were crazy!  I think these are called witch's steps and I've seen them on-line in a few other places since we used them here.  You really needed to start on the correct foot or the stairs were terrible, but if you started on the correct foot they worked pretty well.

The top was not all that warm, but it was nice and sunny.

Then it was finally time to jump in!  I went first.  I also went second because the second person wasn't ready fast enough.  The water was 11C.

Isaac followed.

Ben was third, but he went from the roof jumping spot so we don't have a good video of it.  Joshua followed.  He wouldn't jump out very far and was pretty much climbing back into the boat once his feet touched the water, but he did it!  By the end he was going a little bit farther.

Cheryl jumped in too!

Then we would warm up and while moving to a new place.  The sauna was so nice and warm after getting in the water.  There was a large window to look out of here too.

...the sauna was nice and warm, but only for about ten minutes.  Then it got too hot, so we all slowly migrated to the floor.  There was a substantial difference between sitting on the lower bench and sitting on the floor.  The thermometer, near the ceiling, showed 89C.  We thought that it must be wrong, but after looking it up it was probably correct.

More jumping at the very end.  Cheryl jumped in twice (which we were all excited about) and I think everyone else had 12ish jumps.  Isaac also jumped off the roof.  There were two big lessons.  First, remember to keep breathing.  It is easy to want to clench everything up in the cold water, but you need to breathe.  Secondly, make sure the person before you is almost out before you jump in, so that you don't have to wait to get out.  Our motto was, "That was terrible!  Let's do it again!"

I had a blast.  I would 100% do something like this again, and I'm really happy to say that I've swum in a fjord.

Thursday: cleaning

Joshua stayed home today.  Ben came home early to work from home, but Joshua was mostly on his own.  He was feeling better, although still not his normal self.

Isaac and I went rock climbing this evening.  (I didn't climb well.  I'm blaming it on the blood donation, but I'm not sure I can do that after a week.)  When we got home Joshua had cleaned up the kitchen, the table, and the mini-hallway.  It looked so much better.  It's not as though I didn't get things done yesterday with Joshua around, but I didn't get all of my normal things done.  He said it was because he really appreciated how well I took care of him while he was sick. <3

Wednesday: LEGO take apart

For most of the day Joshua was ok.  He probably spent about 95% of his day on the couch (by choice).  He got extra screen time and listened to audio books for quite a while.  While he was listening to audio books, he was taking about some of our LEGO sets.  The ones that have needed to be taken apart have been piling up, so I was super excited that he was willing to do this.  (Sometimes we do it during church if we do church at home, but we haven't done that much.  Sometimes Ben does it during dinner, but lately he's been on sorting the loose LEGO drawers because some needed to be split into two or more categories.)

I went on a walk with Natalie - the weather has been beautiful lately!

In karate we went over our knife defense.  I attacked my partner, Will, first, who did a nice job of dealing with the attack...if it wasn't a knife attack.  He punched my face and I swished the knife and then he had no legs.  We were working with knives, so by the end of the night he also had no fingers.  (I wasn't paying attention, but I probably didn't have all my fingers either.)  (Also, Will is much better than I am.  There are just a lot of things to remember.)

Tuesday: Fall break

Today was fall break, so Dad and I worked on the Christmas tree.  We had a great system down, and managed to drill 216 holes in about two hours.  I'm really curious and excited to see how it looks, but I need to wait for the Christmas tree stand to come first.

I got home and talked with Aunt C for a little bit.  While the morning had started out cold, by 11 is was really nice out.  I had lunch and then Ben called because he had made arrangements to deal with some e-foil stuff.  Things lined up pretty well, so he was dealing with that until mid-evening.  (Although he got extra ragoons so I could have some, even though I didn't have Chinese for dinner.)

At 2:20 I got a call from Joshua; he wasn't feeling well.  It didn't completely surprise me because he was a bit off this morning.  He really did seem pretty off, and when he took his temperature it was 99.1F.  Hmm, that's an annoying amount because the fever is starting but isn't high enough to say for sure no school tomorrow.  We decided that Joshua would take a nap and we'd check again.

Joshua slept for over two hours - he hasn't taken a nap in a long time.  When he woke up he definitely had a fever, so he gets to join me at home tomorrow.  He perked up a bit with some medicine, but never was his normal self and said he was still pretty tired.  We'll see how tomorrow goes!

Sunday: driving

I've been doing a lot of the driving for the kids this school year.  There are a lot of good reasons for this that I won't get into.

Anyway, Ben usually does the pickup after Sunday school.  His schedule changed at the last minute today, so I went to pick up the kids.  Then, about a minute after I left his schedule changed again such that he'd get home later and wouldn't be able to pick up food for dinner.

We laughed about the timing.  So many things are conspiring against us.

Saturday: eyes

For LEGO group today, we were bringing monster cookies.  I had a few candy eyeballs, but it would have been one small one per cookie.  Joshua was sure that we needed more eyeballs.  After discussing for a while, he said he would come with me if I went to the grocery store to get them and that he would help put them on the cookies.

I didn't want to go, but I did want to spend time with Joshua, so we went.  Ben also needed a few things picked up so it worked well, but it was an extra 45 minutes in the morning that I wasn't planning on.

Friday: blood donation, lunch

I gave blood today.  I just signed up to give the normal whole blood, and that was good because my iron wasn't high enough for power red again.  However, I drank plenty of water so getting the needle in was easy and the blood came out quickly.

Afterwards Betsy and I went out for lunch.  The last time was in late May, so we had all of summer and the beginning of school to get caught up on.  It was a really nice lunch.

Thursday: at second glance

 At first glance, it was a normal day.  

At second glance, it was a pretty good day.  I had lunch with Natalie.  I taught conditional formatting with a new rule, which is one of my favorite subjects.  It lightly rained most of the day.  I belayed with Kristyn and it was a really fun session.  My chicken sandwich for dinner was delicious.  My book is currently great!

My bad part of the day was that Isaac told me he was done climbing at a terrible point in my book.  The main character was about to fight her ex-fiancé in the colosseum.  (Obviously, there is a lot of backstory that I didn't mention.)  We drove home, I put the chicken in the oven, and finished reading the chapter.

Wednesday: trap

Isaac left me a booby trap for when I was grabbing his laundry today.  He was pretty excited about it.

I put all the dice in this bed.  I put a few in his pillow cases.  I hope he finds a few during the night because he didn't get them all out.

vacation Sunday (June 14) part 4: return train

The return train was actually two different trains.  The first one was getting from Flam to another train station and was more of a tourist train.  It also had some nice screens with good information.

And more waterfalls!

The train was really warm.  There were a few windows that could go down, but then when we were in tunnels it was really noisy.  (Also there were signs that asked for the windows to stay up.)  We found seats with one other person who was just traveling by herself and she became an honorary member of our family for the trip.

Rjoandefossen:

Partway through there was a stop!  We could get out of the train for the Kjosfossen waterfall.  There is a legend that says Huldra, a seductive and elusive forest spirit, lures away travelers from the falls.  Surprisingly (ish), a woman in a red dress started dancing about half way up the falls and I think some music started playing in the background too.  I think most of our pictures were before she came out.  It was a nice way to wake up and cool off a bit.

Isaac decided to use this picture to recreate in different media once we got home.  (Spoiler: he started a LEGO remake and quit, so I picked that one up.  I think it would be interesting if he make one in LEGO too and we could see how different they are.  He has also done a painting.  I'm planning on a quilt.)

After this we were starting to get slightly worried...we only had about five minutes for our transfer and we seemed to be running a few minutes behind.  

We needn't have worried.  The transfer was all of a five second walk across a platform.  We laughed at ourselves a bit, but it was just something we didn't know!

The return part of a scenic tour is always the most boring.  I gave Isaac and Joshua devices, and was surprised to see that Isaac continued to look out a window!  Well, apparently he was rather bored but didn't realize I that I had given him his phone to play games on and not take pictures with.  I still think he must not have been that bored or he would have said something.

This was the same lake that we passed in the morning, with all the fog burned off.

We walked back to our hotel.  We stopped at a chicken place to get some food to bring back to the hotel room.  The lack of sauces in Denmark and Norway was sad.  They had some, but they were always expensive and extra.  They also didn't have our normal sauces...new sauces can be fun to try, but I like ours better.

The lovies enjoyed watching Norway from the window.

Bed time!  (Although I had to look at the date stamp of the picture to see if it was bed time or wake up time!  The room was so bright.)

Tuesday: how the phone dies

Phone: "Holy Spirit, help us to hear You, and give us courage to do what you say.  Amen."
Phone dies.

The timing was perfect.  The moment "Amen" was finished it died.

Monday: chores

I finished a lot of my chores today!  I had a whole bunch of shorter chores that had been waiting for other people but were finally ready.  I also had a few other things that just went faster than I expected.

Also, have I mentioned?  Getting up 20-30 minutes earlier than last year gives me a ton of extra time in the morning.  I like seeing Isaac for a little bit and have never had a more consistently clean kitchen.

I wasn't able to get all the seaweed into the yard waste.  Some neighborhood kids and raked up another huge pile yesterday.  So the lake is mostly clean but there is still one large pile left.  The bin is also really, really heavy right now. I'm hoping the water evaporates over the next day and it's easier tomorrow.  Otherwise I'll ask a kid to help me get it to the road for pickup.

vacation Sunday (June 14) part 3: boat

We got on the boat next!  It was going from Gudvangen to Flam.  So many waterfalls!!  There are a ton of waterfall pictures and I had to stop myself from adding more.

Since we were near the end getting on, it was pretty crowded inside and we decided to go outside for a bit.  It was cool.  I probably should have brought a sweatshirt instead of a cardigan, but didn't think about it.  It was fine (ish) while we were outside and then it was nice inside when we finally went in.

Someone was feeding a seagull behind us and our family all grumbled about it.  Don't feed the wildlife.  Tons of people were taking a video though, so it encouraged the guy even more.

While not shown in this picture, there were a few roads and cars, a small village or two, some sheep, etc.  They were always near the bottom of the fjord because it got steep rather quickly.

Joshua was a bit cold too, so we snuggled a bit.  Oh!  Look!  A village with a waterfall.

We made a stop at Lægdafossen.  It was obviously a popular tourist destination, as there was a short line of boats waiting for their turn to back up and get close to the falls.

At this stop I managed to get good photos of the waterfall and good photos of people, but not together.

Soon after this we hit our highest point in the trip with 60.99 deg north latitude, at Beitelen where three fjords meet.  Isaac and I went inside after this.  The rest of the family had found a place to sit, and there was mostly enough room for us too.  I think Isaac found a place a few rows away, but he was reading his book.

While it was nice and refreshing to be outside, it was nice and warm inside.  Also, they had great tour information on the monitors!

Flam was our destination.  We had originally thought about driving and or doing the tour from Bergen to Oslo, but Ben did some reading and said Flam was mostly a tourist trap.  From the little bit that we saw, and it was just a little bit, it seemed accurate.  While I'm sure different plans would have been great, I'm glad we made a home base in Bergen.

I have no doubt Joshua stood behind the pole on purpose. :(

Next up, train back home!