Wednesday: groceries, seaweed

Ah, Wednesday.  Boring chore day...although there were a few other chores that found their way in today too.

It started with groceries.  The store was all out of butternut squash.  Can you believe it?  Who wants that much butternut squash?  My meal plan is derailed.  (Also, I didn't realize we were out of frozen sausages, which also derails my meal plan but not quite as much.)

This afternoon I continued to deal with the seaweed that is washing up on our shore.  I think this is the worst year so far.  I remember one other bad year, but so far our yard waste bin is 3/4 full of seaweed, the last quarter is drying on the grass, and there is a whole bunch more still coming in.  Luckily the year hasn't been too bad until now.

I fixed one of our soffits!  It was significantly easier than I was expecting.  One of the boards had come loose and I took the tiny nails out and used a screw to attach it back up.  There was even a pilot hole because of the nails.  Once I got the end attached the rest of the board popped back into place...I wasn't sure that was going to happen and it was just going to be good enough.  But now it's better than good enough.

After a few "fine" books I'm finally reading one that has grabbed my attention well, so that has been nice.  It's nice to want to pick up the book instead of phone games when I have a few minutes.

Tuesday: trolled

 Ben, text: 🪿❤️🦒🦒
Amanda, in the car: oh, the car doesn't say emojis.
Ben: it has done so in the past
Joshua: Hahaha.  Isaac just wrote the words out when we were testing it: "giraffe emoji, heart emoji"
Ben: oh, that's right

I was cracking up.

vacation Sunday (June 14): fjord tour - train

Today was the fjord tour!  It included a train, a bus, and a boat.  There will be a lot of pretty pictures, as that is mostly what happened today.

We got to the train station, and finding the right train was pretty straightforward.  I was a bit surprised by the train, because the train seemed more like a normal train rather than a tour train.  In reality, I suppose it can be both!  We saw some cool parts of the country side.  At some of the stops we saw dandelions - but they were knee-high!  I don't think I've ever seen such tall dandelions before!  The train also went through a ton of tunnels.  Some tunnels had fancy lights in them, and some were just tunnels.  I do enjoy a good tunnel for some reason though, and they made the out-of-tunnel times even better.

There were large buttons to push on the trains and trolleys to open the doors.  Probably so that in the winter cold air wasn't blowing through for no reason.

The day started out with low clouds.  Not really foggy, but it did obscure some of the view.

At a small train station

Monday: school pictures

 

Saturday: cats and LEGO

Tornado really likes sitting in Joshua and my chairs and is reluctant to give it up when we want to sit there.

After Norway, Isaac chose one of the pictures and the goal is to remake the picture in different media.  He started making it in LEGO but decided not to do so, so I took it over.

vacation Saturday, part 2 (June 13): walking around

For late lunch we had reindeer sausage with lingonberry.  We did have to fight through a crowd to get it because there was a music festival and maker's market right outside our hotel, but the sausage stand was only about a five minute walk.  We thought we'd have to wait a bit because the line was rather long, but it moved faster than I expected.  Hmm...I also took a quick trip into the 7-11 to see what things they had there, so maybe that skewed my perception of how long the wait was. (Our hotel really was in an ideal location!)  It was good!  I had reindeer!  We also had Kvikk Lunsj.  Cheryl had gotten several chocolate bars.  The other two were just normal (and good) chocolate, but these were like KitKats...but better!  They had more chocolate, which always makes things better.  It also makes for a weird overseas tradition of having KitKats that are better than the ones we can find in the US.

We rested in the afternoon and had an early dinner so we could get to the swim and sauna on time.  Oh!  We were excited-nervous about it!  We got there, found the captain, and found out that it was too windy to go out.  We were welcome to swim/sauna from the dock, but that wasn't really what we wanted to do.  Also, we had forgotten the googles, and while the kids would have been ok without them, they would be better with them.  We rescheduled for Monday since we had some flex in our schedule.  We were a little disappointed that the captain hadn't contacted us before we got out there, because we had to pay for the trolley ticket and we could have found something else to do.  

However, it ended up working out well!  Our train ticket was good for an hour, so we were able to return on the same ticket.  (Joshua enjoyed standing between the cars because as the train turned one foot would move and the other wouldn't and it was a fun sensation.) Isaac and I had seen some "rocks on poles" very, very briefly on the trip out.  Enough to say, "were those rocks on poles?", but not enough to get a good look.  So we chose an intermediate stop to get off at and walk back, hoping to see the rocks on poles again.

At first we weren't sure we would find them.  We walked through some parks and saw some sights.

We were very confused by this.  We thought it was an interactive, brightly lit sculpture, but in the end it might have just given the weather.  We never fully figured it out.

Cheryl in her happy place: finding new plants

We found them!  Isaac and I had a photo shoot by them because rocks!  Up high in the air!  It turns out that the poles are actually lamps and they stand for each district.

Joshua likes rocks too, but not always pictures.

There was also a playground right by the rocks on poles, so of course the kids spent some time at it.  It wasn't an amazing one, but playgrounds are always at least a little fun.

We continued to walk back and just enjoy the city.  There were several other rocks to get pictures by.  There were a lot of favorite animals to get pictures with.  We finally made Cheryl tell us what her favorite animal was.  After a bit of threats that we would choose her animal for her, she chose dolphin.  And what luck!  We found a dolphin a block later.  We also stopped at the grocery store for lunch stuff on our tour tomorrow.  We found a good selection of items, but the few grocery stores we went in were so crowded!  Low ceilings and barely enough room in the aisles to get one cart through.  My sample size is low (two) and they were both in touristy areas, but it was still rather surprising.

We found a lot of favorite animals!

Although we had sort-of had an early dinner, Isaac was hungry again.  We got some waffles to share and a moose burger for him.  It must have been delicious...I saw him start the burger and then suddenly it was gone.  The waffles were also good, but we savored them for a bit longer.

These two photos were taken at 9:30pm.  While the sun is starting to set, there is still quite a bit of daylight left.

As we were not really going to sleep but starting to get ready for it, the room next to us got really, really loud with voice noises (not music).  Oh boy.  It didn't quite matter to us yet, so we just let it go. It went for a bit, but then suddenly...stopped.  My guess is that everyone went out at that point, but it stopped surprisingly quickly.