Here we are, back again. Thought you might like to see a 'typical Sunday'. This morning we were up, had breakfast and a skype chat to Uncle Danny. Great to hear all the news about the 10k preparations, well proud of both Dan and Becca! The usual rush about to get out the house for church. We have started using the 'off site' parking. First Baptist gets about 200 new members a month, yes you read that correctly. So to allow new visitors to be able to park the Pastor asks the congregation to consider parking off site and they provide shuttle buses back to church. Ben is sweet and drops us girls off and goes and parks while I take them to their Sunday school lessons. Naomi and Lilja first go to Kids Worship, Naomi to Clubhouse and Lilja to Heartland. Naomi gets her name tag from the electronic computer. Clubhouse has different themes each month, right now they are in Kingdom something... It is very cool. She then goes on to her Sunday School class with Mr. Kline. Respect to Mr. Kline - he is very old school and gets them reading their Bibles everyday. Naomi has without exception been in the 'outstanding Bible learners' every week.

After we drop off Naomi, Lilja goes next door to Heartland, only there is a toilet between the rooms:) Yes, this is our second favourite toilet at First Baptist. Here is Lilja signing in to Heartland, she has sweet, loving teachers who always greet her so nicely..

At this point I go downstairs to meet Ben at Chapel. We go and enjoy the contemporary band in the Chapel. It is about the size of our church in Stavanger, much smaller than the large sanctuary and so a bit more intimate. The sermon is televised from next door. It works fine. Today they had one of the Bull riders from the Rodeo being interviewed (more of that later). And another amazing sermon, we are enormously blessed to be able to attend our church.

After Chapel Ben and I head up to our Sunday school class 'The Big Time'. We attended this same class in 2005, were very warmly welcomed and made some friends. When we came back, we were equally warmly welcomed, reconnected with old friends and have carried on making some new ones. This picture shows Andy (who with his wife 'look after' the class - it is more like the size of a normal church, Andy acts as compare- he is naturally very funny, but with the biggest softest heart) he is 'interviewing' Eric and Olivia Ober. They do a couples spotlight every so often. Olivia acted as our real estate agent, helped us find and buy our house and acts on the board of directors of Naomi's school. They are currently fostering three children in addition to their own three children (one of which is very disabled).

After Sunday school we race to pick up the girls, Ben to get Naomi and me to pick up Lilja. Here she is with Miss Jeanine:) Her son is in Naomi's class.

One of the couples we were friends with in 2005, who we spent quite a bit of time with and Ben visited with on each business trip to Houston were Mark and Jennifer Palmer. They also are on the board of directors of the school. Here is their son Tate - who did not wished to be photographed and Naomi with Bronwyn. Bronwyn is in 2nd grade and has been an amazing friend to Naomi, she helped her adjust to a new country so well.

Here we are all ready to get back on the shuttle bus back to our car. Phew, we are always very HUNGRY at this point.

This afternoon we had plans to meet up with David, Scottie, Lily and Ellie to go and do the Houston Rodeo and Livestock. It was an ambitious plan and I am glad we had people that had done it before. It was massive, there were so many people. Here we are watching the pig racing, doing a little farm activity thing (the big girls were very grumpy as we had to walk past all the fairground attraction rides).



This is classic picture. Two first born girls get to ride first, and are probably ironing it out who is in charge and who gets to drive and where. Lilja and Ellie get on and start helping each other with the seat belt.



We really did not have enough time to do the Livestock bit and will have to go back to do that another time. But we did get to enjoy the Rodeo, I do not have great pictures of this but we saw some incredible things. Bull riding, steer catching, horse racing you name. I loved it!

After all the events there was a concert, we saw Selena Gomez who is a teeny Disney star. Here are Lilja and Ellie getting into their very first rock concert. Ellie particularly enjoyed it and was sad to leave. We stayed for about 4 songs and decided to quit while we were ahead.

Saturday 5th March

Saturday morning, we had a leisurely start to the day. I had a cup of tea in bed and Benj took the girls some milk in theirs. They started to do some dress up games and chose not to have breakfast in favour of waiting for brunch. We had invited some friends round for morning coffee and something. We decided to make the something. We made banana crumb muffins and had chance to use the new muffin cases from Nanna.

At 10.30 our friends Dan, Andrea and their adorable baby Matthew came over. Naomi and Lilja helped set out blankets and toys for Matty and practiced hospitality on Dan and Andrea. Naomi got out her notepad and took drinks orders then scooted off to the kitchen to prepare them (including the coffees). Lilja helped lay out all the food and dishes.

We have made friends with Dan and Andrea through our adult Sunday school class, we were paired up with them as prayer couples during a recent marriage retreat we were able to go on. Andrea has been along to Beth Moore with me on Tuesday nights and she sang with Ben as Ben led the worship at the marriage weekend. So in a short time we feel like we are starting a good friendship, unfortunately they are moving to the Chicago area in a few weeks to be closer to family and starting new jobs:( We will miss them.

After they left Naomi decided she would like to help with the washing up, Lilja tucked into some letter practice and Benj started on some more garden work. This is a small patch that lies at the front of the house outside the library/music room, it has this wall in front of it. There was a large overgrown climber and lots of weeds there which Ben has already torn down. The plan is to tidy it up and pave a bit. No doubt we will show you the progress as it's made.

The BIG EVENT of the day was this afternoon. Naomi and Lilja's friends Lily and Ellie were in town (children of Pastor David and Scottie from our Stavanger church). We were invited to celebrate Lily's 7th Birthday. David and Scottie moved to Stavanger in 2006 when Lily was 2. Naomi has been to every Lily Birthday party since that date. Scottie is party organiser extraordinaire. Our girls adore Scottie and her parties. They also love their friends and were over the moon to see them (so were we). It was quite windy so there were not many great photo opportunities.

Here they are playing pass the parcel (apparently David had never seen this game until he played it at Ben's Birthday party). Eating food, yum.

The grown ups had time to socialise too. Here is Ben with Preben and David. Me with Scottie, Ellen and Carrie. Preben and Ellen lived in Stavanger and came to a small home group we hosted some time in 2006-7, they now live in Katy just outside Houston. Preben works for Statoil, they have two lovely boys (Noah and Liam) and also attend our church here in Houston. Carrie and Jason lived in Stavanger around the same time and also live in Katy with their children Kenna and Tobin. It was surreal and also quite wonderful to spend the afternoon with good friends and their families in a totally different location.

The climax of the party with the pinata! Fun and candy, yeah! Well done Scottie for another awesome party, and huge respect for her and David's family for loads of behind the scenes hard work.

A new week- we are back on track!

The week in pictures had to spill over a little into another week. We missed some activities due to the lingering illness that we wanted to share.... so bear with us. First picture is Sunday, Lilja spent the entire day in her pajamas. She actually went to school with Naomi on Monday morning in those same pajamas as it felt to her like too early a start. We made it to ballet and changed right into our leotard, then home for a play date with our friends and straight into a fairy costume. Not a bad transition. We had a good day, the weather was gorgeous so we stayed after school and played in the playground for an hour.

The girls appetites returned :) Ikea meatballs for tea.

After tea Naomi and Ben went out to rollerblade in the street and the postman came to drop off some post:)

The doctors must have put something in the antibiotics because Naomi decided Monday after tea (before the rollerblading) she wanted to do her maths lesson a day early. No sooner were the words out of her mouth and I had whipped out the books and we were doing her lesson. She then told me that she was going to have a great attitude at home school the next day.

Here she is tucking into her work at 7.30am Tuesday morning, GO NAOMI. She did so well, she had a fantastic attitude and accomplished much. Back to that in a bit.

Here are some pictures of Lilja going to playgroup or Mothers Day Out as they call it here. Can you tell she dressed herself:) Here are the girls at the front of our church. This is Lilja's favourite toilet stop. Lilja loves to go to the toilet, the little lady cannot walk past a public facility without having to enter in and use them. Some public toilets we have found are quite revolting (inwardly missing the serenity and cleanliness of Norway- well perhaps not Europris toilets but most others), these however are beautiful with granite sinks and all the latest colours and fancy toilet fixtures. Without fail we have to visit these toilets!

Naomi signs Lilja in and writes her name tag. They always start with a craft activity, here is Lilja and her friend Kate and her teacher Claudia. Naomi always wishes she could stay and do crafts too.

Back to schoolwork for us. At noon I noticed that I had brought Lilja's lunch box home with us after drop off, so we had to zoom back and drop it back to her. Naomi had done so well with her work that she was all done so we went straight from there to a nice playground in a nice leafy park, took our lunch and played until it was time to collect Lilja. A great lesson for Naomi about having a good attitude with her school work.

Signing out now, no doubt we will be adding more pictures. The girls are now wanting their picture taken at any and every opportunity. We had a great day again today (Wednesday). We got to help out with lunch duty at Naomi's school, more playing in the park, library and the like. Here are the girls tucking into dinner on the breakfast bar. So glad they are feeling better:)