Aboret

Temp +10, sunny

It is still amazing weather, the buds on the trees are bursting, the bulbs are all out, and IKEA can't get the outdoor furniture out fast enough! The farmers are very busy ploughing and muck spreading, and almost every household has pruned some bush or tree. We are spending lots of time outside. The newspapers have 'Drømme Påske' (dream Easter) as their headlines.

We have Granny visiting so I feel like I am having a break and the children are loving the extra attention. Next week we are planning to join in the Norwegian traditional Easter pursuit and go skiing.

Today after swimming we headed off to the Rogaland Arboret (arboretum) for a picnic, Naomi walked happily around without the buggy and found so much to play with. Rocks, sticks, mud, ducks to feed, houses in the trees etc etc.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Temp +18, BRIGHT SUNSHINE

It is just getting better and better (the weather that is) and there is so much more day to enjoy it!

OK this is a post that I have been meaning to write for a while. How to introduce Easter to a small person. I don't want to get into the whole Easter Bunny debate, I don't see a problem with celebrating Spring (bunnies, chickens, new life etc), especially here as the spring is so welcome. However the facts of the death and crucifixion of Jesus are a critical part of my Christian faith and we want our daughters to know those stories.

My dad wrote: Very nice - yes, Easter is a bit of a problem especially the bit that 'he died
because he loved us' Gives the wrong impression about love. Heavy stuff.

Not easy to defend in a short space, but 'no greater love is this, that a man would lay down his life for a friend'. I have trouble comprehendinng a love that would give up everything for me, but should we short change our daughter and not show her that kind of love??

So as is the way with me, I bought a book that we can read together and talk about. It is called 'The Easter Story' by Brian Wildsmith. It is the Bible story told from the perspective of the donkey who carried Jesus to Jerusalem. It has beautiful pictures and is a faithful story and is a book she can enjoy today and will grow into.

On a lighter note, the Påske hare (Easter bunny) did visit Barnehage today and gave all the children chocolate eggs. It was fun and like Father Christmas captures the children's attention for a fleeting moment, my prayer is that Jesus captures their hearts for longer than that:)

Time

Temp +15, warm and sunny

There is so much going on in our little life right now that I think it might be safest to talk about the weather. It is really really beautiful, as Ben said last week 'it reminds us why we live in Stavanger'. After a dreary winter it is easy to forget sometimes. It's warm and bright and the birds are singing. Warm enough to throw open the doors and play in the sunshine on the front step. Sunny enough that Naomi will wear sunglasses.

It was a quiet weekend on the railway as they had a working weekend, so there were no trains running. We walked up the little track by the railway and started inspected some of the work, at the moment its just some blasting and tree felling. They are well on the way to taking down all the trees to make a new station at Frøystad. The railway has done wonders for raising the neighbourhood spirit, nothing like something to winge about to bring people together. The good weather helps too, gets people outside. In the winter you just see people rushing in and out of the house to the car.

The clocks changed yesterday. This means we bought our house 4 years ago, it was a Sunday viewing and we recon that we got the house cause people got confused about the time change and missed the viewing. I am glad we did, I like our house, I love the view and 
the beach, and frankly looking at the housing market right now in Stavanger it frightens me.
Usually we get a very kind email from our Pastor to remind us of the time change, this year the email came quite late (about midnight) on Saturday, which caught out a few families on Sunday who arrived towards the end of the service... Unfortunately, time changes don't help babies very much, especially babies who have a runny nose and probably teeth coming too! Lilja is utterly confused by the whole thing.

Season of Singing

Temp +7, dry, bright

Yesterday was the first day of spring! It was the equinox. It never fails to disappoint. For the next 6 months Light will triumph over Darkness. Even if it is not warm it will be Light!!

This was the verse on my little calender yesterday.

See! The winter is past the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come... (Song of Songs 2:11-12)

Well the part about the rains over may not be true, but it was yesterday. And this week has been full of singing. Naomi is now singing both English and Norwegian songs interchangeably. How is it children love music so much? She was singing Ride Ride Ranke to the tune of Alle Fugler ending up with Twinkle Star the other day.

The other singing is in practice for tonight when Ben and some friends are leading worship for a new Prison ministry starting here. I think the plan is to start Alpha in the prison here. So Ben is leading the team in Norwegian praise songs. It's very exciting!

The other bit of praise, Lilja is learning how to clap (8 mo). You just forget what a fun thing that is, and the look of delight on her face when she sees you seeing her doing it. She wobbles her little body so much she falls over..

Mothering Sunday

Temp +4, hail, sun, showers, strong cold wind

We celebrated British Mothering Sunday today. It can be a bit confusing, as the Norwegians, Americans and British have different dates for Mothers day- so we are never too sure which to celebrate. Our mothers got phone calls, and I took the family to Tungenes Fyr (lighthouse in Randaberg, north of Stavanger) to the little Søndags Kafe they run. It is open each week and a different group (eg local guides or scouts) serve cakes, waffles and coffee- its a great location and its really cheap... Today the wind was bitterly cold and the waves were crashing hard on the rocks, it was very very beautiful and we were glad to have some shelter for the kids. We took another family with us and Naomi and Lily (their daughter) danced round and round the room.

The Railway sent us a packet in the post and it has caused quite a stir among our little row of houses! It appears that the 'solution' for each house it quite different, despite the houses basically being the same age, same position and roughly same layout... one house will have all windows replaced, one only in the kitchen and so on. So it looks like our neighbours make be calling for a re-measurement. As my mum said, we may end up with no new windows! I am sure this is only the start. We do get a nice new wooden fence to shield us from the line, which I am pleased about..

It is the 100 year anniversary of the composer Edvard Grieg's death this year, and I keep catching mention of it on the Norwegian Classical music radio station. Nice little pieces, interviews with people for whom Grieg impacts their life. Like a 7 year old boy who loves to play the piano and loves Grieg. We passed an old printing press outside the Stavanger Library on Saturday, it said on it 'Trykket ord er Kultur' (the printed word is culture). The same must be said for music. So I am going to do a bit of research into Grieg.

Wrong number

Temp +6, grey, showers

On Friday it felt the like telephone did not stop. It was one of those days, when they are not for you. It is increasingly common to get offers on the telephone, some for charities, I think the first one was for a charity...it went something like this..

Me: Hello
Lady: Hello, how is the weather with you?
Me: er? well its wet and grey... and you?
Lady: yes, it is to here in Kristiansand too, bit boring eh?
Me: yes, and your point is?
Lady: well we wouldn't expect you to give a monthly amount but if I could send you a giro for 350kr (£30)...
Me: No I don't think so, I'm sorry, goodbye.

As always I felt incredibly sorry for the poor girl on the other end of the phone..

Next call, some bloke ringing for Hafslund, this is incrediably common, we probably get up to 10 calls a week for them- I think our number is very similar, or there is an actual fault on the line, anyway I guess one day it will annoy me so much that I may call the telephone opperator. So this one was a classic, we have been sworn at, hung up on, you name it..

Me (seeing it was an unknown number): Nikki Clarke speaking
Him: Hallo, er yes I would like to give you my electricity reading
Me (I am pretty honed on this one): I am sorry, you have dialed the wrong number, if you try again you will get through.
Him (shouting): NO I HAVEN*T, this is 815....
Me: I am sorry you have, this is 51... (like I wouldn't know)
Me: Bye

Last one was on my mobile, I knew it was a telesales..
Me: Hello
Them: Is this Mary?
Me: No sorry (for goodness sake at least get my name right)

Ah well, at least there is a centralised place to register with to take your name and number off these people's lists the Brønnøysund register, love this country. Shame it might take up to 3 months!

supermarkets, weddings and holidays

Temp +12, sunny

It is a beautiful day. A complete contrast to yesterday and I am shocked at how fickle my mood is in response to the weather! I am pretty much skipping along, smiling at everyone. I think that the weather at the end of the winter affects my mood more than that at the beginning. We had such an amazing summer last year that a couple of weeks of rain really didn't matter too much. Plus I really enjoyed the run up to Christmas which sort of masked the darkness. It is so warm today, its a throw all the windows and doors open day.

Today, like friday, we had errands to run, so ended up in the supermarket. Naomi is so thrilled to ride in the trolly with Lilja in the baby seat - that it is the easiest place (other than swimming and town) to get her to leave the house for. Here are some things I love about the supermarkets here..

1. Small
2. Limited choice (but just what you might want, the list of things for people to bring when they visit from the UK gets less as time goes by, you get used to living without things and there is actually more and more choice- not always a positive thing)
3. Bread (all the bread is uncut, they have self service bread slicing machine thing, there are always end bits you can pick up for the kids to chew on, so far this has always been a massive treat and staves off the demands for sweets by the check out).
4. Paying for bags (OK I actually think this is great, you get good proper bags, they don't break, you don't take more than you need)

We are in the process of planning our next holiday. Living 'abroad' this always presents the dilemma- do you go and visit family or travel in Norway or go somewhere else. As the family increases in size and age and the budget diminishes our options are becoming a little different. This time we have a wedding invite, which we have procrastinated over no end (sorry family!). I will not bore you with our tooings and froings over this, mainly to do with transport, length, where to go, how much to spend etc. For us to go to a wedding in the UK we really need to make it a holiday as well. We are as far as booking the ferry to travel across. We have yet to decide where to spend the week before the wedding.

Seeing life through the eyes of a nearly 3 year old is quite amazing, this will be Naomi's first wedding and her first overnight trip on a ferry. She is now old enough that she can deal with past and future a little more and we are starting to talk about our adventure.. Although, when we took the local ferry the other day she started to get a bit worried that we were going to sleep on it and why didn't we have the green bag (our big travel bag) with us and when was the wedding!. Anyway, she knows this far that we are going to sleep on the boat and we are going to the wedding and we are starting to talk about all the people she knows that will be there. We are reading Katie Morag stories and in one of them Granma Mainland gets married to Neilie Beag and it is giving us plenty of opportunity to talk about dresses and dancing and confetti and staying up past our bedtime!

Butterfly game

Temp +5, gusty wild wind, wet

The fine weather of the weekend is a distant memory, and I am slightly filled with the longing for warmer, stable weather and lighter evenings, and some green vegetation. Although, I suspect we may be a few months off on that one. In the mean time, life goes on and we are filling our days with painting, baking, barnehage, doctors appointments, a play date and a birthday party.

The said party was a huge success, it was probably the prettiest, most 'themed' party I have ever been to. Everything was 'Hello Kitty'. Naomi had such a nice time.

Among the party games was this really fun game involving a little elephant with a long nose that spat out butterflies, each of the girls held a net and the aim was to catch the falling butterflies. The two eldest girls picked up the idea straight away and stood right up close with their nets stretched up high to catch the butterflies (pretty successfully). My darling daughter stood solemnly clutching her net in slight bemusement, obviously thinking ever so hard about having butterflies in her net- just not really worked out how. She stood very still. Several goes later and birthday mum popped a butterfly in her net, much to her delight. It was a bitter-sweet sight, and I have pondered it since the party. I knew how she felt..

Season of small walks

Saturday: temp +5 to 0, easterly wind, bright. Songesand, Lysefjord
Sunday: temp +8, southerly wind, sunny. Church and Sola Beach.

It's so easy to let your world get very very small when you have little kids. You travel short distances, never far from a nap, a feed or a toilet. This weekend, after what seems like too many routine housebound or local Saturdays, we decided to go on an adventure. It's always a bit of a gamble, will it all work together to provide something for everyone, enough fun and exercise and sleep and food and warmth and clothes to mean that we felt it was worth it.

Here are some of the things we did (I will rate them out of 4, one for each member of the family), ferry ride (4/4), drive over some beautiful wild Ryfylke scenery, (4/4, 2 sleeping, 2 enjoying the peace), walk along a small track- through snowdrifts with 2 buggies (3/4, one member not happy about clothing or being woken from nap or lack of food), picnic behind very large boulder in the snow (4/4- until cold set in), walk back down track which turned into a sprint to get screaming children back to the car (0/4 family well and truly fed up). Kilometers walked 0.4. Drive back (3/4 one dirty nappy changed in layby), ferry home (4/4).

I think we (adults) wished we could have walked at least another 2 hours... maybe alone.

Today we had a lovely short walk on the beach. The expectations were lower and a great time was had.

For me though, it was great to get to just take in some nature, some space and wilderness and forget about the laundry.

Computer says no

Temp +7, north wind, sunny, blue skies. Full moon.

I'll start with the good news, today was my favourite kind of day, sparkly, fresh, sweet cool air, clear bright light, you could see every rock and crag on Dalsnuten and Lifjellet. It was like waking from a long deep wonderful sleep. We probably didn't do it justice (sometimes there is the fear that it might rain and be grey again for the next 2 months and that was it!) by going to Kvadrat   (shopping centre) but we had errands to run and had a lovely time meeting friends.

The light is unforgiving in some respects in that it highlighted every speck of dust, every new scratch on our dark parquet floor and it gave me the opportunity to inspect the damage done to our veranda over the long winter. But none of these things bothered me - it was too nice a day.

The bad news came in a slim white envelope from Stavanger Kommune this afternoon. It read that we had not got a place at Barnehage for Naomi from August.

The way that you apply for barnehage here is extremely fair, there is one deadline a year, you apply, they draw your names out of a hat and the rest go on a waiting list. The fee's are capped so that it is affordable for all. It is so fair that it is so oversubscribed that there are not enough places, despite the promise of a place for all (it is a strongly fought over political issue). Added to this there are priority cases, for siblings, for special needs and for children who have a mother tongue that is not Norwegian (and as of this year English too). Ironically, we could have had a place for Naomi when she was a year old at the barnehage of our choosing- as she was diagnosed as having Cerebral Palsy, thereby qualifying for a priority place. On top of that she could have had special help and financial support. We did not choose that route at the time, and as it turned out our prayers were answered and she made an incredible 'recovery' and the specialists reversed their diagnosis. That is another story. I was hoping that we could use the language card on this occasion but they have changed the rules and having English mother tongue no longer qualifies for priority. So we were in the pot the same as everyone else. I can't help but think of all the families all over Stavanger who are holding their letter and either breathing a sigh of relief or wondering, as I am, what now??

In a way, for us, we will continue as we are. I don't have a job that is asking me when I am coming back and I love our little life. I guess I just wanted it for Naomi, for her to have a place to really learn Norwegian and a place to go without me (not that I have asked her). We live just around the corner from the British School of Stavanger- which has an excellent pre-school. We have friends there. We have always resisted the urge to put Naomi there. It is not going to help her to learn the language, it is not going to help her make local friends who will follow her to school. It will be more tempting to want to send her to school there and then we are talking fee's and a very different life. So we shall see. I feel quite excited actually, because I trust there is a 'plan'. Our prayers were answered regarding the CP, and I have been praying about barnehage for at least 2 years, I know there is a plan unfolding here.

Karnival

Temp +6, mild, bright, light cloud cover

Today we celebrated Karnival at the Åpen Barnehage I take the children to. Normally Karnival just means an excuse to dress up and have a bit of a party, it is a relaxed affair - and for the most part home made costumes are the order of the day. This year, our lovely Barnehage leaders (Rita and Sissel) decided on a theme, and in the run up we have been able to make accessories and to bake 'boller' (sweet bread rolls). The theme was 'Hakkebakkeskogen'. This is from the very popular Norwegian children's classic by Torbjørn Egner (1955) (also wrote Kardemomme By), and features some charming characters such as Klatremus (climbing mouse), Mikkel Rev (a sly fox), Bamsefar-Bjørnemor and son Brumleman. So with all the children decked in mouse or fox ears and painted faces we had lots of fun playing 'Katta i sekken' (cat in the bag, a variation on a pinata) and singing songs, plus eating the very fine 'boller'. I am now thinking that we probably need to invest in some of these classic books (and CD's) to introduce to the girls, so that they can learn to love the stories that their friends and neighbours know so well.

On another note, it is the first day of March. Here are some things I am looking forward to in March, celebrating some friends/family birthdays, getting ready for Easter (although unlike Christmas I am unsure of how we will introduce it to Naomi), seeing more spring bulbs come out, having mum visit, lengthening days....

Hello Goodbye

Temp +3, wind from the east, intermittent rain.

We say goodbye to February today and we said goodbye to two faithful and fun people tonight at our Wednesday night group for 'young adults'. Of late we have been going through a season of saying goodbye to very special people at the church, it's what happens in this transient community. I have been thinking of it a bit like a hemorrhage, as the church left behind struggles to re-group and continue the same momentum. Today I thought of it differently as I considered that the body is global, God is just moving his people, like blood, around his body. It's His call! My prayer is that we don't faint with low blood pressure- bring us more people to love and to know. It's hard saying goodbye - and its equally hard to remain fresh and say hello to new people too- but if you don't, you miss a blessing. We will miss our friends, they were committed and that really counts for something and that's what makes it good.

Question? Naomi if you could spend the money in your moneybox at the shops, what would you buy? A: Wegetables.

40 months

The sun is out today, a cool grey February sun, a welcome sun. There is a faint dust of snow on the hills above Sandnes- and some indications that spring will come. We are waiting to leave this month and get into March. Last year the entire month of March was snowy and bright with wonderful clear vibrant blue skies- that kind of weather is described as having 'Påske stemning' here- it means 'a feel of Easter'. Norwegians love to ski at Easter, and especially when the snow and exercise is accompanied with the warm sun on their faces. It is the payout for surviving the dark winter months. The sun today and a return in energy after having a wisdom tooth out last week raised my spirits today.
Lilja is 7 months old today and Naomi is 33- that makes a total of 40 baby months...

Question? what is an ektascope? A cardboard kitchen roll tube you look through- or beat mummy's bottom with!