Thanksgiving

This was our second Thanksgiving away from family. We were unsure what the celebration would be like since Thanksgiving is an American holiday, not observed here. But luckily, the Elders Quorum decided to plan a Thanskgiving retreat for anyone who wanted to come in our ward. They rented out cabins that the NATO base owns and we were able to stay in a cabin in Sirdal, a more mountainous area about an hour and a half away from Stavanger. It was SO much fun! 

Here is the little cabin we stayed in with another couple in our ward.

And this was the main gathering place where we ate Thanksgiving dinner.

It was cold when we arrived, but not snowy. However, we woke up to this beautiful layer of white.

After breakfast we wandered around the cabin area and got some gorgeous pictures. The air was so clean and crisp. It reminded me how much I LOVE being outdoors in the mountains. It was very peaceful. I was grateful we had even a short time to spend together in the serenity.

 All of the water had a thin layer of ice on the top. Barrett and Lily started throwing rocks and as you can see above some broke through and some just stuck, ha ha. They would try to break the bubbles like in the picture below.

Here's a short video.

After some socializing and naps we got to enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner :)

I got the recipe for a Czech apple cake from my landlady who is from the Czech Republic and decided to take this with us.

We've had fun swapping some recipes with all the holidays lately.

I decided to do a small Thanksgiving dinner on the actual Thanksgiving (we were in Sirdal the weekend before). I didn't buy turkey, but did brine a pork roast that turned out yummy. Almost traditional, ha ha...

And a little Thanksgiving activity we did with Lily.

And a picture to document our Thanksgiving!

Barrett also had a Thanksgiving meal at work, plus we were invited to one the following Sunday with some of Barrett's coworkers. (Which Lily and I ended up not going to due to missing the bus by literally 10 seconds as I was running to the bus. So frustrating! The annoyance of buses sometimes!) There are a lot of international people in Barrett's group so that dinner turned into a collection of turkey, stuffing, spinach lasagna, chicken curry, curry tomato soup, rolls, etc..... Kind of fun though. For not spending the holiday in America, we definitely got our fill of Thanksgiving, which helped to take away the homesickness, a little anyway.

Rainbow day

I am sure going to miss barnehage when we move from Norway someday. Just before Halloween they had a rainbow day with fun activities for the children. I dressed Lily up in all sorts of colors and she had a lot of fun. Here are some pictures.

One of the activities was face painting, which was a little interesting. As you can see, there is a huge "butterfly" on Lily's cheek, well half of her face really, ha ha.

Another activity was eating all the different colorful fruit and vegetables.

I'll have to remember this idea if I every do a joyschool someday.

General Conference

General Conference was definitely a different experience in Norway. I didn't even remember there was a General Women's broadcast the week before because it shows in the middle of the night here. I was able to watch online a few days later. Growing up in Utah I never really thought about the adjustments other members of the church had to make to watch because I watched it on a local channel, live. And it is so much easier now than it used to be because of the internet. Last year we adjusted to watching it two hours later than normal, but since we're 8 hours ahead here the times are confusing. So we started the first session at 6:00 p.m. Saturday night, then watched the second session in the morning on Sunday. We attempted to watch the priesthood session too, but it wouldn't work for some reason, so we had to postpone that. Then another late session for Sunday morning and later in the week we watched the last session. At least we were still able to stay home in comfy clothes and make our couch as comfortable as possible to enjoy the sessions. I'm also grateful we can read the talks whenever we want because I already need a refresher on the amazing talks that were given!

Going out to dinner... memories of Norway

Before we moved to Norway we had heard/read that people don't really go out to eat here because it is so expensive. We hardly went out to eat in Baltimore so we didn't think it would be a big difference, but you definitely get used to having that easy option in the states. Especially after we had spent the whole summer with our families and friends eating out. It is relaxing, fun to try new places, yummy, and kind of a social thing to do. We did get milkshakes one time for a date night (which was about the price of going out to eat) but other than that we hadn't ventured out. One Saturday I wanted to get out of the house and I REALLY felt like going out to eat. We looked at options, prices, and with more deliberation that you would imagine, decided to go to a pizza place in the mall near our house, called Al Forno.

We ordered a pizza, that we easily finished in one sitting, and shared a soda and spent about $45. The pizza was very yummy so we were glad it was worth it. But we definitely won't be going out again for awhile, ha ha.

Visit to the Norsk Oljemuseum (oil museum)

Oil is a major part of Norway's recent history. Oil was found in the North Sea in the 1960's and has been a huge source of income for Norway since. We had heard about the oil museum and decided to go one rainy Saturday and it was actually a lot more interesting and fun than we thought it would be. And in true Norwegian family-friendly fashion, they even had a kids' play area. Here are some pictures from the day.

Lily by the kids' play area.