I love Fall!

I love Fall more and more every year. I'm so grateful for the transition from summer to winter and for the holidays it brings. And now that we have Lily and her birthday to start off those holidays it makes it more fun. Plus, I'm home now to make some of those delicious treats that include pumpkins and apples. 

Here are a couple pictures of the beautiful fall in Norway.

I was so excited when I heard there was a pumpkin patch in Stavanger. Ever since Lily was born I've been dying to make it to a pumpkin patch and to take some pictures of her there. Plus I found out that the Americans in my ward like this specific pumpkin patch because it has "cooking pumpkins". Just like most things around here, it's cheaper to make it homemade. I had never even thought about making homemade pumpkin puree before. They told me it was easy so I planned to do this with the pumpkins we found.

It was a little out of bus range so a girl in our ward offered to pick me up from the bus stop with her children and then drive me back home after.

The pumpkin patch was amazing. The weather was not. It's behind a cute house right by the ocean with a beautiful field behind it. But it was SO windy that Lily was basically getting blown over the whole time. 

She helped pick out a couple pumpkins and then was done with the activity. Especially if I pulled out the camera, ha ha. This was her most of the time :)

There were also some carrots you could pick which I thought was fun, and would be fun for Lily, but she preferred watching while holding on to my leg so as not to fall over.

We made it out of the field and I started taking quite a few pictures of Lily with the pumpkins and she cooperated for awhile. I took our nice camera, even though I'm intimated by it because I've never learned how to use it. When I got home and put her down for her nap I was so excited to see my highly anticipated pumpkin patch pictures.... only to find out that 90% of them were overexposed. AHHHH! In the craziness of it all and the hurrying I hadn't even checked the pictures I was taking. That's probably the first lesson in photography. LOOK AT THE PICTURE TO MAKE SURE IT WORKED. It's a little embarrassing how sad I was. I threw a little tantrum trying to edit the pictures and frantically texted Barrett telling him how stupid I was and that he needed to come fix them. But to no avail, they were that overexposed that it was irreparable. :_( Barrett came home and gave me my first photography lesson and I am doing better now and have been trying to practice to avoid another disaster. So maybe next year I'll get the pumpkin patch pictures I've always imagined to have with Lily? At least I was calm by the time everyone else started posting their amazing, very well taken pumpkin patch pictures, ha ha.

But we did end up with these fun pumpkins and although Lily didn't like the experience, she was so excited about "Lily's pumpkin" and "Mommy's pumpkin" and "Daddy's pumpkin". She carried her little one around for a couple days. 

They came in handy for her birthday party. And at least the cooking of the pumpkins was a huge contrasting success compared to the pumpkin patch pictures. I decided to make these pumpkin cookies I got the recipe for last year. Here's the process.

Cut the pumpkin into fourths, which is no easy task. Then cook them in the oven for about an hour.

 The pumpkin comes off really easily from the skin with a spoon.

 Blend it up and you're finished. Surprisingly easy. And it tasted SO much better than canned pumpkin.

 The finished product. Way more moist, not as strong of a pumpkin taste, and everyone raved over them. I think that we'll be our new Fall tradition, to puree our own pumpkin for the cookies and any other pumpkin baking we want to do. I still have plenty left to try out pumpkin bread and pumpkin pancakes. Mmmm.

Now that Halloween is far past and Thanksgiving is approaching I've been trying to focus a little more on gratitude. I'd like to start adding our own family traditions in now that we are away from our families and on our own to celebrate. But I was reading a blog recently about how to incorporate gratitude and family traditions into this time of year and came across a link to this great documentary photography project (book) by James Mollison, called Where Children Sleep. He travelled the world and took pictures of children and their bedrooms from all different countries, ethnic backgrounds, incomes, family status, etc. It really touched me and filled me with gratitude for ALL the blessings I enjoy. My life has been so easy compared to a lot of people out there who fight everyday to meet their basic needs. It was a good reminder. Anyway, I thought I would share the link. Click here. Happy Fall!

A few outings close to home

One Sunday (general conference Sunday: and I'll have to write about experience general conference 8 hours ahead of broadcast time) our landlords noticed we were still home in the afternoon and invited us to go to the beach with them. So we decided that sounded more fun than naptime for Lily and headed out with them. It was chilly, but a beautiful day. It's surprising seeing people swim, but even at the lake near our house we've heard that Norwegians swim all year long. Not many, but there were a couple older ladies returning from their swim when we arrived. We drove to another small dock/beach on the way back. It is so beautiful out away from the city.

On a rainy day we went with the twins to an indoor playland. Most of the things were for older children, but Lily still had fun.

Jumping is her very favorite thing right now so she LOVED the trampoline.

Another trip with the twins was up to the top of a hill in Tasta where you can see a beautiful view of Stavanger. So I took Barrett for a walk up there one Saturday morning. The pictures don't quite do it justice and the light wasn't great, but another great view just a short walk away from us.

We took a trip to Sandnes (the Southern part of Stavanger; maybe 20 minutes in a car, but an hour on the bus :)) right before Lily's birthday to pick up some cake supplies at a cake store a friend in our ward owns. We intended to take a walk around some popular hikes, but we've found that may of these sites are really hard to get to without a car. So we walked around their center of a town for a short time but the rain was pretty bad so we spent some time looking around inside their mall.
It wasn't rainy when we left to get on the bus so we decided to go to their port, and had a funny experience with some swans.
As you can see in this picture, there were just a few swans and ducks close to the steps we were at, so Barrett started throwing some pretzel pieces with Lily for them.

 Then as we look out at the port we see a bunch of swans in the distance and realize... they are swimming towards us!

 Here is their progression. It really was hilarious. It looked like a swan army coming for us all lined up. We have no idea how they even knew we had food, they seemed so far away from us at the beginning.

 It was hard to capture in one picture, but there were TONS of swans, ducks, and birds all around us by the end.

 We walked around the port a little more to see the view before heading back home.

Our little Norwegian apartment

I finally got around to taking some pictures of what our apartment looks like. I had a lot of people ask at the beginning for pictures, so here they are. Plus a couple more differences of apartment living at the end :)

In case you've forgotten, here is a reminder of what our house looks like, and the entrance to our "basement" apartment.

From the front door is our mud room. It's so nice to have this since we are often coming in with our wet gear.

When you walk through the second door and turn right there is our living room.

Sitting on the couch.

The kitchen from the door by the mud room.

Turning around from the kitchen to the front room.

The other 3 rooms in the house are to the side of the kitchen.

First door on the left is our bedroom.

 We feel a little like college students living in this small apartment because we've had to be creative with where to fit all our stuff. So there's our half-exposed clothes and whatever else we can't fit, ha ha. Luckily we didn't bring very much because there is NO way we could fit even a third of all our things we have packed in our storage unit.

Second door on the left is Lily's room.

 Our landlords' were so kind and finished this second bedroom with what furniture we wanted because it hadn't been used before. Then they showed up with a picture, Winnie the Pooh rug with  matching box, and a small Ikea chair that Lily loves. It feels like a child's room now.

The last room on the left is our bathroom, which is very nice.

Most of the apartments we looked at didn't have a bathtub, and we had even started practicing having Lily shower in preparation, so we were really excited that his apartment didn't only have a tub, but this nice big one with a jacuzzi option.

 (Notice that my washer/dryer is back!)

 Shower to the side of the tub.

We have been really lucky to have this nice apartment with great landlords and a quiet neighborhood that is family friendly and close to the lake.

One thing that I don't know how I forgot to mention about living Norway is the garbage system here. It was probably the first thing we learned about Norway when we ate dinner coming home from the airport our first night. We separate all our trash into a paper container, food container, and then all other trash (there are other places you can drop off glass and plastic but it's not picked up at your house) and there is a sophisticated schedule of what week each of the garbages are picked up. They have a 3 container system you can buy everywhere to put in your house. We've gotten used to it (although I do really miss having a disposal), but Lily always looks at us confused when she opens the cupboard after we've asked her to throw something away, ha ha.

And the absolute BEST thing about our apartment is the heated floors! I don't know why this isn't more common in America. No one has carpet here, but I don't notice it so much when my feet are toasty on my wood floors. And coming out of the shower to heated tile is amazing. It is now a requirement on our ever-growing list of what must be apart of house we will build... eventually. If we ever settle down somewhere long enough to build ;) A little more about life in Norway.

Bye Bye Binkie

About a month ago we said goodbye to Lily's binkie.  She seemed to be getting a little old for the binkie, but we really needed it for the move from Baltimore and to Norway to stay sane, keep her calm, and adjust with the time change. But once that was passed we got really tired of waking up several times a night to give her the binkie so she could fall back asleep. I wanted her over it before the baby came. (Sidenote: I just found out that Norwegians say to take the binkie away before age 3, so most people here are quite surprised to hear that I already took the binkie away. Ahead of the curve here, but a little behind what most "American experts" say in America) To be honest, Barrett and I were both really nervous to take the binkie away. She only used it to sleep and she was instantly calm when we gave it to her. And she's been a fairly good sleeper. But after I got past my initial pregnancy sickness and felt well one morning, I decided that was the day. I told her over and over in the morning that we were going to sleep without the binkie and to say goodbye to the binkie. Here is the video of her saying goodbye to it.

After I had her throw it away in the garbage. (Sorry for the gross garbage picture)

 The first few days were really sad! It was almost panic for her that she didn't have it when it was time to go to sleep. She was fine remembering it was in the garbage when it wasn't time to go to sleep. But she cried less and less each time she slept and I would praise and often reward her for not sleeping with it. At the beginning when I opened the door she would say "Lily slept without binkie. Bye bye binkie. Binkie in garbage." We originally started out with just baby in the crib to comfort her, and then elephant, kitty kat, and sippy were all added, sometimes with additional blankets. 

But this led to continual playing and taking FOREVER to fall asleep at nap and bedtime. Now we're back down to just baby (plus quiet music) and it's still a little struggle with how long it takes her to get to sleep at bedtime. However, we rarely rarely get up with her during the night anymore. Yay for uninterrupted sleep! (well besides getting up to go to the bathroom all the time :))

When I mentioned to people here that I had taken Lily's binkie away they always suggested we visit the binkie tree, which is really close to here. I also recently heard of quite a few other places and tales that go along with the places to help facilitate saying goodbye to a child's binkie. I think it's such a fun Norwegian tradition to help children adjust to the idea of no longer using their binkie rather than it just being gone one day. It took several weeks to make the trip to the binkie tree, but my landlady took me there. Here are quite a few pictures.

Marcela brought her camera along and was so nice to take more pictures for me. 

I look so happy to be tying that binkie to the tree, ha ha.

 I was a little worried about pulling the binkie out that had just been sitting in the diaper bag and Lily wanting it, but she didn't even care. I don't think she even realized it was her old binkie. So not too much emotion regarding the tree, which was good. Here are the kids watching me tie it.

Now Lily also associates binkie with "tree" as well as "garbage" and "bye bye",  ha ha. We got her a baby for her birthday, which has a binkie, so she will still sometimes ask where Lily's binkie is and then proceed with what happened to her binkie. But no more sadness or attachment to it. Yay! One thing down before the baby comes. Now if we can also master a big girl bed and potty training?? We'll see.

The Saga of the Washing Machine: Part 2

Oh how I wish this story was over, but nope it's still going on. Now I haven't dyed any more clothes, maybe some minor shrinking. But it's not my lack of understanding of the settings that kept this story going. At least I don't think I broke the machine...

After my last post, doing the laundry was still an adjustment. Every week something was different, ha ha. I would get one load done perfectly and then be confused when the next few loads finished. The actual washing of the clothes was pretty easy. But drying was another story. I never figured out which setting was best for which type of clothes. It seemed that most times they would either be really wet at the end of the cycle and I would air dry the rest for fear of using high heat and shrinking, or they would come out SO hot that the items of clothing would burn my hand and be crispy wrinkly. (I should have taken some pictures to explain better) Well I was going about my normal Monday morning washing a few weeks ago and suddenly the dryer stopped and started beeping at me. I looked at the screen which read "E20". Well that doesn't seem good. I spent the rest of the day trying to dry my loads with the dryer often stopping, beeping, and displaying the same error code, E20. I got my laundry done at even slower rate than usual and kind of ignored it, thinking it would go away before my next laundry day. The following Monday I was anxious to start the dryer and was so disappointed when I heard the beeping. Another wash day, this time playing around with the dryer settings seeing if any worked. I did find that if I used the timed drying for the lowest amount of time (11 minutes!) then it didn't beep. So every 11 minutes I would go back in the bathroom and restart my load! Then after awhile of this I would be brave and try a different setting, and every now and then a miracle would happen and it would dry like normal. If not, I would continue going in every 11 minutes until I tired of this and finally just air dried the load.

We told my landlord and both of us started researching error code E20. We first thought it was a drain blockage. So Barrett took apart what he needed to and we drained the hoses and there was no blockage. The next week my landlord ordered a new part online that might fix it. He and Barrett worked on it one night and tested a load... Nope, still beeping. Then my landlord asked that I stop using the washer/dryer just so something bad didn't happen or make the problem worse, but offered for me to do the laundry upstairs. Now, I am really happy I don't have to go to a laundromat every week, and they are so kind to let me invade their home every week to do laundry. But it is added work for both of us. I plan a time to start my first load upstairs as early on Monday morning as I can, and since Norwegian washers and dryers take so long, it is about 3 hours to complete one load. So I travel up and down with my laundry basket of dirty and clean clothes a few times Monday, and it always carried over to Tuesday morning before everything is clean. My landlady is really great about letting me wash when I want, and will often change loads for me and once even brought down a dry load to my house. But I also feel bad because it adds work to her. She has to work around my washing schedule and it really is creating more laundry for her as she helps me out when I'm not there late at night or early in the morning.

Good news: Last night our landlord took our machine away to be fixed! Bad news: It could take a couple weeks for the company to even start looking at our machine. The maintenance companies here are not that effective my landlord told me. This company is only open from 8-12, Monday through Friday. It costs significantly more money for them to come to the house and their first suggestions of what to look at to fix it we have already done. Most Norwegians just go out and buy something new if it breaks or replace items a few years after they buy it. I'm not sure if Norwegians buy new products because the maintenance companies are such a pain to use, or if the maintenance companies are open short hours because there is not enough work due to Norwegians buying new, rather than fixing items. I'll never know which came first here, the chicken or the egg. 

Yesterday and today it has been raining REALLY hard. I run from their front door to mine so the dry clothes don't get all wet, ha ha. I really hope a neighbor occasionally looks outside to see the pregnant lady decked out in rain gear, running with her full laundry basket to the basement, often with a toddler, also decked out in rain gear, trying to keep up from behind. It's nice to know I'll at least have either a fixed or new machine in the near future, but for now I'll keep taking my laundry upstairs and listen to Lily ask over and over "Where did Lily's dryer go?" And, in reality, if this is the worst part of renting, I'll take it :) Hopefully the next post about the machine will be about my successful week of washing clothes in my own apartment.