Happy camper....

We've been away on a short camping trip. We went to Gothenburg to meet up with my brother and his family. And, of course, to go to Liseberg, the amusement park.

The weather wasn't really the best, but we managed to get the bbq out the first and the last day.

According to the forecast it wasn't supposed to rain on friday, so we decided to go to the amusement park that day. Not rain my a.... woops, sorry... it did RAIN. We were soaking wet... and when we got back to our tent after spending the whole day, wet, in Liseberg, the rain had dripped off the tent onto the floor cover in the tent, so the whole "indoors" were flooded... Luckily, the bedroom part of the tent has it's own floor, so at least that bit was dry.

Apart from the wet friday, we kept quite dry and warm, but we didn't see the sun. All in all, I think we all enjoyed being away for a few days, and it was great meeting up with my brother & family again.

I think we will consider doing this again sometime soon (even though it might rain...)

What happened next...?? 2011 in pictures....

Oh, I guess it's been a while.... I'm not sure anyone comes "in" here anymore, but that's ok. I will do a quickish (or probably very looong) post about what's been going on since my last post just because I like to look back on my blog to see what and when we've done things... like a diary.... so I guess this post is kind of just for keeping the continuity of the "story" going.... (mostly for myself). I'll try to keep it short....;)

APRIL:

Just after buying the house here in Norway, we finally managed to sell our house in Scotland. So in April we took a trip over the pond to make our Scottish house ready for the new owners. It was a while since we visited last, so the grass really needed cutting.... I think hubby struggled a bit...

The girls really enjoyed beeing back in Scotland, especially Maja Siobhan, who miss Scotland, the house and her Scottish friends a lot.

We had a lovely "last" weekend in our house in Armadale/Bathgate, and we had some lovely years in Scotland, so it was very sad to say goodbye to our house....

Spring is a very nice time in Scotland.... just look at this marvellous tree....

MAY:

Packing everything in boxes.... need I say more....??

....and then unpacking the boxes....

Our new house has a loooovely garden, a huge decking and a couple of trees too many... I wanted these two trees to be taken down because they made the entrance to our decking too narrow...

... so my dad (with good help from Susie) helped us with our tree problem....

... it looks sooooo much better now don't you think....

My mother brought a couple of berry bushes... red currants and blueberries. I planted them behind the house in one of the already existing vegetable patches...

JUNE:

At the end of June we bought a new car. We got the car just in time for our holiday. And when I say just in time, I mean JUST in time... we only had a few hours to spare before the ferry left for Denmark.... It was nice to try out the new car right away.... driving through Denmark to Germany, where we, after a couple of days on our own, met up with my parents and their camper van. The girls and my parents slept inside the van, while hubby and I slept on an airbed in the front tent. Worked out great!

We had a great couple of weeks together, enjoying camping life, and especially the pool...

JULY:

Mid July, my mum and dad treated the whole family, incl. my brother, to a week in Rhodes, Greece. You'd think we'd had enough of each other during our camping trip... a few of our friends thought we were crazy spending almost all summer with my parents... lol... but you can't really say no to a free trip abroad.

The hotel was very nice. This is the view from our balcony....We spent quite a few hours in or around that pool. Thank you mum and dad for an absolutely lovely holiday!

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Well, back home we had some work waiting for us... When we bought the house it came with a very nice, big play house in the garden. But the colour was all wrong, so we decided to paint it the same colour as the house. This is (almost) what it looked like before (hubby has started sanding the walls and putting up new window sills.)

....and here Maja is putting the final touches to her (and Susie's) house. Looks goooood:)

AUGUST:

You didn't think that was all the travelling we did this year, did you?? Well, if you did, you were wrong... Early August, the girls and I went to the north of Norway. I was invited to my cousins wedding. Hubby was working, and I couldn't get anyone to look after the girls while I went up north, so I brought them with me. Since they weren't really invited to the wedding (I could bring them if I was really stuck), I got my aunt to pick them up from the airport outside Harstad and take them home with her, while I took the bus a few hours further north... I was a bit concerned how the girls would take being stuck with my aunt that they don't know very well while I left, but I shouldn't have worried. She has a small, very cute dog, and that did the trick... lol...

After the wedding, I managed to visit my uncle for his 50'th birthday. He lives halfway between my aunt and the wedding place. And then I spent a few days with my aunt, her dog and the girls before we flew back home.

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A few days after coming back home, we started doing up a room in our basement. Hubby has always wanted a bar at home, and we thought this room would be good....The bar will go in the left side of the top picture, and the sofa, beneath the window in the picture below... nice??Everyone is helping out...

SEPTEMBER:

After closing the cracks in the walls and painting them, hubby started laying down a new floor.

And this is how far we had come when the pressure in our central heater became too high and flooded the room with water....We had to take everything out, rip up the floor, leave the floor boards to dry and do it all over again... Hubby was not happy, and he has now cut the pipes from the central heating so they won't flood this room if the pressure gets too high again....

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Maja also participated in her first riding contest this month. She was riding Lille Sky. Sooo much fun!

OCTOBER:

We're not quite finished travelling yet. We spent the autumn holidays at my parents cabin. During the first weekend, there was a market there with lots of little booths selling crafts. There were also different activities to participate in. One of them being stacking the most soda crates on top of each other.... Maja, being the daredevil she is, wanted to try this out... She came 2nd with 23 crates on top of each other... (She's crazy... lol...)

We also had time for some fishing.... the weather being quite wet didn't stop us. We didn't get any fish though.

October was also the month we, or rather Maja, got a pet. The sweetest, kindest hamster you've ever seen. He's called Dott.

We also finished the bar in October! This is what it looks like now when we've "moved in". Do you recognize the room?? We're so pleased with how it turned out, and we've spent quite a few evenings down there.

We got a sofa bed from one of my mum's friends, that we put in the bar as well, so now we can have people staying over. I think this is the only bar I know where you're not just allowed to sleep in the bar, but encouraged to do so too... lol...

NOVEMBER:

November came, and went without much more to say about that...

DECEMBER:
We had a sad ending to the year as my dear mother in law passed away. She was such a good person, always smiling and joking, and always putting other people before herself. We will miss you sooo much, Magda.

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Well, life must go on, and Christmas is waiting for no one. We chopped our Christmas tree in our own garden this year! If you scroll back up and look at the photo of the vegetable patch with the berry bushes, you can see this tree in the background...

I guess that's about it... well, at least the bits I could remember....

Finally: Happy New Year to all of you from the four of us!

Ok, so this wasn't really a shortish post... If you're still here, thanks for looking:)

Our summer holiday!

Summer is almost over, and I guess there will be a bit more time for blogging in the months to come...

For our holiday this year, we borrowed my parent's camper van and drove through a few countries in Europe, seven to be exact (not counting Norway). We started off taking the ferry from Norway to Denmark. While there, we visited Legoland and this was the only day thorugh our three week long holiday we had rain...!! Then we drove through Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium to get to Maubeuge in France, where we visited some friends we hadn't seen in 12 years. After staying with them for a lovely weekend, we drove back to Belgium and then through Luxembourg to get to our dear friend, Edith, in Switzerland. We stayed with her for almost a week before we decided to start making our way home again.

We spent some time in the Rhine Valley (Germany) and also a couple of days in Denmark before taking the ferry back to Norway, where we visited my parents and met up with friends and family before we had to leave the camper van with my parents and take our "normal" car home.

That was the short version... hehe... don't want to bore you with all the small details... but instead I'll show some photos to tell you what we did...:

The girls would take every opportunity to have a bath in the hot, hot weather....
and we would take every opportunity to drink some good wine. The wine in the photo is a bottle we found in Edith's basement. I think it had been there for some time... the wine is even older than me (unfortunately it wasn't good anymore.... what a shame to waste such fine wine....)

we saw some farm animals/birds....

...and some wild animals/birds (stork)

We took a lovely boat trip on the river Rhein...

... where we saw some fantastic castles. There were sooo many of them!

We ate delicious food...

.... used tons of sun screen lotion

... did a bit of sight seeing

Not all the camp sites were crowded....

We even had time to sit down with a coffee and a good book...

and, of course, some more swimming!

What a great holiday!!!

Summer holiday no 2 - North of Norway

WARNING: Picture heavy post... I feel that the best way of describing this holiday is to let the photos speak for me. I took tons of pictures on this trip so I had a really hard time picking out just a few to put on here.... (click on the photos to see them bigger)

So here it is, as promised... my post about my 2nd summer trip this year. (You can read about the first trip here.) This time, the girls and I, hubby had to stay at home and work... went to the north of Norway. I have a lot of family up north, and I hadn't been visiting any of them since 1998... so I guess it was about time.We travelled together with my parents (and their camper van).

We went far north... past the Arctic circle....

... up north, to where all the beautiful mountains are...

...and to our first destination: my cousins wedding.

During the wedding the girls were at their best behaviour and in their best dresses looking gorgeous! Well... at least before dinner...

...after dinner they were - still in their best dresses- running around, climbing trees...

...swinging in the monkey bars...

...and jumping off the swings... I think they had a GREAT time!

After the wedding we headed further north to visit some more family, with the ultimate destination being my brother and his girlfriend on Andenes.

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We did lots of different things during our 2 1/2 week trip. Like...

...picking sea shells, playing with them and sorting them... enjoying all the different colours and shapes. Maja even found this beautiful sea porcupine (is that what it's called?)...

...playing in the white sand at the beach and enjoying the sunshine....

...swimming in the (ice cold) sea...

...and fishing.

The mountains and the colours in the north has always fascinated me...

Look at the bright turquoise of the sea together with the vivid pink flowers... isn't it just lovely?!

...even the mist can be beatiful...

...and not to forget the midnight sun! Here it's almost "touching" the sea... wow... It blows my mind every time I see it... It's just so beautiful the photos can't do it justice, it has to be seen!

We even met some trolls on our way... and the girls weren't scared at all... haha...

That's the end of my trip. There is still much to say, and photos to show, but I think this will do. If you haven't had enough, head over to this post on my mum's blog to see/read some more.