Happy New Year!

As I am sitting here at 6.15 a.m. and have already been up for 1.5 hours, I am truly wondering what this next year will bring. Will I get any more sleep? When will we get a place of our own? Will Elias enjoy his soccer class today? Will Aksel ever take a bottle? How many dress shirts will we have to buy Håkon? Or more importantly, how many pants??! The reality of being here is starting to sink in a bit and it is taking some adjusting. At least for me. Håkon is loving his new job and is experiencing lots of new and exciting things. I think it will take longer for me, but hopefully I'll get there eventually. The reflections of an overtired mamma are not that deep :-)

Christmas was lots of fun this year with Elias understanding more and getting excited about it all. I was completely overwhelmed and blessed by the amount of packages and thoughtfullness from our norwegian friends and family - thank you all so much! I think the mailman was wondering what was going on with all the special trips he had to make to deliver them. One thing that was unusual about the holidays was the fact that it snowed and snowed and snowed some more. Something that is quite unusual here - at least the the snow stayed around. So Hakon spent a lot of time shoveling the driveway and getting to know the neighbors! We almost couldn't get out to eat Christmas dinner with the rest of my extended family! All the snow made for a nice, slow-paced holiday. Håkon had the week off so it was lovely to have him around as well. The basement is slowly starting to resemble proper rooms now as well, thanks to Håkon's time off.

Aksel is starting to roll over now, although it mostly happens when he's naked! Fun to see the development. Elias just started his first football (soccer) class last night. Håkon said he promptly ran into another kid and banged heads really hard and then later got into a fight...hmmm...I think he enjoyed it though! A few days ago my mother tried to get Elias to sing "O Canada", to which he refused and said "I'm norwegian!" - I have no idea how much he really understood what he said, but funny nontheless :-)

A few people have been wondering what our contact info is. Our norwegian mobile phones are still up and running as well as our norwegian home phone number (fast telefon).

Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve - a tradition in my family

Big smiles!!

Having a long conversation with onkel Eirik and tante Lina

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!