Grateful for the little things

Amilia is a very independent young lady. She wants to do everything herself. I guess when you're 4, there are no limits to what you can accomplish. I think it's a great quality.

The other night before going to bed, SHE, of course, was going to say her prayers by herself. This is one of my favorite things that she does because I never know what she will say. I love children's prayers; they're so honest and straight forward. No wonder why we should all become like little children.

Anyhow, this particular evening she thanked Heavenly Father for the buckets at church. Interesting thought..... Justification for this: In case someone gets super-super-super-duper sick at church, they can throw up in the bucket.

I guess she's speaking from experience because she was super-super-super-duper sick a few weeks ago and became very acquainted with our bucket.

So, the moral of the story: Be grateful for the little things that seem so insignificant.

Yellow and blue neighbors

I love our neighbors to the east. The yellow and blue ones. I think Swedes are great people. They're friendly and cool. I love Swedish, it's one of the most beautiful languages in the world in my opinion. It's especially perfect for singing. And I love the country itself. I love Stockholm and Gothenburg especially, 2 awesome cities. I love shopping in Sweden, it's so much cheaper there than here in Norway. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I would not mind living in Sweden.

HOWEVER..... now during these world ski championships, the traditional desire for beating the Swedes has taken over. I guess you could say I'm a "typical" Norwegian who loves to watch winter sports. And it's all about beating the Swedes. If a Norwegian doesn't win, I don't really care who wins as long as it's not a Swede.

So the other day, at the Men's 15 K competition, when the best Swede finished number 17, I had a good laugh. Then when I noticed that the other 3 skiers finished number 22, 34 and 42, I almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

Norway is of course the best nation so far with a total of 12 medals (4 gold, 4 silver and 4 bronze) which I am very proud of. And just to rub it in, Sweden has a total of 3 medals.

Morning munchies

I woke up today with the munchies. Not a good sign. You would think that the problem would have been solved if I had a proper breakfast, but I didn't feel proper and had no willpower or self-control, so I had a bag of Haribo click mix for breakfast. Proper in its own way, you could say. To quote Haribo: "Kids and grown-ups love it so, the happy world of Haribo." Happy indeed! Maybe a bit queasy afterwards, but it was well worth it. I think I'll have some fruit for lunch, though.

The Accident

My parents came back from the States a couple of weeks ago. To my surprise and great pleasure they brought me back a big bottle of Olive Garden salad dressing. My favorite. I was so excited. They gave it to me at church and all throughout the meetings I kept dreaming about how I would enjoy a really good salad after church. (I hope the drooling wasn't obvious.)

After hunting for the kids throughout the entire building, and after getting all of our church bags and whatever else the kids had brought to church that day, I was ready to speed all the way home. My Mom had put the salad dressing in an H&M plastic bag. I wish she had chosen any other bag. Because as I picked up the bag, ready to dive out the door, the handle came lose. Unbelievable. As if in slow motion I watched the bag drop to the floor. Tile floor. And then... the horrible sound of my precious Olive garden salad dressing bottle crushing to pieces. And then .... the smell of Olive garden salad dressing filling the church. I wanted to cry. Honestly. That's how upset I was. As I gathered up the dripping bag, I kept trying to come up with a way to salvage some of the dressing. No success. I didn't really want broken glass mixed in with my salad. (Another thought, can I sue H&M for malfunctioning plastic bags?)

So now I am Olive garden salad dressing deprived. Luckily I can buy another bottle myself in about 4 months.

Oh, calories, how I love Thee!

I have a motto I try to live by: "Calories should not be counted, only enjoyed." Well, in the perfect world it works well. In my world, just looking at calories or even just thinking about them, will add pounds to the hips and elsewhere.

With that said, I want to share a most excellent website with you. Full of calories, sugar and everything else that's delicious. It's absolutely sublime:

http://www.detsoteliv.no/

I apologize to all you non-Norwegians out there, this most amazing website is in Norwegian. (Try google translate? Or maybe too risky in case something gets lost in translation?)

I've tried a few of the recipes, and everything comes out tasting wonderful. I just absolutely love this most mouth-watering website. Give it a try, you won't regret it!

(I went to high school with the creator of this most heavenly website, so I guess that's my claim to fame.)

Life without a computer

Our computer has a nasty virus. Thank goodness I have a comuter genious for a brother who is kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to try to figure out what's going on. I know nothing about those things. The computer world is a world I feel completely lost in.

As bad as it sounds to be without a computer, it's actually quite nice! All of a sudden we have all this time together! Link's phone is an option if I get desperate, but mostly I just get annoyed because the screen is so small and everything seems like a huge task. So to be truthful, I don't really miss the computer. I'll admit that if I didn't use a computer all day at work, my withdrawels would probably be more violent. Not that I surf the internet all day at work. Just sometimes.

One thing that baffles me, however, is that with all this new-found time on my hands, there is one thing I'm unable to catch up on. It's never ending, and no matter how hard I work at it, it doesn't disappear. Laundry. I don't remember the last time I saw my laundry baskets completely emtpy. I just don't understand it. It's only the 4 of us, but it just seems like the piles never shrink. I find it a little discouraging. I don't know how my Mom did it with 5 kids.

At least I don't have to do laundry by hand in the creek......

Finger + door = nail loss

When your cell phone rings while you're at work and the display shows "daycare", you don't get a good feeling. Something close to panick would be more accurate. Last week I got one of those phone calls. "Hello, it's from Amilia's barnehage (daycare for those of you who don't speak the language of the vikings.) Uhm.... Amilia had an accident. Uhm... her finger got caught in the door..... there was quite a bit of blood..... her nail came off....." Kids and doors. Not a good combination. Every parent's fear.

My angel parents were able to pick her up right away and take her to the doctor while I hurried home from work as fast as I could. We ended up going to the hospital to do an x-ray just to make sure nothing in that tiny finger was broken. Luckily nothing was. But her finger looked so horrible it made me want to cry. Poor kid! She was so brave, though, and she really is a tough kid. She was a little worried about losing the nail, but was very fascinated with the idea of a new nail growing out.

2 days later, she got a sore throat and a fever. And 2 days after that, we headed back to the doctor because pink eye hit both her eyes. She's had a rough week. And, by the way, have you ever had to give a 4 year old 2 drops in each eye 5 times a day? Not an easy task.