Game Night

Tonight we were invited to our friend Janneke and had a nice game night with some more friends. We played the game Cranium. You devide into teams and you have to guess things, activities or persons by decribing them with words, drawing them, molding them out of play dough or miming them...lots of fun! Congratulations to Markus, Sarah and Kristine, who won!

being brave did not pan out

Remember when a few days ago I wrote about Erlend bravely changing our winter- to summer tires? Guess what we saw, when we left our cousins party just now.... not cool!

Spring haircut

Today Erlend got his spring haircut, off with the thick winter fur! :-) You can tell that we really do want spring to come and that we hope, despite all weather forecasts, that we have seen the last of this winters snow.
Here are some pictures of Erlend, my handsome man. You can see all the colours of his emotion :-).

some more remodeling

Our Norwegian parents are in the process of redoing quite a bit of their house. The last few days it was the little hallway's turn to get a makeover. I stole the pictures of my mamma in law because hers were just better then the once I took :-).

 laying the floor

finished product

very brave

Erlend, very bravely, changed the winter- to summer tires today. We are hoping the weather will get better and that we have seen the last of the snow.

just a view pictures

....from yesterday, when we took a little walk around the town. We almost were fooled into thinking that spring was on here, but today it rained again.... :-(.

 stretching towards the sun

 I thought this is so cool, they painted a guy working on the house (maybe so that they don't have to work themselves? :-))

 another painting on the wall of a house

 Erlend and Pappa enjoying the sunshine

James being happy he has a camera to play with

Happy "Birthday" car!

Today was a very nice day with a great time at our Bible Study Group, all going out to dinner after a little walk and visiting Family F. for a little chat and watching Ålesund's first match of the season.
But it was also a very special day for our car, as old as it is and as many things it needs to have fixed, we are very proud when we saw on the kilometre count thingy: 222 222 km! Wow!

The help

We watched the movie "The help" this evening with some friends and I must say I am very impressed. What a good movie, I laughed and I cryed, brilliant acting, great story, good fotography and nice music. It is definetely worth watching.

birds and cheese

Today Sarah and I made some angry birds cake toppers for her friends kids birthday party.

now my hands are green, guess who's fault that is? 

That's right, those egg-stealing pigs, those trouble makers.

A few weeks ago Sarah and I were invited to a french themed party hosted by our friend Janneke. We both loved the idea of just cheese, crackers and some veggies and fruit as party food and had one thought while we were enjoying it - our husbands would LOVE this! 

So we decided that we would one night have a cheeeeeesy evening. Today the day had finally come and it was amazing, worth every calorie :-)!

clean record

I am very proud to announce that I was officially declared to have a clean record in two different countries, just waiting for England right now to send me their letter, too and then nothing stands in the way of me working at the local airport. Yes, they do require a police check if you wanna work beyond security control which would not be a problem for normal people, but when it comes to me, I had to get a police check from 3 different countries (as in the countries you have lived in in the last 5 years). So we are hoping and praying that letter #3 will come soon so I can start working.

ich habe heute leider kein Foto für dich...

This very creative, and I know GERMAN headline is a quote of what Heidi Klum says to the girls that get send home from Germany's next topmodel (it means that she does not have a photo for them today, which I don't have either) and it is somehow a depressing line which is how I am feeling right now. We went to Norwegian class which was good, then went to hand out some more CVs which is always humbleing, tried to go shopping for shoes which clearly don't excist in Norway at the price that I am thinking. Got some paperwork in the mail that I do not understand at all how to answer.
But I am thankful for a wonderful husband who is pointing me to the Lord and His perfect timing, sufficient grace and provision for everything we need.

a good deal

I was wondering for a while what I should post about today as most of the day was spend catching up on laundry, looking for jobs and catching up on the sleep we lost last week.
Then I found a picture that I took while traveling of Erlend's very cool new Hollister jumper. We love that shop, it smells soooo good in there :-) but because everything is so expensive in there we always just go to the back were they have the sales and if we don't find anything we get outta there before we get tempted to buy anything that we can't afford. Anyways, we went there last week and found an amazing deal for Erlend - it was a super comfy jumper that used to cost 160 pounds and it was down to 25 pounds, now that is what I call a good deal!

summary

This post is a summary of the last two days which is very easily described as "travels". After one last meeting on Sunday morning REACH conference ended with lunch for everybody. We are amazed at God's provision during this weekend, whether that was through people being willing to serve, people being willing to listen, good weather and and and! It was so cool to be part of seeing young people come together and talk about missions. Our prayer is now that everybody who heard so much this weekend will not only be challenged but changed.

After trying to squeeze in as many visits as possible with friends into the busy schedule of the conference it was time to leave to Manchester with the train on Sunday night and we flew to Oslo and Vigra this morning. All together a very smooth journey which we are thankful for.
All I have to share picture-wise is the result of me being bored while traveling and playing around with the camera.

more REACH

The second day of REACH conference has come and is not quite gone, but we are already tired....
Here come some pictures of today...

 We had burgers for lunch - the grill team did a great job!

 Erlend really enjoyed flipping those burgers, all together we made 528!

Feeding almost 300 people actually takes a lot of organization

At night we got in some babysitting time with some of our favorite kids

REACH conference has started

We had problems with the internet yesterday... so here comes yesterdays blog. We will put up today's blog later.

Tonight the Reach conference meetings here in England will begin. We already managed to feed the hungry crowd of around 300 people for dinner. Now we are heading to the first meeting.
Erlend took some pictures of the classes in the morning where there were a lot of guests who had arrived early, attending as well. There are also some pictures of setting up the gym where the meetings will take place.

baking away

One of the things I did in the kitchen today (besides enjoying the coffee breaks with old and new co-workers :-)) was making these rolls.

enjoying to be back

Here come the promised pictures that tell what we have been doing the last few days.

 Like we said, we flew to England, we had a nice uneventful, relatively quick journey and it was great to get here and meet so many old friends and meet new ones.

 Our first day back we decided to go to our favorite restaurant in England (hehe, I think it is American though) T.G.I. Fridays and Erlend got his full rack of ribs that he had been dreaming about for so long.

 Afterwards we had to go to Tescos, of course, where else would 

you get a pack of Paracetamols for 16 ct? :-)

Today we both have been working on campus, helping out with set up for the conference and cooking for the students and guests that have already arrived. We were invited for dinner to our friends Tony and Lina and enjoyed nice food, good Swiss chocolate and great conversation. Afterwards we visited Yolanda and Steve and found a whole crowd at their place. It is so nice to hang out with people that have the same believes and convictions as you - all in all we can say that we enjoy thoroughly to be back.

we are back in good old England

First of all, sorry, for not posting yesterday, we were traveling, and had a problem getting on the internet.
It is so nice to see and catch up with friends that we have missed them sooo much!
We are here of course to see them all but also we are here to help with a youth conference that will be happening over the weekend here. Stay tuned, you will hear about it :-).
Since we still have not figured out how to get the internet on our laptop so there is no photo today, but I promise as soon as I can, there will be several loaded up.

This had to be done :-)

Waffles seem to be a stable part of our diet right now, everywhere we go, we eat it and we make it ourselves, too. I made my families waffle recipe once in the very beginning just after we moved there and the whole Røsvik family liked it so much, they have adopted it :-). I was asked by a friend to post the recipe after I posted about waffle the last time, so this has to be done, here it comes:

250g margarine
175g sugar
2 Tsp (or two Päckchen) vanilla sugar
6 eggs
500g flour
1 Tsp (or ein Päckchen) baking powder
500 ml milk

melt the margarine and put all the ingredience in a bowl - stir - fry them in a waffle iron - enjoy!

This make a quite big batch, if it is just for a few people half everything.

Saturday visit

We had a lovely afternoon with friends who invited us over for dinner and some games. Thank you Natalia and David for your hospitality and for being competitive which makes playing games so much more fun :-).

dugnad part 2

Today was another day of kitchen building, but to be honest, after all the pieces were screwed together I did not do much. The jobs left to be done were more what I would call "man jobs" :-).

I kinda don't want to show too many pictures of the kitchen during the process, but I will probably have a before/after blog at some point, when it is all done. So, therefore, the picture of the day is more of a quiz :-).

What is this device Erlend is holding? Is it,

a) a nose hair trimmer

b) a saw

c) a foot massager ?

dugnad part 1

Today we had a dugnad at our parents house. A dugnad is a thing in Norway, where somebody has a big project to do at their house, so they invite their friends and family, they help them and get lots of good food :-).
We are about half done with putting together the new kitchen and tomorrow will be another day of power drills and unwrapping drawer parts. Only hit my thumb once with the hammer today, hope to not repeat that tomorrow though :-).

what do they want to tell us with that?

Today the new kitchen my parents in law have ordered arrived. Lots of boxes and appliances. Some of them had this printed on the wrapping

So I was wondering what they are trying to say with that?
My best guess is: Drink wine when you look up and see that it is raining! :-)

special birthday cake

Our nephew G had a special request for his birthday cake this year. Onkel Scrooge's (Onkel Dagobert, onkel skrue) money bin!
Here is my sister-in-law's and my attempt to it. Everything you see is edible. (well, except the flag on top, the plate and a little peace of cardboard between the building and the hill) Tomorrow just before the party we will add some "stay away", "danger" and so on signs to the hill.

for all my non Norwegian blog readers - the kr stands for krone, the Norwegian currency

spring, vår, Frühling

Spring is here....I think, at least it is here in the form of crocuses (I hope that is what you call that flower in English :-)).

I found these beautiful ones in my favorite colour right outside our house.

waffles

For some reason we have had waffles every day for the last three days (one time at our place, once on the mountain top and just now at Markus and Sarah's) - don't get me wrong, I am not complaining - I loooove waffles, especially the one's made from the recipe that we used to make at home in Germany - the Kuhs waffles :-).

 Erlend and I have a continuing argument whether Nugatti or Nutella is better. What do you think and can you guess which one is which?

There is of course the strawberry jam solution and the Norwegians have a great twist on it - adding sour cream - it tastes amazing!

hike up godøyfjellet

Today we had beautiful weather with lots of sunshine here and as that is very rare we decided to go on a hike.

 quite steep on the way up, I was not happy with my non existing level of fitness.

Do you see the "finger" sticking out to the left of the waterfall?

That is were we are standing here :-)

 

if you look closer the flat island in the background is were we live! 

 

 it was very nice to catch up with Kristine during the "tur".