He is here

May we introduce our son Maximilian Erling, born on Friday, the 12th of December, 3365g and 51cm.
We are so thankful for him and for him being a chilled baby and for a quick recovery of Mama.

His big sister is handling the big change quite well, even though she is a bit more exhausting, or maybe we are just more exhausted from not sleeping so much?....

We would appreciate prayer for Max as he is not going up in his weight as he should be. We are hoping that it is just due to his jaundice and that he will soon start to feed better.

pictures

So these are not pictures of our apartment that we get to live in now, as promised in the last post, but nonetheless they are pictures of random things we have been doing the last few weeks.
Considering that I am writing this post on our "lap"top, when I don't really have a "lap" anymore, or better, my lap is occupied 24/7 by a certain little (NOT so little anymore) person inside of me, it feels like a real achievement to blog at all. So be thankful for what you get :-).

Here it goes, just random pictures:

 My awesome sister-in-laws threw a baby shower for me and our other sister (we are both due the same week) and amongst other things we got these awesome diaper cakes. The reason I am not posting a pictures of me during that event is that they totally surprised me with the party, so I did not look very presentable (track pants and all the rest of it :-)).

During our first few weeks here we got to travel to Bergen and visit Erlend's oldest sister's family. Always a pleasure to see them! 

One evening us girls got crafty and made cards - so much fun

 While we were down there we also got to meet up with this lovely couple. I met her almost 10 years ago in England and who would have known that we would be connected one day by being married to Norwegians.

 Erlend got to share in our home church about our last year in Asia. 

We love being back with fellow believers - we're soaking it up!

Also hanging with family has been such a blessing - seeing Alia interact with her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins is so much fun.

 Alia thinks so too :-)

 Alia having a cultural experience - making gingerbread men

This is kind of a picture of our apartment - it is the view from the living rom - not bad, not bad at all!

We are so thankful that we get to be here during these last weeks of pregnancy and for everybody who is willing to be used by God to provide for us, whether that is the apartment, the car we get to borrow, kids clothing, everything we need for the arrival of little man - the list is endless. 

Thank you God and thank you people! (you know who you are!)

This is most likely the last post before little man is born (in 8 days - wahhhhh!!!), 

so stay tuned for baby pictures!

A new home

We praise the LORD for a very generous friend who is letting us live in an apartment in her house.
Pictures coming soon.

last days in Germany

During our last weekend in Germany we got to go to our home church's weekend camp.
We had a great time during the Bible studies, hang out and just having time to really talk with people.

 very challenging mornings in the Word

Fun afternoons with things like the church camp "Olympic Games"

Erlend was in charge of the Africa quiz

 how many heart shaped noodles can you get on your straw? 

This will be an olympic discipline soon, I am sure :-)

 Alia had a great time hanging out with her cousins all day long

Lobster fishing! (Yeah, We're back in Norway)

Woohoo, first time I (Erlend) write two posts in a row!!! ...oh, yeah, and woohoo because we're back in Norway for the first time in one and a half years.

Today, while Anne and Alia went to town with my mom, a nephew and a niece, I went out to check the lobster pots with my father and brother.

Here's the marina where my father and brothers boat is. They own one together.

Thats it. Very good little boat.

My brother, eager to find out if there's any lobsters, or just boring ol' crabs.

"Captain" Dad 

On the way out we saw three of the least favorite boats of any lobster fisher: the sea weed trawler.

(These boats are very damaging for crabs and lobsters, which naturally makes it a bad thing for lobster fishers... Today they were not just in the area, they were right on top of all the lobster pots. Not nice... they probably just wanted to see if they could get some lobsters with the sea weed...) 

The island I'm from is right out there in the open sea. The next island west would be Iceland or Greenland.

They have 10 pots, and here the first one is being checked.

The captain waiting for the content report. (Wearing overalls from the big boat I used to work on back in the day)

As the sun was setting, a huge, red moon rose.

 It was pretty cool looking... at 4:30 in the afternoon :-P

The stupid sea weed trawlers were still there...

The catch: 5 lobsters and a few crabs. 

Earlier today Anne, Alia and I ate one they had caught earlier.

Still fresh though, because they have a storage in the ocean, so we just picked one, took it home, boiled it and enjoyed it. 

I gave Alia a piece... she looked at it, shrugged her nose, smelled it, shrugged her nose again, but then opened her mouth, ate it and walked away. 

I assume she liked it, because a few seconds later, she came back saying "meih, meih." which is her version of the word "more" (English), "mehr" (German) and "meir" (Norwegian).

As a conclusion I can say that its really great to be home, to meet family and friends, and to get to do things like lobster fishing.

I'm going to the US!! ... Oh no... I'm not...

This is a blog post by Erlend again by the way...

So here's what happened...

I was asked by our organization to go to the US to a seminar on a relevant topic to our future ministry in AP.
And that sounded fine with me, I haven't even been to the US for almost 12 years, and the seminar was about a topic that I find quite interesting.

So I booked a ticket, paid and got the booking number and travel itinerary in an email. After that I got bombarded with spam (advertisement) from the online company I used, but that is normal, so I ignored those emails. I didn't really feel like going skiing in the Alps anyway.

So today the big day had arrived. I got up at 4 in the morning, and my father-in-law drove me over 100 kilometers to the airport, dropped me of and went home.

I went to the check-in desk and handed them my booking info and passport.
The lady sat there for a while and looked quite confused, trying to find my ticket on the flight.
She even tried several different ways of typing the special Norwegian letter in our last name, but found nothing.

Then I was sent to a info desk, and was told they could help me. After standing around waiting for quite a while, the lady told me that she could see that there had been a booking, but that it had been cancelled...

I then got my phone out, and started going through all of my emails from the online travel agent, and found, in between all the spam, a small email, with a topic that didn't say anything about its urgency, that basically read "We have (for some reason) rejected your payment, call us within 2 days or your ticket will be cancelled."

I have never heard of anything like this before, and we travel a lot (this year is going to be a hard-to-break-record in amounts of flights for me).

So my only two options were to buy a new ticket over the counter for 2400 Euro (No thanks) or to go home...

So just as my father-in-law came home after driving the 100 + kilometers home, Anne told him what had happened, he drank a cup of coffee (I have been told) and got back in the car for another 200 + kilometers of driving to pick me up.

(Danke für deine Geduld und Hilfe Papa!)

So now, here I am, still in Germany.
But, hey, its a nice place to be :-)

Considering all the things I would have missed this week (and a few other reasons) I'm actually totally fine with not going.

Maybe next year :-)

random

Here are some pictures of the things we have been up to during the last few weeks.

 We got to hang out with lots my siblings (I don't mean the cow!)

which meant lots of fun play time for Alia

 Even drove to Stuttgart to see one special auntie 

and Onkel Ma and Tante Schuli came all the way from Vienna

Alia is enjoying hanging out with her cousins and friends

We got to share about Asia with our youth group

 Also told them how to make Es Jeruk nipis from scratch

 and how to break down garlic without a garlic press 

but with a their bare hands - hard core, I know :-)

adjusting

We have had a couple of really nice weeks here in Germany. We are so thankful for how well Alia is adjusting and how much she loves her "Popa" and "Moma" and her cousins.

On Sunday we got to share in our church about what we have been doing during the last year, but of course I forgot to have somebody take a picture... but here is basically everything else we took a picture of since we came back.

These beautiful welcome signs (in four different languages) waited for us on our first Sunday back in church (Danke, Annegret!)

 Alia's new (and cheap :-)) hobby, going to the store and look at fish

another new favorite thing is the playground at the lake

and of course she is loving the all the bread 

(prefers it with Nutella on it, well, she is her mother's daughter after all)

This has been Erlend's highlight so far, finding a guy who sells not one but two steaks in a bread roll 

(I think that guy is onto something, I mean, why stop at one steak?)

 We also had a check up for little man and everything is fine. Alia thought it was only appropriate that her heart beat got checked as well, so we just pretended and put some wires over her stomach.

 Yes, we are having a good time!

From one home to the other

After 14 months in Asia we headed back to Germany on Tuesday. Will be heading to Norway in November and have the baby there before moving back to Asia in February. That's the plan anyways.

It was bittersweet to leave.

We will miss our many friends that we have made through the year there.
We will miss wearing flip-flops year around.
We will miss driving motorcycles....

But we won't miss ants in the house! I can't believe that is has been 48 hours since I have seen or killed an ant :-).

 Some of the people without whom we would not have been able to study language, they taught us or took care of Alia while we had our language sessions - so thankful for these ladies

 saying goodbye to Pak W. at the airport, we will miss him and his family

 Alia was very disappointed that the security guard did not allow her to play on the escalator behind us - how dare he :-)

 happy again on the plane

 built a little tent for her - so thankful that she slept well on our long flight -  

many people must have prayed for that

 Papa picked us up from the airport and we enjoyed the ride home on smooth roads

 Alia has to get used to wearing closed shoes and multiple layers - 

she seems to be enjoying Germany so far

first impressions of the grocery store in Germany :-)

Not wrong, just different #43578

Its been a while since we posted one of these, but we hope that's ok, because today we have a pretty good one:

This guy is transporting 3(!) double bed frames(!) with his motorcycle(!) 

It is quite impressive what people here are able to transport on a bike...

Quiet book

We are up to our elbows in packing and what is the natural way to distressed after a busy day?

Sure, you attempt to make a Quiet book for you daughter to use during the long journey home.

If you are not on pinterest and have never searched for "How to keep your toddler quiet during church or busy during a long haul flight", chances are you don't know what a Quiet/Activity book is.

Well, look it up and then, by all means, DON'T compare it to what I produced last night. (actually, on a proud side note - Erlend helped me make it!)

book cover

 will maybe help with learning how to count?

 button flowers and sensory shapes with tulle on top

 pulling ribbons and zippers

 collecting strawberries in a 'basket'

We finished up the book today while Alia was taking her nap and when she woke up I was so excited to see how she would react to her new book after all the work we had put into it. 

She looked at it for about a minute and then lost interest. REALLY?!?!

But later, when we were packing and we needed her to not mess with the already packed stuff, she played a good 30 minutes with a little lump of sticky tack (or blue tack or sticky stuff that you can hang up pictures with) - oh well, never mind, lesson learned - we are definitely bringing sticky tack on the plane....