Tuesday 27 January 2015

birthday and blessing

It was Alia's birthday last week and we got to celebrate with a bunch of family which was awesome, especially considering that having lots of cousins, aunties, uncles and grandparents at her birthday parties won't be the norm for this little girl. There were waffles, chocolate cake and lots of pretty clothes as gift for her. Needless to say she had a blast!

 She even got her own individual cake made by her cousin. Blowing out the candle was one of her highlights of the evening, so much that we did it a few times, just for fun :-)

 While the older kids went outside with Erlend to grill some marshmallows, inside there was always somebody willing to cuddle these two bundles of joy

 Alia showing of one of her awesome presents from Germany (Danke, Matze und Juli!) to Uncle Pada and cousin Sisa

She is wearing almost all the clothes she was given for her birthday :-)

Max got to cuddles with his beautiful little cousin 
Erlend and I used to cuddles her a lot when she was little

 I know she has a funky hairstyle, but since her special Tante Sa styled it the day before, I was not allowed to change it.

On Sunday Erlend got to share in church about our future plans 

Alia will miss the kids songs so much

Max being prayed for by his grandpa and a good friend as part of the 'child blessing

 Being blessed is exhausting so little man had a nap with grandma




Tuesday 6 January 2015

Alia's trip to the caves

Alia's first blog post:

Today I went to see the big cave on the other side of the island we live on.
We drove to the closest parking lot, because that is a lot nicer than walking the whole way...


First we walked up to a small cave neither of us had heard of before, but someone had put up a sign to show the way to it.


It is called Trollkjelen (The Troll's Cauldron) and was pretty cool. I liked that it had water running into it, but because it also made it sound a bit scary, I stayed away from the opening


I liked the gravel road best. First of all it was easier to walk on, and also it had awesome little puddles that I could jump into :-D


After a long walk from where we parked the car (it was like 8 minutes!!) we came to the trail up to the cave. Papa tried to tell me that the cave was really cool, and tried to get me exited about walking up there, but I wasn't paying attention, because I found something way cooler: a small stream next to the path!


I was also asked to pose for this picture... I have no idea what those pictures were supposed to be, but I do know that having to be in this photo distracted me from picking up small rocks that I wanted to bring home.


"Yes, i know the cave is behind me, but look at this cool pebble!"


"Look another cool pebble!"


On the last part of the trip to the cave, the pebbles got a bit bigger, and I needed help to get to up there


One of my favorite parts of the trip was to take breaks


"But... there's no more pebbles on the ground in here :-(


Oooo! a cone... I wonder who thought the trip up here was so easy that they brought something totally unnecessary with them... 


The cave turned out to be pretty cool. My favorite part was the dusty floor that looked like moon landscape.


Even though the entrance is huge, the cave gets smaller pretty quickly.
There's another room further in, but it was dark in there, so I preferred to stay out in the light.


The local legend says that the cave is very very deep, and that once a dog walked into it, and a while later came out trough another cave on a neighboring island... whiteout any fur!!! ooOOoo


The entrance seen from the back of the cave. Papa took the picture while I was busy playing with the dusty ground.


I tried to jump on this stretcher that someone had carried all the way up there, but it was broken... 


Seriously? Stairs? why not the whole way...


Back on the gravel path... much better.


In the background there you can see parts of the island my pappa is from. On that part of the island there used to be a 200+ meter high radio transmitter, but someone did This to it.


After getting back to the gravel path, I wanted to go back to mamma and bebbii, that is my name for Max, because Max is hard to pronounce...


At home, mamma and pappa were trying to take passport pictures of Max... I think he found the experience quite shocking...