Spontaneous family photo shoot

For a week now we have had three families, who are waiting for their new visas, living in the guesthouse and we have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them, hanging out and showing them around town.

Today we decided it was time to get out of the city, so we drove up into, what we call 'The meadows'.

One of the guys took his camera and here is what became of that.

We love coming here for a little picknick and some fresh air

 'our' city

 Guess who is making us smile! Hint: His name starts with E and ends with rlend. :-)

 our pretty girl

 we call this the "Marilyn Monroe" :-)... it is windy up there

 she cracks us up

 handsome little big guy

"Mama, stop it, you are embarrassing me!"

Rocking their Polo Shirts

Even though they can push each others buttons, at the end of the day, those two love each other.

We even got some proper family pictures - thank you Payton for taking them!

But then the boys had enough of all that picture taking.

everyday life is different every day

Hi, anybody still out there? I know we have been really bad about posting regularly lately but we can always blame bad internet connections and the business of everyday life :-).

Every day life is never boring here. Like this morning, Erlend was in the middle of his normal language session when he got a phone call. Within 5 minutes he was out of the house in fancy clothes on his way to a  4 hour meeting at the immigration office that he was supposed to be part of. (it was the first time he had heard of it that morning). We have learned to just roll with it. Some days it is harder to roll than others....

A few pictures of the past few weeks.

The flu has come and gone but language sessions are forever (hopefully not FOREVER, even though it feels that way right not :-))

We are actually encouraged with our progress in language study. I (Anne) seem to have made a long awaited jump (although small, it still is progress). When I listen to Erlend I can hear his progress. 

Telephone calls, official meetings and hour long conversations with friends in the national language have become a lot less scary for both of us and the latter even enjoyable.

Erlend and I both came down with food poisoning for 24 hours and we were so encouraged by our local friends who dropped everything and came to help us, taking care of our kids, cooking and just being there for us. What a blessing they are!

I had to fly to the capital a few weeks ago to get a tooth fixed (it ended up having to be pulled), but my flights were canceled and delayed several times, due to all the smoke from forest fires.

We are so thankful that we have had some rain this week that helped to clear up the air. We can breathe and fly again!

This week we have 3 families living at the guesthouse as they are waiting for their visa. 

We have enjoyed showing them around town, taking them to the beach and hopefully helping them a bit as they are all transitioning to new phases in their lives. 

In this pictures the kids enjoyed a movie night together.

On and major accomplishment of our little big boy.

Ladies and gentlemen, WE HAVE A WALKER!