Fleisch and flights

I am writing this blog post from a guest house that we get to stay in for two nights before flying to our final destination and new home tomorrow morning.

We came here last night after 3 flights - tired but thankful for a really good trip.
God blessed us with an extra seat for Alia and a baby crib for Max. Alia slept 8 hours straight on an 11.5 hour flight - that is amazing! Other than that she was happy to eat snacks, watch 'Frozen' and run around in the airports. Max did very well, too, sleeping, eating, diaper filling and repeat.

Thank you to everybody who prayed for our trip - it worked!
Feel free to continue to pray for us as we settle in yet another place - this time hopefully for longer.

 last picture of Alia in Germany - at the butcher she is educating herself about different cuts of meat...

transit in Amsterdam - loving their little trolleys

 we build a little tent for her and she loved it

(this is after she woke up - a little confused still

 on the third and last flight (I had not slept in 30 hours)

this one just because it is cute - we are so thankful for how much Alia loves her little brother

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

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... 

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