San Diego Saturday

Saturday Aug 11 was another great day in San Diego. Rosie and I went to a pre-natal yoga class and left the Daddies to clothe the babies then meet us for brunch at the Big Kitchen in South Park. Our dear friends Rob and Marah met us there too and we had a fantastic time. Here are Rosie, Marah (in the background), Toby, Rhiannon and Ben outside the Big Kitchen.Marah and Rob with the Minx
After the meal, we went back to Rob and Marah's house and played for a couple of hours. The fun really started when Marah brought out the blue bowls and the wooden spoons! Rhiannon and Rob spent quite a long time banging on each other's heads and dancing.
Of course the Minx was really tired from all of the attention and activity, and once we left Rob and Marah's house she fell fast asleep in the car. The nap was short-lived, though, because we went over to visit Mike and Stacy Quesada and their new baby Corinne! Rhiannon sure did not like either Rhodri or I holding little Corinne - she got jealous and mad....uh-oh! We will have to fix that in the next 2 months. Anyway, by the time we got back to Rosie and Ben's house, fed the kids and put them in the bath, everyone was ready for a quiet night.
We had take-out Thai food from our old favorite spot in San Diego -- Sala Thai on College/ El Cajon Blvd -- and it was outstanding!

San Diego - Zoo, Pool and Dinner

Friday Aug 10 was a very busy day for us. We went to the Zoo with Rosie and Toby, and met friends Heidi and Elke there. We saw the gorillas, flamingos, elephants and giraffes. Rhiannon really likes pictures of monkeys, elephants and giraffes but had never seen them in real life so I was excited for her to see them. Her eyes were as big as saucers when she saw the gorillas, who were quite active - chasing each other around and thumping their chests. She kept making monkey noises and pointing to the gorillas. Then we took her to the elephantsI don't think she expected elephants to be quite so large. She had the same expression when we saw the giraffes.
Here is Elke, Toby and Rhiannon ready to leave the zoo.
We went for a quick swim over at Nicole and Sofia's pool (no photos unfortunately), and then raced off for dinner in La Jolla with Jacques and Chris. Rhiannon really took to our waitress Adriana! She didn't really want to sit still, and she also didn't want Chris or Jacques to hang out with her -- she kept following Adriana around and asking to be picked up.
All these late nights are not part of our normal schedule, but Rhiannon has done pretty well in spite of it all. Its hard work visiting with people, even though the people are great friends that we really miss and who we have been really looking forward to seeing.

Return to San Diego! Day 1

Yay! We made it back to San Diego on Thursday morning (Aug 9). We had a bit of hassle with the rental car but eventually we made it over to Rosie, Ben and little Toby's house where we are staying. Then we went for a sushi buffet with Vickii, who was our midwife when Rhiannon was born. Rosie and I took the kids to the swimming pool later in the late afternoon, about the same time Rhodri went mountain biking with some other friends.
It was all going great until I got a phonecall from Rhodri's mountain biking friends who told me that Rhodri had come off the bike and was in the emergency room! More on that later...
Here are Toby (16 months) and Rhiannon (20 months) hanging out in the backseat of Rosie's car -- they were having a noisy but funny conversation and kept trying to touch hands.

Goodbye Reno friends

After spending the afternoon at Lake Tahoe, we 3 called in with the Doerners who live in Truckee. It turned out to be a late night but the Minx was such a star. Rhiannon loved playing with their dog Ursa and with the big girls Corrinne (left) and Lilly (right). She got especially attached to Corrinne, who she calls "Ka-nan". Here is Rhiannon with our host Leann before we said goodbyeWe spent our final evening in Reno at Dee Dee and Wes' house overlooking the city and enjoying the sunset
Reno is special place to us, mostly because of all the great friends we have there. Thanks, everybody for the great time.

Up at Lake Tahoe

After having breakfast with the Cellura's and then a nice long midday nap, we drove up to Lake Tahoe and met Leann and the girls there. It was gorgeous of course and more than a little chaotic with all the beach toys to play with and birds to chase.Talking with Jayden about all the birds
Snuggling with Alyssa, who Rhiannon calls "La La"
On the drive from Reno to the Lake

Black Bear Diner (Reno part 2)

We met up with our long lost friends Beth and Brian Cellura and their 4 month baby girl Casey on Monday night and then again for Tuesday morning breakfast. Beth had bought matching outfits for Rhiannon and Casey, so they were looking extra cute when we went out to eat at the Black Bear Diner.
Rhiannon was showing Casey how bears roar and growl
Casey learns quickly!

Reno! (part 1)

We made it to Reno! Somehow the travel from Santa Barbara through San Francisco to Reno -- each flight only 1 hour or less -- was WAAAAY more painful than our entire trip from Oslo to Santa Barbara, but we made it eventually. We are staying at our old next door neighbor Leann's house and her three girls. Lots of estrogen in this household, as you might guess from the pink princess bathroom. Here is Alyssa (12), Leann, Hannah (2), Rhiannon, me and Jayden at bathtime on Sunday night.Playing with the big girls -- Jayden (below) and Hannah (standing)Rhiannon loves playing on the art table and sharing crayons with Hannah. As I was making breakfast yesterday, I looked over and the girls were both happily eating crayons.

Friends at the beach

We had a great day yesterday (Saturday) and a lot of it was spent at the beach with friends. Having all of us get a full night's sleep was a good start! In the morning, Rhiannon and I had breakfast at the Brown Pelican with my longtime friend Polly. Afterwards we walked on the beach to the doggie part of the beach so that Rhiannon could get her fix of petting and trying to chase dogs.After a leisurely midday and early afternoon, we had a family picnic at Goleta Beach along with some friends and more family. Rhiannon loved going down the big slide with Grandpa Carl to catch her.
Wade Kirkelie is 6 days younger than Rhiannon but he is bigger. They practiced sharing their favorite possessions -- Wade shared his baby with her and Rhiannon shared bits of broccoli and sprouts with him.
But she kept trying to climb up to the fruit bowl on the table. Here Butch (Wade's Grandpa) is helping Rhiannon dig into the berries while Grandma Debi comes to help.

A little tyrant

We did some fun things yesterday (Friday), but the Minx had a stormy temperment for most of the day. I guess we all have days like this sometimes. It was a little bit funny but we tried not to laugh. First we visited my longtime friend Denise and her two kids Ava (3) and Liam (19 months). Look at that scowl on the Minx's face!
Ava really wanted to play with Rhiannon's hair and Rhiannon kept shouting, hitting and glaring at her when she tried. Those were the times we tried not to laugh...Then after a nap that got cut short by Grandpa Carl's car alarm, we took the Minx for a ride at Ellwood Shores in the new Burley bike trailer we bought! Now we don't need to borrow our neighbor's one anymore. Rhiannon refused to take off her ladybug backpack even though it must have been a little uncomfortable to sit against inside the trailer.
Rhodri, the new Burley with Rhiannon inside, and Grandpa Carl after a long ride on bumpy trails.

Made it!

Hurray! We finally made it to Santa Barbara! Rhodri and I were both quite worried about the flight over but it turned out to be a really great trip. Paying the extra money for Rhiannon to have her own seat and then all 3 of us being upgraded from Economy Plus to Business class made all the difference in the world. Here we are in Oslo boarding the flight to London.At London Heathrow airport, we were able to get into the British Airways lounge and there was a children's play area which was empty for most of our time there. I had packed Rhiannon's ladybug backpack full of little wrapped surprises, and then at Heathrow I bought another couple of activity books. The most popular one (of course) was the "Bob the Builder" book with finger puppet pencil toy. I thought I had gone overboard with all the little toys and snacks I packed for her, but it turned out to be just enough . 2 of our 3 seats faced opposite each other with a collapsible window between them. Each seat turned into a bed and had all the audio and video gadgets to play with, as well as little drawers and pockets to hide things in! We had a couple of doting flight attendents who received big smiles from the Minx whenever they showed up to deliver food, beverages or toys. It was about 11.5 hours from London to LAX (10.5 in the air, with the rest waiting around on the ground before and after the flight with seatbelts still on), and it was about as good as it possibly could have been. Rhiannon slept for nearly 4 hours (with the help of some doctor-prescribed "knock out juice") and so Rhodri and I got to sleep also. Highly recommended! During the waking time, the Minx loved to climb back and forth from Mama's seat to Daddy's seat over the collapsible window.
After our happy reunion with Grandpa Carl and Grandma Debi, we drove up through Malibu along the coast to Santa Barbara. We had a very relaxing day today and we went out to both lunch and dinner at our favorite venue near to Grandpa and Grandma's house -- Glen Annie Golf Club's Frog Bar and Grill. All of the bougainvillea were in bloom (of course) and the Minx was in heaven chasing after birds and playing in the gazebo.
We did a bit of shopping in the afternoon and Rhiannon really liked this baseball helmet. Here she is all smiles before we had to take it off her and then quickly leave the store. She really did NOT want to take it off.

Dinner with neighbors

This weekend we had dinner over at our neighbors' (Beate, Ole, Carina and Max) house along with our landlords (Håvard, Pia, Ådne, and Marthe) who were in town one last time before heading back to Dubai. Rhiannon especially liked chasing Max's soccerball around the house while yelling "weeeeeeee!". Max is the tall one on the left and Ådne is behind in the striped shirt.
(l to r): Beate, Carina, Håvard, Ådne, Rhiannon (being restrained), Rhodri, Ole and Pia around the dining table. Marthe and Max are missing. Bentley and Nikita (Beate and Ole's dog) were under the table licking up fallen scraps. Waving "har det" (bye-bye) to all the kids as we walk back to our house for a late bedtime.
We are counting down the hours until we leave for California! Right now we have only 60 hours until we get to the Oslo airport ready to fly. Woo hoo!

"Bird" in Bergen

29 weeks

As requested, here is a comparison between right now (left) and last time around when I was 29 weeks along. I am a lot less tan now...

Fjord Tour adventure

Since Huw was visiting us, we decided to go on one of these arranged fjord tours. The most common one is called "Norway in a Nutshell" and we went on a variant of that called "The Royal Fjord Tour". Here is the website for it. Basically, we got up super early on Saturday morning, took the train from Oslo to Myrdal, then took the famous Flåm railway from Myrdal to Flåm, then a boat from Flåm to Bergen on the west coast of Norway. Here we are in Myrdal waiting for the Flåm train. We had gorgeous weather! Sunny and warm with a cool breeze -- perfect.Midway down the Flåm line, we stopped for a few minutes at this waterfall. There was some cheesy music piped into the viewing area and 2 dancers emerged from the rocks at different times to dance and then mysteriously disappear again. We have had a lot of rain, so the waterfall was really impressive.
View of the steep valley from the Flåm train.In Flåm, getting some wiggles out on the grass while waiting for the boat to BergenOn the boat to Bergen, which took 5 hours! Spectacular scenery of course and it reminded me of Lake Chelan, WA.The Minx was pretty good even though she didn't sleep at all. Fortunately the boat was fairly empty so she could run around and play with buckles.Finally we got to Bergen around 9pm
Sunday was another beautiful day and we played in the park before getting on the train back to Oslo at 4pm. Here the Minx is trying to hop the fence to chase birds down to the water.