Some of the everyday

I’m sitting on our back balcony enjoying the end of a beautiful, sunny, spring day in Stavanger. Rory and I (Stepler is on a field trip in England) spent most of our day outside enjoying the wonderful weather. This morning we went for a run around Mosvatnet Lake. Then we met two of Stepler’s co-workers and their families at the Arboretum for a picnic lunch and a bit of wandering through the grounds. Rory really liked picking flowers (weeds) during our walk and kept us moving at a very sloooow pace.

I haven’t given much or any detail about out daily activities lately so I’ll try for a quick recap of our last week. It was a nice week as we both had the opportunity to socialize with others several times.

On Monday Rory and I went to our last Lille Gym class before summer break. It’s too bad that it ended so quickly, because Rory was having a lot of fun there. If it works with our schedule, we’ll start again in the fall. The last class had a summer vacation theme – with one half of the room “underwater” and the other half “on the beach”. Rory liked the “underwater” side best because it had a small pool of water that she could play in and pretend to fish. She liked the pool so much that I had to pull her away from it so that she could try some of the climbing and jumping activities.

Tuesday was my first Norwegian Pilates class and Rory’s first time in the gym’s kids’ room. It went well for both of us. The class was all in Norwegian, but I was able to follow along. I was very sore on Wednesday though!

Wednesday we joined several moms and their young children for coffee at the French café. The restaurant was fairly empty early in the morning so the children were able to wander among the tables without bothering anyone while the moms chatted and enjoyed their coffee. After coffee we went to the butcher shop for the first time to get hamburger meat. Rory charmed the butcher with her smile and he gave her a hot dog. She was shy though and didn’t want to eat it in front of him. The hamburgers were that night’s supper and were the best we’ve had since arriving in Norway – other hamburger meat has been a bit chewy.

After dropping Stepler off at the airport on Thursday morning Rory and I headed to the big grocery store. But because it wasn’t open right after dropping Stepler off, we stopped at a nearby park. I wanted to go there because the Friday playgroup is going to start meeting there next week and I wanted to be sure I could find it. We didn’t get to explore the park much because it started sprinkling and we weren’t really prepared to be out in the rain. But by then the grocery store was open. I can find almost everything I want there – including tofu. At the grocery store we ran into one of the moms from the coffee – Stavanger really is like a small town!

Friday morning we went to the international playgroup on one of the islands for the first time. Many of the same people from Wednesday’s coffee were there. The group meets in a large room in a community center and there are lots of toys for the children to play with. Including two Flintstone type cars which were everyone’s – including Rory – favorites. After playgroup our day was pretty much done because Rory was so tired. After nap and before supper we did manage to sneak in a few minutes on our playground.