Various

I love magazines.  Marathon sends me my magazines.  I hate to get rid of my magazines, but I also hate to have stacks of magazines all around the house.  So I tear interesting pages out and put them in a folder.  My folder was getting pretty thick.  Most pages have recipes on them.  Recipes I've never even tried, but they sound good.  For September I've decided to try a new recipes six nights a week.  We're rating them to determine what gets put into the rotation and what gets recycled.  It's going pretty well, a few will make the regular rotation, there are some that need improvement and so far nothing has made it into the recycling bin.

Rory is still loving school.  She often asks to go on days that are not school days.  LilleGym started again last week and she's still loving that.  Today when she got dressed in her LilleGym shirt she was ready to go, right then!  Class didn't start for another two and a half hours.  So for about two hours I was asked go? gym? until we finally got in the car.  On Fridays we go to the international playgroup and Rory really enjoys that too, several of her classmates are there as well as friends we made when we first moved here.

Our Slingbox is working!  Fingers crossed that it continues to work without any problems through football season.  We stayed up late to watch the Oklahoma State game.  The following Sunday was a long day.  We did not stay up for the South Carolina game, but recorded it and watched it as soon as we woke up Sunday morning.  Rory was very patient with us through most of the long game.  She now says go Dawgs, sic 'em, let's go D, Hairy Dawg, Uga, and touchdown.




   

A visitor, a birthday, a boat ride and a marathon

On Tuesday, August 25th Kay arrived for a week-long visit.  After finding a really great fare from Philladelphia she decided to visit for Stepler's birthday on the 26th.  Rory and I picked her up from the airport after Rory's first day of school.  Rory napped on the way to the airport, but was so excited for our second visitor that she was not able to nap once we got home.


Rory started the birthday celebration off by sleeping in!  (Sleeping in = later than 6:20 when our alarm goes off.) I cannot complain about that, but it did mean that I had less time than I thought I would for making the birthday blueberry rolls.  They were supposed to be rolls, but they did not roll, so we had blueberry bread.  Tasty, but not pretty.  Birthday dinner was pizza out, followed by gifts, yellow cake (from a box per Stepler's request) with (homemade) fudge icing and ice cream.  Rory was delighted to help her dad open his presents.

Stepler took Friday afternoon off and we all took a Lysefjord cruise to see Preikestolen.  We had hiked there when Hannah was here visiting, but this was a completely different view of it.  It looked so much smaller from the water.  Just shows how high up Preikestolen is.  Rory loved being on the boat.  For awhile we were sitting on a bench beside the boat waiting for 12 other people to show up so we would have enough for the tour to run.  Rory was so excited to be there and couldn't understand why we weren't getting on the boat!


Saturday evening Rory stayed home with Kay while Stepler and I went out for dinner.  It was very nice to go out by ourselves.  While having drinks we saw participants in the Stavanger Marathon, some finishing, more starting their final lap.  We'd heard less than good things about the marathon because it is a loop course and the streets are not closed.  No thanks.  And Saturday was not a good day for running - I think it started raining right as the marathon started and didn't stop.  Seeing the marathon did get us talking about running one in 2010.  Stepler's interested in the Midnight Sun Marathon and I'm still looking - Prague, Berlin, Dublin?