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?