Happy Christmas!

It's that time of the year again - and here is one of the best snapshots from last year.




We leave on Thursday evening to spend just over a week with my family. We'll be back in Oslo before New Year's and have invited some friends over for lunch on New Year's Day.

We wish you all a peaceful and relaxing christmas and a happy 2007. May the new year bring you only good things and wonderful experiences! Take care and enjoy the holidays!

Our first Xmas tree!!!

Because we always go away for Christmas, we never have a tree. This year I thought it would be fun to get a little fir tree of some kind in a pot, and dress it for Xmas! This is a cypress tree, so we'll put it outside after the holidays, and if it doesn't grow too much we can bring it inside again next Christmas.

So now all the decorating (that is, all we're doing) is done - just one or two things left to shop, some packing before we leave - and lots and lots of stuff to do at work.... and then it's Christmas!


Looking quite satisfied, aren't I :-)

Christmas baking

Karsten is looking very happy while making this year's Christmas cookies, isn't he? We baked three different kinds this afternoon. We were supposed to do it with some friends of ours, but they have all got either the flu, a cold or a stomach bug, so we decided to just deliver some cookies to them when they're well again :-)

And here are the results (or at least some of them):

Marie's birthday: 9 years old!

A couple of weeks ago we went to a birthday party for Karsten's niece, Marie, who is now 9. Below you can see her checking out the earrings we got her while Karsten watches and her little sister Dina focuses on the photographer:


She was veeery happy to get her own carry-on suitcase, and now she's all set for worldwide travel (her parents might have something to say about that, however...)

My new job

Well, I'm a few weeks into my new job now, and it's looking OK. It's demanding and difficult and challenging, but that's also what I wanted - as long as it's not always that way :-)

I'm managing a department in the telecom company Telenor, in Telenor Nordic Mobile, and I'm responsible for the billing systems in Nordic Mobile. My team consists of 6 employees and, depending on how you count, around 8-10 consultants from companies like Accenture, Tietoenator etc. There's so much to learn and so much I don't understand yet, sometimes it gets frustrating. Give me a few months and I hope that side of things will be looking better.

Hope all of you are doing fine and enjoying life! Will be back with some more photos.

So far...

...so good?

Well, at least I've managed to publish a few posts for you to read since I created the blog. Haven't quite managed the frequency of publishing that I planned, but something new has been posted every month... When I looked through our pictures from the last couple of months I found lots more I want to share with you, but that's for next time. I'll also try to improve the frequency and move away from the "batch processing" approach that seems to dominate my posting so far... Anyway, time for bed now.

...'cause I'm off early to my new job tomorrow. Yupp, I started October 1st and it's still mostly new and scary, but at least I'm learning. At record speeds. "See" you again soon. Hopefully :-)

Merete's birthday

The weekend before last we celebrated Merete's (Karsten's sister) birthday. As always there was good food and great company :-) Thanks, Merete, Tor, Helle, Marie and Dina! It also seemed that Merete was happy with her present (a pair of white gold earstuds) - check it out, Birgit...

Martin & Anja's monthly wedding present: August?

Our group from university has a tradition when it comes to wedding gifts when someone from the group gets married. In July, our friend Martin got married, to lucky Anja :-) One of their 12 monthly wedding presents was a gourmet picnic in the park, provided by us. This was supposed to be delivered in August, but due to the heavy schedules of the participants it didn't happen unti October. Even so, we were incredibly lucky - this is how an October Sunday can look in Oslo:Anja and Martin's baby girl Emilie is not in the picture due to a previous arrangement (sleeping in her pram in the shade). Our next monthly present is Christmas baking - pictures hopefully to be published here some time in December.

Erik has arrived :-)

Our friends, Anne and Endre, just had their second child, a boy called Erik. We went to see them, and big brother Oskar was lucky enough to get to open his baby brother's present - with his sword!

Stargazers

A few weeks ago, my mam came to stay with us for a few days. She bought me the most fantastic bunch of stargazer lilies. I just had to try to capture them "on film" - take a look, even if the pictures nowhere near do the flowers justice.

Unni and Elsa

We had a visit from my cousin Unni, who I haven't seen for a couple of years. She also brought an old friend from school, Elsa, who I hadn't seen in a veeery long time. They came to dinner and we had a great Friday evening catching up.

A bird's eye view of Oslo

Klara

We also went to dinner with Merete's (Karsten's sister) family. Klaus & Louise's beautiful baby girl got lots of attention, and was very popular with the older girls :-)

Sightseeing in Oslo

Last weekend we had a visit from some of Karsten's Danish relatives. Karen, Klaus, Louise and Klara arrived on Saturday (en route from Trondheim) and stayed until Tuesday evening. We were able to spend all day Sunday with them and went sightseeing.

The skis go under the ceiling

Karsten's dad is always coming up with smart solutions for everyday problems and challenges. Both Karsten and I are happy to say that Karsten takes after his father in that area. Between the two of us we have no less than 8 pairs of skis (everyone who knows us will assume, and correctly so, that the majority belong to Karsten (6 out of the 8 pairs)). They keep getting in the way in our already overflowing storage shed. Of course, there's always a solution for this kind of world problem...

The natural place for 8 pairs of skis is - of course - under the ceiling! Why not?

Girls' weekend 2006

Six of the girls in my class at NTH have managed to stick together - we don't see each other as often any more, but we try :-) The last couple of years we managed to go off on a weekend trip together, so in June we all went to Copenhagen.

We were lucky and got fantastic weather, and had a great time mostly walking, shopping and eating/drinking. 1/3 of the group was sporting baby bumps (Anne and Arnhild), so we didn't exactly paint the town red. The fact that the rest of us are not really 20 anymore had nothing whatsoever to do with it :-)

Lisbeth and Elin enjoying one of our many cafe pit stops (and the sunshine).














Elin, Arnhild, Anne and Sigrid (who has just got engaged, by the way).














On the Saturday evening we went to Tivoli. A couple of the girls hadn't been there before. We had dinner and were lucky enough to also catch the Rotary-sponsored fireworks display at midnight. From the left in the picture you can see the smiling faces of Mona, Arnhild, Lisbeth, Elin and Sigrid. Anne is behind the camera.














Anne and Arnhild left early on the Sunday. The rest of us enjoyed walking around the city, including Amalienborg castle, which is behind the fountain (didn't see any royalty, though).

Jan & Aina 30+30

My brother, Jan, and his (live-in) girlfriend, Aina, are both 30 this year. So they decided to have a big party and celebrate their birthdays together. Here they are going at the vast amount of cakes on offer.



We were around 80-90 guests, and Mona was in charge of the welcome drink.. See how happy Karsten was to help out making the drink? We made it in two 30 litre buckets - most of which was gone by the time the party ended at around 5 in the morning.
















The Birthday boy and girl were given a tent as a present - but before receiving it they had to pass a test - trying to erect a tent like the one they were getting. This was not very sucessful.. (see above). We all hope the communication is better in other areas of the relationship!

Here they are (below), looking quite happy before they were told about the test.

Our house

Time to show you something other than holiday pictures. I thought you might like to have a look at our house? We moved in two years ago, and we're very happy with it - even if there are always projects and we still haven't hung all the pictures.



This is what the house looked like around May 10th. Everything was blooming, green and beautiful.

Our house is the one in the middle of a row of three. It has three floors and around 151 square meters of living space. Plenty for us :-) We have lots of room for guests, and they even get their own floor including a bathroom with a jacuzzi.. So - what are you waiting for?


This picture was taken sometime last winter. We had sooo much snow!

..and this one shows you the back of the house, where the entrance is - and we also park our two beloved Vespas here.

ITALY 2006: Soccer world championship

When we left Rome we travelled northwest to an area on the coast called Cinque Terre (Five Lands), which is also a Unesco world heritage site. It consists of five small villages along the coast, which are more or less car-free and connected by a network of footpaths. Lots of tourists - but nice. We spent a week walking and chilling out on the beach.

...and yes, we were in Italy during the last week of the soccer world cup. It was crazy :-) We were in Monterosso (one of the five villages, the one where we stayed) the night Italy won the final. There was a big party, a parade, lots of flags and music and many, many happy italians.






They covered the "coffin" in the French flag... and then paraded it around town, before unsuccessfully trying to light it on fire.

It was a good party! (No reference to the attempted coffin burning.)

"Pics of us taken by us"

This is what happens when you've been up early to catch a train, the train is late, and you have to spend way to much time hanging around in the station... You take pictures!

Big, bigger, huge?

Just a couple of pictures to show you the dimensions of some of the architecture and sculpture in Rome's churches.


To the left you can just about see Mona (under the huuuuge statue of Bartholomew) inside one of Rome's 4 patriarchal churches (St. Lorenzo, I think).





...and here is Karsten in front of a couple of seriously large copper doors, at one end of the same church.