from across the Atlantic…

So this posting is the first since our trip to Seattle and my summer hiatus from blogging!

I don’t even really know where to start…and I’ve got my hands full with a jetlagged Nell…so I’m going to just give a bit of a summary at a time!  Just want to get this first posting out there, with the link to some pictures and then I’ll fill you in more a bit here and there.

Here are just a few of the highlights from our trip…

*getting girls (Nell and Anja Sol) together for the first time ever!
*Kristian, Katrina and Anja Sol’s family blessing party
*Lars’ Birthday
*Nell’s Baptism
*Seeing family and friends! 

The pictures from our trip are hard to upload (because there are about 1.000 of them and it would take me years!!)…so check back from time to time and I’ll try to get them up a few at a time!  I have also started a file in our photobucket album called "Fall 2009"…and I’ve been trying to take a few pics a day for my parents, so they can watch Nell grow!  They’ll be fun for everyone to look back on, and I haven’t been good enough at taking a few pictures here and there since Nell was born…so watch out, they’re coming now!

Phew…so first posting post-summer….UP!  I’ll write more soon!

So besides Nell chewing on her thumbs and teething rings like crazy (we have these two from natursutten.dk) today she started rolling over…constantly! 

Nell had started rolling awhile back…but it seemed just like they were lucky rolls.  Now she has got it down.  She was trying all morning, grunting and groaning as she squirmed around on her side.  Then all of a sudden I realized that I couldn’t hear Nell anymore…so I turned around and there she was on her stomach!  She was so proud of herself!  I got a huge smile…too cute!

So that was fun!  Of course I called Lars at work right away and told him all about it!  And since that first roll, she has been rolling onto her tummy every chance she gets!  Not much action when she’s on her belly though…she just looks around until she gets too tired and then puts her head on the floor!  As soon as I flip her back on to her back, she whines and then starts working on getting on her belly again!  Too funny!

Counting down the hours until our trip!

It is just typical that there is this super contageous flu going around right when we’ll be travelling for the first time with Nell!  We have gotten mixed opinions on whether or not we should travel with her during the outbreak…but we’re going for it!  Figure all we can do is take the percautions that they’re recommending and hopefully we’ll be just fine!  Plus, we’re travelling through Iceland, which is a pretty small airport…so I feel safer doing that than travelling through the Nederlands, for example!

So we’ll soon be flying high with our little Birdie for the first time!  I’ll let you know how that goes!!  Ha, ha!  As for other Nell updates…we’re 99% sure that theres a tooth coming in before long, as Nell is knawing away on her fingers and always on the same side.  We have used some chilled teething rings too, and she loves them!

Alright, have to run!  Company coming for dinner!  All the grandparents want to see little Nell Bell before we take off with her!

Seattle here we come!

So Nell will be gracing the beaches of Hawaii at the tender age of just 10 months!

We have booked yet another (our 3rd) trip to Hawaii for this winter and we couldn’t be more tickled!  For those of you who know us well, you know that Lars and I just fell harder than hard for the Hawaiian Islands when we first visited there for our honeymoon in 2006.  We returned in 2007 and had plans to return in 2008 but had to cancel when we got pregnant with Nell…not complaining there…what a GREAT reason to stay home!  So now we’re back on track and have Hawaii as our va-cay destination for 2010!

This year we’ve even convinced some friends to come with us too…so we’ll be two families (with 2 kids!) gracing the beaches (and the golf courses!) of Hawaii!  I can’t believe they want to come with us…what fun!

We’ll start our trip by spending 12 nights at the Park Shore Waikiki Hotel, where we’ve never stayed before.  We usually stay at the Waikiki Beachside, but they didn’t have room in the rooms to accomodate a rollaway bed for our kids.  Soooooooo we’re moving down the beach, but the view from the balcony will be the same…ocean front!  Lars and I (and Nell!) will have 4 days together before our friends join us (they’re flying directly from Norway to Hawaii, phew!), and then we’ll jump to Kauai and spend 9 nights there, sharing a condo at the Poipu Makai…again, right on the water.

We are already counting the days until our trip…and as fall, and then winter, settle in…we’re going to be more and more excited every single day!  Plus, this trip to Hawaii means that Nell will be visiting her Bestemor and Bestefar in Seattle just after Christmas!  A bonus visit!

So Hubby and I have been dreaming of where we’re going to take our next vacation, and for those of you who know us well…you know we were (seriously) bitten by the Hawaii bug in 2006, on our honeymoon!

So after running through all the of opntions of somewhere warm to travel during the upcoming-Norwegian-winter (brrrrrrrr), we’ve pretty much settled on returning to Oahu.  I have been planning a trip to Seattle anyway, to greet baby-Bentsen…and so Lars is going to join me for a couple of days…and then we’ll head onto Waikiki Beach!  We’re planning on staying a total of 17 days on Hawaii…14 on Oahu, and then 3 on Kauai (to visit the Hanson’s if they’ll be there too) before we head back to Seattle.

Let the planning (and money spending…yikes!) begin!  I’m ecstatic just thinking about it! What treat for Hubby and I to look forward to as the snow soon starts to fall.

A volunteer vaction is something that I have loooooooooong wanted to do…and Lars and I have just never done enough research on it. If its not something that we do before we have kids, I will definitely be taking my kids on this type of "vacation" from time to time.

While trying to find some info online, I ran across this great CNN article that gave an overview in an article called, 8 volunteer vacations.  I found another article on Transitions Abroad called, Volunteer Vacations Gain in Popularity.  Both of these stories have wonderful links to organizations who plan these volunteer vacations.  The Sierra Club also has a great volunteer vacation program for those interested in staying state-side (although they do have some international options too).

Merry Christmas & Happy New Years….early!

Lars & I will be returning to Hawaii again this winter!  We were there for our honeymoon in September of 2006 and just loved it.  Neither one of us thought that we would make it back, let alone this soon!

Thanks to Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian and their current price war, we got tickets with Hawaiian for half the price that we paid last September!  FUN!  So we’ll we on Oahu for 14 days in January!  I can’t wait!  Here in Norway it will be approximately 23F…and we’ll be travelling to approximately 76F in the air and water!  Deilig!

And the fun doesn’t end there…we’ll first be celebrating the holidays with my family!  Its been over a year now since I’ve been "home" so I’m overdue for a trip, and being that it will be the holidays is just an added bonus!  Lars has never celebrated Christmas and New Years with my family in the states, so there will be a lot of new and exciting things going on for us! 

We’ll be in the states for 4 weeks all together and neither one of us can wait!

(post trip note: here’s a pic from the beach…)

Brrrrr….we’re back from the arctic!  At least it felt like the arctic!

We just returned this afternoon from our annual hunting trip to Brimi Fjellstugu…and if you only have a second, I’ll keep it brief…there wasn’t much hunting done this year!

We arrived on Friday night at 1900, just in time for dinner…yum!  Did I mention before that this place is famous for their food?  It was a "kaltbord" with bread, scrambled eggs, all kinds of meats, fish…all cold.  And there was "rømmegrøt"….sour cream porridge.  YUM…with a capital Y!  Its this creamy, sour cream tasting porridge that we top with butter, sugar and cinnamon.  May sound weird, but very Norwegian!  Anyway, got up there at  just as it was getting dark and the wind starting ripping up a storm!

All Friday night we listened to the wind howl…and I mean howl.  Saturday morning we woke up and it was blowing so hard that you could hardly stand upright outside!  Everyone decided to tough it out (except me) and go try to hunt.  In the meantime, I crawled back in bed for another hour of shut eye, listening to the wind roar.  Then I threw on my outdoor gear and took a 3 hour walk past Brimi farm…where I took some time to visit with the goats, the pigs, the cows and the ducks.  Picked up a little goat snot in the process and kept on moving…apparently even they get runny noses when the wind blows!

It was a pretty easy stroll on my way down, but on my way back to the cabin it took me twice as long!  It was extremely hard walking home against that wind!  And there were little ice-balls whipping through the air that just pierced my cheeks!  I had my hood up, a scarf up to under my nose…and my sunnies on to protect my eyeballs.  It was pretty hysterical.  Anyway, made it back the house in one piece, found a calm spot on a wind-still side of the cabin and sunned myself for about an hour.  It was a great place to enjoy my lunch while picking up some desperately needed rays and vitamin D!

Everyone else came back shortly after and then we headed down to a fantastic 4-course dinner of two fish starters (one smoked trout in a salad and the other baked trout in a delicious cream sauce), kalv tenderloin for the main course and then cheese cake with strawberry sauce for dessert.  We sat over the course of three hours and laughed over family stories while tossing back several bottles of wine, along with dinner.  What a great atmosphere.  Theres nothing like being out in the crisp mountain air all day and then retiring in to good food and great company!  And this cabin is just such a relaxing spot…and the people working the cabin are just great, a lot of fun to talk with!

Then, on Sunday (today), we woke up at 7am and I could hear that there was no longer any wind…so I climbed out of bed and went to the window…threw back the curtain and to my surprise found SNOW!  I couldn’t even believe it!  Snow was coming down like crazy!  So we stumbled down to breakfast and met the others…talked it over and decided that since we couldn’t see two arms lengths in front of us, that we wouldn’t hunt today.  So we packed up our bags and headed home after breakfast!

No birds, no hares…nothing in our hunting bag this year.  All for the best, I supose.  More for us to get next year!

So all in all….not many action shots from this years trip!  I did take a few pics from my walk down through the farm and here they come…

dream cabin
mountain cabin
look at that backdrop 1
look at that backdrop 2
bovines
sunbathing beauty

Tomorow we are Lars and I are headed up to a small community, a 5 hour drive north of where we are now, called Lom.  Here we’ll be staying at the Brimi Fjellstugu, which means Brimi mountain "livingroom"!  Check out photos, maps and information in english at the following link
http://www.brimi-fjellstugu.no/eng/

This is our fifth annual hunting trip for a type of mountain grouse (bird), called a rype in Norwegian.  The trip includes Jan (Lars’ dad) + Oddhild (Jan’s girlfriend), Mette (Lars’ sister) + Bjørn (Mette’s husband), and Lars + me!

The first two years, only the boys hunted…but since then Mette has taken her hunting test and last year she got a hare!  Pretty impressive, as those suckers a pretty quick, and I think that the boys were just a tad jealous!

Not being a hunter myself, I go along just for the long walks in the mountains.  The colors this time of year are just spectacular…fire reds, orangy-yellows, and crisp browns.  The mountains sides are barren, without and trees growing or shelter of any kind.  The only shrubbery around grows very low the the ground (no higher than your ankle), and looks very much like colorful corals covering the hills.  Tucked in the shrubbery you can find berries that the rype live off of, and there is also a hard white-ish grey mossy plant that the reindeer eat and dig through the snow for in the winter time.  The walks are a fantastic opportunity to click a few pictures, admire the scenery and just clear my mind!  The evenings are a fantastic opportunity to relax, catch up on reading, enjoy a glass of red wine and just sit by the fire place nursing sore muscles!

I’ll try to post some pictures when we get back!