Archive for February, 2007

We finally left home at around 1:30 pm and after 14 hours we arrived at my parents house tired, but happy. I was worried about the mountain pass, but it was no problem at all. And because of the winter holidays starting this weekend it was a lot of cars everywhere. I took a few (blurry) photos, but sadly all our driving time in the snow was after dark… So I just tell you: it was a winter wonderland

I took some photos, though:

Now we’re enjoying time with our family and MT is outside having fun in the snow with his cousins.

I guess this week will be less updates, sorry, but my parent do not have any broadband and the dial up is sooooo slow!!

Take care

We’re supposed to drive back home to my my parents today. But it’s snowy and windy outside AND, more importantly, up in the mountain. I’m sitting here looking at the weather forecast and road reports trying to figure out what to do(!!) We have about 8 or 9 hours of driving (within this short stops are included), but if the weather is bad we’re looking at at least 11 or 12 hours – and that is a long time to be driving all by my self and a long time for MT to sit in his seat….. But then we would be there in the morning tomorrow and not late afternoon.

Right now it seems like the best thing is to wait a bit more to see if it clears a bit and then dive right into it and use the time necessary to get there….. OR NOT

I need a cup of coffee, and after that I’ll pack the car and then we’ll see!

Update: It’s still a bit more snow and wind than I like and we might have to spend the night i Lærdal before we cross the mountain. But we’re off!!! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! 

Can you believe it?! We got snow again Thought the white winter was about finished by now, but I was wrong. A good thing to be about this matter if you ask MT He screamed of joy this morning when he discovered it, soon we’re off to kindergarten and hopefully a day outside in the snow for his part.

I only wish I could say it was the snow that caused my fall on Monday…..
I was in a hurry and on my way to the store, on the way to my car I was to drop some garbage in the garbage tin outside so I had to turn a bit to the right while going down the stairs. I’m not quite sure what caused it, maybe my shoes or a rock in the wrong place, but suddenly I found myself crashing to the ground!!! As I fell I heard a soft snapping sound (can such sounds be soft? well, it was…) from my right foot and was half expecting to find it broken when I tried to get up again. It was not, I kind of knew that but the humbling thought of managing to break my leg right outside my door kept me from thinking straight – adding to that I was going to the store mostly for my friend who’s jumping around on crouches after an operation a few weeks ago; she was watching MT while I was in a hurry falling…. But the leg was sore and swollen. And I felt like an idiot falling like that and hoped no one saw me (it was dark, thank you very much ). It’s not the first time I’ve done this, but it’s been good for a while now…

Anyhow I’m trying to slow down, put the leg up high whenever I can and to concentrate on not falling again!! Right now I’m loving the automatic gear in my car.

Saturday is my sleeping-in day. And as usual I stay in bed for a long time while MT enjoys his morning TV. As a result my head hurts and I find yogurt on the floor because MT helped himself to some food…… But it is simply impossible to get out of this one day of the week

The photo is from last Saturday, today is a gray and rainy day!!

I finished the application on overtime yesterday, mainly because of a server problem on their behalf, but finally I hit the send-button for real. We don’t know anything about how it’ll turn out until March 29th – so we’re hoping and praying and kind of forgetting it until then !!
Now we’re off to my friend, we shall watch movie and eat pizza and just hang out together. MT’s mainly looking forward to the movie part

Have a wonderful Saturday and weekend!!

Tonight, as well as most of the day and until 12:00 pm tomorrow, I have only (hehe, or should have) one thought in my head: Getting the application finished so we maybe can get some funding and new resources for our project SKIPET (the ship).

Skipet is a project for educating our children, youths and young members of our congregation about Jesus and the life as an Christian (that was the short version).

Now I’m so tired and plan to go to bed and get some needed sleep before our early morning tomorrow. It’ll be a race to be finished in time – but I most. So tomorrow, I’ll be the one out of bed at 6:30 am!! LOL

Wish me, and our congregations, luck and blessings
- and have a wonderful weekend!

13 THINGS FROM MY LIVING ROOM

WELCOME TO MY HOME!

and, well, I should have been cleaning and removed some flowers before I showed you; but this is as it is and as my life is – a bit busy

Enjoy TT!!!

THANKS FOR VISITING!!

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Good morning to you all and happy Valentine Day to anyone who celebrates that!!!

I overslept today, so it was not a good start of the day; but now after reading a few blogs and eating a bit of breakfast I feel better. The good thing is that MT only missed kindergarten by 5 minutes – even though I was out of bed only 15 minutes before we should have been there…. So now we know – under crazy circumstances we only need 20 minutes to get out of the door and in the kindergarten door :s But it’s a nicer morning when we have an hour to accomplice it. And also MT did go into the fridge for some yogurt for breakfast without asking me, a good thing today when we were in a hurry, but not so good other vice. He’s supposed to ask first!! Oh, well, it worked out fine!

Anyhow, I’m supposed to be at work – so I’ll better move on!
Enjoy your day, and when I’m back I’ll tell you about how my Monday got all filled with water…

Today we had the second Bible Sunday in a row, not in the same church, though. Each year the church councils invites the 11 yr olds in our area to come to church and be given a Bible. A lot of them comes and I usually try to make this Sunday service all about the Bible. Most years I’ve had a Bible exhibition of some kind and showed them the book in Greek and Hebrew, and off course old, new, large and small editions in Norwegian. I’ve had a bit of fun finding them all….

But this year I wanted to try another approach, so I decided to make a Bible walk (or what to call it) inside my sermon – it had 4 stations and in every one there where a passage from the Bible (they had to find it themselves in the Bible) and a thing to do, eat or to get. And it worked, today I even got some good and warming words after the service. I’m so glad!! I think I’ll be doing more of this, not every time but every now and then!

This is part of my sermon scripture:

Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge. He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times.”

Mark 4:1-8

This always makes me think of being a little girl growing up on my parents farm. When I was small enough to have fun making my own paths in the crops hoping my father would not see me (he always did in the end), because I was not allowed to this – not.at.all!! I can still see how the yellow crops swaying in the soft wind.

There is another picture that pops into my head and that is one of my father. Going around in the field throwing his seed out from his kind of a bag-looking thing he has on his stomach holding the unthrown seeds. This is the way farmer has done it since forever and would have still if it where not for the tractors and stuff.

But when I take a closer look at the text I get stuck with a feeling that this sower is a strange sower. He’s throwing his precious seeds everywhere and it doesn’t seem to bother him. Unlike any framers I’ve known the sower does not care if his seeds are landing in the wrong place. I’m amazed how Jesus takes such a normal situation and makes it into something else. Because Jesus is the sower himself and he throws the words of God out to every man alike, hoping that he can get mankind to listen and discover the greatness of his words and actions. It’s like God do hope that even the stone ground some day will be good soil, ready to produce big harvest.

In Norway we’re having our Mothers Day today!

I’ve called my mum, as I always tries to do this day – and I’ll bring flowers next time I see her (in two weeks, so really soon…). I’ve even gotten a congratulation on my day from a good friend – thanks Ben And since MT have no clue about the day, and no one to help him with it, I bought myself a DVD and has spent the last hours in front of my computer watching Adam Sandler in Click. Not the best movie I’ve seen, but not to bad either. It got me laughing, crying and almost falling asleep a few times… Hehe; so glad I don’t have a universal-one-click-thingy thougt – I might use it(!)

Why is it that every Saturday night I feel like I have the same problem; no movies to watch on my television!??! I have plenty of channels but not any of the movie-all-day-long kind. But still; no movies to watch! Arrrgh, I do have to see a DVD instead like every other Saturday (almost).

The choise for the evening is: “My big fat greek wedding”. I’ve seen it before, but not as many times as “Twister” that was the only movie on right now……. I’m ready to laugh now

From my cousins wedding last April. His brother sat right next to me and was the toastmaster. And he used this glass to pling on when he wanted us to listen.

The problem was, he didn’t use his hands lightly on the glass. So me and my mum and brother said to each other, I wonder who will break the glass first; our cousin or my 3 yr old using a big glass for the first time.

My cousin lost the battle After many plings and bangs the glass finally gave – and we laughed out loud!

And MT, he did not break the glass at all – good boy!

Blue, blue winter sky. Taken at my parents last year on February 10th

And, honestly, we have the same weather today and the forecast says: good weather, cold and a lot of blue sky, for tomorrow as well I do love it!!! Big time

Have a wonderful weekend!!!

Another one of those beautiful sunny winter days. We haven’t had to many of those – so it’s so wonderful It’s cold, though, so better wear warm clothes(!) In MT’s kindergarten they have strange rules about outdoors clothing(actually they have not; but it seems like almost impossible to make them do things differently). They simply cannot think to avoid putting on the kids sock even though the boots have fleece inside. They absolutely must put on them fleece jacket even though the suit have fleece on the inside(!) My boy does run a lot and all this thick clothing makes it difficult for him to move around and he gets so warm. (it’s kind of funny that they don’t put on his fleece pants as well even though it’s there right in front of them by the jacket – LOL)

But for some reason, and this makes me me both a bit annoyed and crack a smile, they do not zip his suit all the way up and almost never put on his hood. In fact leaving the neck bare; in my book much more “dangerous” than any lack of extra socks or jacket. I’m not saying that he doesn’t need to be warm, but hey, not that warm when it haven’t been more than 5-7 centigrades below…. and that for only one or two days so far

As I told yesterday we’re working hard to get some more funding in our church’s youth work (in fact age 10 and all the way to 18). Today I’ve worked on a sketch for a logo for the whole program, on the left you can see the result. I had quite some fun, but I’m not sure this is the final logo version, thought But that’s alright, I had fun just trying!

We now work on an idea of using the internet as a way to keep track and keep up with all the youths that at age 16 leave our area and goes to school somewhere else (usually to a town). A few of them have family to move in with, but many do face their first year at their own at a tiny flat – or living with a few friends. We also want to link them up to a congregation at their new home place (but not through the word wide web, though ). I’m still having fun working with this project and my mind is racing with ideas

Anyhow; the weather has been wonderful today as well. Blue sky and bright sun, I spent most of the day indoors but enjoyed a little walk outside and let the sun warm me up and fill me with energy! Tomorrow’s forecast is just as well.

Yippi!!

I also had a Confirmant class today and they had to draw as well. We talked about the ten commandments and here are one take on number 5 (not kill), 6 (not break marriage) and 7 (not steal). The pink and the blue are (off course?!): female and male…

This is a way for them to try to remember the commandments and keep the numbers apart. I wish it also helped me I keep messing them up (or a few of them…).

Oh, man, I just realized that this won’t be an early-in-bed-night after all. It’s midnight at my place. Blah!

So this is: Good Night everyone

Today I have been out sailing! Not been shipper my self, though, I had a trip out to the island far west from here and spent some hours on the ferry.

So I took some photos. I keep it in my pocket these days. But they are not half as good as the day was!! It was beautiful, cold, blue and sunny.

This year we are planning to join our national faith education project for children and youths, age 0-18. We don’t know if our application will come through, but we have to try. We only have a short time to make our project come to life, so we are in an hurry. That was some of the reason for the trip today, me and a colleague put out heads together to try figuring out what the project should be about and what we wanted to stick with the young people after completing our program. We are not even close to finished, but shall be by the end of this week(!!), but the program has the working title: THE SHIP (or SKIPET as we write it in Norwegian). With this we wanted to focus both on the fact that we live close to the water element and that much of life here depends on it one way or another, as well as on the ship as an important Christian symbol (Jesus is the captain and we’re on board sailing through life, to put is short..) and with it a link to the service and the church room – or the ship as we in fact call the main sitting area.

I figured out that we maybe could use the letter in the world to say something more about what should be the same for all age groups, such as Fellowship (S), Known, Involve, Pearls, Gospel (E) and Faith (T). This is all on the scathing board, honestly, but soon, soon, it will be a working plan if God wants and the comities with the money agrees with him….. Some of the plans we may be able to realize without the money, but most of it depends on it and the new person we want to hire full time!

Anyway, friends and neighbor collected MT from kindergarten before we both were treated to dinner when I arrived back home (it was so nice; Thanks!!!) – and then we went to Children’s Gym or what to call it – just like last time it was outside, only this time I didn’t know – so we had no skis, or anything. Oh yea, there were crying! But thankfully he got to borrow a sledding board, and he was a happy camper