General

I’ve been so into Christmas lately, and have been gathering ideas for what to make and do during the month of December when ever I’ve had a few minutes to spare. Many of these I’ve pinned on my Christmas board. Here are my 10 favorite ideas, so far:

Sources: 1. tumblr.com | 2. sweetpaul.typepad.com | 3. marthastewart.com | 4. kimmccrary.blogspot.com |
5. tinywhitedaisies.tumblr.com | 6. smashedpeasandcarrots.blogspot.com | 7. childmadetutorials.blogspot.com |
8. serendipity-ddv.blogspot.com | 9. littlebirdiesecrets.blogspot.com | 10. saraspartyperfect.com. All via Lime on Pinterest

I’m still on the look out for December / Christmas ideas and inspiration, please share and link me up here in the comments – or on Pinterest.

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Visit Shimelle for more Ten Things on the Tenth.

Ok. I have to admit it. I miss summer. I miss the sunny warm weather. The lazy days. The living as much outdoors and indoors. I miss it for sure, but, I also love the fall season. And I want to embrace the right here and now, so here is my 10 things I’m happy and grateful right now:

1. I’m happy and grateful for my son, how he is growing, learning and having more and more faith in himself.
2. The nature is turning into fantastic colors. And the forest is filled with berries. We should go pick some….
3. Football season started again. And MT loved that, I love watching them play as well.
4. We’ve had several sunny days. Got to love that!
5. I can capture the beauty with my camera and look at in on a rainy day.
6. Come to think of it, some of the rainy days are kind of beautiful as well.
7. School and work are starting up again and the days have some structure.
8. We’re both healthy and non of us have caught the flue yet.
9. It’s still warm enough for nice walks down by the river.
10. September mornings are misty and glows with the first ray of sunshine on a nice day, I love them.

So, what do you want to embrace in the season you’re in right now?!

Today I woke up to the devastating news that more than 90 people died Friday due to two terrible acts of terrorism in our safe little country of Norway. So far it seems it was one man that did it all, but off course the police are still trying to piece it all together. And even though, thankfully, any members of my family or friends are directly affected by this tragedy – it still affect us all in one way or another.

It makes me more sad than I have words for to know that hatred can destroy so much so fast.

I pray for all the people directly affected by this, for all those that survived but have to live with what they saw, heard and felt during the shooting on the island, I pray for all the police, health and rescuing men and women and for all those giving warmth, love, strength, room and time to the people in need.

If you pray, please keep them all in your prayers too.

We’re spending a few days @ The Farm. Watching the house(s) and the cat while my parents are on vacation. We thought we would do a whole lot here, but most of the days are spent relaxing and regrouping. We needed that.

Better get that grass cut before they (my parents) are back home

Hope your summer is sweet as well!

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I love the idea of this; there is always something to celebrate or cherish when we take the time to look for the simple things.
I hope I can keep it as kind-of-a-regular thing on Mondays.

After dinner this afternoon both my kid and I found some paper and then we wrote down our Summer Want-To-Do List. We’re not going on any long vacation this year and we have a lot of things to do with out old house, which is kind of boring and not very vacation-ish. So we wanted to make some time for a few fun and inexpensive stuff as well. To be sure to make good memories of the summer, not just boring ones….

Shimelle have introduced a new blog challenge. 10 things on the 10th of the month.

I’m joining in with our Summer Lists.

First up is MT’s list (mine is coming in July):

1. Go fishing
2. Go bathing
3. Go for a bike ride
4. Visit Grandma and Grandpa
5. Be outside
6. Pick some flowers
7. Play badminton
8. Eat some ice cream
9. Celebrate a birthday
10. Buy a baseball bat

I’m so glad that all the things he want to do can be done right here were we live.
Hoping on a fun and playful summer!

I’ve been kind of into taking photos with my phone again. I guess the light days and evenings helps, and with far more activity outdoors it’s easy to capture the moments with the camera I (almost) always have with me. Here are a few from the last weekends, taken using the Hipstamatic app.

My favorite! Love the colors and the peaceful feeling. Really screams summer to me

Reflections.

Just love this one. The colors. The action. The framing.

So glad to be inside my car when the rain hit.

Tasty.

A favorite card game in our house right now. MT is on a winning streak. And I’m not going easy on him. We have rematches scheduled for the entire summer

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Thanks for looking at my HAPPY moments from the last week. There have been a lot of other things going on in our life as well, not so fun stuff as well. Just wanted to give the happy feeling some room. That’s the moments I want to remember!

** Ops. Fell asleep in the chair yesterday and forgot this wasn’t published. Now it is.**

So grateful for spending some time with my kid this weekend.

No office hours. No obligation. Just working on a few project outdoors and inside, enjoying another few days of glorious spring weather, talking, playing and creating together.

This whole Sunday was one long breathing room. I so needed that. And I think my son did too.

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It’s my first go @ the simple things, I love the idea of this.
I hope I can make it a regular thing on Mondays from now on.

See more days here.

Just a quick little note to tell I updated my heading image. I really would love to do something with the desing and theme, but I have no time for that right now.

So I did the next best thing. New images in the heading.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

So I haven’t been the best blogger laterly. Ahem. But I’m planning to turn that around and be the best blogger there is in the next coming months. Or not.

LOL. I’m not promise anything, but I’ve been missing this little spot of mine. And if there is still anyone hanging around, waiting from life sign from me. I’m here to tell you I’m good. Life is full, but good. So thankful for that!

And in a few hours I have another post coming. That was what I wanted to tell the world.

See ya! Hugs.

Just a few words from me in the middle of the night, as I sit here in my kitchen not wanting to go to bed. I’m so happy my dad came by with some more fire wood the other day, I love having (at least) one good warm room in the house!

Today, after church, we went by to visit my brother and his family. Just because it’s been a while since we last saw them and because we had a couple of hours to spend not sitting in front om the computer screen I’m so glad they where all at home and for catching up a little bit with them. They are in the middle of remodeling their kitchen and it was fun to see it in real life (and not just from photos). I wish I had time and energy to swing by them more often, though. And I know for a fact that MT does as well. Oh, well, they’ll never know when we’ll come knocking on the door next. Maybe soon, maybe later….

Lately life have been kind of busy, we’ve also been a bit sick and have had a few struggles. It seems like things are settling down now, though, and I’m really glad about that. Being sick just takes too much time, and since most of my work doesn’t get done when I’m sick, I have a lot to get through when I’m finally back at it. I’m still not caught up after being sick in the beginning of October – and it drives me completely nuts!

A few days ago (almost a week, to be honest) we got our second downpour of snow this season. MT was thrilled (even though he also mentioned looking forward to summer. LOL.) – and before I knew it he was out and about and ready to go skiing. I don’t think it was all that easy, the snow layer was a bit thin, but he got to try it out and that was all he wanted. Since that night we’ve gotten even more snow, so it’s a beautiful winter land outside our door step. And I love it too, for the time being (I’m not being this supportive of winter come February…), and since the sun isn’t shining on our house during the winter months, the snow gives at least something light to look out on. Only it feels a bit cold around here now.

This is really a random not well thought through post. Oh, well, it’s just a snapshot of the chaos my head is I guess Sorry about that! I haven’t been blogging for a while and it is just fun to throw a few words together sending it out to you. Thank you so much for reading them all!

Later…

I woke up by his little shout of delight. ‘KOAS! Koas.‘ It was his first morning in his new house, in his new country. Everything was new to him, even the language – so he spoke his own; but something made him wake up with a smile. He found a football (a pillow formed as a ball, I might add) in his bed. He loved footballs, I knew that. And even though everything was new to him, it didn’t matter that much. He had a football in his bed and he felt right at home.

I can hardly believe that it’s 5 years since that morning. But today it is.

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Here is a link to a post I made on the 14th October 2005. He’s still a wonderful kid, I’m so blessed for having him in my life. The photo above is taken in Ethiopia on the very day we became a family of two.

I’ve been thinking about entering the contest of I ♥ faces for a while. Finally I just did it The challenge for this week is to present a photo with a face and some SHADES. I just knew I had a few photos of MT from when he was around 3 years old sporting some shades, looking cool. Thankfully I found them!

And above is my favorite and the entry for the contest. Below are the runner up You can read more about this weeks entries in this and this post.

Kiddo got in trouble surfing the Internet yesterday, so now he’s not allowed to use any of my browsers anymore. To many searches for fighting games from his side…

But we’re trying out a new browser called Kidzui, anyone used it? I hope it is fun to use, but also that it’s not easy to manipulate from his side of the table…

So now, if only no one teaches him how to delete surfing history in the other browsers I can keep on telling him: “If you use my browser, and yes I will know if you do, then it’s no computer time for a week”.

Off to check up on how he’s doing and how he’s liking his new browser.

So I might have been a bit sleepy this morning. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking?! Anyhow I managed to put out my week 6 post (of the iPhone Photo Project) – with photos and word from week 5(!) That’s the danger of being lacy and just copying the stuff from the week before; editing the photos and word as I go down the list of days….

But it’s fixed now. New photos. New words. All originals of week 6/52.

Come take a look (while I take a break and clear my head)! LOL.