It's been a while....

Wow, it's been almost a month since we gave you all an update. I guess most people have stopped checking our blog since nothing has been written in a month. I promise to get better!

A LOT of things have happened in the last month...

First of all, we had a very nice Christmas holiday with lots of family visting us here in Gaithersburg. My mom flew in from Norway for a 10-day trip, which was shortened by one day since one of her flights were cancelled in Europe and she lost her connecting flight to the U.S. (not to mention her suitcase didn't make it for another three days after she had arrived). Kathleen and Christ came down from NYC, and Earl drove all the way from Oklahoma. We celebrated Christmas Norwegian-style this year with dinner and gift opening on the evening of the 24th. My mom managed to prepare a good, old-style Norwegian ribbe (pork roast)! Yumyum.













On New Years Eve we celebrated with friends and my Mom at our house. Steve cooked a pork roast and Mike & Mirtha came with Isabella, and Antje & Mehri visited with Christopher. The kiddies had a blast and stayed up really late, but only party-girl Isabella stayed up until the very late hours before New Years rang in. Of course, the grown-ups had some bubbly drinks when the ball dropped at Times Square.

Another good thing that happened was that we got an offer on our place two days before Christmas. What a CHristmas gift! And the buyers were willing to settle only one month later, which means that we don't have to pay two mortgages. What a relief. All the pieces in the puzzle fell in place, just in time.

So now we are trying to get ready to move in two weeks. But how do we pack and get ready when we need to use most of what we have up until the day we move? We put all of our non-essential belongings in storage when we put our house on the market. It makes me nervous to even try to plan the packing, does anyone have any good suggestions for how to move a 3-bedroom apartment and a whole family? We've hired movers, but we are packing ourselves. We've never moved this much stuff and people before...

The new house... well, after Steve had worked on the floor for a couple of weeks he finally realized that it would take a looooooong time and the result may not be too good on some troubled spots, so he hired a professional company to refinish the floors. They finished on the 23rd, and the floor looks fantastic! Since then we have sanded, primed and painted walls, and we are still going at it. I think we will barely get done in time before we move in.

Before Christmas we also had to find a new aupair to replace Ana since she is leaving in February. She's been with us for almost a year - time goes by so fast! The new girl who accepted our offer is Helene from France, and we look very much forward to getting to know her better and help her fulfill her dreams during the next year. She will arrive on February 17 after a week's training session in NYC.

I had a ridiculously busy work week before CHristmas, with almost regular day-time work hours and then a second shift from 8-12midnight running and monitoring a text messaging program for a prime-time NBC show. Imagine how tired I was when we shut down the last program on the 23rd... and our house was full of people and i had not wrapped a single gift or barely had time to get in a Christmas mood. Steve was also busy that same week getting insider knowledge about the county court system. He was chosen for jury duty and was in a jury for a defamation case almost all week (Mon-Thur).

Think that's it for now. We will try to post more often, especially after we have settled into the new house at the end of the month. Oops, that reminds me, we have to call the cable company so we can get cable and Internet connection setup at the new house.

Almost bed-time - we're all tired after a full day at the new house, Steve was painting and I was looking after Anika and Tascha, who wanted to be outside all the time, and I was raking leaves (got blisters in my hands...). New tasks we are not used to, but those are the pleasures of having a single-family house with a yard :)

Love,
Kine