Quinntessentials

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Not much new...

Not so much going on right now after the excitement of the job. I'm in a Norwegian course right now full-time so that's keeping me fairly busy for once.

Just thought I'd up load a few brief photos to tide you all over (and to try and keep in the habit of updating this stuff...)

First two scanned drawings Isabelle did. She named them herself; not too sure what her thought process was....

Birthday Celebration

Your Majesty, Your Highness

Isabelle watching a football game

Isabelle doing some drawing in the park

And proudly taking after her Uncle and Aunty; showing off the ink

Monday, September 13, 2010

CONGRATULATIONS JAMES!!

As most of you have probably heard already: James got an offer from PwC today! We are so happy, relieved and excited - and I must add very, very proud...

We went out to this lovely tapas place near Lillestrøm Station with Tommy and Pernille (her father Tom Espen was in town so he came along as well) to celebrate, which was really nice. My brother recently got a promotion at work (he works part time for a debt collection company) - so it was a double celebration.

We forgot to bring the camera along, but here are some mobile uploads:

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Our Sunday hike

Thanks for the Skype-call on Tuesday guys - Isabelle really loved seeing and speaking to you all. She's not one to miss a chance to show off, that is for sure!

I just thought I'd upload some photos from the forest hike we did last Sunday. We started out at Tærruddalen, which is about 5 minutes in the car from our house. Isabelle walked for the first 1km or so - which took us about 30 minutes since she was exploring the forest and running around like crazy.

Then for the next hour she was sitting comfortably in our hiking backpack, while mum and (mostly) dad had to struggle with an extra 16 kilos through the forest. We made our destination, a little cabin about 5-6 km into the forest in good time, where the local ski club was selling waffles to tired hikers.

We had our waffles, hot chocolate and a couple of biscuits too, before turning around and starting on the hike back. Isabelle was really good again, and probably walked for another 1 km before it was back up into the backpack. It seemed a lot quicker to walk back, and the hike was done in no time. We stopped at our normal "camp site" on our way back, where we grilled pølse (sausages) and pinnebrød (damper with spices on a stick!). Lovely!

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Return of the blog...

It has been a long time coming, but here is finally another update from Norway! The whole blog thing slipped away from us a bit with all the changes over the last year - but we promise to be a bit better with updating this page from now on.

Isabelle had her first session at dancing school today! We did not get to see much of it (parents are only allowed in class in the last session of the semester), but we are sure she did amazingly well - proud parents as we are. A couple of photos of our tiny ballerina:

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Denmark

A few days ago we returned from an impromptu Danish holiday, and here are the juicy details...

We took the ferry from Larvik to Hirtshals in Northern Jylland (called Jutland in English; the part of Denmark attached to mainland Europe), and let our newly acquired GPS guide us for the 30 minute drive to Tversted. My uncle's firm owns a holiday appartment at a place called Tannishus and he and his family were well into their annual stay when we decided to join them for their last few days of Danish fun. Anne Marit's (who is married to my uncle and hence technically my auntie, but I am not allowed to call her that because she's way too young to be the aunt of someone my age...) sister we family was there as well, and together we made up one big, happy beach party.

After a few days on the beautiful, sandy beaches of Tversted we went to Fårup Sommerland (a theme park) which was absolutely fantastic. Isabelle turned out to be absolutely fearless, and loved all the rides - the scarier the better. The poor thing was fairly unhappy when told she could not go on the big roller coasters (because of height restrictions). We told her that we'd go back when she is 6, because then she will be old enough.. Seems Isabelle was too smart for us, however, because when the three of us two days later set our eyes on Legoland, the first thing she did when arriving in the park was to look at me seriously and explain: 'mamma, jeg er seks' (Mum, I am six!).

While the rest of the family headed home to Norway after Fårup, the Quinns experienced Legoland before heading to Ebeltoft on the Eastern coast of Jylland. Our hotel room had the most beatiful sea-view, and at night we experienced some lovely sunsets. It did not even matter that the weather turned a bit greyer on us, we still had Djurs Sommerland (yes, another theme park) to see, and beyond that we were happy just relaxing in our room and the hotel pool, not to mention walking around the pittoresque streets of Ebeltoft. After eight days of Danish delight we returned to Larvik late Wednesday evening, and as the following photos shows, we had the most amazing holiday...