Family over money

Before I met Mike, I'd work 80 hours a week easily, often more. I had one job for the daytime, another one for the evenings, plus a part-time on the weekends. I loved working... I loved money... And I loved spending the money!

When I met Mike, I toned down my hours a tiny bit because I wanted more free-time to spend with him. I wanted some weekends off to go traveling, camping, or just hang out at home with my love.

The day Elliot was born, my view of money completely changed. I was 100% content for the first time in my life. I needed NOTHING because to me, I had EVERYTHING! There is still a small part of me that's money-hungry of course, but the difference now is that I'm fine with having just enough to live how I want to live. I will work overtime if they're desperately in need of help, but then they better be desperate because I would much rather be at home with my boys than making money.

Money just doesn't mean the same to me anymore. I know we need it and I love having it, but I it's definitely not a priority over time with my family!

The love of my life

Here comes my first cheeeesy blog and it probably won't be the last. Mike just sent me a text message to remind me how much he loves me and to wish me a good day at work. The message was so simple, yet it made my day :) He makes me so incredibly happy and sending me these little cheesy notes that makes me all gitty as if I'm falling in love for the first time... AGAIN! :)

Mike and I have been together for 7 years, which I guess isn't that long considering we've moved to Norway, bought a house and have two kids ages 1 1/2 and 5. What still amazes me is that I can still be so head over heals for this guy. I used to be the master of getting bored of boyfriends quickly, but for some reason, I just can't get enough of Mike. We do have our moments of disagreements of course and there are plenty of things that we could improve, but seriously, I couldn't be more content and it's all because of him!

Mike is an expert on how to make a long-term relationship work the best. He always finds ways to spice up our life together so we don't just fall into a rut of the same old, same old. We make sure to take turns going out once in a while so that we can still have that social part with our friends and not just sit at home because our kids are in bed. We do go out together too, of course, but I love going out for coffee with friends while he loves going fishing with the guys, so it works out perfect. We go on a lot of fun adventures as a family and seeing each other with our kids, just makes us fall that much MORE in love with one another.

One thing we're not as good at is taking time to ourselves, without the kids. I love spending as much time as possible with my boys, but I know how important it is for all of us that Mike and I get that alone time too. Maybe I should try to plan a date for the two of us? We're together at home every day, but it'd be good for us to actually get out of the house together again. It's been a while. Now I just need to plan a fun date for a guy who totally deserves it :) Any suggestions?

Blue fingers

I love love LOVE going on walks, especially with my boys! So today after dinner, we decided to go on a short hike. We live in a suburb of Trondheim and are surrounded by houses, but if we walk a couple minutes we're out in the country. I've always been a city-girl so living in the country was never an option for me, but this neighborhood is perfect. I love being surrounded by people and I wanted neighbors that the kids can play with, but at the same time, I've learned to love the silence and safety you feel out here. The kids can run around without being worried about traffic, which is something we had to be very concerned about at our last house.

One bonus of living out here is that there are TONS of places to go on walks without having to drive at all. We're surrounded by mountains, woods, and water so we can never get bored of the scenery. Today's hike ended up being in the woods - Elliot's choice. It's the beginning of blueberry season so I brought a bucket incase we found any.

Elliot showed the way and decided which paths to follow. It didn't take long before he spotted all of the blueberries. Elliot grabbed his blueberry picker (Mike bought the boys a cute froggy one each) and was eager to start picking. Aiden followed along, only his blueberries never made it to the bucket. hehe ;) After an hour in the woods, our fingers were blue and it was time to get the boys home for bed. We returned home with half a bucket of blueberries, blue mouths, and wet socks and shoes. We didn't get enough to make jam, but hey, this was only our first trip out this season plus it will make for a good snack in the kids' lunches tomorrow.

My "to do" list

I just made the longest "to do" list!!! I get like this every time when I've been gone from the house for a few days... and the longer I've been gone, the longer the list usually tends to be. Does that mean I'm trying to make up for lost time or is it because I've been thinking about it the whole time while I was suppose to be vacationing? Hmm...!?

If any of you have lived with me before, you also know that making a to do list for me is more than just a paper with a long list. I have quite the system as I'm a little anal-retentive when it comes to lists and organizing. First of all, it must be seperated into categories. This to do list is about my house so the paper is divided into 3 columns: Work to be done upstairs, work to be done downstairs, and work to be done outside. Within each column, there are sub-categories, which in this case are the seperate rooms. It may sound silly but seriously, it makes it SO much easier to read and plan what I'm going to do that day. That way I can decide ahead of time which room I'd like to work in and then I can go down the list and check off the boxes as I finish each item.

Oh, I didn't mention that part. Under the sub-category, is where I have the to do lists. In front of each 'task' I make a pretty little square that I check off when I'm finished. That's my favorite part - making the check mark in the square! :) Plus it's an additional motivation for me because the list just looks better and better with more check marks.

Yes, I have issues - I know! hahaha! Now I'm curious, do any of you get as into list making?

P.S. Elliot drew a picture for his great-grandparents and since that's probably more exciting than my to do list, I'll scan that in instead :p I love his drawings! They make me so happy!!! :)

Sunday night routines

Tomorrow is a new week and therefore, a lot of stuff I need to get prepared tonight. When we pick up our boys from daycare on Fridays, I like to bring home pretty much everything we have there. I bring home all of their clothes to wash, and let me tell ya, that makes for A LOT of clothes! There there are all of the shoes: jogging shoes, sandals, and rainboots (we live in a country where the weather is absolutely unpredictable). Because we've been on vacation and Aiden's daycare has moved locations while we were away, I also had to bring his stroller home (it's a 2nd stroller we keep there all-year-round to spare us the hassle of bringing it back and forth all the time). You see, kids nap in their stroller over here... but that makes for a whole other blog so I'll have to get back to that one later.

Anywho, here's what I have to pack for each of our boys tonight:
- extra set of clothes (pants, shirt, socks)
- rainsuit and rainboots
- shorts, sandals, sunglasses, sunscreen
-a waterbottle that they bring outside and on trips
- stroller for Aiden w/ the sleeping bag that goes in it
- diapers for Aiden

In addition, I have to make their lunches, which I always do the night before cuz every minute is valuable in the morning and this just saves me that much time :)
Norwegian lunches are probably boring, at least compare to what everyone eats at daycares/schools in the States. Our lunches consist of an open-faced sandwich (or 2), a piece of fruit, and sometimes a yogurt. Exciting, eh? Not so much, but hey, it's healthy!

Ding ding! Laundry just finished so now I'm off like a herd of turtles to get Monday's stuff packed. Ta ta for now :)

Back from vacation

I've had three weeks of vacation now.

Mike had to work during my first week of vacation so then it was just me and the kids. I loved it! One day we spent on Munkholmen island with my sister, Anniken, and her boyfriend, Padrick. We picniced on the beach, played in the water, and checked out the old prison from World War II.

Another day, my mom brought me and the kids to a farm she knew of. There the kids got look at the animals, feed a few of them, and jump in the hay. They had so much fun!

The rest of our week was spent swimming (both outside and at the local pool on the cooler days), hiking in the woods, biking, and packing for our trip to the cabin.

The next two weeks, we spent at a cabin in Røros (2 hours south of Trondheim). My parents were up there the majority of the time as well, and my sisters were there for about a week each. The cabin is right on the lake so we spent most of our days down by the water. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't nice enough to go swimming, but we got in lots of boating and fishing so that was fun! Mike caught some fish but the rest of us were too impatient and therefore, had no luck. I would rather cruise around in the boat than wait a looong time for one single fish, ya see. Mike and my dad put up a volleyball net, badminton net, and soccer goal out in the yard. We also had a little firepit set up by the water, which is where we spent most of our time when we sat out in the evenings. It was the perfect vacation - nice and relaxing, but a lot of fun as well!

A walk down memory lane... of haircuts!

We're celebrating my grandparents' 80th birthdays soon and giving them a book with stories and pictures that we've collected from all of the family members. So last night's task was to find some pictures of them. I have all the recent ones saved on my computer of course, but I had to dig up the old photo albums to find the rest.

First of all, I LOVE photo albums! It is so fun to sit down by your bookshelf and go through the albums with old pictures. I have several scrapbooks, both that I've made myself and that I've gotten as gifts from friends. This generation is gonna miss out... It's just not the same to scan through your computer files to look at memories. You gotta have the big, heavy albums to flip through or it's just not the same!

As I was flipping through the pictures, I couldn't help but to notice the different hair styles we had. There were so many awful hair do's! I started out having cute hair, but it quickly changed and went through many awkward looks. In daycare I had the ultimate tomboy look with short hair. All of my friends were boys so to fit in, this made sense. Then I became all girly-girl for a while in elementary school, which was fine. From then on, it all went down hill... haha! It started with the crimped hair, then the extremely high bangs, followed by a short period where I dyed my hair green, then red, then black. I can't believe my parents let me because it absolutely didn't not work for me! Since then it's been long, super short, braided, colored, highlights-gone-wrong look, you name it...

But hey, the different looks made for a good laugh as I was walking down memory lane yesterday :)

"Blog." What is that anyway?

It dawned on me yesterday that EVERYONE has a blog so it's about time I get one too. Not that I don't spend enough time online already, but hey, now I have one more thing I just HAVE to do in the evenings. Mike will love it! Yeah, probably not!

So really, what is a blog anyway? And why is it that we're so into looking into everyone else's lives to see what they're up to?

I'm not sure how I will use it yet and how often I will write, but as of now, I'm pretty excited about it. I always kept a diary/journal when I was younger and I love writing updates and posting pictures of my family, so I think this will be good. For now, stay tuned and we'll see if this blog thing takes off or not...