new adventures

it's been a little quiet on the fidfam blog, but we've been busy re-nesting and gearing up for our next adventure: owen will start montessori preschool in the fall-- he'll be commuting with me out to riverside 3 days a week where i'll start as a full time lecturer at uc riverside. the offer came unexpectedly days (before) we arrived home and with my goal of finishing my dissertation this fall and getting back into academic life it seemed like a perfect opportunity. michael will be returning to alesund to help support the project with b&d and well, we'll just see what happens next.

in the meantime i've enjoyed the california coastal weather and eating al fresco. we're packing packing up to spend a few days with the fids up at the washington coast where we'll get to spend some time in the sand and around the beachfire. we can't wait!!

why you should take your three year old to paris

on our first afternoon in paris i was writing a blog in my head that started something like this-- paris is a life-long love afair. if you're lucky your favorite auntie takes you when you're twelve and the world is not fancy enough (see fancy nancy), and when you've read all your hemingway and stein and go as a romantic twentysomething college student, and you go with your first love because theres a $199 one way ticket, and then you go for your honeymoon, and then of course with your three year old, and you go with your girlfriends, and you go again with the love of your life, and you take your niece when she's twelve. ok, maybe you don't go all those times. but it felt like you could. like there was a little paris for everyone at everytime. because despite the fact that all of the paris souvies are better bought here back in the states--it still fulfills our romantic ideas of what europe should be, or could be like. because there are avenues of bookstores. because there are art museums with wings for children. because there are ferris wheels that let you see remy's paris. because there are wooden carousels and toy boats you can rent by the half hour. because there is a cafe in the tuilleries garden. because laudree on bonparte street really does have the best macroons in the world (i would go back for the blackcurrant). and because you really can take the metro anywhere. and although we've been home weeks and the thought of another transcontinental trip makes my head spin i'd go back tomorrow with any one of those possibilites above. and the pictures of course, are why you should take your little one even if he only remembers the eiffel tower, metro line 9, and chaud chocolat when he is old enough to rembember.









we're home!

thanks to everyone who made the coming and going possible! getting settled in--unpacking boxes and suitcases and sorting through buckets of mail. updates and of course more pics soon! love to all!!!!

no kidding

we were just charged 980 NOK to wash a week or so worth of underwear. that's roughly $191.

the return of the dinner party

we had the honor and good fortune to get invited to rosemari and nil's for dinner last night--and thanks to the generous hotel staff we also had a volunteer babysitter so we could enjoy a proper adult dinner party--complete with golden goblets, jeweled candelabra and fancifully folded napkins. and it was amazing--rose and her cousin "whipped up" an aromatic feast. there was baba ganoush with subtly smoky eggplant and the creamiest humus i've ever had with rich olive oil i didn't know existed in norway. there was a nutty chickpea dish with toasted pine nuts and walnuts and some kind of creamy cheese sauce that pulled it all together alongside a tangy fava bean dish. the main course was a tomato and potato bake over a savory minced meat and a spicy lamb and green bean entree. there was italian wine and spanish wine and caroline came with sweedish green wine and there was conversation and more wine and then liquer soaked strawberries and cream. absolute heaven!

owen the museet curator



after spending the morning waiting around for DHL (who never came) and dealing with foreign shipping paperwork and navigating tourbus and cruiseship traffic to pick up pullups and other essentials we indulged in our last piece of rosemari's moka cake and went to the kube to check out janniche & her sister lilian's exhibit "stoppested jante" --a visual de-mystification of the scandanavian law of jante. they play with the grey area between sticking-your-neck-out and sticking-your-neck-in-the-sand and the result is a larger than life commentary that at the very least has owen dancing around monolith medalions and peeking through statues. there was also a mini-version of the scandanavian design in the milennium exhibit which i must confess felt a bit like a high end ikea showroom. the most fun for owen though was the rhythm 69 william morris/art nouveau exhibit. but i'll let owen show you around:






here's a loose captioning: after owen muses on the pictures,"those are sculptures mama" (we had just left the sculpture room) he does some counting and points out some cauliflowers i ask him which is his favorite and he runs up to a white floral print "cause there's flowers on it." he then quickly runs across the room and tells me "this is a button" pointing to a circle on the floor. owen then explains "when you push a button the pictures will turn red and when the pictures turn while there will be flowers." now if that isn't propaganda on why children SHOULD be allowed to run amok among art. . .

happy birthday america!

we celebrated sans fireworks but with a lovely bbq with some locals and their tots. owen had a great time drinking fizzy drinks, coloring with sidewalk chalk (he told me that janniche lived on "norwegian sesame street") and getting to know elias the norwegian tug boat in the wading pool. there was also a silly seagull who jumped into the potato salad and a gorgeous view of the water and the yellow schoolhouse. on the way home we ran into some of our other friends who invited us for dinner at their place on tuesday. so it goes, just when you make a new place your home it's time to return. perhaps that's a sign that you've earned the ticket back ;)


american as apple pie, norwegian as

jordbaer. . . grown locally here and so sweet they melt in your mouth. we've indulged in these sweets all week--we bought some from a little jordbaer stand out on our afternoon walk and then had a strawberry picnic. when michael and i had our anniversary date the featured dessert was pepper marinated strawberries with fresh mint and vanilla ice cream--which was nothing short of culinary ecstasy! and while we enjoyed a big bowl of fresh fish soup on our stop in ona, the chef made owen his own bowl of--strawberries and cream of course!



james the red engine and his spaghetti adventure

owen has become quite the reader, here he is telling HIS version of the story of james from the thomas the tank engine books (a reprint of the original 1948 The Railway Series set):