Men in black!

Jón Birgir, his father Tommi, his brother Bergur and their father Jónsi in the back. Here are all of the confirmation pictures.

Another set of cousins

Kristín Lára and Guðrún Margrét at the confirmation reception.

Cousins

Sólveig Lilja and I went to the church for Jón Birgir's confirmation. She got dressed up in her national costume and looked very pretty.

Jón Birgir confirmed

The girls and I went to Jón Birgir's confirmation yesterday. This was taken in the church.

Cautious Kristín Lára

Yesterday the girls and I went to Jón Birgir's confirmation. Kristín Lára is always very cautious with people but she didn't hesitate to go to her cousin Tóti and give him a hug!

Kristín Lára - judo

Kristín Lára got given a judo suite yesterday and it was a happy little girl who went to her judo class yesterday afternoon. Here are some more pictures of her.

Christmas decorations

The window is Píla's place (or one of them). It took her a couple of days to accept the crap that I put there but now she's OK with it as you can see.

Toothless tinker

Sólveig Lilja has lost two of her baby teeth already, the first one a few weeks ago and the second one on Friday. And the first two of her adult molars are coming up. She's growing up, our little girl. She's changed a lot as well, she's always been a bit cheeky and sometimes quite naughty but now she's changed into a very good little girl, she's very protective of her sister, looks after her and takes care of her and she tries to make sure no one is left out. She's still no angel but she's changed.

Kristín Lára however is still a little bully towards her sister, but like she said the other day, she is trying to do better.

Sólveig Lilja 5

Sólveig Lilja is five years old today. She woke up early, 6 o'clock. I took the afternoon off and prepared for the party. She had invited three of her friends and the family of course. I think they all had fun but she was very, very tired when they'd all gone, and was in bed not long after seven o'clock. Here are more pictures from today.

Poses

Took a few pictures of Kristín Lára the other day. Some of them are very good, but this one is my favourite. Here's the rest.

Silver - or even gold!

The semi finals were yesterday and first France beat Croatia, with two or three goal. Then it was Iceland and Spain. After seeing France play two days earlier, I knew that they have a fantastic team, but they never stood a chance against Iceland yesterday. We beat them 36:30 and we are in the finals, playing for the gold tomorrow morning! The boys cried and a lot of people cried with them. That is fantastic and you bet I'm watching that game!

Heiða called me on msn yesterday, they are coming here on Thursday. I'm looking very much forward to seeing her and having her here for a bit. Unfortunately, they are going back on Friday again.

I have managed to sell three of my school books the other night and that made me a few pennies. Which is very good, even better is that I don't have to buy a book for this last course.

Handball

I watched the Icelandic handball team play Poland in the quarter-finals in the Olympics this morning. The girls watched some of it with me, Sólveig Lilja stated that I wasn't supposed to shout so much but I told her that under the circumstances it was allowed to shout. Why? Yes, a medal was at stake and we still have a chance of getting one! Which is not bad, for a nation of this size. We will play either South-Korea or Spain in the semi-finals, on Friday.

Sólveig Lilja didn't get into it at all but Kristín Lára was starting to! But I bet they'd both rather be watching the Teletubbies!

The morning snuggle

Kristín Lára usually wakes up way before her sister. If Píla is in here when Kristín Lára comes down stairs, they have a sit down and snuggle on the sofa. Here they are having their morning snuggle, both seem very happy with life.

Anna has left

Anna, our RES exchange student, left this morning. She'll still stay for three weeks in the country, first one in Reykjavík and then two in the West Fjords. Then she's off to the States again.

It's been a real pleasure to have her with us. Sólveig Lilja got the choice of two girls and she picked Anna and she couldn't have made a better choice. I took these two pictures this morning before we dropped her off to school where a bus waited to take them to the airport.

On the farm with Anna

The girls and I took Anna to the farm on Saturday. It was quite wet but we still took her down to the waterfall - and we got wet of course! Here are more pictures.

Kristín Lára's birthday

We had a little birthday party for Kristín Lára on her birthday on the 30th of June. Here's a picture since then, Jón Birgir had to help her blow out the candles.

Anna

Like last year, we took in a RES student for just under a month. Her name is Anna, she's from Irvine, California, and she seems to fit in well with the family. She came to us last Saturday and the girls immediately adopted her as can be seen in this picture.

Happy birthday

It's Bob's birthday today. Happy birthday sweetheart. We got him a book, Njála (one of the Icelandic sagas) in English, and then we made him a birthday cake.

Back home

We came back home from England yesterday. We went there on Saturday 3rd and stayed in a cottage on Ford Street for a week. "Auntie Pammy" (Bob's sister Pam) came back with us and she is staying for a week with us here in Akureyri.

We had a good week, we did some shopping, mostly clothes for the girls, picked up some goods that we'd ordered from Amazon and had sent to Pam, and did some sight seeing. The weather was fantastic, mostly around 20°C but on Saturday when we drove back to Stansted, it was 26 or 27°C! Then we came back to the wind and rain in Keflavík with it's 7°C. Quite some change.

We went to the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, it was OK but not much more than that. I think it can be done so much better and hopefully they will. Then we went to Paignton Zoo which was very nice. We saw lions, elephants, monkeys, birds and a lot of things. Rode on a little train and Sólveig Lilja put her hand on a stinging nettle and she didn't like that one bit! We walked around Tavistock a bit, they played in the Meadows and let out some steam. The last day we were there, we went to Trago Mills, where most of the attractions were closed but we got to see the model trains and that was really fantastic.

Right now I'm uploading pictures to a Tavistock album on Picasa.

Feeding time at the zoo!

Sunday lunch just finished, see pictures!