Mercedes Bus

I thought it was odd that some of the taxis here and in Holland were Mercedes. But this one surprised me even more. A Mercedes Bus!

(at the bottom of the black window is a merc logo!)

Socks that don't slip

We have stairs in our new house. Three stories. The kids are going up and down constantly. It's a baby gate nightmare (for upcoming baby van der Horst). But the girls have it down except for a slip here and there. Aunt Kelly heard about this and took action to help the girls become slip proof. She sent us some wonderful animal socks with rubber spots on the bottom to prevent slipping. The girls love them:

MJ's first School Play

MJ was in her first school play. It was a variety of Nursury Rhymes such as Little Bo Peep, Old King Cole, and Humpty Dumpty. At first they made her a sheep (little bo peep) and she refused. Not sure why. But she was very interested in being a knight (humpty dumpty). She looked adorable.

At home ready to head to school for her big debut...

Kingsman (knight) MJ and Humpty Dumpty and two other Kingsman. Needless to say the kid playing Humpty was not harmed in any way during this production ; )

Who knew beds were different here

So we hired some housekeepers here. Sisters from Poland. Very nice and they did a good job so far. Only they weren't exactly sure what to do with the 2 sheets and comforter to make the beds. This is MJ's bed. Bottom fitted sheet put on correctly. Top sheet they told me they have never seen before, and even though I told them it went between the comforter and bottom sheet they still didn't seem to know what to do with it. The green comforter is a standard twin comforter. The monkies are supposed to go at the bottom. But instead they tri-folded it and put it on sideways. And then that's the top sheet folded on top. Interesting.

Petroleum Playground

They have a petroleum museum here. Outside of that is a playground made of old oil and gas equipment. We went on Tuesday with a group of other kids/moms. Here are the girls enjoying their snack, and MJ on something that makes Mark Jan very excited that she could be a drilling engineer one day!

Overboard on the trash sorting/recycling

So there are places by shops that you can dispose of various items that aren't your usual paper, plastic, food waste, etc. Here is a picture of one of these places. I'll translate some of the words for you after the pic...

Medisiner = Medicine

Sigaretter = Cigarettes

Barberblad = razors

Nicotinell = no translation but best we can guess is something to do with nicotine (although they've covered cigarettes, snuff, and dip with other listings...hmmm?

Tobakk = Tobacco like dip

Snus = snuff (i thought snuff and dip were the same but oh well)
Kondomer = condoms...yes condoms....what?!?!?!?!

The condoms is what I call a bit overboard. weird! I makes me start thinking of people having separate bins in their house for these. and then they have to save them up to make it worth the trip to this place. weird weird weird. and....awkward maybe. haha

Mexican Food

First time having Mexican food in Norway. Needless to say I had to make it myself. Avacados are kind of expensive but they were worth it!

Funny Car

So here is something amusing that I saw while going to the grocery store. Don't see these much in the US. It seems to be electric too!

Benders Landing Friends Cookbook

So there are lots of yummy recipes in my awesome Benders Landing Friends Cookbook. This is a cookbook that my friends put together for me since they knew eating out here was so expensive. and it is. very.
So far I've made lots of recipes, some more than once. Here are a few that I've made:


Misty Odenweller's Chicken Noodle Casserole


Kelly Reeves' Chicken Spaghetti
>

Mary Beth Bill's Chicken and Rice
>

Robin Vieau's White Chicken Chilli
>

Debbie Shaw's Poppy Seed Chicken
>

Rebecca Harlow's King Ranch Chicken
>

Misty Odenweller's Chicken Tetrazzini
>

Food in Norway

So here is one thing I found here that I've never seen in the US. I'm going to find a reason to use these though, I think they're pretty cool!

Capella Indoor Play Area

So we found this indoor play area. It's kind of expensive at $13/hr/child, but it got us out of the house and the kids had fun. It's pretty big. Most of the time I couldn't even see the kids as they were on the second level, so I took this video while they were near me.

Snow in Norway

Here are some videos of the snow that I took with my phone this morning before we headed out to the house to play (hopefully you can make out the snow falling). And one cute pic of the girls in their getup...

Snow Play Day

Today we had some snow. So we bundled the girls up, headed to our house (still empty since we are waiting on our stuff to arrive) and played around in the backyard with snowballs and a snowman.

The jumpsuits that the girls are wearing are very typical here. MJ will need to have one at school that will stay there along with a pair of boots so that when they go outside to play (for about 2 hours regardless of the weather) they are protected from the elements and dirt (there is a sand box there). The girls were able to put them on and off mostly by themselves needing a bit of help here and there.
Mark forgot gloves, but he said it wasn't too bad. The girls didn't complain about the cold, they seemed to have an awesome time.

Driving in Norway

So yesterday, day six, I almost got into my first car accident... With a huge truck. And again with a bus. Some rules here are different. Regarding the bus, if he is stopped and has picked up passengers and is ready to go, he puts on his blinker and he has the right of way. So I wasn't looking for that and almost got hit when he pulled out in front of me. Luckily I was far enough behind. The worse one involves a yield to the right rule. Unless there is a yellow diamond sign posted on the road, then I, going straight, must yield to any person at an intersection on my right. Whether its a 4 way or 3 way (T intersection) I have to yield to the guy on the right. But I have no stop sign or yield sign! And this applies in parking lots as well! You have to constantly be thinking about it. I was by the mall and wasn't thinking about it and almost got T-boned by a truck on my right. When I saw him going I realized I should be stopping. But thank God he realized I wasn't paying attention because he stopped and waved me on. I was so freaked out! I pay a bit better attention now though!

Car shopping

So we went shopping for a car today. It's a bit different here. Different doesn't mean bad, just different.

1) First dealership we went to, we walked up to a guy. He claimed he was the used car guy and he would find a new car guy for us. About 12 minutes later, we still were standing around with no help. In the US I would have been verbally attacked by 4 or 5 guys by then.

2) At the second dealership we got a bit more serious, picked a car and started talking car loans. In the US, the more years you get a loan for, the less the interest rate. Not here. The more years you take, the less the interest rate is?? huh?!

3) Same dealership, same car loan conversation. In the US, the interest rate usually doesn't have to do with how much you put down on the car. Here, the more you put down, the higher your interest rate goes?? huh?!

I'm baffled by 2 and 3. Two components, loan term and down payment, determine the rate. We can't play around with it at home. I'm going to have to sit there and play with the numbers at the dealership to figure out the best deal. I am not prepared for this.

Again, not bad, just different. This could end up working to our advantage. We'll see!

MJ has the gift

Those who know me well know that I have a useless gift about movies/tv and actors. Well it looks like MJ had it to. We are watching how I met your mother and out of the blue she says "hey that's the guy from the smurfs". Niel Patrick Harris...I'm so proud

En Garde!

We went to McDonald's yesterday. It was 255 NOK which is $44 for 2 burger meals and 2 happy meals. It's going to take a bit to get used to that! The only reason we ate out is because we weren't going home for a few hours and all of us were starving. Figured it was the least expensive option. I haven't eaten at MickyD's in like 5 years. The up side was the happy meal toys were a lot better than in the states. They were 5 in tall Puss n Boots figures with swords. The girls liked playing with them.

MJ: "en garde"

Reese: "en garde too"

Blog Resumed...

Well here we are again. I've decided with our recent move to Norway to try and resume the Familie van der Horst blog...

Today is Mark's first day of work. Since we only have one car and I didn't fall asleep until 3 am (jet lag) we decided Mark could take the car and me and the girls would stay home. At first I thought, awesome, vacation day. But then I realized we had a lot of laundry to do. It's not a lot for home, but it's a lot here when the washer is so small each load at home is at least two here. I better get used to doing laundry everyday or something. *sigh*. oh well, such is life. We also need to go to the store today as we haven't really done that yet and I have to cook dinner tonight. already this is a huge change for me since it hasn't been that long since I quit work. laundry, dinner, grocery shopping! Having Jacki around spoiled me big time. Another thing on the list is to get a cell phone. I feel so useless without one. It took us ages to get somewhere yesterday because we didn't have my handy dandy interactive map on my iPhone.

Well overall, we are all doing well, and day 2 looks to be pretty uneventful, which is ok cause we are all tired. For future reference, feel free to comment on posts (if they are interesting enough), and hopefully this will give all our friends and loved ones a one stop shop to see what we are up to over here.

Oh yeah, one thing we need to get used to are the prices. Mark did one quick shopping trip for bread, milk, lunch meat, juice, toilet paper, and maybe one or two other items. it was $100. oh man. That cost of living increase is going to get used 100%!

Lisa