What happened next...?? 2011 in pictures....

Oh, I guess it's been a while.... I'm not sure anyone comes "in" here anymore, but that's ok. I will do a quickish (or probably very looong) post about what's been going on since my last post just because I like to look back on my blog to see what and when we've done things... like a diary.... so I guess this post is kind of just for keeping the continuity of the "story" going.... (mostly for myself). I'll try to keep it short....;)

APRIL:

Just after buying the house here in Norway, we finally managed to sell our house in Scotland. So in April we took a trip over the pond to make our Scottish house ready for the new owners. It was a while since we visited last, so the grass really needed cutting.... I think hubby struggled a bit...

The girls really enjoyed beeing back in Scotland, especially Maja Siobhan, who miss Scotland, the house and her Scottish friends a lot.

We had a lovely "last" weekend in our house in Armadale/Bathgate, and we had some lovely years in Scotland, so it was very sad to say goodbye to our house....

Spring is a very nice time in Scotland.... just look at this marvellous tree....

MAY:

Packing everything in boxes.... need I say more....??

....and then unpacking the boxes....

Our new house has a loooovely garden, a huge decking and a couple of trees too many... I wanted these two trees to be taken down because they made the entrance to our decking too narrow...

... so my dad (with good help from Susie) helped us with our tree problem....

... it looks sooooo much better now don't you think....

My mother brought a couple of berry bushes... red currants and blueberries. I planted them behind the house in one of the already existing vegetable patches...

JUNE:

At the end of June we bought a new car. We got the car just in time for our holiday. And when I say just in time, I mean JUST in time... we only had a few hours to spare before the ferry left for Denmark.... It was nice to try out the new car right away.... driving through Denmark to Germany, where we, after a couple of days on our own, met up with my parents and their camper van. The girls and my parents slept inside the van, while hubby and I slept on an airbed in the front tent. Worked out great!

We had a great couple of weeks together, enjoying camping life, and especially the pool...

JULY:

Mid July, my mum and dad treated the whole family, incl. my brother, to a week in Rhodes, Greece. You'd think we'd had enough of each other during our camping trip... a few of our friends thought we were crazy spending almost all summer with my parents... lol... but you can't really say no to a free trip abroad.

The hotel was very nice. This is the view from our balcony....We spent quite a few hours in or around that pool. Thank you mum and dad for an absolutely lovely holiday!

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Well, back home we had some work waiting for us... When we bought the house it came with a very nice, big play house in the garden. But the colour was all wrong, so we decided to paint it the same colour as the house. This is (almost) what it looked like before (hubby has started sanding the walls and putting up new window sills.)

....and here Maja is putting the final touches to her (and Susie's) house. Looks goooood:)

AUGUST:

You didn't think that was all the travelling we did this year, did you?? Well, if you did, you were wrong... Early August, the girls and I went to the north of Norway. I was invited to my cousins wedding. Hubby was working, and I couldn't get anyone to look after the girls while I went up north, so I brought them with me. Since they weren't really invited to the wedding (I could bring them if I was really stuck), I got my aunt to pick them up from the airport outside Harstad and take them home with her, while I took the bus a few hours further north... I was a bit concerned how the girls would take being stuck with my aunt that they don't know very well while I left, but I shouldn't have worried. She has a small, very cute dog, and that did the trick... lol...

After the wedding, I managed to visit my uncle for his 50'th birthday. He lives halfway between my aunt and the wedding place. And then I spent a few days with my aunt, her dog and the girls before we flew back home.

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A few days after coming back home, we started doing up a room in our basement. Hubby has always wanted a bar at home, and we thought this room would be good....The bar will go in the left side of the top picture, and the sofa, beneath the window in the picture below... nice??Everyone is helping out...

SEPTEMBER:

After closing the cracks in the walls and painting them, hubby started laying down a new floor.

And this is how far we had come when the pressure in our central heater became too high and flooded the room with water....We had to take everything out, rip up the floor, leave the floor boards to dry and do it all over again... Hubby was not happy, and he has now cut the pipes from the central heating so they won't flood this room if the pressure gets too high again....

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Maja also participated in her first riding contest this month. She was riding Lille Sky. Sooo much fun!

OCTOBER:

We're not quite finished travelling yet. We spent the autumn holidays at my parents cabin. During the first weekend, there was a market there with lots of little booths selling crafts. There were also different activities to participate in. One of them being stacking the most soda crates on top of each other.... Maja, being the daredevil she is, wanted to try this out... She came 2nd with 23 crates on top of each other... (She's crazy... lol...)

We also had time for some fishing.... the weather being quite wet didn't stop us. We didn't get any fish though.

October was also the month we, or rather Maja, got a pet. The sweetest, kindest hamster you've ever seen. He's called Dott.

We also finished the bar in October! This is what it looks like now when we've "moved in". Do you recognize the room?? We're so pleased with how it turned out, and we've spent quite a few evenings down there.

We got a sofa bed from one of my mum's friends, that we put in the bar as well, so now we can have people staying over. I think this is the only bar I know where you're not just allowed to sleep in the bar, but encouraged to do so too... lol...

NOVEMBER:

November came, and went without much more to say about that...

DECEMBER:
We had a sad ending to the year as my dear mother in law passed away. She was such a good person, always smiling and joking, and always putting other people before herself. We will miss you sooo much, Magda.

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Well, life must go on, and Christmas is waiting for no one. We chopped our Christmas tree in our own garden this year! If you scroll back up and look at the photo of the vegetable patch with the berry bushes, you can see this tree in the background...

I guess that's about it... well, at least the bits I could remember....

Finally: Happy New Year to all of you from the four of us!

Ok, so this wasn't really a shortish post... If you're still here, thanks for looking:)