Alana’s Blog

I know it’s been a while since I posted anything but Lanie said something pretty funny tonight and I just had to post it!

Conversation heard while eating diner and watching the Pro Bowl:

Lanie: Do you know who I like in this football game?

David: Who do you like in this football game?

Lanie: Tony Romo.

David: Why do you like Tony Romo?

Lanie: Because he’s funny.

David: Why is he funny?

Lanie: Because he loses the ball.

Out of the mouths of babes……

Well, our planned trip out on the Viking ship had to be postponed due to bad weather. It has been rainy here for the past week…. actually the last month! Today on the news they said we only have had 3 days without rain in July! I am hoping August is a little sunnier. We have rescheduled the Viking ship trip for tomorrow, and as of right now the weather looks like it may cooperate. The sun actually came out around 10 pm tonight for a bit and the last weather forecast I saw just called for cloudy skies. On Thursday we will be traveling by bus and train to Trondheim. It is a larger city a bit north of here where some of our relatives and friends live. We are traveling up with our friends Jessika and Anna, and will be staying with my cousin, Else. We will be there for just under a week, and then will fly back to Alesund to spend our last week here before we return back to the states. Send lots of good weather thoughts our way!

I was going to try and post an update going through our trip day by day, but because that would be so time consuming I kept putting it off! So here is a shorter post to catch everyone up on what we have been doing. While my sister was here we kept very busy visiting friends and relatives, taking a day trip to some of the outlying islands, and climbing up the stairs to Fjellstua (directly translates as mountain living room), which is at the top of the mountain in the middle of town. Lanie walked about half way up by herself, but then my cousin, Anne, and her boyfriend, Ulf took turns carrying her on their shoulders the rest of the way up! She pretty much has everyone here wrapped around her little finger.

The Alesund Boat Festival was held that week as well, so we did spend some time there and discovered that Lanie likes the Norwegian food as much as I do! When David visited in ‘98, he wasn’t very fond of the Norwegian food with the exception of the polser and I wondered if it would be the same with Lanie, but the answer is a definite no, because she seems to like it all!

After my sister left, we spent a few days just relaxing and recovering from the busy week! We spent some time with our friends Jessika and Anna, letting the girls play and just hang out. On Friday we went to the aquarium here, which is one of the largest in Europe. Lanie loved watching the diver hand feed the fish and getting to feed the fish herself! Tomorrow we are hoping to go out ont he Viking ship at the Sunmore Museum as long as the weather isn’t too bad. We had a few days of sun and then it became overcast and rainy again.

That’s pretty much the highlights. We will be going to Trondheim the 1st week of August, so there should be more to post then!

Well I have been able to post pictures in the gallery. Not exactly the way I wanted to but there are some up now. Enjoy!

I have been trying to load some photos into the gallery but am having some issues with my uploads spontaneously aborting! If I can’t get them working soon, I may try to temporarily load the photos on to another site so everyone can see them.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

We decided for this trip we would go all out on a trip to the beautiful Geiranger Fjord. In the past, I have taken a series of buses and ferries to get to Geiranger, but have always wanted to take the Norwegian Hurtigruten, which does a cruise up and down the Norwegian coast. They come to Alesund and spend the day going into the Geiranger Fjord and then return to Alesund. So we were able to board the ship, the MS Trollfjord, in Alesund on Saturday morning and return back to town early that evening. Lanie absolutely loved being on a big ship. They had a small children’s play area which was able to keep her occupied some of the time, and she did nap for a while in the afternoon. I enjoyed taking pictures with my new camera of all the beautiful sights. Lanie’s Mormor and Kikishell were great keeping Lanie occupied much of the time on board so I could play with my new toy. I’ll try to get a few pictures posted ASAP so everyone can get a small taste of what we saw.

We had beautiful weather for the trip, with the exception of some strong winds when we were returning into Alesund. It was so good that we went ahead and went right away because for the rest of the week, the weather wasn’t very good.

July 6, 2007

We had wonderful weather for a first full day in Norway. The sun was shining and the temperature was in the upper 70s/low 80s. We ran a few errands and spent a little time in town with our friends Jessika and Anna before heading out to the beach at Volsdalsberga with my cousin, Anne. We had been there a few times on our last trip, but since hten they have trucked in sand, so the beach isn’t just all rocks. It made it much nice for walking in and playing in, but it also makes the water a bit dirty which made Lanie not want to actually swim in it. We were able to get her to jump off some rocks into some clear water away from the sand and she loved that, but the water was a bit on the chilly side so after a couple of times, she was ready to just go back to play in the sand and water. She kept trying to talk to the other kids to try and play with them but since she speaks English and they speak Norwegian the language barrier was a bit difficult to overcome. I think she may start seeing the benefit of speaking Norwegian though!

July 4-5, 2007

After our stay in the Flagship Lounge in Chicago, it was off to London. We flew in a 777 and the business class seats are about the size of first class seats in smaller planes. It was pretty comfortable and Lanie fell asleep before they even got us our dinner. She slept the whole flight until I attempted to wake her for some breakfast. That didn’t work too well, so it was probably only about a half hour before landing when she actually woke up. We had a few hours in London, most of which were spent walking across Heathrow Airport! Word of advice; if you ever have to fly through Heathrow make sure you wear your walking shoes and that you have at least a 2 hour layover if you have to make a connection! We made it to the British Airways Lounge and they had a children’s room with a TV and toys which kept Lanie occupied with her Mormor, while her aunt and I took a look around the airport shops. At first look, the prices seem great, but then when you have to double them (it’s about $2 to 1 pound), then it’s not such a good deal! Finally, our flight time came and we got on our 3rd flight of the trip. Again, Lanie slept pretty much the whole flight. We arrived in Oslo, and had to deal with passport control and customs, so we had to collect our luggage. It is neat here in Norway with the Duty Free shop because they have one right in the baggage claim area, and with your incoming international boarding pass you can take advantage of it. So we did a little shopping there while we waited for our bags. We then sailed through customs and made our way to the SAS desk to check our bags in for our final flight to Aalesund. Unfortunately, they are the only airline flying into Aalesund and because they are not a partner with American Airlines or British Airways they don’t care that we were traveling internationally, and only give us the domestic baggage allowance. With a little re-arranging we managed to get everything checked without any charges for additional luggage, unlike on our trip in 2005. We had a few hours layover in Oslo, but after dealing with customs, rechecking bags, and getting Lanie something to eat (polser, of course) we didn’t have too much time left before we were able to board the plane. Unlike the other flights, Lanie was wide awake for this one, while I was so tired that I had a hard time keeping my eyes open! Of course, Lanie helped make sure I did!

Once we got in to Aalesund, we collected our bags. After I had gotten all of the bags off the conveyor belt I went to get the carts and my backpack (which had all of my money, passports, etc), and it was missing! I was about to come completely unglued, thinking someone had stolen it, when we saw Lanie standing by the conveyor belt which was still going around (at one point the items enter through a opening in the wall, and go around into another opening). She was grinning and at that moment I saw my backpack coming out the other side! Lanie thought it would be fun to put Mommy’s backpack on the conveyor belt and watch it go around! Needless to say, I was relieved and infuriated all at the same time! After that, we made our way out of the terminal and to the bus that took us into the city (the airport is on one of the many islands around Aalesund, and the bus has to go through tunnels that go under the sea to get from island to island). The bus stops right near my cousin’s apartment, where Lanie and I will be staying for our time here. She came down to help with our luggage and we finally were able just to relax a bit after a very long trip!

The other day we were driving to one of our relative’s homes for dinner, and Lanie’s aunt, known to all as Kikishell, asked Lanie in Norwegian “Do you understand what I am saying?” to which Lanie responded, “Jeg snakker Norsk!” That translates as “I speak Norwegian!” At the time we had been here 5 days. She is catching on very fast. It is fun to hear her using new words and phrases. Lanie will be looking at the things around her and just start asking what the names of everything are in Norwegian. It will be so fun to see how much she learns in the next 4 weeks!

Well, we are on our way to Norway! We left today out of DFW at 1:00 p.m. and will get to my mother’s hometown, Alesund, tomorrow around 8 pm local time. It will take over 24 hours of traveling! So far, Lanie is doing well, but the wait here in Chicago is annoying her quite a bit. She just wants to get on the plane! She slept most of the way to Chicago, but didn’t get as long of a nap as she usually does so I would have to say she is a bit on the cranky side, but overall doing very well. We are spending our 5 hour layover in Chicago in the Flagship Lounge which is for First Class travelers (no, we are not in first class, but my mother and sister are, so we were able to come in as their guest. It is a nice place to wait but a bit on the snobbish side. We were told when we came in that we would need to make sure we kept Lanie quiet or we would have to leave! They do have food and adult beverages so we’ll put up with the snobbery! It is very nice having two other people here helping keep Lanie occupied, especially when she won’t listen to me she will usually listen to one of them!

Anyway, I will post again when I have an internet connection and when I start taking some pictures I will get them posted as well!

I just remembered something Lanie said the other day that really made me laugh. We went to her doctor for a visit and they wanted to collect a urine sample. Since getting her to pee in a cup isn’t really possible, they put a urine collection bag on her and we sat there waiting to see if she would produce a sample. She wasn’t really happy about it and kept asking me, “Why is there a bandaid on my butt!?!” I could not keep from laughing!

Lately the posts I have made have just been things happening at the moment and I haven’t really kept up with things we have been doing, so I thought I would do one post to catch up the past several months.

October 2006 - Lanie went to the Texas State Fair this year with Mommy, Papa King, and Mormor. Daddy had to work and couldn’t make it this year. Later in the month, we went to visit a local pumpkin patch with our friends, the Harrells (Cherly, Chris and Rachel). Lanie had a blast seeing all of the pumpkins and riding in the wagon. At the end of the month, we had a visit from Papa Pat, and celebrated Halloween with him here. Lanie was the Little Mermaid for Halloween, and she went trick or treating with her friend Rachel, who was Cinderella. A lot of candy was received and quickly hidden and is still being rationed out now in February!

November 2006 - This was a pretty quiet month for us. We celebrated Thanksgiving in our new home with Mormor, Papa, and Kikishell.

December 2006 - Always a busy time with the holidays, this month was no different. Early in the month we had a brief but wonderful visit with our friends Rylee and Cassy who were visiting from Kuwait. It was nice to see them again, even if for just a short time. We celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas morning in our new home. Lanie was on major sensory overload when she was opening presents on Christmas Eve, so we held some over to be opened on Christmas Day along with all of the presents she got from Santa! If you look at the pictures, you can see that Lanie had a very bountiful Christmas!

January 2007 - We took a fun family trip with the Harrells to Taos New Mexico. We had a great time snowmobiling and playing in the snow. Lanie loved the snow and still asks if she can go play in the snow. There are some great pictures from the trip, including some of Lanie asleep on the snowmobile! Later in the month, I took Lanie to the Stock Show with the Harrells. She went on her first pony ride! She loved it, and loved seeing the animals and riding the rides. We will definitely have to make visits to the snow and stock show annual events!

February 2007 - As you can tell from the previous post, much of this month has been spent dealing with Lanie being sick. Hopefully, she will get through it soon and we can get back to doing all kinds of fun things with her!

That’s at least a brief overview of what we have been up to, and I will be working on getting the rest of the pictures up so you can see it all too!

Lanie has been under the weather the past couple weeks. Two weeks ago, she was running fever and coughing, then last week she was diagnosed with ear infections, and then this past weekend has had a bad stomach virus. So we have had two visits to her doctor and two visits to Urgent Care in the past two weeks. Right now, she seems to be doing better and, hopefully, will be fever free today and well enough to go to Sarah’s tomorrow. There is nothing worse than when Lanie is sick and I feel so powerless to help her feel better.

Last night, Lanie brought in a movie and told me she wanted to watch it. I told her that it was “Mulan.” Then, Lanie told us,”I want to watch ‘Mow the Lawn!” Kids really do say the darndest things. The whole way home tonight Lanie was telling me she wanted to watch “Mow the Lawn.” So, if Lanie ever asks you to watch you do yardwork, you know what she is really asking.

A couple of weeks ago my computer went on the blink. I was afraid I might have lost all of my photos, especially after what had happened with the laptop on New Year’s Eve. Well, David was able to back-up all of my pictures and other important things, but we still cannot get my computer to boot up properly. So, when we finally figure out what is going on and get it up and running, I will definitely post recent photos, including some of Lanie swimming. It really is a sight to see!

Other than the computer issues, things are going fairly well here. David made it through another round of lay-offs at his company, but is now in a different position. He really liked the position he was in, so we will have to see how things go. I am actually enjoying my new job a lot more than I thought I would and seriously considering continuing in this position beyond this school year. I think I may be much more suited to this than either of my prior teaching positions.

And as for Lanie, the one you all come here to read about, she is doing great! She continues to amaze us on a daily basis with the things she says and does. She is definitely two, and makes sure we know that every day. There is a lot of saying “NO” and “It’s not fair!”, which are probably her two favorit things to say right now. We are still dealing with her crawling into bed with us every night in the middle of the night. Neither one of us wants to get out of bed to put her back in hers, and I think we both kind of like her being there to tell you the truth. We’ve tried to start potty training, but Lanie really isn’t interested yet, so we will just give it time. I guess since she seems to be doing everything else ahead of what is expected, we can let her slide on this one thing for a while!

I will try to post more later and hopefully my computer will be up and running soon so I can post those pictures!

Well, when we decided to get a swimming pool, I was a bit apprehensive just because of the safety issues with Lanie. So, I made sure I put her in swim lessons this summer to at least get her started on skills to stay safe in the water. Well, now we have a little mermaid on our hands. She would love to LIVE in the water. Of course, Little Mermaid and Little Mermaid II are her favorite movies and for halloween she is going to be, yes, you guessed it, a mermaid! She amazes me with how well she can swim and how fearless she is in the water. She will dive in from the side and swim across the the other side. Now, she still hasn’t figured out how to get her head out of the water while she is swimming, so she can only go as far as she can hold her breath! SHe swims with her eyes open underwater, and can change direction and maneuver around pretty well. One of the tricks she likes to do is to sit on the beach entry with her back to the water, and then lean back to “fall” into the pool backwards. She gets herself all turned around and pulls herself out of the water. It is quite a sight to see her in the pool.

Most mornings when she wakes up, one of the first things she will say is “I’m going to go in the swimming pool?” And, she has been in the pool several times each week since it was finished. Now, I wonder what we are going to do with her when it gets to cold to be in the pool! She is NOT going to like that!

Lately, there has been very little sleep being gotten in this house. The main reason being that Lanie is having a hard time sleeping through the night and staying in her room. A few weeks ago she discovered that she could climb out of her crib (she actually had done it a few times about a year ago, but I guess didn’t feel confident enough to do it consistently). She started doing this and coming out of her room so we put a gate up at her door. Then she found various ways to climb over the gate, first using various items from her room as stairs, and then just figuring a way to climb over it all by herself. She is very creative and is using it to her advantage! We did convert her crib to a toddler bed because we were worried she would hurt herself and because it was just time to do it. We have abandoned the gate on her door as it just doesn’t seem to help, but use it on the stairs as a precautionary measure. So now it is very easy for Lanie to crawl out of bed in the middle of the night, usually several times, to come into our bedroom and want to sleep with us. I try to stand firm and just return her to her bed, but sometimes I am just too tired! Especially after usually having to go through 30 minutes to an hour of putting her back in her bed just to get her to sleep in the first place. ANd she knows all the tricks… wanting me to rock with her… wanting me to read to her…. telling me she missed me…. the list goes on and on. I am afraid, very afraid, of how intelligent and manipulative she can be! I’m hoping once we get back on a regular schedule during the day things will calm down at night, but right now I just need some sleep!

Tell me this is just a phase…. please…..

Well, so much for keeping up with the blog over the summer! I can’t believe there are only two and a half more weeks until I have to go back to school and not be with Lanie all day! I have really enjoyed spending so much time with her and we have had a lot of fun. We haven’t done nearly as many things as I had hoped or planned, but you know all those things about best laid plans! I’ll try and catch everyone up on a bit of what we have done this summer.

The first few weeks of the summer we had our friends Cassy and Rylee staying with us before they left for Kuwait. It was nice to get to spend time with them before they left. Lanie enjoyed having someone around to play with, even if it did seem that they fought and got on each others nerves a lot! We spent a lot of time at the community pool and took the girls to their first Texas Rangers baseball game! It was sad to say goodbye to them at the end of June, but we will get to seem them sometime around Christmas, so we tried to say see you later instead of goodbye!

Lanie started learning to swim this summer! She took two weeks of swim lessons at the community pool, and her instructor has been doing some private lessons with her in our pool this past week. Yes, our pool finally did open the weekend before the 4th of July and we have spent a LOT of time in it! Lanie loves the water and is doing very well in her lessons. She will put her head underwater on her own, and “swims” underwater (being directed but kicking herself toward the edge). We are very proud of her!

We are still working on getting settled in to the new house and there are still a lot of boxes around. I hurt my foot at the beginning of the summer and that hasn’t helped matters. It’s still hurting quite a bit and I finally broke down and went to a podiatrist this week. One of the most exciting things for me personally this summer was that I had LASIK surgery last Friday, and it is truly amazing. I can see as well now as I ever have in contacts! I am so glad that I finally went ahead and did it!

As for the rest of the summer, it will be packed with things to do. We are hoping to get a lot more done around the house so we can have a get together here for David’s birthday. Lanie and I are going to visit family in Sacramento next week, and are very excited about that. Then it will only be one more week after that until I return to work. I am still not exactly sure what school I will be at (long story), but I hope they are able to place me somewhere that I will be as happy as I was this past year!

I have started updating Lanie’s pictures, but still have a bit to do, and am not making any promises as to when it will get done! Keep checking back and I will get them up as fast as I can!

I know I have been really bad about posting on Lanie’s blog here in the past few months, but hopefully there will be a lot of new posts over the summer while I am home for summer vacation! YEAH! This has to be the absolute best part about being a teacher: getting to spend this hole chunk of time with Lanie!

So much has gone on in the last couple of months but I will try to give you all the short version to catch you up. Lanie turned 2 in April and had a butterfly themed birthday party with just a few close friends and family. We had a good time and I have some great pictures of David beating the pinata that refused to die! I took Lanie to have her two year pictures the day after her birthday, and am posting those in the gallery. She is getting so big and looking more and more like a little girl instead of a baby.

Lanie’s vocabulary has been growing rapidly and she amazes us every day with the things she can say. She will hear you say something and at some point in the future will pull it out, generally in an appropriate context, which is just amazing to me! She knows a lot of her colors, can count almost to 20, and sings the ABC song with very few mistakes! Since moving into the new house, she has learned to go up and down the stairs with ease.

Speaking of the new house, we moved in the 1st weekend in April and are still unpacking lots of boxes. We have a contract (and a backup if the first falls through) on the old house finally, so it should close by the end of this month. They are working on the swimming pool as I type, and hopefully it will also be done by the end of this month, considering it was supposed to be done by June 12!

Anyway, that is the short version of things going on around here, and I will try to be better about posting more during the summer and getting her pictures up to date!

We have had a good and very busy Spring Break. I have had to do a lot of things in preparation for the upcoming closing and move into our new house, along with still trying to get our current house sold. We had a contract on it earlier this week, but the people flaked and withdrew their contract. So, still waiting for the right people to buy this house.

It has been so nice this week to be home with Lanie. She is so much fun to be around. Right now, she loves for you to sing to her so she can sing along. I am trying to get video clips of her doing it, but she gets camera shy! The cutest thing is listening to her sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” She knows most of the words and it is just adorable. I wish everyone could be here to see it. She is also making longer sentences. Earlier this week she said a five word sentence: “Look at Lanie wearing boots.” It was very cute. Lately, all she wants to wear on her feet are her boots! We got to spend some time with some of her friends this week, we went to the park and had fun, and just got to spend some quality time together. I know I will miss it when I go back to work on Monday. I just have to remember that we only have about 10 more weeks of school until summer vacation!

I have posted the October, November, and December pictures and right now am loading a folder with all of the video clips. For some reason when I posted November they loaded just fine, btu then with December the video clips didn’t upload at all. So I decided just to create a separate album just for those. I hope you all are enjoying those as much as I do. Hoepfully I will get January and February pictures loaded before I go back to school on Monday.