Monday...

Well, it was supposed to be a productive day...but...

We discovered this morning that the tax office was closed today, luckily before we trekked over, so today was a no-go on doing our residence paperwork again. We will try tomorrow. Spencer was at work most of the day, so the kids and I hung out here at the apartment, but then decided to venture out on a walk with the intention of walking over to the 3 swords statue area. It is about a mile walk and we started off and I was just hoping I was going the right direction...(for those of you who know me...I am NOT direction-minded, LOL) The good and bad...we didn't make it there, mostly because I was afraid I was on the wrong road so we turned back, but the good news, I was on the right road and if we had just rounded a corner, we would have been there! So, next time, we will go the distance!

After our walk, we came back and made lunch - PBJ for Brendan and grilled cheese for me and Kyla! A very traditional American lunch if I do say so myself :)

Spencer came home a little early with the intention of going to the bank to do our first wire transfer...ha, that was not to be either, so we were batting zero on the chores! We drove into Stavanger and parked, headed to the bank, and yep, you guessed it, summer hours...closed early...so alas, another chore for tomorrow! Since we were there, we went ahead and walked around the harbor area some more and visited a very old church right in city center called Stavanger Domkirke, a medieval stone cathedral that still holds services. It has a beautiful full wall of stained glass and huge wooden doors - gorgeous! We wandered around the cobblestone streets and enjoyed another day of beautiful weather. In one area there were some little children feeding pigeons and it was so fun to watch them - they were giggling and laughing and Brendan and Kyla joined in. At one point, a pigeon landed on this little boy's (maybe about age 2) head and it was hilarious to watch him!

After we left the city center, I had my first driving experience and it wasn't so bad...now if I can just learn the streets...! We stopped at a grocery store called Helgo that had been recommended by the folks we met at church. It was by far the best of the 3 grocery stores we have been to as far as selection. Spencer was able to get a couple beers and we found chili beans and purchased stuff to make soft tacos and various other things - all of which fit in a hand-held plastic basket! That little trip to the store only cost us 460,57 NOK which is about $75-$80 in the US.

From there I continued to drive us home. We dropped of the groceries and drove over to the 3 Swords to climb around a bit. The kids put their feet in the water and found some little crabs and some mussel shells.

We then came home to cook some dinnner - but, that ended up not so great either...technical difficulties with the stovetop...so we spent the next hour using Google Translate (thank goodness for this handy little internet feature!) to translate the manual only to figure out later that the problem was the pan we were trying to use...can't use aluminum on this kind of stovetop - go figure! In the meantime, I was improvising dinner for the kids - definitely not gourmet, but we managed. And, now we know which pan is a no-go!

Funny thing I feel the need to mention today...the men here all wear man-capris...I guess I should take a photo for you to see...I asked Spencer and Dan (our neighbor) if they were going to get in on the fashion statement and you can guess what their reply was!

Anyway, that's all for today!