Kaleb woke his friends up early this morning so they could finish up whatever electronic game they were playing last night when Kory told them to quit and go to bed. I don’t think his friend’s were too happy with their early wake up call, based on the sour faces I encountered at the breakfast table. I made fresh scones for breakfast, and yet again, faced the “acquired taste” problem and neither Daniel or Andre would eat one, after tasting just a nibble – even covered with strawberry jam. At least I tried. Kaleb appreciated them anyway. I think Andre might lose weight when he’s with us for three weeks this summer. I keep telling him he has to learn to try American food, but he just smiles and says, “Taco Bell,” like that’s all he’s going to eat when he’s in the U.S.. Maybe it will be. I know I find great delight in fresh bread and white cheese when I’m here, so I can’t really fault him if he finds something he likes and sticks with it.
We had a big discussion about which church to attend today because we have yet to go to Philadelphia, where both Daniel and Andre attend, but they didn’t want to go to church at all. Kaleb wanted to take them to Agape since he gets extra points for bringing a friend and he was looking forward to a little prize today if he brought two friends, but we couldn’t get them to agree to go there, either. Finally I called Daniel’s mom to say we’d bring him home before church but she said he needed to go, so she was the one that decided for us all. We went to Philadelphia. The boys sat up in the loft and we didn’t hear a peep out of them so I’m sure there were some electronics involved in their Christian teaching today. Hmm.
Kory stayed after church for the café hour, but I had to get home and start making dinner for his mom’s two cousins and their wives who we invited over tonight. They are always having us over, so it’s nice now we can repay the hospitality. I made seafood chowder and it was deeeee-licous! I’m so glad we have leftovers. It took me all afternoon to make dinner because I also made some biscuits, salad, blueberry cobbler and a twice baked potato to go with it, in case they didn’t like the soup. Good thing Kory helped a little or I’d have never made it on time.
It rained like the dickens all afternoon so Kory took the boys over to Andre’s house where they watched a movie together. Kaleb had to ride his bike home and was soaked to the core by the time he made it to our place. After we’d all eaten dinner and were visiting in the living room, he curled up with a book in his room and promptly fell asleep about 7:30, so I know he didn’t sleep much last night. I kept telling him to go down to Tante Kari’s and practice the piano, but he kept putting it off. How convenient.
We had a lot of good laughs with our guests tonight, as one of the couples are the parents to Bjørn, our host in Turkey, so they are grandparents to those crazy twins. I showed them some of the videos and photos I’d taken while we were with Bjørn’s family and everyone just roared with laughter, as that Markus belted out a few rounds of Hallelujah! He’s a funny kid, even if one isn’t related to him.
The ladies tried not to eat too much food tonight as the 17th of May is in just two days and everyone is worried about fitting in to their bunads (traditional Norwegian dresses). I guess that’s as good of motivation as it gets to keep one’s weight in check year after year. One night last week at Bible study, the women must have spent the first 15 minutes just talking about the pressure of fitting into that dress every year. It’s designed to “expand”, but if they don’t try it on early enough and have enough time to do the sewing to expand it, they are stuck wearing it like a corset where they can barely breathe the whole day, or opting to just buy a nice black dress to wear instead. It’s pretty comical to hear the discussion around this tradition. One woman told of a time she was totally humiliated when she realized the entire day she’d had her blouse on inside out – and no one said anything. Such is the politeness of the Norwegians. So if any of them didn’t like my fish soup or twice baked potatoes tonight, I’ll never know.
(The sunset tonight, around 11pm, provided quite the dramatic sky, as seen from our balcony in today’s photos.)
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