Holiday 2011 - Beito, Norway

mette on a bungee/trampoline rig they had set up for kids at the ski run

Hennie on a mountaineering course at the Beitostølen ski area

mountain mette

Hennie at the summit of a long hike up Bitihorn

Mette didn't make it too far, unsurprisingly. But we all did get to see a heard of reindeer running by in the valley below.

day hike up Bitihorn. Daisy was in heaven.

lot of pancakes for breakfast - we've been experimenting with making them large and with butter lately

panorama by the apartment

stream next to the apartment

hiking at Beitostølen

We saw quite a few rainbows as the weather wavered between mists, rain, and windows of blasting sun.

another triumphant shot of Hennie at the top of Bitihorn. it was a 5.5 hour round trip for us and we opened a lunch and ate like we were starving once we got up to the top. she was talking excitedly non-stop she was so proud of getting all the way up.

Christmas 2010

"Food of Norway" cookbook for hege and randy

a portrait in beads of thomas from mina

mette had an idea to make hennie a stuffed cheetah out of some leopard fabric of hege's she spotted. we had a good afternoon finding cheetah images online and drawing the pattern in tape, and cutting it out carefully. hege did an even better job stuffing and stitching it together. a few hours after this photo was taken hennie threw up all over it and its still in a plastic bag waiting to be washed.

mette's wrapping paper

the jewelry boxes from fathermother were a big hit

the 5th Harry Potter book from Fridtof is almost 1000 pages long. Hennie is just finishing up the 4th and looking forward to getting started on it

home-made earrings from Mina

new cameras for each of them were also a huge surprise

mette doing experiments with her hair

christmas afternoon sledding by the Oslo Fjord. Hege is improvising using a flat-headed shovel (which worked really well)

Hennie and Hege


Hennie in her plastic bag

walk along the frozen Fjord - shortly before 2pm. about as bright as it gets - sun heading back down.

standing on a diving platform - tempting fate

along the Fjord, behind the Eilertsen's house

animal tracks across the frozen surface (fox and rabbits)

it was -16C (about 5 degrees F) and the air was icy and clean. we felt like arctic researchers

Moab, Utah

view from our first night's campsite outside Moab

Jay and I making dinner - steaks, mashed potatoes, and zucchini

this was a nearby site on a river we considered for camping but rejected because it didn't feel right

breakfast at campsite #1

view from campsite #1

first day exploring Arches National Park - this is Landscape Arch, along Devil's Garden Trail

we walked out onto one of the 'blades' at the end of the Devil's Garden Trail. Its impossible to describe how tangible is the sense of geologic time and power as you carefully make your way out to a moment like this.

Devil's Garden, Arches National Park

About an hour's drive south, and a hard, hot hike for another 45 minutes got us to the very famous Delicate Arch.

This was campsite #2, about an hour further south from Moab, in Canyonlands National Park.
This was our best evening. we sat on the edge of a cliff until about 3am, in moonlight, looking out over hundreds of miles and millions of years of erosion and tectonic force.

waiting for sunset at Canyonlands

me, jay, and sean (and a handful of other international travelers) waiting for the sun to set

we spent hours talking about things we spotted and theorizing about the tectonics.

view out across Canyonlands

Canyonlands in fading light