Avi's class visits Solina Farm

The farm is a popular topic at our charter school, Garden City Community School (http://www.gardencityschool.org/). Avi and Soli both enjoy bringing farm "stuff" (and animals!) to show in class. One day Avi brought in a Highland cow hide.

(All pictures in this post were taken by Avi's teacher Tawnia - thanks Tawnia!)

One fine day in Spring, Avi's class visited the farm.  Robert gave them all lessons in farm management. Brede had a hard time with the big group of kids and spent a lot of the visit on Dad's shoulder.

Eamon, on the other hand, was in his element and thoroughly enjoyed showing off his farm! (He's third from the left in the blue shirt.)

The students all enjoyed holding the ducks. That's Avi showing off Ole, one of our Swedish ducks. Ella, Avi's best friend, is the one in green holding a runner duck.

Back in April...

Back in April, I gathered up the triplets and drove to Gold Beach, Oregon to spend a week at our vacation rental. We bought "Solina by the Sea" last October and we try not to use it during peak rental times. If you'd like to see what it looks like, here's the website where it's listed: http://www.breakerhouse.com/ . Since the triplets were not yet in school, they got to come with Mom. My sister Ann came over from Medford for the week and my younger sister Emily came down from Portland for a few days. We all had a wonderful time! On the way there, we stopped at the Safari Park. You can wander around with some of the animals. Brede really liked herding the tiny deer. I think Eamon's favorite was the lynx they brought out to pet.

That's Soren on top of the rock. And Soren again at the top of the log. Eamon got to the top of the log also.

And here's a wind blown Brede enjoying the sand.

While Soli was gone...

..the rest of us spent the long 4th of July weekend in North Idaho. My good friend and financial advisor Doug Pelz invited us to his wedding. Since it was very close to Lake Pend O'Reille, we decided to camp at the state park. The wedding was lovely and a lot of fun and wonderful food (we think Julie is a gourmet chef!). We spent a couple of afternoons at the only beach nearby where Robert gave fishing lessons and Avi and Mom did a tiny bit of swimming (the water was VERY cold). Brede and Eamon each caught a fish - they were very proud.

The last two weeks of July, Avi went to Camp Nidaros on the coast of Oregon. She flew to Portland and spent a couple of days visiting Aunt Emily and our good friends Julia and Andy Petersen before camp started. Then I drove over to Portland to see the last day program and pick up Avi. Aunt Emily came over also and we spent the rest of the day on the beach before heading back to Portland. Avi and I also spent a couple of nights visiting my brother and his family. By Monday we were anxious to drive up to Seattle to pick up Soli.

Soli in Sweden

This past summer, Robert and I took our hearts in our hands and sent our oldest child (only 13!) to Sweden for about 7 weeks. Getting her there safely involved flying her to Portland where her Aunt Emily picked her up and drove her to Seattle where she could catch a flight to Copenhagen and then Oslo on one airline. The airline handled her transfer in Copenhagen and Robert's cousins Stig and Gerd and Stig's partner Kristina picked her up in Oslo. Whew! We were happy to get that email saying she had arrived safely. Soli was happy to be on her own (without all those pesky siblings!) for a few weeks. Here are pictures of Stig and Kristina and Gerd to whom we are grateful for the wonderful hospitality and fun times they showed Solveig.

The house in the photo below was the home of Myja Lubeck, Robert's ancester on his father's side of the family.

Soli attended the Torsby mid-summer celebration. She told us the entire town comes out and dances around the maypole in multiple circles!

Just before Soli left for Sweden, we purchased a new horse for her (Bella) and Soli was (a little) sad to leave her for so long. Luckily, we have a neighbor that loves horses as much as our girls that agreed to ride her for Soli while she was gone. Soli was invited to ride at some friends' home while in Sweden.  Looks like she enjoyed it!

Holiday Letter

Okay so it's been a few years since I've done a holiday letter. I started one each year for the past 4 years but never seemed to be able to finish it. Can't imagine why... must be triplet mania plus demanding job plus 2 very busy older kids. This year I'm going to experiment with this blog and then send the link to our friends and family that have internet access in hopes that we can at least re-connect with them. Leaves out the non-tech savvy ones (sigh..) but that's the best I can do right now!

Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to get my oldest daughter (who has her own email address now) to help. Speaking of Soli, here's a picture of her on our special mother-daughter date. She wanted to go skiing. And another photo of her showing the valley from Bogus Basin where we went...

But I need to back up a bit... 2009 started out for us as every year has for the last 9 years - celebrating Avi's birthday. For her 9th birthday my horse-crazy daughter (one of 2) wanted a beach scene with horses running on it. So we made "Avi's beach at Connemara" - here's the birthday girl and her cake.

We lost Robert's Mom this year but got to celebrate one last Mother's Day with her. We had Mother's Day tea with her at her retirement home the day before and took her to the Mother's Day brunch in Parma, Idaho on Sunday. She was in fine fiddle right up until the end of May when an aneurism got her. Here are a couple of pictures we like.

Earlier in the Spring, Robert's band, the Scandinavian Triplets performed at the Farmers Market. The dance group we've all been part of also performed. I love this picture of the girls doing the Snekkervalse - a fun little clap dance in 3/4 time.

I'll go ahead and post this part of the letter to get it started. Hopefully, by the time the 2-week break over the holidays is over, the rest of the year will be chronicled and I'll have the link sent to all of you!