Wednesday 30 November; 1243: Brrrrrr!!
Ok so we've got a tiny dusting of snow....but the temp has been creeping down like mad. The past two mornings we've woken up to -12c - and that IS cold!
Claire's been coughing a bit lately, mostly during the night so she keeps waking up mum for comfort and cough mixture - and mum wakes up tired every morning heeh (yaaaawn)
I heard at daycare yesterday that she keeps on talking about the new house all the time over there now - looks like we're all pretty much looking forward to moving. I called Telenor (phone company) yesterday and ordered phone and ADSL. We probably wont be online the first few days but hopefull we'll have contact with the outside world again max a week after we've moved in. But...you know what these phone companies are like....
9 days until moving now - I gotta start packing this weekend, could be fun...or not. As soon as the loan is in the account we're gonna have to go out and buy some stuff for the kitchen (stove, fridge etc) and some furniture. We pretty much know what we're gonna get, but gotta go back to Ikea again and try out another couple of sofas.
Will keep you all posted :-)

Sunday 27 November, 2040; Relaxation
Claire's asleep and Dave's gone off to play WoW. I'm sitting here watching Love Actually. Love that movie, it's sweet and funny and .. well I suppose a true 'chick flick' but hey - we all need some soppiness now and then :-)
Dave was putting Claire to sleep today and they were fighting hard for a while there - God she's stubborn! Of course Dave claims the stubbornness is from me - where does he get these insane ideas from??
Mum and Dad are still in Egypt, coming home this Thursday. Dave's working late that day so Claire and I will go up to the airport and pick them up. Plane is scheduled to land at 1930 so she will probably fall asleep on the way home...or not - time will tell.
one and a half week left now until we get the keys for the house.
And yeah - when we've moved we'll send out our new address to you all. Using the old one for post cards, huge checks etc will be no problem - the post office will forward our mail for a few months *grin*

Sunday 27 November, 0713; No rest for the wicked
Morning all. Claire sure isn't one for staying in bed all morning. Both yesterday and today she's been outta bed before 7 am. She's doing pretty good these days, still scratching and her skin is recovering from the chicken pox but overall she's doing brilliantly. As Dave and myself, she is really forward to moving into the new house ans who can blame her. She'll finally have her own room and be able to invite friends home.
We have set the date for moving to Friday 9 December. Yesterday we were out looking at whitegoods and some furniture. Next week the money should be in the bank and then we'll order all the whitegoods and have it sent home to us on the 9th. I'll take the day off and start sorting things out in the new house Friday morning after I've taken Claire to daycare.

Thursday 23 November, 1946; Get set, ready...GO!
Last Friday we signed the contract on the house, today we signed the papers in the bank. 7 December is the day we're scheduled to take over the whole shebang. Are we eager? You bet your butt we are *huge grin*

Monday 14 November, 1705; HOUSE!!!!!!!!
We bought a house today :-)
Dave and I went to look at a house for sale on Saturday. Then me and Chris & Else went back an hour later. Today the bidding started - and man did the phone glow in the end. We got it at last around 4 pm today and I'm still reeling and can't get anything down apart from water hehe. I'll sort out pics for all you guys out there :-)
Here's one in the meantime of Claire and the pumpkin we had for Halloween this year.

Here's the house:
The house
The lounge
The lounge, new angle
The kitchen
The bathroom
The tv-room
The entrance
The view from the garden

So, give us a few weeks and start ordering the tickets - no more staying in hotels when visiting the Hughes in Norway from now on!

Saturday 22 October, 0839; Weekend is here :-)
I gotta win the lottory - there as too many things I wanna do right now...
1: Buy house and move in
2: Have another baby
3: Go to Oz
4: Get new cars for us both
5: Erm.....
Well it's good to dream isnt it hehe. We'll see if we can talk to this woman about the house next door this weekend or early next week and take it from there. Another baby WILL be produced after the house n stuff, and we gotta buy Dave another wreck as his is starting to fall apart. Trip to Oz? Yeah well, it's gonna happen but no idea when.
Could have some sleet today and tomorrow....Right now its 3c and raining - miserable as hell!
Claire and I are going shopping with Else a little later on, comfort food here we come :-)
And yeah - Dave's still sleeping.

Thursday 20 October, 17:46; Mmmmmmm!!!
Claire and I are stuffed. We have eaten TONS of waffles today - and Claire is showing no sign of allergy at all. It is a good day :-)
The weather, however, is not as co-operative. It's now around 4C out there and very very wet. Give it another few weeks and the rain will turn into snow...

Wednesday 19 October, 14:18: YAAAAY!
Claire went to a birthday party Saturday and by mistake ate a muffin containing egg - and no reaction whatsoever. I have now spoken to her doctor and he's told me that we can now try giving her food containing egg. What a result! :-) I'm so chuffed.
Most of us in the family have been more or less down with the cold the last couple of weeks but getting better now. Claire and Chris are the ones who's more or less avoided the whole thing, lucky devils.
Autumn is here in full force and we've now had many frosty nights - and most days the past week have been fairly cool with temps in single figs. Could have some snow by the end of the month :-) Claire is of course *really* looking forward to the white stuff!
Chris and Else (my parents) are going off to Egypt for a couple of weeks in November - I think they are secretly hoping for snow before that so that they can leave a snowy Norway and arrive to a warm and sunny Egypt. I'm driving them up the airport early early early in the morning on 17 November... we're leaving around 3 am (at the latest!). Dave will take a few days off work the first week my parents are gone to catch up on the holiday. Poor man, such a hard life...
Work's going pretty ok, takled a bit about my perm contract the past couple of weeks and they say its a done deal, now we just have to argue about the money :P

Tuesday 11 October, 1725: Happy birthday Claire
Claire's birthday and she's loving it. The pirate effects went down very well. Thanks to Nan and Pop for sending the very cool jacket and the puzzles - Claire's busy doing puzzles right now and she's having a ball with it. We're having coffee and cakes at 6 pm so anyone who's able to make it are more then welcome :-)
I had my yearly chat with boss today and it went pretty good. Hopefully I'll be doing some travelling in a few months and we're looking at putting me into engineering courses etc as well - could be interesting. The main goal set for me is to take over all the international orders, which suits me juuuuust fine.
I've had some encouraging e-mails from clients the past few days and its making everything worth it - happy customers is what we want.

Monday 10 October, 1142; Lunch :-)
A few minutes to spare during my lunch hour so thought I'd just update you all on a few things.
Dave did an experiment with his allergy this weekend. He went in to Morten's and stayed there for half an hour or so. Had he done that 3 months ago he would have been down with asthma within 2 minutes. On Sunday - not a thing! Not a hint of asthma even. I mean...WOW!! Who would have thought that changing your diet could produce such results. And no - I'm not thinking about getting a dog like Morten...but I would *love* to get a couple of cats again - depending on Claire's results of course. We'll test her again in a couple of years or so I guess...
Someone came out of the blue on Saturday to take away the big and ugly asphalt machine on the property. It looks SOOO much better. Took a couple of pics and will load them on the house web this week.
Claire's birthday tomorrow and she's been counting down the days for quite a while now. She's a HUGE pirate fan and we've bought a few piraty effects for her, she's been wanting things like that for 5 months or more.
The house next door (which is the one we looked at a week ago) is being inspected tomorrow and we'll know the price in a week or so. I really can't wait to hear what they'll want for it. I want it so bad I'm drooling when I think about it. It's old, but well kept and big and would be so perfect for us. Lots of room for guests visiting from Oz, the UK etc (yep - that IS a hint for you guys out there!).
Work's going ok, but as always - I could do with a bit more to do, but orders are coming in now and my area (Asia/Oceania) could be *very* busy the next few months. Next step would be for me to visit the clients *huge grin*.

Sunday 2 October, 0858; Interesting day..?
We're all up and down in the basement, grownups on the puters and kiddo is watching telly - but she'll probably want to go on the puter soon too ;-)
Could be an interesting day today...we're gonna go look at a house - and if the price is right and it looks ok we'll might just buy it, or at least try to. Going to call the bank tomorrow and set up a meeting so that we can check out how much we can get from them.

Saturday 1 October, 07:14 am: Yeah...what I said..
Guess who's up :P

Saturday 1 October, 0703: Too early
Wow, can you imagine - October already! Scary...
Gym was good on Thursday by the way, really good. Actually quite looking forward to the next session now, sick as it may seem..
Woke up so early today. Was totally knackered yesterday so went to bed at 10 pm, didn't take me long to fall asleep either - and the result? Well I woke up at 05:24 am and was totally unable to go back to sleep again. Gave it up after half an hour and went down here in the basement instead.
Claire and Dave are still in bed, but I don't think Claire will sleep for much longer - she usually doesn't.
Morten's doing quite badly these days, he's going in to the hospital for an urgent MRI today for his upper back and neck...and another one on Tuesday at 7 am for his shoulder. Poor thing has been in agony the past week or so.
Dave's changed game nites to Friday again so he was playing until god knows when last nite. I have no idea when he came to bed. Not sure what we're doing tonight, perhaps a movie or something...

Thursday 29 September, 1103: AGONY!
So, this is what dying feels like...
I finally started going to the gym yesterday, and silly me thought she'd try out spinning for the first time. Sweat was pouring out of every pore and my face was the colour of ripe tomatoes - but this is nothing compared to the pain today.
No, not the pain in my legs, arms, shoulders etc - most of the body is actually holding up pretty good. Its my behind. Man I'm sore. I haven't been on a bike for a couple of years...at least. To be stupid enough then to hop on a spinning class is....well I don't have any words for that really.
Serves me right I guess *grin*.
Going back to the gym today, but there is NO WAY im going to do spinning again for a while! They're gonna set up a program for me using manuals etc. About bloody time I got started on this body of mine - it's been falling apart the past few years.
I'm at the office atm, and thank god I have a nicely padded office chair :-)

18 September 2005, 0905:
Claire had her new hair-cut yesterday and she's really proud heeh. As we made it home and Claire went downstairs to Dave she was just in time to chat to both Pop and Nan on the phone - she had a good day yesterday :-).
She was coughing a bit last nite and was twisting and turning all nite waking up fairly regularly. She had a slight fever this morning but after a bit of paracet she seems much better. Both she and Dave are busy on their puters - normal Sunday morning in other words.
Didn't win a single penny with the lotto yesterday - cheating next time!

17 September 2005, 7:24 am: Gooood morning! :-)
Yeah - it IS a good morning today even though it is kinda early still. Claire is of course up with me and shes watching Finding Nemo today, been a while since she's been watching that one.
I had a really good day at the office yesterday. Yeah I know I know, its been really bad lately but yesterday it was really good, made for such a change. Didn't get to mention to MD that I wanna go to Oz too, but there's always Monday eh *g*.
I went to bed pretty early last nite - I was just exhausted for some reason. Must have been asleep around 9:45 pm hehe....so waking up early this morning didn't really come as a huge surprise. Claire and I got up just before 7 am. Dave is sleeping as usual - he was playing WoW again yesterday until the wee hours.
We're off to the mall later on today, Claire wants a haircut so we'll see about getting her one.

15 September 2005, 11:23 am: Aussieities
I've got a bad case of Aussieities. On Saturday I wanna win BIG in the lottory and move down under. No I don't know why, well ok perhaps I do. I've always been very fascinated by Oz and always wanted to move down there. Now that Vector has opened an office in Perth I'm so ready to go its getting silly *g*. One of my colleagues is going on a biz trip to Brisbane and Perth this autumn, I keep asking him when we're going but he just laughs. Doesn't he know I'm dead serious? Obviously not...
I was talking to Liz on MSN the other day and said as a joke she and the family could move to Oz with us and she was asking if we're moving to Oz...or if we had the choice would we be moving to the UK instead. Dave reckons the UK but I'm not so sure. Whenever we've been there Dave's had asthma from the minute he arrived - probably because there's more pollution over there then back here in Norway. Of course I can see his point - if we were move to the UK one day we would be travelling more abroad and around the UK, whereas if we were to move to Oz we'd mostly be doing domestic travelling.
But - we still haven't won the lottory so no need to make any choices right now! And yeah - I have actually checked out a few properties down under too....just curious ya know!
Work is boring. Not enough to do. I keep sitting for long periods of time idling not having anything to do. But it could (it better!!) get better as autumn progresses - November/December is usually one of our busiest time of the year.
I'll keep ya posted ;)

11 September 2005 (5 pm): Pictures updated
I've worked with 2002-2004 today and updated most of the pics from that year that were already on the server, I'll look at what we've got here at home for those years and this year and update again another day. In the meantime - enjoy the ones that are there now :-)

11 September 2005 (09:05 am): Morning :-)
Didn't get frost overnite - quite a surprise as it was only 5c at 10 pm. It's not warm tho, but it could turn into another nice autumn day. Yesterday was really good and it was nice and warm if the sun was shining on ya.
Claire had a great party yesterday - no surprise there really. And do you think she was dead tired when she got home? Think again :P, she was all over the place and bubbly and chatty as usual.
Claire is watching telly at the moment, but I have a feeling she'll want to sit next to me on her computer soon and play some games before she leaves today. I have *no* idea when Dave came to bed last nite, he was playing WoW again. I was watching telly until nearly 1 am tho so was a bit tired this morning. Claire was good tho and didn't want to get outta bed until it was past 8 am, makes for a nice change.

10 September 2005 (10:30 am): Sorted!
Yay, got the pics from holiday sorted on the web - Im sorry it took so long Liz *grin*
Nearly time to hit the shower now, I'll see if Claire wants to join me in the shower before she goes off to her party. Just woke Dave up, he was playing WoW until 4:30 am last nite...nothing new there then!

10 September 2005 (8:45 am): Uhm.....
Ok, so where on earth do you start when you're catching up on 6 months of laziness in the blog? I don't think I'm even going to try to be honest..
The HUGE change the past few months is this: Dave's asthma is much better. He took some allergy tests a few weeks ago, one of the things that popped up on the positive side was grains, so after having seen the doc Dave gave up all kinds of grain, including corn and rice. He's also given up tomatoes. 4 days later: asthma goes away...and stays away! It's almost too good to be true, he's been free of the asthma for nearly 4 weeks now, that has *never* happened as long as he's lived here in Norway. WTG!!
Claire's busy on her computer most days, she's really loving it hehe - its gotta be in the genes!
She's going to a birthday party again today, I'll see if I can get a pic of her and post it here so that you can see what she's like these days.
She's decided she doesn't want long hair anymore - so she'll probaby go to the hairdresser next weekend.
And yes, I'll see if I can make that page with all the holiday pics as well today, will have some time off now that Claire's gonna be gone for a few hours - so that's definately the big weekend project .. promise! :-)

Quite Bored and slightly mental: 15 March 2005
I think I'm addicted to this cappuccino from Nescafé... you know - the instant stuff? I only had one sachet left this morning and that was gone in like 15 mins and after that Ive been bored and listless and just...dead. Need more - NOW! *g*
Then I have ppl talk to me about how frantic they are at work, how depressing their lives are and how sick they are. I'm not good with those sorta things. I don't always have a whole lot of empathy to dish out. If people complain about too much work then try to sort it out somehow. If you're sick you take your meds and go to bed, or go see the doc and get cured. If you're depressed go see a shrink.
Yes I know, I'm not a very nice person at times - but most of the times I feel its better to just say it like it is instead of just lying all the time. Don't you agree?

15 March 2005: Asthma getting better :-)
Claire's now been taking cortison for a couple of weeks and her asthma has improved quite a bit. No more coughing at nite so thats great news. In a week or two we'll try to lower the dosage on her meds and see how low we can go :-)
The weekend up in the mountain was a huge success. Claire fell asleep in the car half an hour after we left home and didn't wake up again until we'd parked the car outside the hotel 3 hours later.
Not a bad hotel, rooms were ok but food was excellent and so were the other facilities. Saturday morning we all went across the ski lift are and played around for a while until Claire was getting tired. After lunch Claire and I went to the pool and even tho Claire has never been in a pool before she looked like she had done nothing else the past 3 years. A born mermaid! No doubt we'll hit the pool again in not too long.
Dave also said he'd like to try out skiing next time we go up to the mountains so that should be great fun :-) And yep, Dave and Ivar did take a few trees last Wednesday but had to leave one log as they need to be 3 to take the last one down. Might be this weekend as Dave's borrowing Ivar's chainsaw on Friday.
I think Dad is restless already to start the work again after their holiday. I picked them up at the airport Sunday evening and they had a good time down there but said it was great to be back home - isn't it always like that ;)

9 March 2005: Busy busy busy
Busy March. Forbo weekend over and done with and this weekend it's Vector's turn - but a much different sort of weekend really. All three of us are going, I can't wait really - and neither can Claire! When I came home on Sunday morning I told her that we're all going up to the mountains to stay in a hotel the following weekend and shes hyped already....even tho she has no clue whats going on ehhe - she's so cute.
Dave and Ivar is planning on chopping down the 2 birches today - but I'll believe it when I see it *g*.
More later!

3 March 2005: Asthma has arrived!
Yep, Claire now has asthma. I know I know, it really only was a matter of time - but still...
But it could have been worse, as Dave says: at least we *know* asthma. How true, we know how it works and how to treat it. Thank god its not kidney failure, brain tumour or leukemia :-)
Claire and Dave will be alone this weekend as I'm off to spend a weekend with Forbo - my previous employer. Sooo looking forward to it - a weekend on my own with all expenses paid. A good book and a good bottle of red - just what a mum needs every now and then *grin*.
My parents are down on Tenerife for a 3 week break. They get some space and we get some space - a match made in heaven. We talk on the phone every day so its not like we don't have an y contact with them. Claire talks to them too and is chuffed that they're calling her to say nite nite hehe - she's so sweet.
I should really go and pack soon...and I have NO idea what to even bring - nothing new there really. Dave always was the best packer here and he's not coming with this time so I guess I gotta do it all myself :P