Getting Settled

I spent monday morning laying down good routines for the dogs: the walk behind the tool sheds to potty. Seperatly and on leash. Lying in their bed / crate in the house so as not to get underfoot. Playing recall games. My goal is to get an outstanding recall from Lucy, before letting her loose in the woods and yard. Kaisa, the farm dog has has a bad experience with visiting dogs a few years ago so I want to prepare their aquaintance as carefully as possible, but also to avvoid deer and cow chasing.

The moving truck came about noon on monday, right on the heels of Husbands arrival. Pretty soon the house was full of boxes. By some miracle we have found a place for all the furniture. Spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking: I concentrated mainly on the kitchen. By the time I found the frying pan and spatula we were starved and I fried up eggs and bacon for dinner.

We slept on the sofa bed in the living room, as the bedroom was full of boxes. We tried to sleep that is. The cats after snoozing in the furniture all day, suddenly became active as night fell. They kept jumping onto the bed to lie on our pillows or feet, hissing at each other when they got to close, or wandered around meowing and jumping on all the furniture. We really didn't get much sleep at all.

Tuesday we started to find out things like how to get milk from the tank, where to get firewood, and how the recycling system works. Also I drove to the nearby village of Spydeberg, to do some shopping. I was dissapointed in the lack of organic produce and dairy at the Mega, which is the supermarket I got so many good organic stuff from at our old home. But I discovered a large sports store, a pharmacy, a book store and a bakery right around the Mega. There were two other large supermarkets as well and I intend to have a look around next time I go shopping to see whether there is organic produce there. I did get a tree and a Christmas sheaf while I was there, and husband got to work hanging up the bird feeder. We have finished unpacking the kitchen, and made the bedroom presentable so that we can sleep away from the feline tyranny of last night. There are still a lot of books and clothes to unpack, not to speak of all the boxes we stowed in the attic. Might not get to those until after Christmas.

Somehow, during the day I have gotten rid of the last of the boxes (by stowing them in the attic). Well the books are unpacked and organized – only a whole box of books is missing. Also 2 matresses. I can't figure it out. You'd think if something was still on the truck the moving people would have called, or if it was still at Fjellhaug, the cleaning guy would have mentioned it. The books must be in the attic. I just couldn't find them when I looked, but matresses can't just dissapear, can they? I also found places to stow all the clothes, so we didn't need to buy a new dresser after all.

Finally ready to decorate our new home for Christmas on the 23^rd Below is our home with the tree trimmed and the advent candles burning in the kitchen. I had wrapped a Hutzelbrot for our new neighbors, thinking to hang it on their door handle when we left on Christmas eve, but in the evening Geir knocked on the door to deliver a Christmas gift of their own: a lovely bunch of tulips, so I was able to hand over their gift in person.