The highlight of the year 2011 for us was buying our “hytte” (Norwegian for cabin) in the Hill Country close to “Gruene, Texas (New Braunfels). We bought the house in June, and it’s a great place with lots of space for us and visitors, a huge deck for the barbeque, playscape, swimming pool, hot tub, and deer come to the yard every evening. The hytte is on a quiet street surrounded by six acres, so although it feels like we are in the middle of nowhere in the Hill Country, it’s really only ten minutes from New Braunfels. Since we bought the hytte, we have been there almost every single weekend, enjoying the new place and have had visitors almost every one of those weekends. It also turned into a great meeting point for Becki’s family as it is right in between Fredericksburg, Austin and San Antonio.

    

The other highlights of the year: We started off the year in Jamaica for New Year’s Eve for a nice, sunny, relaxing beach vacation. My mother visited in January for two weeks to come see the cute new baby Fleur, and then we had several other visitors come by too. Becki remodeled the kitchen which took a bit longer than expected, but resulted in a great and beautiful kitchen. In April, Becki took a trip with Fleur to Stavanger for two weeks and then went to Holland for two weeks, where I joined her with Jasper. We had a great time enjoying the nice spring weather, playing with the kids in my mother’s back yard, and taking daytrips around Holland. In July, Becki went back to Amsterdam for a week and spent a weekend with the Coffee Girls from Stavanger, and took Fleur along too. In the second half of the year, all our trips were to Gruene, except for two fun long weekends visiting our friends in New Orleans part 1 and part 2.

    

The kids have grown and changed so much this year. Both Jasper and Fleur are going to the BP day care three days a week as Becki has gone back to work part time since May. Other days are filled with play dates and shopping.

Jasper learned how to speak Dutch and English, repeats everything we say, and started singing songs. His favorites are “Daisy Daisy” and “ABC” which we have played about a thousand times in the car. He likes calling people nick-names like Aunt Mariah who is “perfect” and Aunt Nicki who is “NUTS!” But by far, cars are his most favorite thing in the world. He has a book with a hundred of them and he knows all of them in Dutch and English. He can’t sleep without at least one car and points them out all over the place when we take him for a ride.

    

Fleur is sweet and incredibly independent. She started walking at about ten months and nothing will stop her. She climbs up and down on toys, slides, and furniture. She prefers to eat her food herself, which is pretty much anything you put in front of her face. She also likes to have fun with her papa and call him “mama” every time she sees him, even though she knows better. Fleur’s favorite things are her binky, shoes, Jasper’s toys, and food.

    

All together it was another great year and we accomplished quite a few things we had planned to do when we came back to the States. It still feels like we are just settling in, but that is especially so in New Braunfels where we are slowly getting two of everything. Next year more trips are planned and in between we always love having visitors.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and all the best in 2012 !

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