NO WAY! NORWAY!!!

We are going on a Norwegian cruise in June!

My grandparents came to the US in 1948 after WWII. We have several Norwegian
traditions, especially around Christmas. We make 8 kinds of Norwegian cookies
(over 150 dozen cookies total) including krumkaker and marzipan. Whenever I had
to do a country report in school, I wanted to do mine about Norway. I know this sounds
like a slight obsession ;), but I have wanted to go to Norway longer than I can remember. This is a picture of Farfar wearing his Norwegian flag hat

I thought it would be a little entertaining to include some further evidence.
In 3rd grade we would write "journals" all the time. My teacher would put a little
starter sentence, question or scenario on the board, and then we would write.
Here are a few examples that don't necessarily make perfect sense and are a
little embarrassing. I'll leave in the grammar/punctuation errors for authenticity
(sadly I've lost some of my favorite ones):

"I am sitting in my classroom and my mind begins to wonder. And I was dreaming
about going to Norway and they had a dance set up fore me, and they pulled
me on to the stage and taught me a dance it was the funnest thing in history it was so fun
I got wako and started going real fast and they all cleard off stage and I was going
coco all by my self well the crowd was chering." A Traditional Norwegian Dance at the syttende mai Celebration in SLC
(17th of May, Norwegian Constitution Day)

"On my vacation of track I want to... go to Sea World and Norway and Hawaii
(so there is a little competition) and have a sleepover and I will not have to do jobs
in the afternoon and instead I will play the rest of the day and it will be my best of track
ever especially if I take my friends and Mrs. Bruns (my teacher). THE END"

This one doesn't make sense hardly at all...
"Imagine that I have a hidden bottle in my closet. Inside the bottle lives several little people.
And I ventured with the gymnastics girls and Nancy Keriggan. Just in case you did not know
my uncle and grandma and grandpa. Sorry back to the little people, they took my family
and I to Norway it was the funnest thing I ever did. The End."

"I am in favor of going to Norway because I have seen wonderful pictures of Norway
from my Farmor and Farfar the r's are silent. Farmor means Fathers Mother and
Farfar means Fathers Father. if you went to my mothers side of the family her mom
would be Mormor, remember the r's are silent and my moms dad would be Morfar.
I want to go to Norway because it is beutiful. In winter it is like a winter wonder land.
My Farmor has been a gymnist in Norway. My dad go's everywhere but Norway.
One time he went to Hawaii and it was around Halloween and brought Val a hola outift
for Halloween. I want to go to Norway! The End."Geirangerfjord

I also found a list of "My Main Goals" that I wrote after graduating from highschool.
One of them reads, "If I ever have the opportunity, I will go to Norway."

This all came about when my sister-in-law gave my brother cruise tickets for Christmas,
and they were kind enough to invite the family along. After several months of debating,
seeing the prices for the cruise and plane tickets drop drastically with the
failing economy, not having kids even though we want to, Nathaniel not having a
job lined up after graduation, having been really good about saving money since before
we were married, and just recently finding a way to cut a few hundred dollars out of our
budget each month for the next few months, we finally decided to go.

The cruise actually starts in London so it somehow ended up that we are flying to Paris,
spending a few days, taking the chunnel to London, spending a few days, hopping on the ship
for the 12-day cruise and flying home immediately from London.

Coming Soon...

Hopefully I'll post something very exciting in the next week or so,
so stay tuned all 2 of you. :)
I've thought a lot about posting but haven't had much to say.
I was going to blog about Than's b-day but that was almost two weeks ago now...
I got him a pressure cooker and he LOVES it!
Work was better today than yesterday.
Maybe because the new little boy slept most of the time.
Should I have woken him up? I tried to gently, but let him alone after that.
The opthomologist said Nathaniel's retina is partially detached.
We're seeing a retinologist tomorrow.
The snow is WAY past annoying. It is really getting to me. :(
But yea for General Conference and family time, I am excited!

Graduation Cap & Gown

So Nathaniel is graduating in May and needs to borrow or rent a regular black cap & gown.
Anyone?

6 Things

1- Post the rules on your blog
2- List 6 random things about yourself.
3- Tag 6 people at the end of your post.
4- Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Nathaniel:
1 - He can ride a unicycle and did a unicycle triathlon last summer.
Maybe he'll do it again this summer.
2 - He was born in Indiana and lived in Wisconsin and Kentucky.
He hopes to move out of state.
3 - He likes to make up silly jokes. He makes me laugh.
4 - Nathaniel is an amazing cook and baker. I love breads!
5 - On our 2nd date he said, "What if our hands touched?" Silly boy.
6 - He loves Simpsons, music and reading.

Lina:
1- I took tumbling classes since I was about 4 until I was 16.
2 - I took bagpipe lessons, but I don't have my own set...
one day when we're rich or after I practice a lot on my chanter.
3 - I love to paint (walls, not pictures) and have had several jobs painting.
4 - I hit my head on the side of the pool at least 2-3 times while swimming in a
triathlon last summer. It seemed like I hit it 5x though.
5 - I love to take classes and learn (sewing, tiling, flower arranging, intro to
landscape architecture, racquetball, tennis, ultimate frisbee, aerobics, etc.).
6 - I used to or still want to: be a travel agent/clean airplanes so I could get discounts,
go to culinary arts school, finish learning Spanish, learn to play the acordian,
be a good mom, be good at dancing, be an olympic gymnast...

I tag: Bennetts, Porters, Larchars, Woodwards, Ethan and You!

Playing in the Sandbox

Two weeks ago the Sanders came up to Logan to play. We had a great time
and were really happy to see them! We went to the lunch buffet at the Indian Oven and
took a little walk around Logan. I LOVE Logan and will miss it sooo much if we move!
We walked by the Tabernacle and the old Roller Skating rink.
It was a pretty day but a little chilly.

Dave &Nathaniel playing
Comet Busters

Downtown Logan...

Yummy!
Kris and Dave

Sidenote: The yellow house is Citrus & Sage.
It is a cafe/novelty shop. Nathaniel and I
went there on our 2nd date for a poetry reading.
We were going to ride our bikes because I had just
gotten the boot off from my surgery, but we ended
up driving because he sprained both of his ankles
that morning. That was the first time we held hands.
Then a year ago at C&S he read the poems that he
entered in USU's Scribendi writing contest after he won 3rd place.

We also played Ticket to Ride and made sure to watch a Monkees episode,
an old Sanders-Hardman tradition. We skipped dinner because we were so full
and topped the night off with a USU Basketball game! We won of course
(just like we should have yesterday in Boise). The Hammonds sat with us.
I am glad they came to the game. They had never been and I highly
recommended it to them so I hope they had a good time.

What a Week!

Nathaniel had Spring Break last week, but I still had to work.
I guess it was for the best anyway because he had to study
for his first actuarial exam, which he took on Friday. He has
been studying all semester for it. He had to take it at the
testing center at the U of U and had a bunch of special requirements
(eg. They provided a packet of scratch paper, and if he were to
use it up he would have to sign it and raise his hand for another one.
He also couldn't take in the cover to his calculator
and had to get finger-printed. If he were to go the bathroom,
they would take his fingerprint digitally to compare when he came back) .

Lina wrote all that. I'll just add that it was a doozy of a test. There was a big bank
of practice questions online that I was using to study - I did the entire bank of questions once,
then I worked through most of the ones that I missed a second time. Even the second time
through I was only getting about 65% of the questions right,
so I was pretty worried about being able to pass the test.
I took some pictures of all of the study problems I did -
it's a quirk of mine that I love to stare at and admire a
page of my math work, so I laid it all out to see. Anyway,
I was really, really blessed on that test. As I took it, I was
happy to see that I knew how to do all but two of the problems
(though I may have missed more than that), and the test felt
much easier than the practice questions. When I finished,
a little message popped up that said something like, "Congratulations, you passed. You'll get
your official score in eight weeks." I feel really blessed, and I'm very grateful for the Lord's help.
Lina was very supportive, too, and she got me some Almond Joys to celebrate.

(Lina again) On Wednesday last week I had an observation - someone "bigger" than me
comes in to see how well I am teaching. It happens a lot as a 1st, 2nd and 3rd year teacher,
but this particular observation caused me A LOT of stress! I did everything I could think of to
get ready and get him the stuff he asked for, but I just felt like the main problem was going to
be when we went through it after. I emailed him my lesson plans and papers which he looked
through and said they seemed to have the important components of an effective lesson,
but that he had one question that we could talk about after. (We haven't had the best
conversations up to this point - he hasn't seemed to listen and/or
understand.) I called my "coach" to see if she had any suggestions,
and she gave me a few ideas and then decided they wouldn't help
and told me to wear red. Her sister believes it is a confidence color
and my dad told me it is a power color for women. I don't have a lot
of red, or any really, and I feel like a million bucks in a new shirt
so somehow I convinced Than (who was in his PJ's, had just dished
up some ice cream, hates shopping, was ready to go to bed, and
probably rightfully thinks I don't need any more clothes) to run with
me to the store right before it closed. We walked in about the time
they announced the store was closing in 5 minutes. I tried on 4 tops
as quick as a whip and got a fun NEW shirt with RED flowers on it.
I wasn't totally sure about it then, but it has really grown on me. It was even on sale!
Thanks to all the prayers, support, and my new red shirt, the observation went amazingly
and surprisingly well. Usually/Always he asks tons of questions and makes people defend
EVERYTHING they do, but I didn't even get to explain or show him all of my planning
methods and ideas because he was so busy telling me how great it was.

We also stayed with Kevin, a boy with disabilities that we
work with, and his two dogs while his parents were
out of town from Wednesday until Friday. Kevin volunteers at
the DI, takes voice and piano lessons, participates in
Special Olympics and LOVES anything Disney (especially Ariel)
or comic book related. We had a very pleasant time together.
I have known Kevin for almost 5 years now and have "lived"
at his house for a combined total of at least 4-6 months.
Our friends, the Merkets, were able to go to San Francisco over the break and
visit Noel's mission. So we checked up on their cat from Monday-Friday too.
It was easy and simple and they let us borrow some eggs.

It was a crazy week, but we feel very blessed!

Best of Lina

Let me preface this by saying that I am not making fun. It's just that
every once in a while, Lina says things that are so funny they have to be
shared. Here are a few of my favorites from the last couple of months:

We were playing a board game called "Ticket to Ride" with some friends
a few weeks ago. In the game, you have to construct train routes to
get you from one city to another. As our friend explained the rules, he
pointed out a few special places on the board and said that you need a
ferry to build your track there. Lina didn't notice that each of these
special places was a track that needed to cross over a body of water. So
about ten minutes later, in a quiet moment in the game, Lina suddenly
said, "Oh, like a ferry that goes on the water!" She had been wondering
and wondering what fairies had to do with trains.

Lina was giving a talk in sacrament and encouraging the sisters to
participate in relief society. She was saying something about how we're all in
the same wonderful stage of life together - "We're all newly married, just
figuring out how to be married and go to school, how to manage our money,
how to manage our time, how to have kids..." Then she stopped, laughed a
little, looked a bit embarrassed, and went on with her talk.

Lina's parents have a dog named Meg who likes to perch on the back of
their sofa. We were visiting a few months ago, and Lina's nephew had
climbed up on Meg's spot and was relaxing there. Someone commented
that he had taken a leaf out of Meg's book. Lina came into the conversation
just then and said, "Meg has a book? What?"
We said, "No, he's taking a leaf out of Meg's book."
Lina said, "Meg has a book with leaves in it?"

Lina and I were both at a ward council meeting with all of the ward
leadership as well as the stake presidency after our last ward conference
(I'm a ward finance clerk, and Lina is the R.S. president). At the conclusion
of the meeting the stake president called on "President Hardman" to say
the closing prayer. Lina looked at me with a confused look on her face,
thought, "He's not a president." Then she looked over at the person on her
other side, who was not a Hardman at all, and she looked even more
confused. Then she said, "Oh, Me!" and started laughing.
She's a cutie.