Heading South to Stavanger
After a wonderful stay in Bergen, we are headed South to explore Stavanger and the surrounding region. We loved Bergen and cannot wait to go back some day.
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Heading South to Stavanger
After a wonderful stay in Bergen, we are headed South to explore Stavanger and the surrounding region. We loved Bergen and cannot wait to go back some day.
Fun at the Bergen Aquarium
This morning the weather was a bit rainy, so hiking the mountain as we had planned was a no go. The old cobblestone roads were slippery enough, I couldn’t imagine how slippery the trail would have been. In lieu of hiking, we took the kids and went to the Bergen Aquarium with my brother and his family. The aquarium was a quick ten minute walk from our place and reasonably priced.
The aquarium wasn’t huge, but it was perfectly sized. It had a nice array of animals all of our attention including some familiar species from back home. My personal favorite was the flamboyant sea lion that kept making eyes at us as it swam by the group. It was a fun morning.
A Little Treat
After a busy day of hiking and sightseeing, it was time for a little treat overlooking the harbor. While the kids wanted ice cream, pastries and maybe some hot chocolate, the adults were happy to sit down and have a brew. Better than a lollipop or any other treat, a nice, cold pear cider over ice was exactly what the doctor had ordered.
My hubby, Jacob and my brothers enjoyed a nice cold brew. It’s a bit crazy for all of us that Jacob is now able to legally drink with us while in Norway. It makes us feel a bit old, but the shared experience of a beer overlooking Bergen Harbor and Bryggen is something he will never forget.
9,000 steps before noon
We started our morning of 9,000 steps with a ride up to Mt. Floyen on the funicular. Once up the mountain, we hiked around the lake and through the forest. The views of the city, nearby islands and the North Sea were incredible. Thankfully, they had some coffee and cold water in the gift shop for a post hike refreshment.
Post Mt. Floyen, we got on a bus and headed to Mt. Ulricken. We headed up the gondola to see Bergen from the city’s highest peak. Once at the top, we hiked up to the mountain’s peak. The mountain top was home to a farm and several small lakes. The hike was exhausting, but well worth the hard work.
Savage Beast
We took a trip to the Glades this evening so I could test out my camera before our big trip. If you’ve never been to the Everglades before, it is hard to imagine what it looks like. It doesn’t look like a swamp. It’s a peaceful, beautiful, slow moving river teaming with wildlife.
The most savage beast of the glades is the American Alligator. Fishing here comes with the added challenge of having to reel in the fish before the gators can steal it. The big gators will often sit below the fishing dock waiting for someone to reel one in and then they’ll pounce. Tonight we saw several large alligators in the water, which was great. Additionally, we also saw several baby gators hanging close to shore in the weeds hiding from the larger gators and other predators.
The Mayor had a lot of luck fishing for blue gill and tilapia with worms. Goalielocks was fishing for bass, but the bass were not biting. He had a near miss with a gator and gar. Gars are a pain in the butt to catch as they’ve got very sharp teeth (and a lot of them) and they’re hard to get off the line. The gnats were out in full force, so we only stayed out for about an hour and I got plenty of practice with the new camera.
Joys of Childhood
I spent my childhood outside playing in the woods, riding my bike with the neighbor kids, playing sports year round in the neighborhood and spending quality time with my family. My childhood was fantastic and full of fond memories. These memories are more meaningful now that I have children of my own. I remember waking up early Christmas mornings with my brothers eagerly awaiting the opportunity to open our presents. I loved Christmas as a kid, but as a parent Christmas is a million times better.
The beauty of being a parent is the innocence we love when transitioning from child to adult is rediscovered through our children. The excitement of Christmas morning is now heard in their scampering about the house waiting for us to wake up. A sense of wonderment and discovery is shared when our child sees or experiences something for the first time. I’ll never forget their first trip to the zoo when they first saw a lion, tiger, giraffe and gorillas for the first time. The sense of wonderment and excitement as they moved from animal to animal was palpable.
Somewhere along our journey, we lose the wonderment and joy of childhood as we get lost in the minutia of everyday life. We stop rolling down the hills and being silly instead opting to take ourselves too seriously. We stop being curious. There is a lot we can learn from our children as we guide them through life. We can learn to enjoy the small things in life, to not take ourselves too seriously and to approach life with a sense of wonderment and curiosity.
My boys love exploring the outdoor and enjoy a healthy sense of adventure. They’re minds are going a million times a minute. When they see something they love, you can guarantee that they’ve already started scheming about how they’re going to get a boat, a chicken, a goat, a plane, etc. Their mind and their dreams have no bounds. Their joie de vivre is contagious and drives me a better mom, a better wife and a better person. Inspiration doesn’t always come from big things or famous people sometimes it comes from our minis.
To Be Or Not To Be
When the question is whether or not to be a helicopter parent, the answer is always not to be. Helicopter parents aren’t something I remember from my youth. I cannot recall a time where numerous parent volunteers populated the halls and the classroom my elementary school, but it is the case at my children’s school.
While there’s nothing wrong with volunteering in our kids classroom, it isn’t healthy when you’re child goes off to kindergarten and you go too. I remember when Goalielocks was in kindergarten he had a classmate whose mom was literally in class as a volunteer every single day. While it was awesome that she was able to help the teacher every day, it wasn’t healthy for her child to have her in class every day.
While my brothers and I were in middle school and high school, my parents were always there to support us, but they allowed us to make decisions and make mistakes. My parents were never involved in any of our relationships and certainly never orchestrated any of them. Present day, we parents like to meddle in our kids relationships, in our kids’ grades and all aspects of their lives.
The problem is if we handle every issue, every bump in the road our kids face, they will never learn to overcome obstacles on their own. This leaves them ill prepared for the obstacles they’ll face in their adult lives. As hard as it is to watch the stumble, we have to let them stumble and make mistakes. It is through these mistakes that they’ll learn critical thinking skills, that failure is okay and that we all make mistakes. Life lessons they’ll take forward into their adult life that are invaluable. The alternative of course is that we smother them as a helicopter parent and they turnout like Buster from Arrested Development.
Ice Cream, Taxes and Kids
This summer for the first time in eight years, my kids are spending the summer at home in Florida. One of the things, I’ve tasked them with is creating a product and a business. The purpose of the exercise is to keep their reading, math and critical thinking skills sharp, while also getting them to think creatively about their future. For the older two kids, this also includes the personal finance modules on Khan Academy.
As kids leave high school and college, few are well prepared for the real world. They don’t teach personal finance in high school or college. In fact, I remember tables and tables of credit card offers during my time at the University of Minnesota. A bunch of high interest credit cards is exactly what college kids don’t need as they accrue student loan debt.
Jake starts college this August and he needs to be ready to navigate his finances on his own. Since it wasn’t addressed in school, we had to create our own curriculum to teach our kids about money. One thing we did is give them a monthly budget to buy drinks and snacks for their lunch. If they ate or drink their goodies before the month was over, they were out of luck and they couldn’t borrow money. It only happened once and Jake quickly learned to live within his budget.
Fortunately, my younger two are very aggressive about saving money. As we’ve tightened the belt to afford our dream vacation, they have really sacrificed. They’ve finally stopped asking for a new boat, which is amazing. Now instead of a boat, they’d like a Cessna (small plane) they can keep in the garage. Seems pretty reasonable, right! Clearly, they need some more financial education. I’m sure once we get back from Norway, they’ll be asking for a yacht.
Living Life as a Paragon of Perfection (Not!)
In a world dominated by social media and social media influencers, the use of filters and the crafting of a careful social media presence exists far from the glare of the Hollywood lights. We use Instagram to perpetuate an image of our lives that we want the world to accept regardless if it is accurate or not. It has a created a society that looks towards almost unattainable and unsustainable happiness based on the false pretense of everyday life the social media has created.
Think about it. When you select your Insta or Facebook profile picture, you’re going to pick the most flattering picture. You may even select one with one of those ridiculous and fun Snapchat filters. We certainly don’t select a picture where we look horrible that’s for damn sure. The picture where we’ve clearly drank too much and are making the most ridiculous face that are friend tagged us in on Facebook? We instantaneously remove the tag.
The thing is we can’t pretend like this didn’t exist before the socials did. It’s not like people picked their crappiest photos and worst moments to highlight on their Christmas cards. Just like the photos we post to our profiles now, the photos selected and the moments shared always crafted a good picture. Was it always accurate? Probably not.
The problem with socials is that they exacerbate the perception that many of our friends are living lives that are the total paragon of perfection. Meanwhile, their life may be a complete disaster or completely normal. As I looked through pictures from graduation last month, I found myself laughing at the outtakes. We had some great pictures, but there were some completely disastrous photos, which are pretty accurate of how life sometimes feels in a house of all boys.
For today’s blog post, I’ve interspersed some of my favorite photos of the boys and the numerous outtakes. You’ll notice one Christmas (2007) the Mayor decided he didn’t want to cooperate at all. At the end of the day, social media can be a great tool to keep in touch with family and friends across the globe, but we can balance putting our best foot forward with the creation of a completing fake and narcissistic social media persona.