Wed Aug 4 Ok, today was my day to sleep in. Why do we have designated days to sleep in, you ask? If you're in the group that's asking, then clearly you have never crossed many time zones with small children. Emma and Lizzie go to sleep when they are tired, which means it has taken them now 4 days and they are still adjusting to the time change. They wake up at 3:00 in the morning and then go back to sleep at 6:00, up again at 10:00----you get the picture. Well, Karen and I have been taking turns getting up and taking care of the kids. Today was particularly bad; both Emma and Lizzie woke at the same time, didn't want to watch movies, didn't want to lay down, they just wanted daddy. So despite being technically off-duty I got up at ~4:00 and got Lizzie settled down on the couch. At some point Lizzie decided I was taking up too much room and pushed me off the couch so I ended up sleeping on the floor; at least I was sleeping.     Emma, Lizzie, and I finally woke up ~8:00. They watched a movie for a while and I decided that Karen might like some time to be alone with her family so I got the kids ready and we headed of to Lagunen. Lagunen is the local shopping mall. It has a large grocery store and all the normal mall-type shops. We were after apple juice, ham, and other breakfast stuff. I was quite pleased that I managed the entire shopping expedition without using English, including having the clerk attempt to explain the warranty on the beard trimmer.     We returned from our expedition about 11:30. Guess who was still asleep. In fact Karen didn't wake up till 12:40. She was shocked to find out it was as late as it was, but I think she really needed the sleep. The rest of the day was occupied with a trip to visit some of Karen’s cousins. We had a wonderful time. Ingvild and her husband Tom with their two little kids had just recently moved into a new house. By moving 10 minutes out of town they saved themselves a good chunk of money and got this view: -A    Things were going really well when Lizzie decided to follow the international-relations approach endorsed by the president she was born under. Six-year-old Herman wanted to join Lizzie in the tent. She removed one shoe, smacked him across the face with it, and was coolly replacing it when his wails drew the frowning attention of Aaron & me from the deck overlooking the lawn. Herman, in best Norwegian socially-indoctrinated style, didn't retaliate, but huddled back, cradling his cheek and crying out, "That wasn't nice!" We got Lizzie to say sorry, eventually, a nicety somewhat undercut by the evil chuckle she followed it up with. -K     There's a new unit of measure in our household, product of the ongoing debate on how to get to Baroniet Rosendal. After a lot of discussion and consulting of ferry schedules and cursing of undetailed maps, we've concluded that one route will take five forks of driving and 2 forks of ferrying. One fork = ~30 mins, and is paced off on our main map with the tines of a dessert fork. But Aaron just worked out another route that shaves off 2-3 forks of driving and wins us another 1/2 fork of ferry time. -K