9 Days to Go!

Merry Christmas to all. We have been traveling since the 21st to the Denver area and down to the family farm. We have seen family and friends, visited the Denver Zoo lights, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, played board games with friends and had lots of good food and beer. Christmas eve and day were spent on the farm with all of Shan's mom's relatives. We will be heading to Denver to see Sally's family for a few days before heading back to Gunnison to pack for Iceland.
One new twist to our plans is that Spencer needs to go in for surgery on the 29th. He is having another tube placed in his eardrum and his upper throat will be scoped to try and diagnose why he keeps having ear trouble. When we went to Spencers' ENT appointment on Friday morning, his doctor wanted to see him again in 6 weeks to decide whether surgery should happen sooner or later. But with us all being in Iceland, Dr Hogle was able to squeeze Spencer in 6 days later, especially with all of the flying we will doing in the next few weeks. Hopefully, Spencer will be as ideal of a patient as last time and recover just as quickly. Not exactly what I wanted 5 days before we leave the country but it should help Spencer hear better (again).

Leaving school

Trying to get everything in line for us to leave school in Gunnison for 6 months. We have to disenroll each kid and then reenroll when we return over the summer. Interestingly, each school (all in same district) keeps having different policies as to what must be done before we leave. Two talk about filling out paperwork while the third  has nothing for us. Alex must have her paperwork completed by herself while Joslyn's is in limbo and Spencer has none. Love admististrative work. All I care about is that they all will matriculate to the next grade with their peers in the Fall.
Shan and I made PDF files of Alex's History/Social Science text and science text. This way we can be sure and cover the general material that her classmates are covering. Luckily both Alex and Joslyn's math texts are available online.
Lots of school parties today and telling everyone goodbye.
19 days until we fly fly away.

finishing final exams

Shan and I are finishing up final exams today. We will (hopefully) finish grading over the next few days and can concentrate on getting ready to go.
The kids are on the lookout for anything Icelandic. In the movie "Arthur Christmas" the old sleigh is made from Icelandic birch and the kids talk about being close to the North Pole once we are in Iceland.

Practicing Icelandic

Shan and Alex are both working hard on speaking Icelandic. We now know that the entire family can roll their r's but me. I guess I'll be the quiet one in Iceland.

Girls Blogs

Alex and Joslyn both have their own blogs for Iceland.
Alex's blog address is alexhiniceland.blogspot.com
Joslyn's blog address is joslyniniceland.blogspot.com
Each have business cards to give to their friends with their blog address on them. They are really excited about this trip and being able to blog about their own adventures.

27 Days to Go and we have Residency Permits

I just received notification that our residency permits have been approved!  Everyone is beginning to really get excited about this.
Shan is already watching the weather in Western Iceland and which ski resorts are opening up.
Spencer has decided to make a list of the first things we need to do in Iceland on Jan. 5th.
     1) Eat Breakfast (we arrive at 6:45 am)
     2) Go buy a car and a house
     3) Find all of the toy stores in Reykjavik
Joslyn is talking about making lots of new friends so next time we go to Iceland, we'll have friends to visit.
Alex is finally learning some useful Icelandic. We have a computer tutorial for kids to learn Icelandic that has 'helpful' words like hippopotamus, octopus and the like. Now, she has shifted to using some of the guidebooks we purchased to learn phrases like "My name is ..." and "Where is the bathroom?"
I'm trying to stay on top of my classes and research here in Colorado while also working on the course syllabus for Bifrost University and preparing for research in Iceland.

36 days until we leave for Iceland

We are leaving on January 4th from Denver to Boston then Reykjavik and arriving at 6:30 am on January 5th.
I have finally finished with the paperwork for the Fulbright commission and Icelandic government. Now we are just waiting for the residency permits to come back from Iceland. Also, I have finished ordering new luggage for everyone for the trip. Lots of bright, distinctive colors for every bag (more difficult to lose a kid in the airport that way).