Contanier arrived and Clara's visit

We had an eventful weekend. Our container arrived on Friday afternoon which we were thrilled about, then my colleague Clara from Laerdal Australia arrived in Stavanger on Saturday afternoon for a work trip (equally if not more exciting!).

We unpacked our container and directed about 2/3 of it to go back into storage (we are in a small furnished flat so didn't need the furniture etc.), but about a third of it went back to our place. It was like christmas all over again (literally - we opened all our chocolates and goodies we got in our Xmas stockings!). We are now enjoying having our rug, cushions, bedding, good knives, coffee machine (joel hasn't had a good night's sleep since it arrived - constant caffine high!), and clothes. It makes things much more homely and we were getting well and truly sick of being surrounded nothing but Ikea.

Saturday we met up with Clara in the afternoon, she was in surprisingly good shape considering the 30+hr flight (via singapore, london, oslo). We had a look around town and headed to Sørmarker (a forest close to Stavanger) where we let Coobs run loose and he had such a ball. Clara just loves dogs (she has a chocolate lab Baci) so Cooba lapped up the attention and freedom to run around after a week cooped up in the apartment during the day.

Sunday we went on a fjord tour with Clara and Ryan. The weather wasn't great - wet and snowing at times, but we made the best of it. The scenery is really spectacular. I'll have to ask Joel to upload the pics to Flickr (link in the menu top right of the page) as I can't work out how to do it!

Now I'll probably get into trouble for this from Joel, but I think its worth sharing, we just found out he has received 6 awards during his final year at AMC, including Best Graduate in 2006. Unfortunately we won't be back in tassie for the graduation ceremony, but Joel's brother Zac and his wife Fraze will attend, and Zac will collect the prizes on Joel's behalf. Clever little vegemite isn't he?!

Speaking of vegemite, we're very excited to sample some home grown treats Clara brought over - 2 value packs of tim tams, a pkt of chocolate teddy bear biscuits, wine, gin, magazines. Heaven.

Hope everyone is well, thanks for your comments, we love to read them. Keem 'em coming.

Emma xo