Riding the Train

Today we had an appointment downtown at the immigration office.  We had to submit all of the paperwork for the kids and I.  We had driven downtown the other day so today we decided to try out the train.  We got up this morning and drove to the nearest train station and parked our car.  We were trying to navigate the machine that you buy your train tickets from when the train pulled up.  We were not able to make that train so we had to wait 30 minutes for the next train. 

 30 minutes on a train platform with 3 rowdy kids was challenging.  Jon is good at keeping them busy.  They went on a tour of the platform.

Ben sat in time out for crossing the yellow line and getting too close to the edge. 

 Addie taking a little break.  She was the only one that brought gloves this morning and we needed them.  We spent a lot of time warming our hands up today.  I feel the Norwegian mothers judging me when Garrett doesn't have a hat on.  Jon thinks I am crazy, but I see the looks.  Garrett probably should wear a hat more, but he despises them.  

 Jon created a game for the kids that involved jumping up and down these stairs.  

 They loved this little game and it kept them busy until the train came.  

 Our appointment at the immigration office took less than 1 hour.  It would have gone quicker if I had been more prepared.  I had all of the documents we needed, but I hadn't made photo copies of all of the documents.  Thankfully there was a copy place just around the corner so that didn't slow us down too much.  Then the person that was helping us, her printer broke!  Thankfully we were able to finish everything up.  Now we just have to wait for them to contact us and then we go back in with pictures of each of us and they finish the process.  Jon and I decided that a government office is a government office, and it doesn't matter what country you are in they are not much fun.

We did make one fun stop at Clas Ohlson.  This store has a lot of items that you need for your home, small appliances, electrical supplies, hardware and tools and electronics.  Today we were buying fans, night lights and a converter.  We are so used to white noise in our house, the AC, a ceiling fan, and baby monitor.  Here we have none of those.  We do sleep with the windows open, but there is so little traffic outside.  All of the bedrooms in our house are on the same hallway and our room is right next to the bathroom.  We are hoping that these fans will help cover some of the creaking floors as we all move around at night.  

 In some other good news we met up with an American Expat family that has been here for about a year.  They have 3 kiddos that are very close in age to all of our kids and they all played well last night!  We also had someone that we could ask all of our random questions to.  Finding friends is such an answer to prayer!