Giveaway

  Go to faith, family and Fridays to view th giveaway.  It is a really neat idea of scripture verses on post it note style paper.

Enter her giveaway and you might win a set.

Germany Part 1

  This is a picture of the girls from the windows of the apartment we stayed in at Oberammergau.  We love Bavaria.  It is just filled with wonderful people and great traditions.  The food wasn't bad either.  The apartment had a kitchen, but only a two burner stove.  I cooked most every night with just two burners.  It was a very interesting time trying to plan meals.

This is the living room and you can see just a part of the kitchen.  The popel of Bavaria are very religious.  There were many statues in the house of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus.  Also crucifixes were everywhere you looked in town.  We had to explain why they were everywhere.  So on top of learning about history in some of the places that we visited, they received some insight into the catholic faith.

The first place we stopped was Stuttgart.  The LTC had a meeting there.  While he was meeting I was shopping.  Everyone needed shoes and I needed clothes since all of mine are too big.  By the end we spent lots of money on clothes for everyone.  The day we were there at the PX, they had an extra 25% off the clearance merchandise.  For the items that we got I would have spent at least twice or three times as much getting them in Norway.

After that we went to the Black Forest for a few days on our way to Oberammergau for LTC to attend a course.  We walked around town Friday night and ate some very good German food.  Saturday we visited the Hollernzoren castle. I will tell all about that next time with some pictures as well.  Auf Weidersehen!

Melanie

Gymnastics Camp in Norway

This a picture of the girls at camp.  Three clubs from Norway came to camp.

We had a guest coach from Russia who now lives in Norway.  The girls have learned many new skills and perfected old ones.  They have three more days of camp and they are loving it.  They are socializing with the girls and working on speaking norweigian. I am socializing with the parents and practicing my norwegian.  

The girls working on skills.  Not the best pictures, but the are working hard and can't always get good pictures.

We get the afternoon off today and I think we are going swimming.  This has been a great experience for the girls and for me.  I think the parents are more open to me since coming here.  

Melanie

  

Gymnastics Camp in Norway

This a picture of the girls at camp.  Three clubs from Norway came to camp.

We had a guest coach from Russia who now lives in Norway.  The girls have learned many new skills and perfected old ones.  They have three more days of camp and they are loving it.  They are socializing with the girls and working on speaking norweigian. I am socializing with the parents and practicing my norwegian.  

The girls working on skills.  Not the best pictures, but the are working hard and can't always get good pictures.

We get the afternoon off today and I think we are going swimming.  This has been a great experience for the girls and for me.  I think the parents are more open to me since coming here.  

Melanie

  

Germany

  We are enjoying our trip to Germany so far.  We came acros from Norway on the ferry and drove to Stuttgart.  While there we did some shopping for clothes and shoes for everyone.  We spent a lot, not as much as I would have spent in Norway.  After that we spent a few days in the Black Forest.  We visited the Hollernzoren castle.  It was amazing.  It sit on top of a hill and the view is great.  You can goggle it to see what it is really like.

We then went on to Oberammergau to spend the next few weeks.  I hope to have pictures for the blog when we get back home, but interent is not that good and I only have an Ipad.  I will do my best to at least update our fun.

Melanie

My Parents and Niece Visit

  These girls really are funny.  This was during our walk on dalsnuten.  This is the first hike we did when we got to Norway .  We thought it would be a good one to take my parents and niece on while they were here.  We had a great time during their visit.  It is so nice to have people visit.  We did a fjord cruise, went to the huge boulder field, had AY birthday party, went fishing, and saw the Queen Mary 2.  It was a great couple of weeks.  We are beginning to have a greater joy for being in Norway, but miss our family and freinds.

Grandma and Papaw with grandkids on top of dalsnutan.

Enjoying the fjord cruise

so we are off on our next adventure to Germany.  More on that in the coming weeks.

Melanie

Norway In June/Saving Money in Norway

  This is the view today from my kitchen balcony.  It has been beautiful here for the past few days.  We can only hope that it will stay this way for the next few weeks.  My parents and one of my nieces are coming for a visit.  We cannot wait.  the little girls are counting the days.

I have been trying to come up with ideas for my blog and the task is not easy.  I would like to do many topics and so I am going to narrow it down.  Today I am going to talk a little bit about how I save money on groceries while living in Norway.

This was my savings the other day at the shopette/commissary.  We have a very small one here.  It has very limited items and not really any sales.  You will not see General Mills cereals 2 for 5 or anything like that.  Sometimes they have a table of things that are buy one get one free, but it may not be things we like or use.  They do however have a couple of shelves of stuff that is 50-75% off and when you combine that with coupons you can get some great deals.  The great thing about shopping overseas here is that you can use coupons that are up to six months expired.  So I get my family and friends to sned me their expired coupons.  I clip what I use and then pass them on to others in the community.  Of the $55.74 that I saved, $21.90 was with coupons and the rest from buying reduced items.  

In the states my grocery budget per month for my family of six was $400 here it is $1000.  We have to buy all fresh produce on the economy and things here are expensive.  I try to buy what is on sale and it makes you not waste because you only buy if you are going to use.  A pound of grapes here is $5 not on sale sometimes you can find them for $3.30 a pound whne they are on sale.  A cucumber is $2.45 and again if on sale you might can find them for $1.55.  So I try to buy the fruit and vegetables that are on sale that week.  We always try to have some things like bananas,tomatoes, peppers and onions whether they are on sale or not.  I keep trying to cut back and get an even smaller number for my budget, but after a year of living here I have decided that I cannot cut much more.  Norway has sales, but not many and they don't have coupons.  The closest thing to coupons is one of the stores has a buying program and you pay 300 NOK  or about $52 and you get a percentage each year of your purchases and they send you coupons for money off the items that you seem to buy a few time a year.  Just last week I got 1.75L of milk for free.  So as you can see I still save and search for the deals even in another country. 

I hope that you get inspired to see where you can save money on the things that you buy.  Living debt free has been our goal and except for our mortage we are there and I can say that we have not suffered by saving and finding the deals to reach our goal.  We are even using the envelope system here in Norway.  Come back to see how we implemented that system in a foreign country.