Update

I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I started Weight Watchers again. I had a goal of losing 15 pounds by the time we left on our trip. I realized that wasn't realistic, so I ammended that to 10 - 15 pounds. I just got back from today's weigh in, and I've lost 14! I'm so proud! It took 6 weeks of hard work, but I did it. I love seeing the results. It helps motivate me to keep moving forward. I still have a lot of work to do, but meeting this goal was awesome!!

Also, I just checked weather.com again. I know we all know that the Weather Channel is always wrong. I don't mean always in your normal weatherman inaccuracies sense of the word. No, I mean ALWAYS. But, their website does seem to do a little better. Well, the forecast for our days in Bergen looks a little better....no rain, just high wind advisories. We can deal with that!

All our bags are packed, we're ready to go..

Truth be told, we're almost ready to go. The bags are packed. There are a couple more things to throw in. It's amazing how much more space winter-type clothes take up than summer/fall clothes! I feel like I don't have THAT much, but my bag sure is full!! I have a couple of little errands to do and some last minute details. Oh, and I guess I'd better put together the carry-ons! I think we're taking our coats as carry-ons with pillow cases so we can have our own pillows throughout the trip! Good idea, Rick!

I can't believe today is the day. I really hope I remember to stop and enjoy being in the middle of everything. Sometimes when traveling, it's easy to get all caught up in what needs to happen next, but I'm focusing on enjoying the fabulous moments as they unfold!

consumed

Today, I am all-consumed with all things travel. Mom and I are running errands, getting things crossed of my list. Incidentally, it's a much longer list than I'd anticipated. Just where did all of these items come from? I checked The Weather Channel for the forecasts this weekend and next week. Apparently, all of the nasty weather we've had here has moved on to there. It's supposed to rain every single day of our first week there. Fabulous. Wait, wait....it gets better. It's cold too. Way colder than last week. Grrrrrrrr!!!! Here's the forecast for our first full day (Bergen, Norway).

Day	Night
Rain High 47°F Precip 60% Wind: SSE 15 mph Max. Humidity: 71% UV Index: 2 Low Sunrise: 6:05 AM Local Time Avg. High: 48°F Record High: N/A	Rain Overnight Low 34°F Precip 60% Wind: S 8 mph Max. Humidity: 82% Sunset: 9:12 PM Local Time Avg. Low: 36°F Record Low: N/A

On another, fabulous note, I found my wedding band! Yay! Yes, it has been among the missing. Bad wife, I know. When we moved, I took it off and put it in the ring box. But where did I put it? Last night, I was going through jewelry I keep in my dresser, and whaddaya know, there it was! Who ever would have guessed? Now, it's properly ensconsed on my finger!

Okay, I'm off to the errands. We'll call it fun.

We have a bed!!

The stress level has reduced significantly!! We have a place to stay our first two nights. Man, was I getting worried there. We are staying at Fjellsiden Guesthouse. Say that three times fast! This is not the place I was talking about yesterday. I had an email from him this morning saying that his guest decided to stay through the weekend. I had a feeling that would happen, so last night I did some more research and found this place. I went ahead and emailed just in case, and they have room! Yay!!

On top of that, we have a room in Helsinki now too. It's weird. All of the hostels there are booked already. We don't want to stay there until the 27th, but everything's booked. I actually emailed two different hotels about staying with them, and got a yes from both! First time that's happened in this trip planning effort. I felt bad turning the one down. In his response, he said, "Thank you for your nice email." But it was a little farther out, and I know at the end of the day Chris will appreciate being close to everything.

So, at this point the only places we don't have rooms are Tallinn, Estonia and Copenhagen. Tallinn's hostels still have beds, so I'm not too worried there, and Rick Steves mentions the place I stayed when I visited Copenhagen 10 years ago. How can it be 10 years already? That means next year I will have been out of college for 10 years. 10 years!!!! Let's not talk about it any more. Back to the topic at hand.....Rickey mentions the place we stayed back then. I think he calls it unimpressive. We quite liked it (I remember the breakfast being great - first time I ever had yougurt on my granola - probably 'cuz I couldn't stand to put whole milk on it, LOL! that hasn't changed in 10 years!). Funny what being poor college students and adding 10 years can do, huh? I thought it would be really cool to stay there again. I'm going to check into it, but there are also a couple of places I've heard good things about that I'll check out too.

Today, I'm doing a couple of last minute details. Picking up my new shoes that had to be tweaked at the cobbler (I love calling the shoe repair guy the cobbler), getting a lens hood for one of my lenses & seeing about getting the camera cleaned. Oh yeah, and packing. We still have piles....nothing in bags yet. I had some laundry to do. Now if I can just keep from wearing my clean clothes before we go!

I'm also scrapbooking with Mom and Rachel at Scraphappy's. It's good for me to do something that keeps my mind off of the fact that WE'RE GOING TO EUROPE IN 2 DAYS!! I could very easily cross the threshold from happy/excited into freaking out. I'm working on finishing up a scrapbook of our last European trip. I took all of my blog entries from that trip (they are Sept. 28, 2005 - Oct. 8, 2005), copied them, and laid the text out across 35(ish) pages, leaving room for pictures to tell the stories. It's quickly become one of my favorite scrapbooks ever. I love going back through and reading everything. It also makes me know I want to do the blogging again this trip. I can't wait to come home and make another one of these of this trip. But, I really want to have the one from the last trip done before we leave. So, off I go.....   

stressed

So, it's gone from frenzied to stressed. Seriously. I don't know what's going on in Bergen, Norway this weekend, but whatever it is, we can't find a hotel room! Let me amend that......we can't find a room at a price we're willing to pay. I can't even count how many emails I've sent in the last couple of days. I started a couple of weeks ago, but had a causual attitude about reservining us a room. I mean, it's not high season or anything. Yeah, well, the lax attitude is kicking me in the you-know-what right now. I try really hard to stay in smaller, family run places or hostels. We're even looking at staying in rooms in homes again. These options tend to be among the cheapest. But, they're all booked. I thought it wouldn't be any big deal. Who wants to go to Norway (or Sweden or Finland for that matter) when it's still cold? Apparently, I was wrong.

Now I'm worried about our Norway in a Nutshell trip. Should I schedule it before we go? At this late date, does it really matter all that much? AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!! Chris says it's all going to be fine. Easy to say when you're not the one actually dealing with all this stuff! I know he's right. There are still beds to be had in hostels, but I wanted something a little nicer for our first two nights. Guess the old addage is true.....beggars can't be choosers. I thought I'd found us a cute little apartment. I checked the availability and everything & it said it was available. But, when the guy emailed me back, he said the person staying there has the opportunity to extend his stay through the weekend. The proprietor won't know what they renter chooses until morning. I'm going crazy over here. I looked at rooms on Travelocity tonight. There were about 5 around $240 and the rest were full. Again, AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!! Actually, it's officially morning over there now. They're what, 7 or 8 hours ahead of us? That makes it at least 7:20 over there. Guess we still won't know anything for a couple of hours, though. And I'm exhuasted, so I'm heading to bed. Here's hoping we have a bed this weekend!

Oh, and how cool is it that I can say, "This weekend, when we're in Norway......?"

Frenzied

Chris and I are totally frenzied right now. We leave for Norway on Thursday. Thursday already. I can't stand it! There's still so much to do. Reservations to make, packing to do (lots of packing...we haven't started yet...at all). Right now, I think I'm more frenzied than Chris (no surprise there, LOL!). Work has been all-consuming for him lately. It's truly been crazy. Pure craziness. I'm excited to get him out of the country where they totally can't get ahold of him. One of his off-shore people (that would be a guy in India) called him in the middle of the night just to talk. I was actually still up, but I don't require nearly as much beauty sleep as Chris. The stress level has gotten totally ridiculous. Seriously.

Anyway, we have a lot of getting ready to do. I usually spend the night before a big trip staying up all night, taking care of all the little details. I've already made (well, really decorated - fancied up) our journals. Chris got me some awesome Moleskine journals for Christmas. I used two out of the three-pack. They're just perfect. Not to big, not too small, and enough pages for the whole trip, but not enough that you feel guilty for not filling it up.

I am a little worried about how much we're taking. Actually, though, I don't know yet how much WE're taking. I asked Chris to make a list of what he wants to take so we (I) can start packing tomorrow. Here's what I got:

• Socks



• Boxers



• Long sleeve shirts



• Short sleeve shirts



• Warm-up pants

Not really what I was looking for in the way of a list! Cracked me up. I even printed off Rick Steves' packing list! No biggie, we'll just do it together. We'll probably get everything out and put it in piles (maybe even actually put it all in the bags) and then go back through and weed out some stuff. I'm just really trying to avoid a sleepless Wednesday night. Although, maybe that would help me sleep on the plane from Memphis to Amsterdam. Nah, probably not. I'm terrible about sleeping on planes. I'm thinking about taking something to help with that this time. We arrive in Bergen, Norway at 4:35, so there will still be time for a little sightseeing, and I'd rather not be falling down sleepy!

On a non-travel note, my little Scooby isn't feeling so well. Poor baby. His allergies are seriously kicking up. Poor little guy. He's got lots of fleghm and is constantly trying to cough it up. We've given him some Benadryl, and it's helped, but not 100%. He's even got little globs of snot that dried around his little poo-bear nose. He needs lots of love right now. Poor guy. If he's not any better by Monday, I'm probably going to take him to the vet. I wonder what giving him Mucinex would do? That stuff really helps me!

Pure Craziness

That's life lately! It's just been crazy around here! We spent Easter weekend in Osage Beach, MO with my awesome friend Andi and her boyfriend, Gio. I was soooo happy to get to see them. I love Andi, and don't get to see her nearly as often as I'd like. We stayed at the Lazy Days Condos. Andi's family has been going there since she was a wee lass, and I've been there with her a couple of times before. It's nice to go somewhere familiar.

We shopped, we slept, we ate. It was perfectly relaxing. Somehow, though, we managed to come home more tired than we left. How does that work? We most certainly did our part to support the economy! Holy cow! We bought a ton of stuff. We found tons of awesome sales with tees for $8 and polos for $10. We stocked up since we won't be going back for a while. (plus, I got a new awesome purse!) And, the Jeep did brilliantly on it's first road trip. If ever there was a perfect vehicle for me, that's it!

Chris and I leave for Scandinavia in 9 days. Oh my gosh. It just hit me...9 days. That's all. Oh my gosh! I can hardly stand myself. Seriously....I was excited about it and aware, but saying it to myself just now really brought it home to me. This trip is already quite different from our last trip to Europe. Last time, we bought our airfare 9 months ahead. This time, it was 4 weeks. Last time, we knew exactly what we were doing & when....this time, I'm still trying to figure it all out. We're flying into Bergen, Norway, then on to Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn (Estonia), back to Stockholm, on to Aero Island, Denmark, and finally 4 days in Copenhagen.

It sounds like a lot, doesn't it? It is a lot. And there's still tons more we want to do than we have time for. We scheduled the trip for now because the airfare was significantly cheaper than even 2 weeks later. But we're running into problems. Nothing...and I mean NOTHING opens until May 1. There are a few things that are open already, but even those things aren't 100% open. On top of that, the things we want to do, like Norway in a Nutshell, are difficult to find out about. Rick Steves suggests reserving ahead of time, but I'm here to tell ya....it's not super easy! Never the less, I'm super excited! We may not be able to see all of the Fjords like I wanted to, but some is better than none, right? Yeah, you could say I'm excited.