The Sorensens

Here is a high speed catch up with the Sorensens…

32A Warrender Park Terrace is ours no longer. We organised, the removal men came, they drank tea, they worked their back sides off, and at the end of two days we had an empty flat. After some serious scrubbing and some generous friends who were willing to take our remaining food (we had an ungodly amount of pasta and olive oil), we handed our keys over to Braemore and walked away with a sadness in our gait.

After some sad but lovely goodbyes, we set off for Scandinavia. I have to add here that Trygve has been an amazingly good traveler and a trooper with all the change we have put him through in the last month.

Stockholm was as beautiful as we imagined it would be. We stayed in a small, quaint hotel in the Old Town that exceeded our expectations. It was a bit of a trick figuring out how to share a room with a seven month old person, but after the first night we adjusted. Our highlights of Stockholm were the Vassa Museet and wandering through the streets of the Old Town. The strangest thing about Sweden was being in a foreign country where we didn’t speak the language at all, but looked so much and felt so much like we belonged. After four lovely nights we caught the train and rolled our way to Oslo. We had a rough start in Oslo as I rolled my ankle walking away from the train station and had to slowly limp our way to the hotel. Needless to say we took it easy that evening. The next day was Sunday and they take their ‘day of rest’ very seriously in Norway-everything was closed except for 7-Eleven and a Deli deLucca. We learned that day that Norwegians like to watch a lot of skiiing-Cross Country skiing. A bit boring after more than ten minutes. Luckily things picked up on Monday. After a quick trip across the street to buy a brace for my ankle, we were off to the Viking Ship Museum and the Nordic Heritage Museum. The skill they have with wood is impressive!

We enjoyed our time, but were glad to be heading off again. The whirlwind continued with a quick stop in Edinburgh and a wonderful last dinner with close friends—curry, cup of tea, and good conversations. It definitely made our last night in the city we’ve called home memorable and bittersweet. We are going to miss Edinburgh and our friends there greatly!

We are now in Florida and have been enjoying the slowed pace, help from grandparents, lovely weather, pool time, sunsets over the beach, good conversation, and today we are off for a bicycle ride. This is the perfect way to transition back and wait for our stuff to make the crossing. Couldn’t be better really!

Cheers, Jenny

It is a strange feeling to visit a place that used to be home. It is both familiar, yet strange at the same time. This Christmas we left Edinburgh and traveled to Seattle to visit with family and friends. Traveling with us was our 5 month old boy. He behaved extraordinary well, but a journey of that length is still wearisome. A thought experiment. Imagine a carry-on bag which weighs roughly 15 pounds which is socially unacceptable to put either overhead, or under the seat. Rather, it must be held on the lap for the duration of the flight. Add to this some drooling, pooing, spitup, etc. This is work enough on its own if the baby is well behaved. Then add the possibility of crying and things begin to get fun. But Trygve was really exceptionally good. I do have significantly more respect for parents and patience with crying children on flights now. One tactic I recommend is to bring earplugs onto the flight to offer to people around you to diffuse the situation a bit.

So what did I notice about the States upon my return?

+ washers and dryers! Having two separate machines parallelizes the task of washing clothes making it possible to do more than 1 load a day. Astounding! Then make the machine large enough to contain more than 3 pairs of socks and you really have something!

+ appliances, bathrooms – I took a long shower at my parent’s house, forgetting that they had a water heater rather than on demand water heating. I thought to myself, man, the UK does this better. But then I thought about the fact that I had showered under gale force water pressure rather than a stream rate which could be compared to the rate of a glacier melting. Hmmm.

+ cheap food, cheap gas, cheap everything! The downside of this is a strong feeling of materialism, that your worth or value or importance is determined by how much you consume. Also, the obesity of the general population is staggering. I suppose an unsurprising side effect of cheap, fast food is that people eat too much. One grandmother observed that obesity may be the biggest health problem facing the nation in the years ahead.

+ friendly – people smile, customer service is actually helpful, random strangers talk to you, I hardly know how to respond!

- cars – It is mind boggling how central cars are to the American way of life. And cars is probably the wrong term to use here, as the number of trucks and SUV’s seems to dwarf the number of cars. Again this may be an example of wealth making it possible to take things to excess.

+ natural beauty – this is perhaps an unfair comparison, for how many places are as beautiful as Seattle? The man made beauty of Edinburgh far exceeds Seattle, but the lakes and sound and mountains in Seattle are stunning.

What did I miss from the UK? Driving is far superior in the UK. People travel at higher speeds, and yet I feel safer (maybe a side effect of having much fewer cars on the road, and smaller ones at that). In Edinburgh a green pedestrian walk symbol means you are safe to go. In the States it means, “now is your chance, but watch out because somebody turning might not see you”. I missed the beauty of Edinburgh buildings, the feeling of history, spires and castles, cobbled streets. And of course, I missed the BBC.

But the most important part of the trip was seeing family. How grand to witness family delight in seeing Trygve for the first time! How glorious to be parented rather than parenting for a while! We loved seeing family and friends, and were blessed by all those we stayed with. Now we return to our quiet life in the windy city.

More Pics!

~haakon

A random post for the fam – here is Trygve making some noise as he plays>

Squeaker Squeakerson

I thought that after the last couple techy posts (informative and enlightening as they are) I would change the pace a touch.

I am continually amazed at how quickly time passes. I look at our son who is coming up for 12 weeks on Thursday and think, when did he get to be such a little person? Last time I checked it was the beginning of August and now in the blink of an eye we are in the thick of October. I’m usually heard complaining about the weather in Edinburgh, but as of late, it has been absolutely beautiful and I wanted to put it on record that I am enjoying this Autumn fully.

Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk with a new friend Jennie and her 13 week old son Louis. We meandered through the cobbled streets, enjoying the crisp air and the lovely colours. We walked towards the “Hermitage” which is a large ‘park’ just south of our flat with fields, a large hill, pond, creek, and woodland as well. I love that in just 20 minutes walking I can go from the upbeat pace of the city to tranquil countryside. We walked through a field and sat on a bench overlooking it all as the sun was beginning to set. The trees were showing off their full colours, the sky was a lovely hue of pink, and both our sons were peacefully sleeping—a virtual moment of heaven. It was a lovely break in the midst of what can feel like a busy and hectic life filled with feeding, nappy changing, and trying to get chores done around the house. We paused for several blissful moments and took it all in before walking back to home, city, and the clambering needs of our wee little men. A short Autumn respite indeed, but it made for a restorative Sunday evening.

~Jenny

This evening I was enjoying my common pastime these days, trying to settle Master Trygve to sleep. A little burping, tying up (I mean swaddling), rocking, etc. Whatever it takes to bring on the elusive state of sleep. I have tried telling him to just close his eyes and pretend he is asleep, or maybe count sheep, but he doesn’t seem to understand the finer points of reason yet. Finally success arrived, he was sleeping quietly and peacfully. One thing we’ve found that seems to help is an astonishingly loud clock. It is the ol’ manual wind up kind that gives you dreams that you are Captain Hook and that a crocodile is relentlessly pursuing you night and day. Not having read Peter Pan, Trygve seems to find it to be a pleasant bit of steady white noise.

As I stealthily stood up to leave the room, the stillness was shattered by the self same clock ringing itself mightily in joyous abandon, sound reverberating through the room for what seemed an eternity. I desperately grabbed it and attempted to muffle it as best I could but to no avail. Trygve had experienced his first alarm clock, and with good success. In the words of Mr. Castanza, “Serenity now!”

I thought I would post a picture of the offending clock and it wasn’t until I saw the picture that I chuckled at the irony of the situation.

~haakon

We are pleased to announce the arrival of the newest member of the Sorensen family. Trygve Anders Peter made his arrival into the world at 9:05 (BST) at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, weighing in at 7 lbs 10 oz. and a whopping 22 inches long! He has been a joy so far and loves to sleep and eat. Our lives have been forever changed and we feel blessed greatly by it.

As some have wondered at the name, here is a quick run-down on what it means, why we chose it, and the all important…how to pronounce it!

Name guide

Trygve is a old-school Norwegian name that means “True or Trustworthy”. Anders is the Scandinavian form of Andrew (the patron saint of Scotland) and it means “Strong and Manly”. Peter is one of Haakon’s middle names and means “Rock”. So all put together it roughly means “true/trustworthy strong rock”. A lot to live up to, we know…we expect his personality to be very gentle, compliant, etc. :)

Also, we have had some requests for a pronunciation guide. We are pronouncing his name ‘trigvee’, though the proper scandinavian is a bit different. You can listen to http://www.thesorensens.org/stuff/trygve.wav for an example. We mostly plan on calling him Tryg (trig), except I’m sure later in life when the whole Trygve Anders Peter will come out at appropriate times. :) We also find ourselves using the nick name ‘Trigger’, so don’t feel like you can’t call him that at times. For you maths heads out there, Haakon’s dad suggested we can make reference to ‘Trig functions’ at appropriate times. :) Goofy engineering/surveyor joke. I have always loved the name Trygve! It’s funny because most people have never heard this name, but I’ve come across two different people with this name in my life and both were well respected and role models for those around them. Trygve Johnson from my high school was an amazing Christian who stood up for his beliefs, loved others around him unconditionally, and still managed to be a stellar student, ASB president, and respected by people of all walks of life. I haven’t kept up with him, but from what I hear, he’s serving God as a pastor now. I hope our son has the same love for others and Christlike attitude to people as him.

~Jenny

Now for a (related) tangent. Should we be “thinking beyond salvation” when sharing God’s good news? How should we be “selling” Christianity? In my context, we (the church) seem to be selling salvation. Focusing on the classic “You have sinned and will face judgement when you die, but Jesus has died for you so if you believe in him God won’t be mad at you anymore and you will go to heaven when you die”. I have to be careful looking back on this line to make sure I am not making the position too farcical (I suspect I’ve failed). Now these statements are pretty much true, and sometimes they might even be the right thing to say. I recently saw a poster that embodies the idea of selling life salvation. It read something like “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ…and you shall be saved. Instant Life Insurance!” This disturbs me somehow; let me see if I can put this in more every day terms and highlight what concerns me.

Say you are a young man, pretty normal, a few years out of college. Your working a vanilla job, and some new girl just got hired a couple weeks ago and you were talking over lunch. During the conversation the topic of relationships come up and she starts to ask you if you are seeing anyone, etc., etc. You admit that you are single, and this person starts to speculate about why. “Maybe it is your temper”, or “yeah, I noticed you are late to things pretty often, sloppy, etc…” I suspect your hackles would rise, and you would write off what they said, and probably make an effort not to take lunch at the same time anymore. A person probably would not change themselves based upon such a conversation. Contrast this to a different scenario. Take the same young man, a few months later. Your life has suddenly got interesting because you have met the girl of your dreams. But, the more you get to know her, you begin to realize that she is just a step beyond you. Dang it, she is smarter, nicer, and better looking. She seems to spend more time thinking about other people than herself. You know she loves you better than you love her and that is confusing. The more you think about it, the more you want to be a better person just for her sake. You want to shed your bad habits, work on those character flaws and generally improve yourself.

So what is the difference? I think it is relationship. We don’t go to much effort to please strangers, we rarely care what random people think about us. “I will never see them again anyway”. But, it is vitally important to us that the people close to us think well of us. We want our family, our spouse, our closest friends to think well of us. It is a bitter twist to find out that someone you care about dislikes some part of you.

Surely this should play a part in how we tell people about Jesus. Telling people they need to shape up for God doesn’t carry much weight until people understand how much God loves them, and they start to love God themselves. When we “peddle” Jesus, surely the main point is not that when we die we go here or there. Is not the biggest news that the greatest lover the world has ever known loves me, even though he knows all the flaws in my past? And better yet, he loves me knowing how I am going to continue to mess up in the future? Isn’t salvation just the icing on the cake, not the substance?

A couple of days ago, I was at the local pool for my morning swim. I’ve been trying to keep up with the swimming during my pregnancy—”they say” that it is good exercise and feels great to be “weightless” in the pool. I haven’t experienced any weightlessness just yet. Who are “they” anyway? Have “they” swam pregnant? Mostly I’m just excited to still be able to do a flip turn without my bump getting in the way too much (imagine a 6 month pregnant lady doing a somersault).

Despite my awkwardness and feeling like I’m not as streamlined as I used to be, I had a small victory on Thursday morning. There was a gentleman in the pool who was decently good (I think he was a triathelete). He could pass me when I was doing a kick set with my kickboard, but when I switched to swimming, he couldn’t pass me and I was keeping up with him. I was proud of myself for still having enough energy to be able to keep up. When he finished with his workout, he got out and went to dry off at the side of the pool. I was doing 100 IM sets, so I stopped after my 100 and stood up at the shallow end (cheeky jenny) and my bump, in all its glory, was above the water. I think he was stunned that I was a pregnant lady! Poor guy, I probably gave him a complex and he will swim much harder next time he works out. I count it as a small victory for the bump—I might feel frumpy and large most of the time (especially going into a cute, trendy, clothing shop where the “big girl” sizes are like size 6), but that morning in the pool I had a moment of feeling great!

~jenny

Today, it is spring in Edinburgh! Fortunately, we finished our errands before the “spring” hit us. We made our monthly trip to America, that is, Costco. Stepping inside the doors is like being in ‘merica. Imagine, shopping carts which are large, with fixed rear wheels! Jenny enjoyed parking in the American sized spots, with our British car. You could probably nearly fit our car the wrong way (perpindicular) in one of those spots!

I think the highlight of my day was stopping into Sainsbury’s (a general purpose kind of store). Jenny was looking for a slip. We looked around in women’s clothing, but they weren’t obvious. However, you never know where something might be, so my policy is usually to ask. So, I spotted an employee, and went to make my query. Unbeknownst to me, Jenny was embarassed at the thought of asking, and was scampering away.

“Do you carry any slips?”, I asked. She looked at me rather strangely, looked around, but I seemed to be by myself. “Slippers?” “No, a slip, they go under your skirt…” “No, we don’t carry any underwear here”. She seemed slightly disturbed by my asking.

So, I went to tell Jenny so, and saw her running out of the store. Apparently she thought it was bad form for a guy to ask a woman in a shop where to find a slip.

Anyway, now it is bright and sunshiney outside, 39 degrees, 9mph winds, a grand day!

-haakon

I have been thinking lately about what I have, and what I buy. My thoughts go something like this…

1. If I need X, then others in the world needs X. 2. I can afford X 3. Others in the world cannot afford X. 4. Will I be comfortable at the end of my life to face God and say, “it was ok for me to have X because I happened to be lucky enough to be born in a rich country, and so clearly you are ok with me having X while other people went without”? 5. Probably not.

Therefore, if I need something, then others in the world do too, and I should work to share with them. Or, maybe I don’t really need X. These are my thoughts. I think the general idea is sound, but it could get challenging in practice, particularly to avoid being formulaic or legalistic. So, can I live it?

-haakon