Weekends

Notice the new blog background? I am trying to be hopeful about Spring! It has been warm, in the 40's, with rain so hopefully no more snow and the rain will continue to melt the snow away! The snow drops flowers have even started peaking up from under the snow in the yard.

As I may have mentioned before, nothing is open in Norway on Sunday except for restaurants, gas stations, the garden store and a select few small grocery stores. By law the grocery store has to be under a certain square footage to be open on Sunday. Recently, the small grocery store up the street started having Sunday hours but not in their own store (since it is too large) but they have rented the space next door (which used to be a 7-11) and it is only open on Sundays. It is impressive to us that they can make enough money on Sundays in a tiny space that they can justify renting the space for only Sunday hours.

We have adjusted to not shopping etc on Sundays and actually kinda like it. What we don't like though is shopping on Saturdays! Since nothing is open on Sunday all Norwegians must shop on Saturday which means all stores feel like Wal-Mart on Black Friday to us. I am sure it is not really that bad but we are used less people now so it feels pretty claustrophobic.

Another great weekend custom here is "Saturday sweets." Most kids are not allowed candy or soda any day of the week but Saturdays. For some kids this means real candy but some kids have even more restrictive parents and they only get sweet things like raisins and yogurt (no I am not kidding). We were at the grocery story on Saturday and saw two little boys about 4 and 6 pushing their small cart with candy in it- well they started arguing and a tussle ensued knocking the cart and littlest one over. Dad promptly reached into the cart and removed all the treats and put them back on the shelf - tears ensued - but it as a great example of Norwegian parenting that we LOVE!

Just looked out the window.....it's snowing.....hmmm!