17th of May - a summary

Last weekend was the 17th of May - the Constitution Day here in Norway. Every year we celebrate by dressing up in our national costumes, suits or summer dresses (according to the wether, really). Last year was the perfect national costumes wether (wool, it was quite chilly at times) but this year the sun shone and it was nice and warm. We also participate in - or watch - parades, eat ice cream (no matter how cold it gets) and usually a hotdog or five. This is the children's day, thus hotdogs and ice cream are mandatory. (The general ¨rule¨ is that you, as a child, gets to eat as much ice cream and hotdogs as you can.) This year, 2014, there were special celebrations as it was 200 years since our constitution was created (and signed), freeing us as our own nation. (We'd been in union with Sweden and/or Denmark for quite some time before that.) So, all over the country special celebrations were happening, and even the Stortinget was decorated beautifully with flowers hanging down the sides of the building.

Flowers decorating the facade of Stortinget.

We spent the day at my sister, with her, Emma and our mom. I baked cupcakes (vanilla, with white chocolate frosting and strawberries) to bring as dessert.

Yummy cupcakes..

 It being a nice and sunny day, we ventured out to one of the local schools to check out the activities and people, and to let the kids play a bit. We didn't have to go much further than outside the house before there was a tree which required some attention.

If there's a tree, one must climb it.

A light breeze in our flags.

Mr. Handsome with his "gold medal". 

Up at the school there were games for the children, lotteries, places to buy cakes, hotdogs, ice cream and other yummy things (and coffee) - everything sold to support the school (I guess they were saving for a school trip or something like that).

Ice cream is mandatory!

 The school had a pretty big playground, with swings, slides and two areas where the kids could climb around. (Which suits Peder pretty well, as he loves to climb.)

Climbing around.

 Some parts required some assistance from dad or mom, but mostly he managed by himself.

Climbing the monkey bars were a new experience
for Peder.

Very focused.. 

The climbing photos were taken by my mom. Trying to get him to look into the camera is almost impossible. Too many other things to focus on. 

Dusty, the balloon.

 Peder finally got his wish granted - a huge balloon! He's been wanting one of these for at least a year, but they've been ridiculously expensive on all the occasions we've seen them. But this time the price was quite reasonable, and so we came home with Dusty.

Relaxing..

When we came back to my sister's house, Peder stripped off his pants and spent the rest of the day in a white shirt and pantyhose. We decided to ¨bbq¨ inside (the frying pan on the stove kind of bbq), as there were some dark skies threatening - but they disappeared after a while. And as the evening grew closer to bedtime, we drove home - boy in pantyhose, Dusty the ballon, and the rest of us.

***
For those who haven't seen the way we Norwegians celebrate our Constitution day, I looked on YouTube and found a video which show parts of the children's parade from this years celebration :

And, in honor of the 200 year anniversary of the signing of our Constitution, the children's channel (NRKSuper) created a music video (a hip hop/rap song) telling the story of how our Constitution was created (with some creative solutions, I've heard that it's missing some details - but it's still pretty cool). The song is quite catchy, and I'm sorry I haven't been able to find an english translation of it yet (but the kids are really good). I hope you enjoy it  :