Jule hilsen fra Familien Larsen

'tis the season

I made a movie like this in the middle of the night, the lighting was great. It had a feeling of cold weather, as it was just great. but the movie turned totally black when I imported onto the computer. So I re-did it in the daylight. Now I contemplating to re-do it again, with pictures into a slideshow.... We'll just have to wait and see if that happens.

Ohhhh, Christmas Tree

'tis the season for a Christmas tree.

We took ourselves a trip out in the country, and we found ourselves a very nice tree on a tree farm, Carrol's Country Christmas Trees.

We were greeted by a nice young guy named Jared. He gave us a little tree saw, and told us to find the tree we wanted, and he would cut it down, unless we wanted to do so ourselves. We walked the whole tree farm, until we found ourselves the tree we wanted. We walked the whole farm to see if they had at least one nice Noble. That's the kind we have had for all the years our families have been..... meaning... both Lea Anne's parents and mine have had NOBLE's throughout our childhood....
But they did not have any .... well, they had some, but they were not nice enough to pay about $40 for, especially since we had a card for one free tree, given to us from our friends Larry and Diana Walker. We figured, we might just get a DOUGLAS here, and we can buy a NOBLE somewhere else if we don't like it.


Here is the tree we finally decided on. Our Christmas tree 2008.


Look how happy we were when had decided on our tree.

Sam in cutting action.

He was a trooper until the tree fell.

The joy lasted until the tree was placed in the stand. How could our beautiful 9' tree become THIS???

I can guarantee you that we don't have a 9' ceiling!!

If you look closely, you may be able to see that I put a two inch block under the tree to get it higher, but that it is still about a foot to the ceiling.

And I did measure it twice!! I even joked with Lea Anne how silly it was of me to measure height on the exact same spot we were to place it, as our ceiling is the same all over.


I put a little two inch block in the bottom of the stand to elevate the tree.
notice how few branches there is at the bottom of our tree....

I filled in with branches to fill it out... a trick I learned from my dad.... he always made the trees much fuller. Our trees always looked perfect.

I think I will add one more branch before I call it good, and we can start decorating it. Good activity for a snow day.

Did I mention... Sam was too effective in cutting the tree... TIMBER! First take.

If the camera guy is not ready when the tree is going down.... well, then a second take have to be taken....

TIMBER! !
Second take......


(We call it: "To do a Jeanette" in our house.... We love you, Jeanette)

Arborist in action.

Here is the first picture from the tree removal party that was at our Bishops house yesterday, Saturday December 6th, 2008.

I took about 70 more pictures and movie clips that morning. A selection of those will appear on this blog, but the rest can be found at

http://picasaweb.google.com/norwayfamily/TakingDownBishopsTree#

The pictures on the Picasa site is in a small format, but if you like to have a larger picture, let me know, and I will send it in a larger format to you.

This is about an hour into the event. The other guys started about 10 AM, but I came at about 11 AM.

Until I can get the movie of the tree top removal in place here... here is a link to it.

http://picasaweb.google.com/norwayfamily/TakingDownBishopsTree#5277011932655488834

I could have a couple of movies where the guys are taking turn using sledgehammers to wedge the wood to fireplace size pieces, and it may come, but for now, I will put in a link to where Peter Bergeson breaks apart a huge log with his bare hands all by himself. Those logs WERE REALLY HEAVY, I NEED TO MENTION IT AGAIN! I carried or rolled more than half of those logs by myself to the guys that split them.

http://picasaweb.google.com/norwayfamily/TakingDownBishopsTree#5277014015881528898

OK, guys... here is a link to where you did a great job splitting the logs.

Neil and James http://picasaweb.google.com/norwayfamily/TakingDownBishopsTree#5277013372022958258

Deleted blog

I guess there is a couple, maybe even a few that my have noticed that I have deleted a whole post right here. It so happen that I had posted a post in the wrong blog. I guess when you have many different blogs, that can happen. At least that happened to me.

It's a SMALL world

The world seems to get smaller and smaller as I grow older and older. Here I have been doing research on the Bottelsen family line. And a couple of days ago, I received an email from Else Egeland. She found my Bottelsen blog and was able to find some common ancestors, and she gave a link to parts of the family tree that I had been thinking of looking into next. While I was looking at the information and the names, I came across a name that was very familiar to me. It was the name of a teacher at my high school from many years ago, and many miles away. Even in the very northern part of Norway. I was not quite sure if it was a coincidence or if it was the same person. There was one man named Olav Erichsen, who was married to a woman with the name Sigrid Rokne. I told my wife as soon as I saw that, about my teacher friend that was named Olav Rokne Erichsen. And sure enough, a little further down the page, I found a son named Olav. How many could it be with that name? I know I am the only Rune Trygve Larsen in the world, even if I have found that there is no-one with that name in the US... (guess where I live.... and if you have read one of my old posts, you'll understand what I mean.)

I mentioned it to Else in an Email, and she confirmed that he is a second cousin of her, so all along, I have known a decedent of my 'old friend' Peder Bottelsen.

And this is the third time this have happened to me. The second time was when I told my friend Lea Anne (she later became my wife) that I knew only one person in Oregon, and her name was Kathleen Nordgaard. Should you have known.... she went to Church with Lea Anne, even if the place I knew that her hometown was a few hours away from Eugene. But that is how I got Lea Anne's number. She can tell you what she thought of me after the first time we talked on the phone.

I also had a similar experience happening to me while visiting the London Temple after my mission, when I met 7 people or couples (or families) that had a connection to me via a friend.

This was also how I became the boyfriend to an old girlfriend I had looooong ago.....

Who have you met lately that you may have a common connection with that may not be obvious.... Maybe it is me? I know of one woman that knows four of my friends from four different periods in my life. I don't know her myself, but being in the same Facebook group, I found that out. BTW, Facebook is very interesting tool to find out that kind of thing.... Maybe there is one of your friends among my friends on Facebook. Who knows who knows who!

A great day

I have enjoyed a day with the family. We took a trip to Portland, and for those that are not familiar with the distance, it's about two hour drive each way. I was happy to do so, and everyone in the family were exited for us to do this today. We were hoping to try their 99cent breakfast... but we got there about 10 minutes late as we stopped to vote. We also stopped as Big Lots have or had a good sale on portable DVD players- A 9 inch for only $49. We come to a closed location of the first Big Lots in Albany. The second Big Lots in Salem said they had been out since the first hour of the sale, on SATURDAY.... And then we made a wrong turn... making us 10 minutes late for breakfast... We survived.... and enjoyed lunch instead a little later.

On the way back, we stopped at Fry's Electronics, and found that they had the computer memory that I requested, with a $17 mail in rebate on a $30 purchase. I should have known it was too good to be true. I looked forward to installing the RAM to be able to get it going noticeable faster. As soon as I powered down the computer and opened the case, I found that my information about what RAM it using and that I had requested the wrong kind of RAM, and now I just have to travel three hours to return it, or put it into Lea Anne's computer, and have her be able to enjoy her computer even more then she is doing now.

What more can I say: Happy Belated Birthday Lea Anne!

At least I got a new supply of Cloudberry Jam at IKEA today. That is for those that speak Norwegian, Multebær syltetøy. That is what Lea Anne brought home the first time she came came from IKEA. I'm sure I will get my RAM one of these days.