Today started, as usual, with the 7am cow chores, which weren't so bad today, now that we knew what was going on. There were also two new lambs to start the day, which were pretty adorable! We went up for breakfast around 9:30 and then were told we'd have the morning off, which was lovely--time to do a little bit of work and upload some photos.

We left around 11:30 and headed to B's grandparent's house, where we had a traditional Saturday lunch with the three of them as well as two of the grandmothers' sisters and one of their brothers. Lunch was interesting and included dried fish, which you smushed through butter, lamb head-cheese, blood and lard sausage, and a very liquid-y rice pudding with cinnamon sugar, which was the main course. I can definitely get behind rice pudding as a main meal!

C and I had to fight desperately to stay awake after lunch as everyone was speaking Icelandic and it was warm and comfortable and we were full, couldn't tell what was going on, and also exhausted. It was a dangerous combination!

We got back to the house around 2, and B said he was exhausted and didn't feel like doing anything, so we got to nap until 3, which was great. We both fell fast asleep and rolled out of bed just in time to head down to the barn to do cow chores.

It was rather exciting as we discovered that one cow, Lus, was loose. I got her collar from her standing stall and put it back on her, and then we herded her back to her pen. Luckily, she was very obliging and basically meandered back in.

C also had to deal with the teenage bulls (who are just waiting to be slaughtered as far as we can tell), who had broken the bottom wire of their two-strand electric fence in their crush for the water bucket.

As we were almost done the cow chores, T and the kids showed up, delivering some more ponies as they did so. Three minutes after they showed up, Thordis (who is all of 5'1 and 110 pounds) had her hand in to her shoulder of a mother-to-be cow, and wrapped bailing twine around two of its legs, basically yanking it into the world, whether it wanted to come or not. Sadly, it didn't as it was still born. It was pretty, uh, gross the whole thing, to be honest, though C was fascinated. We both bolted once the dead cow was tipped upside down and disgorged a vast quantity of liquidious crap from his lungs.

Once we'd herded the sheep back into their pens, we headed up to the house and were left with the four kids, aged four to ten. There are two girls (4 and 9) and two boys (6 and 10) and though they are complete chaos, they are pretty cute! They came into the kitchen in a whirlwind to get themselves a dinner of skiyr (thick yogurt) and cookies, which to be fair, is what we ate too, and then scattered off to watch Eurovision and play barbies. We hung out with the four year old and braided her babies hair, and then got ridden around like ponies, flipped the two little ones around, and generally fooled around even though they speak no English and our Icelandic isn't so good really. The littlest one stole my glasses and then wore them for bit, but when when I wen to find her and get them back, I discovered she was washing them off in the bathroom sink for me. Very cute!

They're in bed now, though not asleep, so we're not entirely sure what to do about that...hopefully they conk out soon!

Best news of the day--we get to sleep in tomorrow!
xx
D