Zoey had to give up her BarkBox subscription because of our move to Norway. We decided to pass it on to Casey, my parent’s black lab. Needless to say she did not object to the idea of getting a box full of treats and toys being sent to her. 

Here is the review that my mom wrote up for January’s BarkBox:

This month's Bark Box was greeted with full excitement by Casey.  I was so busy the day it arrived that I cut the box open and set it on our kitchen table. I had no time to show it to our Lab right away.  While cooking in the kitchen I kept hearing her whining at the kitchen table.  When I went to investigate I found Casey looking at the box and whining for the treats that were in the box.  Grabbed my camera and took some pictures of her.

This box contained 3 treats and 1 toy. Below is a breakdown of all the products received with the cost, Barkbox's product description, and our reactions. 

Total value of products in box: Around $38

Overall impression: Over all impression was very good on this box. Casey loved it and is sill loving the toy which is holding up very good! 

Would I buy this box again? Yes, I would buy this box again.

Do you want to order a BarkBox? Use this link and get $5 off you first order. 

We've have had to adapt to the snow once again. Oslo is a very outdoorsy city in the winter weather. It seem like everyone owns cross country skis. Even the children at the school across the street bring their skis to school.  I also find it amazing that the sidewalks and roads are almost always a sheet of ice and everyone seems to be able to walk on it without a problem. I am proud to say that I have only fell once... Alex on the other hand has lost count.

Zoey and I have taken countless walks over to Frogner Park. This park is famous for all its life size human statues all made from one artist. It was really funny the first time walk through the park with Zoey because she thought all the statues were real people and was afraid of them. 

This park also has a large field dedicated as a dog park. It is so much different than dog parks in the US. There are no fences the dogs just run free and all the owner hope that they come back when called. 

Zoey just loves being able to run free and roll in the snow!

This last weekend Alex and I went sledging (sledding) at Korketrekkeren (which translates to corkscrew).  It was lots of fun. We took the metro to the last stop were we rented a sledge. From there we took the almost mile long course to the bottom where there is another metro stop where we hopped on and took it back up to the top to take more trips down. 

The course has crazy turns and steep falls off the sides. The sleds had the ability to be steered but no way to slow the sled down and steer at the same time. I only spun out once and Alex almost hit a wall once. Overall I think we did pretty good.

This track was originally used for a bobsleigh and luge course. It was actually used in the 1952 Winter Olympics for bobsled. 

I think our next snow adventure is going to be cross country skiing… stay tuned.

Our bags are unpacked and we are now settled into our temporary housing. 

We are in a tiny one bedroom apartment through Frogner House Apartments. We are in a very nice area just a few blocks away from the palace in Oslo. 

Here are some pictures of our temporary apartment before we received our air shipment. 

We have made it through the trials of figuring out how to use of washing machine and dishwasher. Things we have learned til håndoppvask translates to hand washing soap not dishwasher shop. The ending result of this is in the picture below…

I have also had my struggles with the washing machine. The first few times running a cycle, I would wake up in the morning and the machine would still be running. We would force it to stop but our clothes would still be locked inside and when we could finally work our way in they were sitting in a puddle of water. 

Other things learned about the washing machine 

• It is not a washer / dryer
• Don’t run it right when you are going to sleep because it sounds like a jet engine
• Fabric softener is a good thing and required if you don’t want crunchy clothes (translation = tøymykner)
• You can pack the washer all the way full with clothes… they are not like US machines
  

Now we have the fun of finding homes for all our stuff that came in our air shipment.