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This is our Christmas greeting to visitors to the Myrtveit family's web pages. The year of 2003 After Christ is drawing towards its end, as we are already into the month of December.

We are thankful that all five of us are at good health and able to live active and interesting lives. The days are sometimes quite stressful due to work, school, work in, on, and around the house, voluntary work, etc. This is probably not so unusual in families with three teenagers and two parents with their own careers :-)

Ingrid (13) is a happy girl with many friends. She is busy all the time, but also finds time for her homework and activities she likes to do on her own, such as reading. Ingrid wants to wear our national costume for her confirmation, and has already stared working on the embroideries. Once or twice per week she is out jogging with Magne, - something they both enjoy very much.

All three children changed schools this year. Magnar (16) started TAF Elektro (Teknisk Allmenfag), which is a high school that combines regular subjects with work experience. Only a small fraction of the applicants are admitted to TAF Elektro each year, and Magnar was one of them. He enjoys school very much, and also the opportunity to work for a real company two days per week, earning his own money. Mondays he has to get up very early (5:45) to go to Bergen for work. He stays in our apartment in Bergen between Monday and Tuesday, which are his working days.

The youngest generation in our family has at least one thing in common; they like to make things with their hands. To the right Magnar is working on his wood carving project. He made a shelf for storing his VHS and DVD cassettes.

Magnar is active playing soccer. He is also a leader in the "open air group" that is part of the Confirmation program in our local congregation. Here the confirmants are allowed to engage in various activities, such as mountain climbing, rafting, snowboarding, and camping.

Solbjørg (19) finished high school this year. She spent her second high-school-year in Cardiff, Wales. The first and the third (final) years she spent at our local high school. Solbjørg has many interests, and is very (repeating: VERY) active. And she loves to travel.

She finished high school witch excellent marks, so she can just pick and choose when it comes to universities. This year, however, she felt that she needed a break. After long consideration she ended up at Øytun Folkehøgskule in Alta, very far north in Norway. Here she enjoys very non-theoretical topics, such as hiking, fishing on frozen lakes, skiing, ice skating, etc. She continues to travel, and has already been in Japan and Russia this year. Next year she plans to go to Svalbard.

Solbjørg likes to stretch her abilities in all directions. Why swim when you might as well find new ways of entering the water? (See picture to the right.)

Astrid works as a teacher, in addition to much voluntary work. The days seem never to be long enough for everything that she has to do.

Astrid is a leader in one of the groups for the confirmants as well, the KRIK group. Every week this group goes swimming in our local indoor pool, or they play various ball games such as volleyball and soccer. Astrid also is a leader for "Viljen", where she works with young children, teaching them how to make things out of fabric and other materials. She has Bible lessons for the children, who once per year sell the things they make in order to raise money for poor children.

After many considerations, Magne realized that his old company was not the right place to implement his visions. He therefore decided not to go back to Powersim after his leave in 2001. Instead he formed a new company, Dynaplan (Dynamic Planning). The company develops new technology for planning.

This summer he also decided to start working on his PhD. The topic for his thesis will be related to business modelling. If things go as planned, he will finish the PhD work in about three years from now. His project is sponsored by SCA Packaging, an international company with headquarters in Sweden.

Magne is also quite busy doing things outside the family and outside work. He is chairman of the local church council and editor of the church newspaper (Radar). Together with our excellent organist he develops and maintains the web pages for our church, and he is a leader of the "media group", which is another of the groups offered to confirmants here in Radøy.

As you can see, we are doing fine all of us. We are thankful for every year that we are blessed to share together with family and friends.

This summer we got the opportunity to visit some of our friends and relatives. Magnar participated in the world's largest soccer cup, Norway Cup, in Oslo. The rest of us joined him on the trip and had a great time. In the Oslo area we visited Astrid's sister, Sigrun, and her family. We also spent time with Astrid's aunt and uncle, "tante Tulla" and Helge. On our way back home we made our traditional stay in Risør, a small town in the south of Norway. The relaxing and joyful days together with the Strand family is an excellent way to "recharge our batteries".

We wish you a Merry Christmas and God's blessing in the New Year.

- Magne, Astrid, Solbjørg Makalani, Magnar and Ingrid.