Stavanger

 Dad and I arrived in Norway today!  It's a beautiful place. Our hotel is at the university, which is a bit outside of town. We took the bus in and walked around a bit, even though the weather wasn't the best.  It's a cute town!  The Oil Museum (Stavanger is a big oil town) has a cool playground that James would have enjoyed -- lots of ninja opportunities. 

Downtown

 We gave our visitors a little glimpse of downtown Buffalo, mostly the Outer Harbor playground. :)  (The younger boys had fun, but Daniel preferred to read his book.)

We also took the Bike Ferry across the river (no bikes required), and ate at the Liberty Hound (although as Isaac noted, they missed out with the absence of actual hounds in the decor.)

Akron Falls

 On Erin's suggestion, we spent an afternoon at Akron Falls park. I had thought from Mike's descriptions of it that it was a small place, but it's not!  The waterfall itself wasn't too big (we haven't had a lot of rain recently), but there were trails and playgrounds and plenty to see along the creek. It was nice and shady, too. 

The boys had fun climbing on the rocks, and Mattie even had a dramatic save -- we were walking on one of the upper parts of a trail (a ridge above the creek, headed back from the waterfall overlook), and he slipped right off the edge but managed to catch himself one-handed on the railing!  (He would have been okay if he hadn't -- it was a steep slope but only maybe 15-20 feet or so--so he would probably have gotten scratched up but most likely not seriously injured.)  But I'm glad for his quick reflexes!