A month or two ago, the shell on Olof’s Nintendo DS Lite got broken, most likely after being dropped by one child or another. He took it in stride, because that’s just the kind of guy he is. Also, it was nearly two years old and he’d more than gotten his money’s worth out of… Read More Foiled again

Olof and I have been playing Scrabulous, Facebook’s Scrabble application, for the past several days, and it’s with a certain sense of shame that I report that he beats me most of the time. I went in thinking that I had an obvious advantage, being a native speaker of English and fancying myself a pretty… Read More Word jumble

Winter, that is. In the past two or three days, we’ve had temperatures as low as -18° C (0° F) and more new snow than I care to think about.  If things don’t change soon, I think March will be going out like a lion as well.

For the past several years I’ve been hanging around with three other American girls who lived up here in the Skellefteå area.  Despite our coming from different parts of the country and from fairly diverse backgrounds, we’ve forged what I think are strong, meaningful friendships, both with each other individually and as a group.  The… Read More Thanksgiving is shaping up to be a quiet affair this year.

This year Tage dressed up as a påskgubbe for the first time. You’d give him candy, wouldn’t you, if he came knocking at your door?

Oh, how I hate misplaced modifiers.  Just now the newsreader on BBC Radio 2 told us that “MPs will debate plans to shut down two-and-a-half thousand post offices this afternoon.”  Really?  That’s a lot of work for one afternoon. Annoying as that might be, however, it comes nowhere near beating out my favorite example of… Read More Nit-picky

There’s been a lot of money talk around here lately, what with a windfall from the  Sun deal, the arrival of the famed “orange envelopes” with our pension information, and our finally getting around to setting up decent savings plans for the kids.  Olof even went so far as to have a meeting with a… Read More Pecuniary

After a few days of spring-like weather, including a particularly lovely, sunny Saturday, it was rather a disappointment to wake this morning and find several inches of new snow.  At least it made the kids happy.

Today has been a most excellent mom day, something I feel it important to record, if only so that I have it to look wistfully back upon on my more challenging days. We all got a good night’s sleep, with Petra sleeping a solid nine or ten hours and the rest of us only slightly… Read More Nice

Tage is really an awesome big brother. He and Petra have adored each other from day one, and as they’ve grown together it’s been wonderful to watch them develop a deep and powerful bond. It’s still early days yet for him and Brynja, but if this picture is any indication, their relationship is heading in… Read More Old Pro