This is far and away the nicest fall we’ve had since I moved to Sweden. Granted, this is only the third year I’ve lived here, but the previous two were so “nasty, brutish and short” that I had been convinced that fall in Sweden was only ever a few weeks of rain that preceded six or seven months of winter. Before I moved here, I told Olof more than once that I expected that the weather would be the single hardest thing for me to adjust to, and that expectation has proved accurate. Where I come from, we truly have the most beautiful, perfect weather, and it is the climate I am most often homesick for when I start missing Idaho. This year in Sweden, though, I honestly have no complaints and I am quite well-pleased with the manner in which the seasons have turned.

Right now it is absolutely gorgeous outside: crisp and cold (0°C/32°F), with clear blue skies and hoar frost coating the bare branches of the trees. The past week has made me remember something I had forgotten, that it’s not actually winter I hate, but snow. I love winter when it’s like this and I would be thrilled if the snow continued to stay away (Olof told me the other day that it has happened, even up here, that there was no snow on Christmas — imagine!).