Yes, that is my very own ankle (please ignore the bad photo quality — it’s hard to take a good picture at that angle). There’s a story there, of course — apart from the obvious one — but it’s not nearly as involved as the story of the bee tattoo. See, Lydia has a friend… Read More Proof of love
Tomorrow is the beginning of the last week of summer vacation. On Saturday my mom leaves to go back to Texas, two days later Olof goes back to work, and Lydia back to school, and the day after that the three middle kids will be back in their respective classrooms. At some unspecified point later… Read More Preview
Yesterday was Tage’s name day (thanks, Tomas, for the explanatory link — I should have thought to include that myself!), which meant chocolate cupcakes for dessert (Sarah, I’ll post the recipe for the banana cake soon — it needs translation and conversion, and I don’t have it handy just now). Today, being the first Sunday… Read More Whole lotta cakin’ going on
Some months ago, having run out of dishwasher tablets, I took a chance with about a half-teaspoon of regular liquid dish soap, covered liberally with table salt to prevent over-sudsing, and it worked a treat. I’ve used nothing else since, and have already saved a small fortune. The other night in the almost-dark, I saw… Read More A little of this, a little of that
It’s been a busy week here. Last Wednesday my mom arrived from Texas for her annual month with us. We spent that day and the next mostly settling in, then Friday was Petra’s big birthday celebration. We did a big grocery shop on rainy, dreary Saturday, then on Sunday my mom, Petra, and I drove… Read More Report
Today was Petra’s eighth birthday, and the festivities started bright and early, before Olof left for work just after seven this morning. After our girl opened her pile of presents, I went back to bed to rest up for this afternoon’s events, a visit to Leo’s Lekland, the local indoor play-place. Petra had decided to… Read More Eight is great!
Several days ago, Brynja and Petra came to me pitching the idea of a pizza party. They’d seen it on Regular Show, and had worked out all the details, even presenting me with a checklist outlining the vital elements. Of course, they have no real-life experience whatsoever with pizza parties, and I agreed that it… Read More Pizza King? Check!
Late last year, Olof’s sister, Anna, and her family — who had been our two-houses-down neighbors for more than ten years — moved to a town three hours away. They come back to visit relatively often, but obviously we don’t see them as much as we used to. Our kids are roughly the same ages… Read More Roughing it
I probably shouldn’t admit to this, but I haven’t given more than an idle thought or two to my thesis in the past month. Or rather, I’ve thought about it, but most of that thinking has been along the lines of, I really should get to thinking about this. I’ve got tons of work to… Read More Reading
After nearly twelve hours on the road, we pulled into our own driveway just before midnight on Sunday (Google Maps is such a liar with its estimated seven hours, twenty-eight minutes driving time). I had been half-dreading taking such a long car trip with four kids, but it all went surprisingly smoothly. I suppose I… Read More Travelogue