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I don’t want to make any of you jealous so I won’t tell you that it’s been in the 20′s here the last few days. Hard to believe it’s January. But I remember about a year ago we got an ice storm here so we’re trying not to get used to this awesome weather. It’s been a busy last couple of weeks and I have kind of dropped the ball with blogging here. Anna’s birthday was last week so I took her out to Rockfish for a seafood dinner, and there was a surprise party waiting for her when we got home. G & G have been in Hawaii the last week and they get home tomorrow. Molly has been busy as usual. She has made some new friends here in the neighborhood and she goes to the playground every day. It’s a great area here that my parents live in and we are enjoying all that it has to offer.

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Uncle Steve, or “Stina” as Molly calls him, went back to Toronto yesterday, so we are back to the five of us here again. Always sad to say goodbye to the brothers but we were lucky to have them here for a good length of time this year so we are happy for that. And hopefully it won’t be too long until we see them again. Molly had a blast with her uncles and will definitely miss them. We have had gorgeous weather here the last few days, yesterday felt like a July day in Sweden so we feel a little spoiled to be playing tennis in January. Below are some pics from our tour of the incredible Cowboys Stadium last weekend.

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A couple days late, but Happy New Year to everyone anyways. Our 2012 started off a little sadly as Jeremy had to head back to Calgary, but we had a great time with him and are thankful that he was able to come here for almost two weeks, and also that he’s got his new job to go back to. Steve is here until Friday and Grandpa went back to work today, so the holiday season is gradually coming to an end. We’ve had a few day trips in the last little while including Grapevine and Southlake one day, and a tour of Cowboys Stadium on NYE which I’ll post some pictures of next time.

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We hope that everyone had a Merry Christmas/God Jul! We’ve had a fun and relaxing last few days celebrating Christmas and enjoying being together. On the 24th we celebrated Swedish Jul. Anna put together a fantastic Julbord full of Swedish style Christmas food such as meatballs, ham, ribs, glögg and tonnes of other treats.

Yesterday was the Canadian version with turkey and all the fixings. Lemmes spent the day with us yesterday, we played some games, ate a lot of food and watched some Christmas classics on TV. Molly learned quickly how to open presents and she was happy to help everyone with that. It’s been a great last couple of days and the best part is just having everyone together. We still have over a week together so we have some fun stuff planned for the next few days.

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We’re ready for Christmas on Sheldon Road. Jeremy got in from Calgary on Monday and Steve arrived from Toronto on Tuesday, so the whole crew is here. It’s fun to have everyone in the same house for the first time in a year, a house that could be in a Christmas magazine with how well Mom has decorated it. Yesterday was Jer’s birthday and today we are celebrating my Dad’s. We have been out shopping and have the pantry well stocked with food and treats of both a Canadian and Swedish flavour. In fact, Anna is baking saffronbullar as I write this. The weather turned colder overnight and there is even an outside chance that we could get a little snow which would be great for a few days. Mostly we’re just looking forward to a fun few days with family and friends, and we wish everyone a great weekend and a Merry Christmas.

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First of all, thanks to Hasse for rescuing us and getting us to our flight on time. We had some train issues after some trees were blown onto the tracks on our way to Copenhagen. With the delays we were in danger of missing out flight, but Hasse came through in the clutch by getting our car, driving an hour down the road to pick us up, and getting us to Malmö where we caught another train that got us to the airport on time. It was a little stressful for a while but we made it. Tack så mycket Hasse! We’ve been in Texas for over a week now and have settled in. Weather-wise it doesn’t feel like Christmas, but the spirit of the season is alive and well. We played tennis in our shorts yesterday before strolling the village and checking out the Christmas sales. Things will crank up this week with Jer and Steve coming to town. Molly loves life at G&G’s house where she runs the show. She’s in charge of opening the blinds, turning lights off and on, helping Grandpa make breakfast smoothies, and the media room is now her play room. It’s a fun place for her, but she does miss Disa and Hedda and looks at their picture a few times a day. Below are some pictures from this past week.

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It’s once again time for us to head back over to Texas. Our bags are packed and we head out on the train to Copenhagen tomorrow at ten in the morning, and we’ll get to Dallas at about 11 PM local time. We’re really looking forward to going for a lot of reasons, but of course at the same time we will miss everyone here, Disa and Hedda in particular. Molly and them have had a blast hanging out a lot in the last 6 weeks. Hopefully some time they’ll be able to come over with us. We had a fika night here tonight with the Alex, Helena, Disa, Hedda, Eva, Hasse, Solvieg and John. We’ll be staying in Texas almost 3 months and I hope to use the time to jump start some business projects in addition to seeing my family. Looking forward to having the whole crew together again for a few days at Christmas. Last weekend we were up in Vimmerby to see Tim, Lina  Alice, and their new baby boy Charlie. There has been a lot of visiting lately, trying to see everyone before we leave again. So we’ll touch base  here again in a few days from Texas, meanwhile we hope everyone is enjoying the early part of the holiday season.

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Today is exactly 4 weeks until Christmas which means it’s the first advent, a fairly big deal here in Sweden. There are some interesting differences here in how Christmas and the holiday season is celebrated, and I think if you took the best of North American Christmas and the best of Swedish, you could combine them for the perfect December. The girls are at the cousins today baking for the holidays and we’re going to have a big fika there later. All the stores in town are also open today which is very rare for a Sunday, and it’s the first day of the holiday shopping season. I guess it’s the Swedish version of Black Friday, but a little less insane. Unfortunately there is some bad weather rolling in which will likely dampen the mood. We have a lot going on in the days before we go to Texas, and this weekend was a busy one. Last night we celebrated the 45th birthday of Anna’s brother Roger, and on Friday Ines and her parents were over for dinner and some play time. Molly and Ines are pretty entertaining together.

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It’s hard to believe that it’s already the middle of November and we’ve been back in Sweden for almost 3 weeks. It’s starting to get colder here and the days are getting shorter. It’s not the nicest time of year here but there’s starting to be some signs of Christmas. In just over 3 weeks we’ll be heading back to Texas for 3 months. We’ll be celebrating the holidays there and I’ll be working on some projects, so we’re trying to spend as much time as possible these days with friends and family here before we go back.

I’ve been spending my days working in the library and picking up a few window washing jobs while the girls stay busy with cousins, friends, errands, play time at the church and stuff like that. The highlight of our days right now are evenings after dinner playing with Molly. She likes to climb now, usually up on to a chair or her stroller, and then jump off onto me. She also like to throw things and dance to music as you can see on our latest video.

I am going to try to take more video, and you can see we have a new video page instead of posting them on the side. They are a little bigger and easier to watch this way. The latest one is from a couple days ago when she is putting on a show to the Alphabet Song. You can see that and all the other videos through the menu above, or by clicking here: Video Page.

Our trip back to Sweden went very well. The flight from Dallas to Toronto was actually more challenging than the long one as it was timed around Molly’s usual play time, so that’s what she did. She’s in a throwing stage right now so her soother and toy animals were being launched all over the plane for 3 hours. The long flight was during the night so she slept for about 5 hours of it. We had fun visiting with Steve in Toronto, too bad it was only for a day. But we made the most of it and it was nice to break the trip up. We ordered pizza to the hotel room and the next day we had a luxurious bus tour to the Woodbine Mall and were somehow able to get reservations at the Zeller’s restaurant. Sounds funny but it was a great time. Our highlights since coming back have involved hanging out with the cousins and some friends. Molly has also had a couple “firsts” in the last few days. She saw her first hockey game yesterday up in Tingsryd, and today for the first time she woke up, got out of bed and walked into the living room on her own. Anna and I were sitting there drinking coffee and suddenly Molly came walking in with a big grin looking for breakfast. You maybe had to be there but it was hilarious.