Heading West

After Wayne and Ellyn left us in Stockholm to fly back to the US, we were all sad. It seemed so quiet without them. Linnea complained that she didn't have anyone to talk to while riding in the car. We all felt a little lonely without them joining us on our adventures. The same day they left Stockholm we headed west towards Norway. We stopped to stay a couple of days at a cabin on the Northern tip of one of Sweden's largest lakes. Unfortunately, it was cold and rainy so we didn't even get to go swimming. So sad. Instead we went hiking and hit the mother load when we discovered all of the wild blueberries everywhere! We packed up a few containers full and enjoyed them for days.

A bus we saw on the road

Out on a hike

Then it was time to move on again, but we were all eager to escaped the rainy weather. We took a half a day and kept on west to Norway. There we stayed with my very distant and very nice relatives Nils and Vesla on the family farm northwest of Oslo. They were so gracious and hospitable - great people! They are a retired couple that have moved out of the main farmhouse into a very cozy home on the property. One of their daughters, her husband and 3 children now live in the main farmhouse and run the farm. We also visited Ola (their son) who lives on another farm not too far away with his wife and daughter.

View from across the fjord

The girls loved playing with their "cousins" and the weather was just gorgeous. I had stayed there back in 1998 for a week after I completed my term in Germany. It was great to see everyone again, how the kids had grown and to meet the newest family members. While there, we also visited the glass factory and an old silver mine. Very fun. It felt so nice to stay in a home with great hosts after staying in cabins and hotels for the past few of weeks.

Annette, Linnea and Sonja

The two familys at Ola and Anna's house.

From there we set off for a week up to Flåm and then Bergen where we saw some absolutely amazing county. Stories and pictures to follow.

Farewell Already?

We can't believe it! We'll be leaving Sweden in just 11 days. Could it really be that soon? Of course we are really, really looking forward to getting home and seeing family. We are also sad to say "goodbye" to the good friends we have made over the past year. We hope that we will see them again someday! Perhaps they'll visit us in the US?

Our plans for the holidays are to spend 3 weeks in Massachusetts over Christmas, my birthday and New Year's, and then about 2.5 weeks in Washington. Then we will begin the long drive back to Minnesota. This time however, we will be making a stop for 4 days in Yellowstone! We are so excited, I've never been. There we hope to do some cross country skiing and hot tubbing. It'll be interesting to move back into our old apartment building in MN. Some friends are still there and we are very much looking forward to reconnecting with them. Of course, we'll have to get used to the extreme cold again, but I'm really looking forward to some snow.

We are trying to make the most of our remaining time in Sweden and participating in some Advent festivities. Next week Linnea has a Santa Lucia performance at her school at 7:00 AM while it is still dark. That'll be cold. Pictures to follow. Tomorrow we bake Christmas cookies with some friends. And we've done a little Christmas shopping here as well. The girls made a gingerbread house which was quickly devoured.

Hope to see some of you real soon!

Polar Circle, High Coast and Stockholm

Our time with Ellyn and Wayne continued on to more northern Sweden into Lappland. We stayed 3 nights in Arvidsjaur and during that stay traveled north to Jokkmokk, which is north of the Arctic circle. Up there we saw many reindeer and visited the Sami museum that we found very interesting.
After our time up north we started to make our way south down the east coast, also known as the High Coast. Here we stayed another couple of nights. We were originally going to stay in another stuga but the reservation got mixed-up. Apparently, they had us booked as 4 dogs and 2 children instead of 4 adults and 2 children. Not quite sure how that all happened but it was pretty humorous when we were trying to check in! Luckily, there was room at a hotel and we stayed there instead. On the high coast the girls took their first chair lift ride up a mountain. From there we had a beautiful view and they feasted like bear cubs on wild blueberries.

Another day we took a wild ferry ride to one of the islands just off the coast. It was a choppy ride and while both girls felt sick, it was only poor little Sonja that puked all over me. Yuck! The rest of the day was much better until it started to down pour and we all got soaked, especially Wayne who saved our spot in line to get back on the ferry. Luckily, the ferry ride back to the mainland was not as choppy.
Then it was down the coast again to Stockholm where we spent a couple of days doing the usual touristy stuff. We saw the royal palace, walked along the old cobble-stoned streets, took a canal boat ride, and everyone except Sonja and me visited the Vasa museum. It was by far the most touristy destination on our trip. English was spoken everywhere.

We stopped at IKEA on the way for a break and some Swedish fish

Linnea admiring the crown outside the Royal Palace (2nd largest working palace in Europe)

Listening to the narration on the canal tour

At the Vasa Museum

After Stockholm it was back to the US for the Farfs. We continued our summer adventure traveling west over towards Norway where we would stay for 2 weeks.

Stuga Fever

The next week of our journey we spent staying in a cabin or "stuga" in Storlien. This is a little ski village and apparently where the Swedish royal family has their ski stuga. Ellyn and I went snooping around one evening trying to find it. ;-) Our stuga was very cozy, right on a little pond. Farfar took off a few mornings (once with Linnea) and caught us some little fish in the surrounding lakes. We spent much of our time outside enjoying the beauty of the mountains.

All week we took off on daily outings. Our biggest day was back to Norway to visit Trondheim for the day where we visited the Nidaros Cathedral and for dinner that night Matthew had whale steak!


Many of the days we went hiking in and around Storlien. We also visited the popular ski town of Åre where we took a gondola up to the top of the mountain and played in the snow. It was on one of these outings that we spotted our first reindeer.

Linnea and Farfar in their matching vests on a hike down to a waterfall

At the bottom of the falls

At the top in Åre

On a hike up the ski area behind our stuga

Video of the Girls Playing Tag

Tour Continues With "The Farfs"

Dinner out with Far Far and Far Mor

Like I mentioned in the last post, the next part of our journey was up to northern Sweden (through Norway) with Matt's parents, Wayne and Ellyn (also known as Far Far and Far Mor, or more commonly referred to as "The Farfs"). We left Lund early in the morning and started our all day trek through the rain to Oslo. Traveling along the highways in Sweden is not at all like in the US. There are plenty of nice rest stops, most with nice picnic tables and a toilet. Sometimes you'll hit a place with a gas station and/or restaurant that serves light sandwiches and coffee. There are no drive-through coffee shanties. Once in a while you might run into a Burger King, but that is my absolute least favorite place to go! It is kind of assumed that most travelers travel with their own food and coffee. We've been accustomed to this since arriving in Sweden in January so we were prepared and packed a lunch and snack to take along the way.

In Oslo we stayed at a hotel with adjoining rooms, which was very nice. It gave Matt and I a chance to leave the girls with Wayne and Ellyn while we went out for the evening. One evening Matt and I visited Vigeland Sculpture Park and that was amazing! By the way, the pictures taken below were taken after 10:00 at night!

This one reminded me of Sonja

Together we all took the ferry over to Bygdøy and saw awesome viking ships at the Viking Ship Museum ("it houses three ships found in large burial mounds in the Oslo fjord region. The best-preserved Viking ships in existence, each contained a wealth of material, both decorative and utilitarian, dating back up to 1200 years").


and the Norwegian folk museum.


We also visited the Kon-Tiki museum.


Linnea and the Farfs continued on to the Fram Museum "which preserves the polar exploration ship Fram that between 1893 and 1925, sailed further north and further south than any other surface vessel".


Following our two nights in Oslo we had another long day of driving ahead of us as we headed north to Trondheim and hopped on over to Storlien, Sweden where we were staying in a cabin at a wintertime resort for a week.

A Week of Summer

Seriously, summer lasted about a week. Too bad for us we were no longer staying on the coast. Anyway, it seemed really, really hot. I don't think the temperature got above the high 80s; it just felt hotter. Poor little Sonja would redden up like a tomato instantly in the heat. Most of the 3 days we spent touring in and around Norrköping we spent trying to find places to cool off. We went to the lake a couple of days and found a nice wading pool another day.

Linnea, always the Fashion Queen

Sonja cooling off with a cool drink

Linnea trying to be friendly with the not-so-friendly hedgehog

Sharing candy from the candy factory

We then spent a day in Kalmar visiting the castle. It was a lot of fun because we got to go on a tour and they had lots of activities for kids. Linnea even got to practice jousting on a horse!



After our day trip we spent 3 nights in a state/province of Sweden named, Småland. We stayed in a really nice youth hostel out in the country and enjoyed biking and visiting the region famous for glass. After visiting a hand blown glass factory Linnea decided she wanted to be a glass blower when she grows up! The youth hostel we stayed at was very different than those I experienced in Europe during college. It was a nice old house (like you would image a B&B) and we had our own room - with a double/twin bunk bed and our own sink. We shared bathrooms and showers with others on our floor but the place was not full so it felt private. We had to bring our own sheets and towels and we had full use of the common kitchen.

Next, we were on our way back to Lund to pick up Matthew's parents! We spent 3 days in Lund showing them around the city and letting them get acclimated to the new time zone (we're 9 hours ahead of them on the west coast). Since we couldn't stay at the house we'd been renting because the owner was using it for the summer, our good friends Karin and Jakob were very kind in letting us stay at their apartment while they were gone on vacation. The weather was pleasantly warm, but not at all hot.

Our next post will be about the first part of our journey with Far Far and Far Mor. We traveled through Norway, stopping in Oslo along the way, to Northern Sweden.

Fall Updates

While I haven't even begun to finish posting about all of our summer travels, I thought it was time to give a little more current update on how we are all doing. Autumn is in the air! It seemed quite warm to us all of September and we were wondering how cold it was really going to get before we leave in December, and then October 1st hit and along came the cold. We've had a lot of cool, clear weather, but that usually follows a lot of rain and wind. No real color change though, guess we got spoiled living in Massachusetts. We've had to use both the upstairs and downstairs fireplaces a few times because the house is just so cold! We've decided to heat the place as much as we can with just the fireplaces and only use the electric (the very expensive electric) to heat in the girls' room at night. The fruit trees in the yard produced a lot of fruit: plums, pears and apples. Not all of it is really good to eat straight off of the tree so I've been making lots of sauces.

The girls are doing really well. Linnea continues to love school and is learning to speak a lot of Swedish. She is also learning a lot at home too. The other day we had a long discussion about decay thanks to PBS Kids "Sid the Science Kid" that she explores online. She also has informed me that Sonja has an invisible arm and that is why she does things (like pour water on her head in the bath) that I can't see and it is clearly not Linnea's fault. And on Matthew's birthday, she told him he should change his name to Grandpa Jeff. I don't know where she gets this stuff. We spent last Friday outfitting Linnea with a "new" (well, new to her) snowsuit complete with snow boots. Now it's hard to convince her not to wear the whole getup every time we leave the house. It's not that cold, yet! Friday night has also become "movie night" and Linnea gets to choose the dinner and the movie and sometimes a movie treat.

I take both girls with me to open preschool once a week on Monday mornings where we usually meet a friend and play for the morning. On the days that Linnea is in preschool, Sonja seems to enjoy assuming the role of Linnea. She plays with all of the toys that Linnea usually controls and sits in Linnea's seat at the kitchen table. But she does get a little lonely after a while and is generally really excited to pick Linnea up at "SCHOOL!". School is one of the many words that Sonja can say now but she thinks it's the same as the Swedish word "skål", which is like saying "cheers". So when Sonja talks about school it is usually said loudly with an enthusiastically raised up arm as if she were holding a mug of beer. She also likes to say "whoaw", which is like a combination of "wow" and "whoa". It's really funny the way she says it and how she uses it. Like when we were checking out the stars last night "whoaw" or when she almost falls off the bed "whoaw". Sonja also goes to open preschool on Tuesdays with Matthew, while I take a little time off for myself- yay. We try to keep her busy too so she stays out of mischief.

Matt's Swedish seems to be coming along well too. He has to take a language exam soon as part of his graduation requirements. I'm sure that he'll do just fine. He's been studying a lot and practicing a lot with friends. Together we've started a weekly bible study group with our friends that have small children. The term "bible study" is used loosely though because we all have small children and it's hard to keep focused. But we knew that, so our main goal is just to get together once a week, share a meal, sing some songs, have the kids play together, discuss what's been going on in our lives and pray together. We really enjoy the fellowship. We are still attending two church services on a Sunday. Not because we are overly pious, but because one is in Swedish and one is in English. The Swedish one is more traditional Lutheran so I can follow along with the liturgy but really get lost on the Sermons. The English speaking one is not so formal and of course I usually don't have a problem following along. :-) We really enjoy both services and have friends at both churches.

I've been doing much better since I've seemed to have figured out that I have a problem with gluten. Over the summer it seemed problems with my stomach and digestion were getting really bad. I don't know if I'm gluten intolerant, luckily we've got a doctor in the family who can figure that out, but I just know that when I eat things containing gluten it's no good. So I am trying my best to avoid gluten. It's amazing what can contain gluten besides the obvious breads and pasta. We're learning to check everything! But since I've cut out the gluten I feel so much better. Even my mood and energy level has improved. I've been feeling so good that I've even taken up running again. About 2-3 times a week I go for longer (about 6 miles) solo runs out by the coast and then maybe 1-2 times a week I'll take the jogging stroller out with Sonja (sometimes Linnea too) for shorter runs, 2-3 miles or less if it's really windy, around the house.

Our camera stopped working towards the end of the trip in Norway so I don't have any really recent pictures to post yet. We did replace the camera this week with a inexpensive, used one that we'll use until we can get our other camera fixed back in the US. So more pictures and stories coming soon!

Going back the the beginning of summer...

We moved out of the house for the summer on June 18th. Our first stop was to Fiskebäckskil. There we stayed with Lotta and her family. Lotta and Matthew had met once before about 17 years ago when Lotta was an exchange student staying with Matthew's aunt Colleen. They had a nice little guest cabin (stuga) that we stayed in. Lotta and her husband, Tomas, have 3 children; John, Viktor and Elin. They were so nice to us during our stay and we are grateful that they invited us to come and visit. We had a great time!

While we were there we enjoyed the beautiful weather and long, long days. Fiskebäckskil is a beautiful old fishing village on the northern west coast of Sweden. It is an ideal summer spot with lots of opportunities for boating, fishing and beaching. One of the first days we were there we got to celebrate Midsummer with the family. Other days we went site-seeing in and around Fiskebäckskil, to the beach a couple of times, to an aquarium, to an island with a castle, and of course we did some hiking.

The Ericksons at Midsommar Fest

Sonja hanging out at the boat house

Linnea doing her "Alex the Lion" from Madagascar impersonations at the beach

Swinging at a lovely park on Marstrand

Shopping on Marstrand

The next bunch of pictures are from the castle on Marstrand

A view on our way to church on Sunday morning...

Sonja strutting to church

We did a couple of little hikes during our stay. This first pictures is from an evening hike Matt took with the girls.

A walk in the woods

Pictures from our day trip to Lysekil

Sonja at the Aquarium in Lysekil

And here is the group shot just before we left.

What a great way to start the summer!