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!