The song writing competition - What the winner got:

Remember the song writing competition? Remember the winner? Of course you do! So what did the winner get?

Well, let me tell you: The winner, Grandpa Stefan, won a smashing, fabulous, over the top, astonishing 21 page photo book with photos from Ethan's photo shoot plus a few bonus shots! It has been created and shipped, all the way from the US of A, so it should arrive in the mailbox in the near future. Congratulations again Grandpa, and enjoy your photo book!

Here is a sneak preview:

Ethan likey mushy carrots & peas

Pepparkakor!

Christmas is soon upon us, so to get a bit of the Christmas spirit going at home, I brought back 'pepparkaksdeg' from Sweden, which is gingerbread (or ginger snap) dough and shapes to make gingerbread men and women. However Shaena thought the shape for the woman looked more like MC Hammer with his big baggy pants, so I guess we are baking 'gingerbread men' and 'gingerbread MC Hammers' this year! Maybe we should bake a little house for the Hammer-family as well, and a little sign saying 'You can't iTouch this!'?

A bit of interesting trivia about 'pepparkakor' is that the word 'peppar' translated to Swedish is either black or white pepper (and kakor is cookies), but there is no pepper in the 'pepper cookies', and there is no evidence that there has ever been any pepper in the recipe for these delightful treats.

I also have to get crackin' on the Christmas shopping, as I haven't bought any pressies for anyone yet. Shame on me! Let's just say I have been in 'intelligence gathering mode' for the last few months, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what Santa will be bringing this year. And as always, I am sure Shaena has figured it out already...

Thanks for the request Aunty Isabel!

Blitzing Sweden

I just got back from my super-short trip to Stockholm, Sweden. I left Edinburgh yesterday morning, (and it took me all flippin’ day to get to Stockholm!). My dear brother picked me up at the airport and we went straight to the grocery store to shop for our upcoming food feast before we went home to John’s apartment and turned on the oven and the grill. Let me tell you; Swedish meat is great! Much better than the chewy old cows the UK has to offer. Not to mention the potato chips and dip! We (read: John) cooked up a great dinner and he presented me with the best béarnaise sauce I have ever tasted and a couple of Staropramens to wash it down with! Yum-my!

Today, I was up bright and early to pick up sandwiches and salads at a café in the city for my workshop that I was to deliver together with my sales rep colleague Erik. I met up with Erik at our client’s premises (Erik was late and lost, so John and I picked him up by the side of the road in John’s car) and we delivered a half-day workshop which we think went down really well with the client. We got applause from the participants when we were done, so it must have been decent at least.

Once we were all done and dusted with the first client, we swiftly made our way to our next meeting with another client, who conveniently happened to be situated at the airport, so once that meeting was over; I simply walked down to the security check and made my way to my gate. How handy was that!?

I really enjoyed being out in the field meeting clients, and it is always nice to get a bit of a reality check to understand more about clients pain points, how different organizations work, and where our company can help. That totally sounded like a cheesy corporate pitch, but hey, maybe I am corporate!

The downside with traveling for work is that I miss out on time with my family, and as you know, that is time I value dearly. At least, I have had text and Skype updates on Ethan’s progress with eating apple & banana sauce for the first time, and it was apparently messy but good times! Our baby is growing up so fast, one day he is eating pureed food making a total mess, and before you know it he is regretting that playboy bunny-tattoo he got on a late night out with the boys in Ibiza one summer!

I believe you all deserve a nice treat!

The Ghost of Channel 27

For those of you that know where we live, it's a pretty old place! Well recently we believe we have opened the gates of beyond and now have a ghost in our presence!

Every night at around 2am, the TV miraculously turns on to channel 27! It doesn't matter what channel we turned it off to before heading to bed it is always turns on to 27! I turned on 27 today to see what was so special about this channel and funny enough "The Jeremy Kyle Show" was on. This is the UK version of "Sally Jesse" or "Montel" except Jeremy is meaner and all the people are truly off their trolleys! I guess this ghost has a bit of a sore spot for those mothers who slept with their brothers cousins sisters husbands uncle and tried to throw them out when they realised that it was actually their mothers boyfriends husbands aunt!

We are now made to turn the TV off at the wall every night before crawling into slumberland. Guess that made one or two Irish lassies very happy!

We are mobile!

As some of you know, Shaena has a habit of kitting me out with new, cool, handheld devices such as a new camera, mobile phones, a shaver, and now a hot off the shelf iPod Touch!

My theory on this directed generosity: 50% because she likes me, mixed with 50% because she thinks I am way too cheap to buy these items myself. She knows me too well!

Anyway, this means I can now update the blog on the go! How cool is that!? :)

(Sent from my new fancy-pants iPod)

Sneaky photos from the KISS-concert

As we were not allowed to bring our cameras to the KISS-concert, we asked a nice guy who was sitting in the row in front of us if he wouldn't mind snapping a few and email them to us (he had sneakily brought his camera to the venue) and he did! Canadians are nice people! Just found these photos below in the email inbox:

Everyone is a winner... but most of all Grandpa Stefan!

Congratulations to Grandpa Stefan for winning our song writing competition! The jury has reached a verdict and 'Little Ethan', his version of 'In The Ghetto' won him the grand prize! Enjoy your 50 fabulous prints!

Little Ethan
June 09 a boy was born
in Scotland where kilt is worn
Ethan Noel is his name
on the Net he is a Fame
Little Ethan

Four months old he is a Star
in his parents' blog this far
Reddish hair and eyes so blue
we all love you
Little Ethan
Little Ethan

A special mentioning also to Ryan who wrote an awesome wrap for Ethan. A runner-up prize will come your way as well!

'The convicts sleep tonight'

Our friend is working in a medium/maximum security prison and offered to take me on a private tour before we left for home. So late Monday night after the convicts had been counted, tucked in to bed, and locked up for the night, we drove up to the prison and walked through the main entrance and into the heart of 'The Big House'. He gave me an in-depth tour of practically the entire prison, and I must say, I had no clue what to expect before going in, and tried to keep an open mind, as I did not want to assume it would be like prisons are generally portrayed in Hollywood.

We started the tour by looking at how they keep count of the inmates every day, and he also showed me the prison armoury. That gave me the first notion of just how dangerous some of the inmates really are! These guys were prepared for the worst with rifles, guns, bullet proof vests, and pepper spray cans the size of fire extinguishers!

We moved on and walked through long green and white concrete corridors with lots of barriers, video cameras and slamming steel doors, as one would hope and expect.

"It is when I don't hear a door slam behind me I start getting worried."

As we moved deeper and deeper into the prison, I got to visit the cell blocks and the segregation unit where some of the worst baddies are housed alongside the ones that are unlikely to survive in the general population. We also had a look in a suicide observation cell with eerie writings on the walls, we checked out the visiting rooms (which in some ways were surprisingly warm and family oriented), we checked out the exercise yards, kitchen, and even took a drive around the prison walls.

All through the tour he was telling me horror stories about prisoners attacking other prisoners, riots, contraband, gangs, and more. Very very interesting!

This was definitely an eye opening tour, verging to the extreme, that I don't think too many people get to experience. I was saying to our friend as we walked through the prison that it should be mandatory for every single school kid to visit a prison, because hopefully after seeing that, they'd stay out of trouble!

I walked out of there with great admiration and respect for the work our friend and his colleagues are doing every day.

Daytrip to Gimli

Grandpa Keith and I decided to go for a spur of the moment drive outside the Winnipeg city limits, so we headed north east towards Gimli, a lakeside Icelandic community. Our first stop was Lockport and the famously haunted St Andrews church, where apparently you disappear if you walk backwards around the church 3 times. We didn’t, so we are still here. Phew!

The running joke before we left was that we would swing by a Mennonite or Hutterite colony on the way and make a few extra bucks. Apparently (and I have actually done a bit of research on this one as this probably is the weirdest thing I have heard in a long time!) the Mennonites, the Hutterites and the Amish communities of North America are troubled with an increasing number of hereditary diseases as their gene pools have been closed off from the rest of the world for about 12 generations. Therefore, they have come up with a way to get fresh blood into their community by offering men from outside the colonies money to impregnate one of their women the natural way. Show me the money!

We also drove through Winnipeg Beach, an aging holiday resort town that kind of looked like it had been left behind in the 50’s (*tumbleweed*). We drove on to Gimli, which had a similar feel to it. For me, being Swedish and all, it was interesting to see all the Icelandic flags and Nordic references in street names, shop names, names of ships etc. For example; the coast guard ship was named ‘Vakta’, which translated to Sweden would be ‘guard’ or ‘guarding’ and a crafts shop was named ‘Koma Heim’, which translated to Swedish would be ‘coming home’.

Keith kept us entertained by flipping channels between my 80's hair-bands-channel, and his favourite blues-channel on his satellite radio and by practicing the harmonica. Thank you for a great day out, Keith!

Grand Forks photos

We took Sam & Gigi for a walk around downtown Grand Forks and down by the river that is dividing North Dakota and Minnesota. Nini showed us the devastating effects of the flood, and we also walked by a monument showing the water levels the flooding river has had in the past. Really scary how powerful water can be!

"Are we there yet?" Road-photos from the drive to Grand Forks

Full House in Winnipeg

Shaena has a huge network of friends and family here in Winnipeg, and many of them wanted to come meet our new family member, and because of time constraints and for us to be able to meet as many people as possible, we decided to invite anyone who wanted to come to an ‘open house’ yesterday. We had a pretty good turnout and it was nice that so many people would take the time out of their Sunday to come hang out with us for a bit.

Ethan got a ton of new clothes, toys, books, etc! It was like birthday, Christmas and Hanukkah all at once. He entertained his guests for a few hours, and when everyone had left, Grandma Michelle made us her world famous homemade burgers. Yummy in our tummies! This evening we have just chilled out and talked for a bit. It is nice to be able to just relax in an otherwise quite busy schedule. Today, we've been in full-throttle-once mode again.

Thank you very much to everyone who came to see us today, it really meant a lot to us!

Full House in Grand Forks

We made it down to Grand Forks, North Dakota yesterday afternoon together with Great grandma and Julia in Great Grandma's old Volvo. Later in the afternoon we decided to go for a walk and check out downtown Grand Forks and visit Emily at work at the Grand Forks Herald, the local newspaper. So we did. We also took a walk by the river on our way home, and the river in Grand Forks is known to be quite the force to reckon with, as the city has had its fair share of floods througout history and in later years.

Just in time for dinner that same night Jess & Bain knocked on the front door. Apparently everyone knew they were coming except for yours truly (Peter). Thanks for keeping me in the know, guys! Great surprise though, and it was really cool of them to come down, especially considering that Bain just got back from his annual deer hunting trip.

In the evening we had a few drinks and played ‘The Beatles Rock Band’. The morning after, Bain invited me to come with him to a guns and ammo-store. Definitely a new experience; we don’t really have those kind of stores in Scotland where you can basically just walk in and purchase a shotgun and a couple of six-shooters. I was amazed over the clientele in the shop and how passionate they were about guns, rifles, knives, camouflage gear and everything else you might need when roaming around the bush hunting for game. When we came back from the gun store Bain stuck a beer in my hand with the remark “It is five o’clock somewhere!” This was at 11am in the morning. It was clear to us that Bain was back in the house! :)

Later in the day we all hit up Columbia Mall for some shopping, and needless to say, Ethan raked in. Again! I was mostly thrilled over the fact that I managed to find a brand name t-shirt on super-sale for less than $7. Score!

We’ve had a jolly good time and have been fed excellent home cooked meals for the last few days. Auntie Nini’s house gets a ***** star rating in our books.

Tonight is double-date night and we have decided to go see some fire spinning, pick a nice restaurant for dinner, and then go see an AHL ice hockey game and root for Manitoba Moose. After the game we are all going out for a few drinks, as we have organized baby sitters for both Ethan and Danika. Rock ‘n’ Roll all night, and party every day!

Oompah oompah, stick it up your jumper!
Oompah oompah, stick it up your jumper!
Oompah oompah, stick it up your jumper!

The Harrison-Helin's photographed by Brian Rudolph

Thank you Brian for our beautiful family portraits! You are a true GENIUS!!! Anyone interested in booking a session with Brian please check out www.empirephoto.ca or www.empireblog.ca (Brian - I hear already that some people will be contacting you!)