Cirque Du Soleil baby!

The summer hasn’t even started yet and we are already looking forward to the winter!
“Say what?!” was probably the first thing that popped up in your mind right now. It’s not as bad as it sounds. We’ve booked a pair of VIP tickets to ‘Cirque Du Soleil – Michael Jackson - The Immortal World Tour’ when the tour hits Stockholm in November and after watching snippets from the tour so far; our expectations are through the roof! Can't wait!

Check it out:

Ethan & Sam

Daddy days are just around the bend!

It’s happening again! Another slew of daddy days are just weeks away and we are getting increasingly excited about our awesome summer to come. May 10th is my last day at work until September 2nd and I can’t wait for some more family quality time! Gotta love Sweden for it’s social insurance and benefits. Still no set plans for the summer but I am positive we’ll solidify an awesome summer agenda in the next few weeks and whatever it holds, I know BBQ’ing and cold beers on the balcony will be a key ingredient in that plan.

Speaking of sweet benefits; in the last couple of days we've also secured another 7-ish months worth of additional paternity days that I never claimed whilst we were living in Scotland! Days that I actually had no idea I could claim. As it turns out; parents who are Swedish citizens with children born abroad can claim their parental benefits when they move back to Sweden and as I never took out any UK paternity leave, this little nugget of awesomeness has now been credited to our Swedish paternity day account. In other words; the Harrison-Helins are looking forward to very long summers for the next 5 years or so!

Hudson 10 months

Ziplining and rocketsliding at Mulle Meck's playground

Dinner at IKEA

...and the aftermath:

Swing if you're winning!

Easy like Sunday morning

If you would swing by our house on a Sunday morning somewhere between 6am and 10am, you would find two nutty kids in full speed with too many toys on their hands. Activities range from watching ‘Shaun The Sheep’ and and playing with Play Doh to making sure that every single toy that was once neatly stowed away in a drawer or a box is scattered all over the floor, to eating PB&J sandwiches and yoghurt for breakfast… using the entire face(!), to tickle fights and cruising through the apartment in a police car in full speed stopping for nothing! And we wouldn’t have it any other way, our boys are awesome!

The Museum of Nature History (Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet)

This weekend’s big adventure was a trek out to the Museum of Nature History to check out all their cool exhibitions. Ethan was on fire and ran around the place like a maniac and got to look at everything from dinosaur skeletons to stuffed animals and nature videos. Many of their exhibitions had interactive screens and buttons to push, which is of course is a huge plus when you go with an almost-three-year old. On the minus side: Not all exhibitions were in Swedish and English and it was way too easy for Ethan to wander off on his own. The museum was great though and a visit is definitely recommended!

Creepy monkey skeleton


Mommy, Hudson and 'Bones' the African elephant


'Bones' older cousin 'T-bone'

Where dinosaurs lived, back in the day

T-Rex

A huge water monster


Ethan casually running through a North Atlantic Right Whale

Ethan casually sliding down the fin of the same whale

Ethan checking out the arctic exhibition


Shaena making clouds

As creepy as they come: A conserved octopus!

A stuffed wolf


Huddy - cute as a button, as always!

Hudson's first bus ride (in his own seat)

A snowy April morning

Hudson's fun

Firsts

What a great long weekend of firsts!

The weekend started off with a day of drinking tea in pyjamas with my new SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) friend Anita and an early arrival of Peter home from work as it was a squeeze day. We decided to go shopping without kids which is a rarity and a luxury so we enjoyed our short time out while perusing the aisles for items for our first bbq of the year to be hosted on the Friday at ours.

It was a crazy backlog on the road to the shops only to discover the popo were pulling people over for a random breathalyzer. I've already had my first one here a few weekends back when I "accidentally" drove over a solid white line. The fuzz pulled me over and thought I had to have been drinking cause no one pulls that stunt in Sweden! Luckily I got away without a ticket!

We also had our friends spend the night at ours making it a first for a sleepover for Ethan and Hailee. They were too cute all cuddling and reading books in bed together. While the night progressed and all the kids finally sleeping we got to try this new app on Anita's Iphone that is a genie that can guess what you are thinking. It is wild! You can't trip it up!!

Finally it was time to hit the hay. Friday morning we woke up to find it SNOWING! So much for hosting our first BBQ. I cancelled with all those meant to be coming and instead we had a quiet day indoors, though we still did get out the grill! Erin and Svante came by with baby Ossian for his first visit with the rest of the gang.

Uncle John was by for dinner and kindly gave us his old surround sound stereo. A first in this household so we were excited to watch "Top Gun".

Saturday was a relaxed day of cleaning at home. Finally mopping the floors though you can't even tell now!

Sunday was Ethan and Hudson's first Easter egg hunt! Again we met up with Anita and fam to our local park where she had cleverly dyed 12 eggs in food colouring and we placed them randomly around the forest for the kids to locate. Ethan was such a great help to Hailee finding the eggs and putting them in the basket and at the end they both found a special egg of McQueen and Princess Jasmine! We headed back to Anita's for fika and a easter themed movie and in the afternoon we headed home past the farm where Ethan enjoyed "baa-ing" at Shaun...the sheep of course.

Finally today, we took the boys to the pool for Hudson's first ever swim! He was a duck to water. Loving every minute and was not ready to leave when it was time to go. The boys splashed and Ethan helped Hudson around on a floaty thingy.

We enjoyed a lovely afternoon lunch by the marina and this evening is the first time in a long time I've added a blog entry.

Hope everyone is having a great long weekend like we are!!

First BBQ of the year! It. was. friggin. cold!

Let the egg huntin' begin!

Found another one!

The Grand prize: A McQueen chocolate egg!

Lifting our egg huntin' champ!

Huddy tagged along on the egg hunt as well and watched it unfold from the comfort and warmth of his stroller. Smart dude.

Shaun

Just because it's Easter

Mmm...mmm...mmm!

Happy Easter ya'll!

From Riga With Love

Life ain’t bad, not bad at all. We’ve had a great/interesting/fun filled/stereotypical weekend with Uncle Cormac from Ireland on our ‘Fiesta cruise’ to Riga, Latvia!

We boarded the ship in the harbour here in Stockholm, after which we made our way to our respective cabins to make ourselves comfortable. Not long after we entered our nice enough A-class cabin with a window, loud music started playing from the next cabin and a bunch of guys were well on their way to drunkville. At 5pm “Great!” we thought and Cormac kindly offered to swap cabins with us (however his did not have a window). “Heck no!”, Shaena said and marched down to the information counter and demanded to speak to a manager. Not long after, we were upgraded to a Luxury cabin! (which really was at a comparable standard with the crappiest hotel room we’ve ever stayed in!)

Other than that; time on the boat was spent hanging out in the kids playroom, enjoying a big buffet dinner, having drinks at the top deck Panorama Bar, people watching (lots of it!), dancing, watching Mexican themed shows and generally just having a good time!

Once in Riga we had about 5 hours of time ashore before it was time to depart again so we headed in to town and had a coffee and Shaena got a slice of birthday cake before we hit up old town. You wouldn't think so but Riga is surprisingly colorful! I had my mind set on a grey and dull but still nice and well kept old town but lots of buildings were nice and bright and painted in pastel colors and they even had a really modern shopping centre in the middle of old town. Supposedly Riga was the only major Baltic city that was spared during the Second World War bombings and hence it’s nice architecture and well kept historic buildings. Then again; in other areas of the city, buildings were grey and run down and covered in graffiti so there you go.

All in all a weekend well spent and Riga is well worth a quick visit. We’ll definitely be going on more cruises. Just hope the next one will be in the Caribbean instead of the Baltic Sea!

"Seeeese!"

Our welcoming committee when boarding the 'Fiesta cruise'

Family photo in the Panorama Bar on Deck 8

It is.

Self photo! Riga edition!

"Hey Riga! 1963 phoned and wanted its public transport back!"

Watching, waiting, commiserating

Eastern European stereotype at its finest. A run down old communist style apartment block and a LADA parked in front!

No one can blame Riga for not taking care of its homeless cats!

Cormac suffered from terrible land sickness when he got off the boat, poor guy!

Cormie and Huddy

The main square in Riga's Old Town

Family church photo

St. Peter's Church

St. Peter's Church street...obviously

A Rigan alley

Daddy and buddy

The Monument of Freedom

This street performer had created his own snare drum type sound thingy from an energy drink can (check out his foot!)

Care to guess what the Rigan street vendors hawked mostly?

Oh and guess who got picked up on the dance floor by the Rigan ladies!