Saturday, December 31
Getting ready to end 2011 in style!
On this table, an incredible 3-course New Years dinner will be served shortly. Grandma Gertrud as gone all in and will treat us to what could possibly be my all time favourite main course and dessert:
A cognac flambe'd fillet of ox with duchesse potatoes and for dessert she has whipped up her own homemade ice cream for an oven baked(!) glace au four!
Looking back on 2011, we have had a tremendous year with lots of exciting changes and we can't wait to see what 2012 has in store for us!
We would like to wish all our friends and family a fantastic New Years Eve and an even more fantastic 2012!
...and this is how it ended:
Bamse got to lick the plates...
...a glass of bubbly was had...
...and fireworks were fired off into the dark northern skiesThursday, December 29
Two tired boys
After a nice visit to Great grandma with lots of fika, playtime and Christmas pressies, our two lads fell asleep simultaneously and in near record time!
Wednesday, December 28
Hej hej, Haparanda! & Terve terve, Finland!
The Christmas buffet coma is slowly releasing its grip on us after days of continous feasting on meatballs and ham and we've made our way even further up north to Haparanda for a visit.
We arrived yesterday noon after driving through a bit of a blizzard and hardly even took our shoes off before we were out the door again to go burn some energy and calories at the Candy World playland. Ethan has been once before but that was a year and a half ago and you can definitely tell that he enjoyed it even more this time around as he could be more independent and go nuts on tougher climbing structures, taller slides and even ride the tricycles by himself.
Once E-Machine was played out and had accepted our bribe of a visit to the adjacent Candy World shop we swiftly moved on. Ethan got his usual 'Pim Pim' godis box and Shaena found a slice of home when she stumbled upon a bunch of 'American' soda pop cans so we filled a tray with Mountain Dew, root beer, Dr Pepper and more... oh, and we also scored a nice bottle of Cars kids bubbly for New Years!
Afterwards; 3 Swedes, 1 Canadian and 2 Swenadians drove across the river to Finland to pick up Chinese food (most likely made by a Turkish dude) and went back to the house in Sweden and shared this tasty dinner with Ritva, who is from Finland. How very international, eh! ;)
Today's adventure turned out to be something really special and we've had a fantastic winter-themed day! We decided to drive up to Rovaniemi in Finland located pretty much right on the arctic circle and visit 'Santa Village'.
We visited Santa Village last time we were here as well but that was in the summer and this place is just soo much cooler when it is dark and wintery (no pun intended). The whole Santa-theme just works better in the winter! ;) All kidding aside; they had done a fantasic job with creating an atmosphere with amazing lighting, Christmas trees, huge snowmen, ice sculptures, icy slides for the kids to play on, reindeer rides, a Sami camp complete with... well, Sami people, and warming camp fires. The only thing we missed out on was an audience with the Big Guy himself as he had a constant 30-40 minute queue to his lap, so we decided to skip that.
All in all; another very good day out!
Santa Village, Rovaniemi Finland:
Where to next?
Ethan and mommy on an ice slide
Santa lives in the main house in the back
Santa's sled, waiting to be deployed
A white reindeer on 'Christmas World Road'
Sami people by a camp fire
A classic self-photo by a camp fire (notice Shaena's antlers!)
Santa's reindeer after a long day at work
Frosty
Winter wonderlandCandy World, Haparanda Sweden:
Ethan on a bouncy slide thingy!
Ethan and Grandpa on the big boy slideOn the agenda for tomorrow: A visit to great-grandma Linnea!
Tuesday, December 27
Actionboy Ethan (Quadbike sold separately)
Who would have thought! Little Ethan has now officially graduated from just watching planes and trains and monster trucks on Youtube to actually having ridden both a quadbike and a dirtbike!
It all started last week at auntie Ida's school's horse class Christmas show where Ethan got to ride a buggy behind a one of those massive timber-pulling workhorses and sit on another full size horse. Each kid got to go two laps around the riding hall before it was someone elses's turn but Ethan wanted to go again and again so he kept sneaking back into the queue and you could really tell that he loved it!
After that, the new quadbike at the summerhouse was started for the first time and Ethan did not hesitate to jump on and wait for someone to take him for a ride. He went on several rides. First Roland took him, then Ida, then I went with him and lastly Shaena took him for a ride! The joy in his face was priceless so the morning after Roland took him for a ride on both the quad and the dirtbike AND he also got to go on a ride behind the quad on the little wagon that came with it, accompanied by Bamse and Chippen. When he came back to the house he was so excited he just kept saying "cycle, cycle [as in motorcycle], wroom, wroom!" and held his hands in front of him as if he was still holding the handlebars!
Based on this experience I am guessing we are setting ourselves up for years of expensive hobbies for E-man! Yikes! ;)
Monday, December 26
Ethan meets Santa (Tomten)
"Wait, someone's coming!"
"Yeah, who did you say you knew at this party again?"
"Alright, I'll read the label but from a safe distance"
"Santa old buddy!"
"Give us a hug!"
Taking the Mrs out for a fancy 4-year anniversary meal at 'Sunes'
4 years ago today Shaena and I got married in the Orlando County Courthouse in Orlando, Florida; wearing our Mickey & Minnie ears from Disney World. Lots and lots of wonderful things have happened since then and these 4 years have been the most amazing ride to be on!
Ever since we met under ‘less than classy circumstances’, we’ve had a thing for celebrating anniversaries, Valentine’s Day and so on in fast food joints, so today I figured I’d take my dear wife to a fast food restaurant that has become an institution in Piteå over its 40 or so years in business: ‘Sunes Gatukök’. We both had a massive bacon burger meal and it was awesome!
Love you so much baby!
Saturday, December 24
Friday, December 23
Twas the night before Christmas
Christmas in Sweden is mainly celebrated on Christmas Eve as opposed to celebrating on Christmas Day as you do in pretty much the rest of the world.
So tonight we were invited by Grandma Gertrud and Roland to a 'uppesittarkväll', which is basically a 'night before the big night' celebration where you eat lots of good food and sweets, drink mulled wine and other beverages, maybe sample the newly roasted Christmas ham, watch 'uppesittarkväll-specials' on the TV and just hang out and have a good time.
Let me tell you; they went all in on the goodies tonight and we were treated to seveal different crust based delicacies, crepes, wine and sweets. I think I speak for most of us when I say that we rolled from the dinner table to the couch!
Ethan had a great time playing with his aunties and Bamse and Chippen, two out of the family's four four-legged members. Tonight he went to bed full, happy and maybe on a bit of a sugar high!
On the agenda for tomorrow: Fun in the snow, Christmas lunch, the annual Christmas Eve Disney special at 3pm (never ever phone anyone in Sweden between 3pm-4pm on Christnas Eve - we are busy watching Disney reruns!), a Christmas smörgåsbord and last but not least a visit from Santa.
For us, Santa's visit will definitely be interesting as E has never had a close encounter with Santa and we are not sure if he is going to a) help Santa hand out pressies, or b) freak out completely. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.
Personally I am very, very excited about celebrating a traditional Swedish Christmas with family (not to mention mom's Christmas food!) as we've been abroad on other Christmas adventures previous years, so this will also be another 'first' for us as a family. Stay tuned.
Christmas tree - Check!
Hudson is checking out the newly decorated Christmas tree and seems to approve. Bring on Christmas Eve!
And this is what I found...
So it's all quiet in the house and when I went to look for my boys I find them sneakily eating all of the cookies!
Thursday, December 22
Kinda incommunicado but all good!
As you may or may not know, we are currently up north in Piteå visiting for the holidays. As the summer house/cottage that we are staying in is located on an island outside of Piteå, our cheap-o big city mobile plans don't really cut it and there is also no internet or landline out here, so we are a bit off the grid right now. On the flip side; that's kind of nice as well as you get a bit of distance to everything from daily horrors in the news to emails and Facebook status updates.
On the negative side; the winter scenery up here is absolutely stunning right now and we are having a blast with the kids in the snow (which is not negative in itself, read on!) and have of course snapped a bunch of cool photos that we would like to upload and share with you... but as the sporadic connectivity would never allow us to upload; we'll have to make due with mobile photo uploads for now and you'll just have to check back in with us again later for these gems fit for National Geographic! ;)
So, don't worry! As soon as we are back in the land of Mbits and www's and @'s, we'll upload like mad again.
Oh, and don't think for a second that I don't see the irony in blogging from a mobile phone about not being able to blog... ;)
Tuesday, December 20
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