-31 degrees Celsius but in good company - our Christmas in a nutshell

The 12 hour car ride up did not seem to bother Ethan
too much - snacks and Peter Pan-movies made sure of that!

Ethan, farfar, and the boys' new awesome snow racer!

Another Helin four generations photo
Ethan got a new LEGO helicopter from Great Grandma,
so he was mostly interested in showing that off

Ethan: "Yellow tractor, yellow tractor!"

Ethan driving the yellow tractor

Christmas lunch brewing - 'Risgrynsgröt' and 'Dopp i grytan'

Pirate Cap'n Ethan waiting for food

A log fire, a Christmas tree with presents
and a traditional Christmas dinner - Perfect!

Christmas Eve dinner

Ethan pretty excited about his new toys

Santa is watching all the pressies

Mother and daughter

-31 degrees Celsius!

Crisp

Mommy, Ethan and Ida petting Shaun the sheep

Grandma petting an iguana

Huddy and Ida also took a closer look at the iguana,
but he wasn't too impressed

Huddy definitely prefered to pet a guinea pig over a close
encounter with the iguana

Highlight of the visit to the farm - the new red tractor!

Taking The Millennium Falcon to Christmasville

Last day of work today, which means that Christmas is seriously, literally and totally around the corner! I guess we haven't mentioned this before but this bunch is going up north for Christmas! We are mighty excited to take the new car (which by the way has been tentatively named 'The Millennium Falcon', you know, Harrison Ford's silver colored spaceship from Star wars) out for it's first long drive.

Other than that,it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Ethan is bringing home handcrafted Christmas ornaments from dagis, secret parcels are coming in thick and fast, and we are getting pretty excited about Grandma's Christmas dinner, Santa coming to visit, to hang out with family and to just have a nice Christmas break.

Also around the corner: Our 5 year wedding anniversary! 5 years!

December bits and bobs

Hudson having a hoot!

Professor Hudson

Ethan and mommy decorating the gingerbread house

...and here it is!

Merry Pulka!

Lucia celebrations at dagis

Yesterday's Lucia performance at dagis was Ethan's second and Hudson's first one. All the kids were dressed up as little Lucias, Santas, Star boys, or Gingerbread men. 100% adorable and our little boys did their best to fight the cold and entertain the crowd. Needless to say though; Hudson and all the other smaller kids looked dazed and confused when they were marched out in front of all the parents and relatives! They had no idea what was going on, but went along with it nevertheless.

It was a cold afternoon but the kids did their best to
sing all the Christmas carols they had practised

Yes, it's a woman dressed up as a chubby baker accompanied
by 175 little Santas

Cheese!

Cold outside, warm inside = foggy glasses for Grandma

Happy Lucia to one and all!

Here's how it's done:

Is it ever not busy?

With a full time job (soon to be two!), full time school, a business on the side and two supercharged monkeys, the answer is ‘no’. It’s always busy.

Over the past few weeks, besides everything else that is usually going on; Shaena has successfully secured a fulltime job at an international daycare (yay!), I have started my new job as a marketing dude at my current company, we’ve finally registered our ‘H2 E-marketing’ business and I am working on an exciting website project for e-learning in China, you know, stuff like that…

Today Grandma Michelle also arrived in Sweden for her second stint in the ‘HH Institution For The Wild And Crazy’ and we are very excited to have her here of course!

Also, 500 extra suburban bonus points scored: minivan purchased today! We are pretty excited and look forward to some awesome road trips with the kids in the next few years!

Airport love! Grandma is here!

New wheels - a Peugeot 807 7-seater, complete with
electronic sliding doors, front seats that turn around
for road trip coffee breaks, a built in beverage cooler,
and all the cup holders you can ever dream of!

Christmas decorations are up, Gnomeo style!

Ethan and Hudson dressed up to their little milk teeth
at Miguel's 40th birthday party

First snow = Toboggan time!

Opa Grandma Style!

A whole lotta Hudson

Remember the 'Hudson mystery box' I found a while back?
Guess what was in it...

You guessed it! A Hudson!

Peekaboo!

Two dudes in a rocking chair

Funny guy

Hilarious Hudson

The kidsos school photos

Here you are, friends and family. Needless to say; we are pretty excited about how well these photos turned out!

Click here for Ethan's first school photo, if you would like to compare.

Hudson's first school photo

Ethan and Hudson did their annual school photoshoot a few weeks back and they were of course dressed up to their little teeth in the coolest little outfits we could find! ;) Hudson in his 'Cool like a fox' shirt and his wingman Ethan had his 'Wingman' t-shirt on. We expect to get Ethan's photo by tomorrow and this one of Hudson is a photo of a photo, so a better quality one is coming.

Cool like a fox!

October and November snappy snaps

Enjoy! ;)

The boys raiding a playhouse

Ethan and Hudson trying out their Halloween astronaut
outfits

Hudson in the dagis daily diary, happy as ever
and cute as a button

Nessie and the Scotsman out and about

Stockholm on a beautiful fall day

"Bada, bada, bada!"

Ethan and mommy at Olivia's birthday party

Ground control to Major Tom

The Turning Torso skyscraper in Malmö

I found a box full of Hudsons when setting up the fair
in Malmö

Scandinavia's biggest mall, Emporia had its grand opening
when I was in Malmö. Very impressive! 

Awesome glass architecture...

...and funky escalators among other things

View of Malmö and the bridge to Denmark one morning

Vintage signs in Malmö

The Turning Torso again

A crisp day in Uppsala

Highway man, hilarious kids and a circus show...

I've said it before and I say it again: never a dull moment when you're a Harrison-Helin!

So, what's been going on? Well, I've been on the road to the south of Sweden for another CareerBuilder career fair in Malmö and also made it over to Copenhagen for a quick client meeting. It's really cool how Sweden and Denmark are now connected by a bridge and you can just hop on a train and commute to Copenhagen just like you would commute from the suburb and into the city.

Meanwhile; Shaena was manning the fort here at home and did a fab job looking after our nutty little dudes, as always. The boys had a Halloween party at dagis and they both got to wear their little astronaut outfits. Shaena had even crafted a cardboard box NASA spaceship for them! As always, the kids and Shaena have kept themselves super busy with play dates and playlands whilst I've been away.

We've also had our first individual parent-teacher meeting at dagis with the boys and we are so proud of them for getting consistent awesome feedback! According to their teachers, they are two funny, friendly, curious and very hungry boys!

What else, you ask? Well, we've hosted a few dinners too! My friend from back home in Piteå, Evelina, has just moved to the city so we had her over for a nice dinner. We hadn't seen each other in years so it was really nice to catch up, but also scary to realize how fast the years fly by! Dinner number two was for our Kiwi friend Lisa who was in town for business. We met Lisa for the first time when she was couch surfing in Dublin, and we've kept in touch ever since.

Last but not least; this past weekend, as you may have seen below, we went to see Cirque Du Soleil for our date night. Dinner at a restaurant and then off to the Globe arena for a Vegas styled circus. Sweet mother of Abraham Lincoln, was that ever a cool show! An amazing production with a huge cast, incredible staging and visual effects and death defying performances with no safety nets. We knew that the show would be good and had quite high expectations but walked away after the show completely blown away!

Never a dull moment.

Cirque Du Soleil tomorrow!

The day is finally here! Tomorrow evening, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison-Helin are heading out for a date night!

Shaena got a couple of sweet tickets to the Cirque Du Soleil Michael Jackson Immortal World Tour for her 30th and we’ve waited for almost exactly 7 months to go see this show.

Check out this trailer for the show: