Surprise birthday weekend in Åland

April Fools and Shaena’s 29th birthday! Calls for a surprise trip somewhere, don’t you think? Well, I did, so for the past couple of weeks I have been organizing a cruise and a spa/hotel weekend in Åland, an island smack in the middle of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland.

So on Thursday evening Shaena received her first ‘clue’ through a time delayed email and on Friday morning the second email clue was received and we were off! A bus to a train to a bus to a ferry to a huge awesome smörgåsbord on the ferry and before we knew it, we were there! Out on ‘the islands of peace’. The three of us are spending the weekend in Mariehamn in a hotel with an adjacent adventure pool and spa facility, just relaxing and hanging out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85land_Islands

Speaking of time delayed; this blog entry was actually posted with time delay as well; which means that it was written before we even left (which also means that the statement about the huge awesome smörgåsbord was more of an assumption than a fact, as we had not experienced it at the time of writing this... kind of weird!) so as you are reading this, we are probably at the 'Mariebad' adventure pool and spa, maxing and relaxing, eating ice cream and splashing like maniacs! Life is good!

We are back tomorrow (well, Sunday) evening and promise to give you the full lowdown.

Who's shoes Ethan?

“Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you!”

It is Shaena’s 29th birthday today!

600 | 3 | 15000 | 26000 | 970 | 80

Dear blog readers, friends and family: This is blog entry number 600!

Time flies when you’re having fun and we’ve now kept this blog going for the better part of 3 years. We’ve definitely had lots of fun keeping you up to date on all our crazy trips, outings, parties, projects, meet-ups, and last but definitely not least; on our progress as new parents and as a new little family unit.

So far, the ‘waffle counter’ at the bottom of the page reads 15000 visitors, the Google Analytics counter has added up to 26000 page views since September 2009 and in the same timeframe we’ve had visitors from no less than 970 cities in 80 countries! And that ain’t hay!

Before we know it it’s the summer and the size of our little family unit will have increased with another 25% so no doubt we’ll have lots more material to add to this page!

In other words: Keep coming back for more!

The Best Little Office In Stockholm

I've mentioned my work and my office(s) so many times over these past couple years; I figure it is about time I take you on a little tour of my new office in Stockholm. The CareerBuilder office in Stockholm is located on the south side in city centre in an old converted turbine factory. A pretty sweet office if you ask me, but have a look and see for yourselves:

My office. Yes, it is a penthouse loft in an old factory.

CareerBuilder.se

Space. Lots of space.

Where the action is. The sales floor!

Where lunch is had.

Where interesting and totally meaningful lunchbreak topics are covered.

Where fierce ping-pong games are played. To the death!

Party favour fun

Great weekend, great week

Let’s face it: We love it here! With less than 2 months under our belt, we have already hosted our first party, our first weekend guests and a couple of dinners. Even though Stockholm is a massive city and walking over to your friends’ house is not an option, it still feels really easy to get around and to go out and do stuff. When people come visit us, it’s even easier of course! ;)

This past Friday we had another ‘Dublin connection meet-up’ when my old friend and first roommate from Dublin, Hameed and his girlfriend Helene came over for dinner. Hameed was over in Stockholm for a long weekend to visit Helene who is doing an internship here. As always, it is great to catch up with old friends, and as always, it feels like no time has passed since we last met in Edinburgh 2 or 3 years ago. Ethan was thrilled as well as Hameed and Helene brought gifts for him. Who can blame him! ;)

The weather in Stockholm is absolutely gorgeous right now and on Saturday we met up for a long walk around Kallhäll with a new acquaintance, Helen and her kids. Helen is originally from the UK but has been living here for the longest time and she showed us new routes to Centrum *exciting, eh!* and we also headed over to the shops to buy ‘Lördagsgodis’, which is a Swedish weekly tradition where you go out on the Saturday and buy sweeties. The idea is that you don’t necessarily give your kids sweeties for the rest of the week and instead create a buzz around ‘Lördagsgodis’. Works like a charm!

Helen also gave us a good tip for an awesome kiddy pool relatively close by so on Sunday we hopped on the pendeltåg and headed over to Bro and their communal swimming pool where they had recently built and extension with a baby friendly adventure pool with little slides, baby size Jacuzzi-type tubs, non-slip steps, colourful animals that were squirting water, palm trees and last but not least: balls! We have never heard Ethan say the word ‘ball’ so many times in a row before, it was like he was possessed! Good times!

On Monday evening it was no rest for the wicked as we had another dinner guest that had reserved a seat at the table at Chez Harrison-Helin. Our friend Henrik came over to try Shaena’s fantastic pasta. I should mention that Shaena has finally managed to find the last ingredient to her, yes her, signature pasta recipe; Heinz Chili Sauce, and needless to say, she was absolutely thrilled to find out that Sweden, which already is ‘the promised land’ compared to the UK, could also offer decent pasta ingredients!

Oh, and yesterday when I came in to work one of the guys handed me a goodie bag with a huge selection of sweeties and a bottle of 12 year old single malt to say thank you for helping him out with one of his clients. I love my job! ;)

We have arrived!

Ethan 21 months

Stockholm is warming up

Swedish Permanent Residence Permit is in the bag!

New country = new hoops to jump through for Shaena to be legal and official in the country.

So, for the past month or so we have submitted and tracked our application for Shaena’s ‘Permanent Uppehållstillstånd’ or ‘Permanent Residence Permit’ with the Swedish Migration board and just over a week ago, we also had our official interview with our Migration board case worker; you know the one where they interview you separately and ask a quadrillion questions just to try and call you our on any bluff that you may be playing. Our case worker was great and probably realized quite quickly that we were legit and had nothing to hide and even promised to do what she could to speed up the administration and get the decision over to us last week or this week. The other day it arrived in the mail and Shaena is now a permanent resident in Sweden!

I have to say though; this time round the whole application process and everything surrounding it has been pretty painless and pretty quick and I think the best part of it was that we only had to send them copies of everything instead of sending our actual passports etc away.

It feels great that this is sorted and official now and we are glad that we can now this whole process behind us… until next time we move countries! ;)

Happy Paddy's Day everyone!

Have you met Purple?

You may or may not know this about Shaena but Shaena can be very, very persistent and she is a world class researcher who can sniff out the best deals for pretty much anything, and most of the time she also has something on her wish list. Usually it is either a purchase or a little project that she would like to get done and when she sets her mind on it, there is literally no stopping her. A quality I truly admire! Let me tell you the story about “Purple the puppy”. It really is something else!

Here’s how the story developed:
When the iPhone first came out, even though it was only available in the US, and it couldn’t even be used in Europe at that point, Shaena thought is was the best thing since sliced bread and had her mind set on getting one so kept researching and researching and lobbying and lobbying persistently for a very long time until finally the iPhone4 was released (and at this point, a few more significant things had been added to the list) and she said: "If we are going to move to Sweden, I want an iPhone, an SUV, a dishwasher and a puppy!"

“Holy moly!” I said.

Now, since the iPhone4 acquisition is secured, Shaena has moved on to the puppy and let me tell you, she is not shy of using any means to get one! ;)

Let me explain:

Nowadays when Ethan and Shaena are coloring or drawing; for some reason, many of the finished drawings include a picture of a puppy and most of them are drawn with a purple crayon and it says “Purple” underneath the drawing. The other day when Shaena and Ethan met up with me outside work, Shaena slipped me a folded up A4 paper and said “Ethan made this for you at Öppen Förskola” (open day care). I unfolded it and what do I see? Another picture of a purple dog with “Purple” in writing underneath! Ethan of course, has learned how to say "Purple" as well and whenever he sees that dog-drawing or even a purple crayon he is chanting "Purple, PURPLE!"

I have a feeling 'Purple the puppy' will haunt me until he or she is in fact sitting on our hallway floor, chewing my best leather shoes to bits!


Oh, and today at work, she sent me a link to an advert for this used car that she had found in the classifieds (remember the SUV on the list?):

Lord Almighty! ;)

The things we do to get Ethan to laugh!

Visiting season is officially on! - Weekend visit from Grandma Gertrud and Roland

This past weekend we had the pleasure of hosting our first ever overnight visitors in ‘El Flaterino’ when Grandma Gertrud and Roland came to town. On Friday evening Uncle John picked our lucky number one’s up from the airport and hand delivered them to us safe and sound out in Kallhäll. As it was a bit later in the evening and our guests hadn’t had anything to eat all day, we had prepared some night-time nachos for everyone to feast on and Shaena and I also got spoiled with birthday presents! Shaena got a Swedish cookbook, several bags of Grandma's awesome homemade cinnamon buns and a couple of scratch cards… and for me, some lining for the wallet! Thank you very much!

On Saturday, the annual Boat Show was on here in Stockholm so Grandma, Roland and Uncle John headed out to Älvsjö where the venue is to check out the latest fashion in boats for this upcoming boating season and Roland had his eyes on a couple of classic wooden daycruisers from the 50's that he wanted to see. Meanwhile, we stayed at home and just relaxed and took it pretty easy as it had been a fairly packed week last week (again) and new website projects are also coming in so got a chance to catch up on that as well.

In the evening we had requested Grandma to cook her famous garlic potato bake and roasted fillet of pork for us and we also had the pleasure of having John, Mikaela and little Elias, Ethan’s newest little buddy, over for dinner. It was really nice that we could all meet up and sit down for a ol’ family roast!

On Sunday afternoon we were invited to a Sunday brunch at Roland’s sister Anki’s house south of Stockholm so most of us crammed ourselves into John’s car and headed over there. Ethan had an absolute blast running around whilst chowing down food and treats like he hadn’t seen a meal in weeks! After brunch, it was time for our guests to head straight out to the airport and go home but we had a great time and we really managed to get the most out of this weekend!

Ethan found a new fave toy: Grandma's suitcase!

Ethan and Grandma at breakfast

Ethan 'dinging'

Ethan with his 'dinging' audience

Ethan and Grandma on their way to brunch...
Guess who just got woken up from a car-nap!

Daddy, Uncle John and Grand Master E

First we snack...

...a lot!...

...then we nap again! What a hard life!

Blast from the past!

Been awhile since we've posted a few old pics from our travel days. Here's one of us at the Ice Bar in Stockholm. Hope to visit here again soon.

Snowballs!