Summer time

So Mommy, G.G and I have been quite busy this last week waiting for my little Bro to decide to make his appearance. This past Friday we decided to venture into the city to a play group and low and behold there was an outdoor pool! Mommy was not aware of this so did not bring any swimmers for me so bottomless I went! It was soooo much fun being that it was so hot outside. I thought I would make some friends so off I went grabbing random daddys' hands and bringing them over to meet Mommy and G.G.

Unfortunately though I have caught Chickenpox! Oh no!! So far I'm feeling ok but have spots EVERYWHERE!! Let's hope this is over quite soon so I can go to the hospital when my brother is born!

Summer-palooza: Shae and G.G make a pie

Lesson 1 - how to mix the ingredients for a perfect apple pie

"With just a spoonful of Crisco and the..."

2 perfect balls of crust ready to be rolled out

Rollin' rollin' rollin'...

Apples are going in...

Easy as...

...pie!

Good thing we have a two-pie-oven in our kitchen!

Voilá!

Summer-palooza: First 5 days with G.G

Great Grandma had a long travel day so Ethan, helpful as he is, kindly decided to be a good little piccolo and assist with the bags

Swing!

A-dorable!

Mr. Magoo mid-air & many more merry moments

Mid-air at 'Lek & Bus' in Upplands Väsby

Destructo!

More snaps from 'Lek & Bus' in Upplands Väsby

Loving Mom's special pasta sauce!

Ladies and Gentlecars!!! The summer-palooza is officially on!

(Can you tell we’ve been watching a lot of Pixar movies lately?)

This Sunday marks the official start of another summer-visitor-palooza with Great Grandma being the first one to arrive; ready to bake pie after pie after pie for a pie-starved Harrison-Helin crew!

From Sunday onwards and all the way up until mid-August, we will have a full house of guests from near and afar and so far; the full summer-palooza list of visitors as it stands right now looks like this:

G.G, Grandma Michelle, Grandma Gertrud and Roland, Grandpa Stefan, Aunty Nini and cousin Em. My oh my! :)

We are very much looking forward to seeing G.G and everyone else this summer and little Baby H2 seemed pretty eager himself the other night, which resulted in us heading in to the hospital for a checkup. False alarm though but always good to get a checkup and as an added bonus; one of the midwives gave us a private tour of the labour ward, the delivery room, a really cool bathroom fitted with a corner hot tub and gas and air, and so much more. We were quite stunned by the difference in standards between Edinburgh and Stockholm and yet again, we are very happy to be here!

It is a long weekend here in Sweden this weekend. Well, technically it was a Christian holiday/red day yesterday and since the red day was on a Thursday, it is pretty common that companies give their employees the Friday off as a ‘squeeze day’ before the weekend, as their employees would probably not be very productive anyway (gotta love Sweden for our red days, day before red day and squeeze days!). Monday is also Sweden Day, which makes this weekend extra long. We are of course taking the opportunity to relax, recharge and get ready before the summer kicks off for real (think the calm before the storm).

Oh, and we hit up our supermarket Willy's today, in preparation for lotsa hungry mouths to feed:

Posing for the ladies!

Thank you to Uncle John for the awesome photo of little Mickey Blue Eyes here!

Cruisin for the ladies!

H2 update

You’ll be pleased to know that Mr. H2 (yes, for those of you who haven't already heard, it is a boy!) is doing great in there and is now officially a fully developed little boy, technically ready to come out and meet the world! With less than a month to go, we could not be any more eager and excited to meet the little guy!

Ethan’s old crib has now been readjusted and raised to infant level and has been moved into our bedroom and Ethan’s first onesies have been washed again and are ready to be used by his little brother. Hard to imagine that he is going to fit those tiny little things!

What else? Well the hospital bag is pretty much packed and phone numbers to the maternity section at two different hospitals have been plugged into our phones for when ‘it’ happens.

T-minus 23 days!

We know, we know...

...bad, bad bloggers!

We just haven’t had a chance to update the blog for a couple of weeks. The reason being a combination of lots and lots going on (as per usual I guess) and tiredness. After all, the final countdown to the arrival of H2 has started! Not long now and we are prepping as best as we can.

So, in the spirit of time efficiency; let’s do a recap on the highlights of both last weekend and this weekend at the same time:

Last weekend:
Hands down, the highlight of last weekend was what we believe to be a new summer family tradition in the H-H household; a visit to ‘Cirkus Maximum’ – a Swedish travelling circus that’s been touring Sweden for almost 30 years. One of their stops for the 'Viva Maximum tour' was in Jakobsberg, just a few minutes drive from us so we thought we’d take Ethan to their afternoon performance. Cirkus Maximum is a full on professional circus with performers from all over the world, exotic animals, clowns and a live band. At the same time it was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me as I used to sneak in to their performances when I was a kid whenever they visited Piteå. Also really cool to see that they had the same circus director now as they had all those years ago!

Ethan absolutely loved it and was standing in the middle of the aisle, stomping, yelling and clapping and by the time the performance was over, he was spent, sweaty and very happy!

Below is probably the nuttiest performance they put on; 2 dirt bikes driving at full speed inside a huge steel ball with a girl standing in the middle. Once the girl had left the ball (alive, just for the record) a 3rd dirt bike was introduced(!):




This weekend:
The highlight of this weekend was without a doubt little Elias’ 4-year birthday party in, what we believe to be one of the most interesting party venues we’ve ever been to.

Uncle John and Mikaela had rented a communal hall next to their apartment building for the occasion. The venue is located in a typical Swedish 50’s apartment block basement bomb shelter and supposedly, this caretaker-guy in the area had spent the last 20-odd years decorating and collecting furniture, knick-knacks and random crap for the bomb shelter. We’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

The party was great though and little Elias was showered in cool gifts from by a flock of kids, just the way it should be! After the party, Shaena headed out for a mommy-network dinner night out and Ethan and I stayed behind at John’s for Thai food takeout and then we took the choo-choo all the way across town home. Care to guess if Ethan was ready for bed after that?

The party in full swing

Care for anything from the bomb shelter bar of randomness?

Tea time - bunker style!

You can never have too many whaterver-that-is'

Cosy corner behind a bullet proof door

Opium - clearly a necessity during times of war

Yet another classic self photo

"Ethan! Look at mommy! Ethan... Ethan! Look at mommy! Over there! Say Cheese!"

"Bil! Bil! Car! Car!"

Afternoon in Hagaparken

The King's gates

Olle, Jack & Ethan

Olle & Jack

Ethan & dad

Ethan

Linda & Shaena

Zero carbon footprint lawnmower

Zero carbon footprint lawnmower