swedenusa

We picked up our friend at the airport in Denmark and hopped on the train to go to Copenhagen. We spent about 6 hours walking around the city. From the Central Station, past Tivoli, down Ströget the big shopping street and all the way to Nyhavn.

Copenhagen in the summer is such an energetic town yet laid back and people are just soaking in the season. We had no plans or agenda except for getting the feeling of the city and do what we felt like doing or going.

We stopped on the way and had our late lunch. The weather was wonderful. Sunny, not a cloud on the sky and about 74F or 24C. There were people out shopping, sitting at the cafés and restaurants. Street musicians were playing jazz in every corner. Copenhagen is known for its great Jazz.

There were street entertainers. We stopped by this lady that sort of stod still like a statue. Once you put som coins in the bucket in front of her she rang a bell and let you pose by her for a picture. Later on we realized she gave Sam bunny ears.

Towards the end of the day I was very tired. The baby has started to “lean”. It is hard do describe it. Like it is sort of pushing out on one side. It is uncomfortable and I sort of have to push back. Strangely enough the baby is always doing this on the same spot every time.

All in all, we had a great day with a lot of wonderful experiences. It has been like summer over here the whole weekend but tomorrow it will drop back down to mid 50´s.

Today we are starting our journey to southern Sweden. First, tonight we are going to pick up my mom´s car. Tomorrow we will drive down to Malmö and take the train over the bridge to Copenhagen (Denmark) to pick up our good friend Nathanael who is flying in from the US. We will be spending Friday in Copenhagen, Saturday in the Swedish city Lund and then head back to Jönköping!

Hopefully we will have some pictures up after the weekend.

I have never been the type to be overwhelmed by flowers, but I must say I was impressed in Holland. It is beautiful in the spring! Apparently, the farmers in Holland grow tulips in the fields, then harvest the bulbs after they bloom.

My co-worker and I took over 500 pictures. Every time we turned around, there was another amazing display of flowers! It was stunning!  

We just realized that I can really take advantage of the pregnancy just by making some adjustments to how I phrase things.

Just because you are not hungry right now, are you really going to make your ENTIRE family go out into the kitchen and cook?

Are you going to make your ENTIRE family go and get juice at the store?

Are you really going to watch this show when your ENTIRE family wants to watch something else?

Are you going to hog that blanket and let your ENTIRE family be without?

Are you going to eat all that when your ENTIRE family has to share this?

The possiblity are endless and we were laughing a lot while making up different scenarios. I think I will really use this from time to time!

I am beginning to realize that my wife is pregnant! We spent last Saturday looking for “the perfect stroller.” This is not an easy task. There is a huge assortment of strollers with many different features. It kinda reminded me of buying car. Mirjam has been pouring over consumer reports and we have amassed a pretty impressive stack of brochures.

Dispite Mir’s happy face, we left this store pretty disappointed.

Well, I kinda liked the purple one with the umbrella.

Later that day, we bought some maternity clothes for Mir. Here she is showing off her tummy…

Well, It is that time of the year again…April 15th is the IRS deadline for all of you procrastinators out there. Mir and I are fortunate enough to have the honor of filing BOTH in the USA and in Sweden! Fun!

Actually, we file our USA taxes online. It only took about an hour this year. Plus, It gives me an excuse to call my dad and chat with him. He is somewhat of a tax guru.

I declared via text message here in Sweden. It only took 2 minutes! That was definitely more my style!

Yesterday Jonas & Shie had their little Esther. Mother, baby… and dad are all doing great. When I talked with them on the phone after the delivery Shie was all excited and sounded like she normally does which surprised me since she had been doing hard labor for 12 hours. Jonas on the other hand had been holding his daughter (who was sucking on her own little hand) and sounded very tired and relaxed. I even got to hear Esther crying in the background.

Keep an eye on Jonas & Shie´s blog for more info and pictures in the near future!

I filmed a short clip of grandma two years ago when I visited her at her home. I begged her to play her guitarr and harmonica. She was very reluctant to do so since it had been a long time since she had played the harmonica. Finally she brought out the instruments and let me film with my little cellphone camera. She was about 82 years old at the time. I jus think it is amazing!

Click on the picture to go to youtube and watch.

Last weekend I got a new cellphone. Switching the SIM card meant I would loose all my pictures and movie clips I filmed with my cell. I finally figured out how to save my files onto the computer. I tried once before but it didn´t work so I just gave up. But now I had too much to loose. This means I can finally blog about some of the things that I wanted to blog about but never could, because of lack of pictures.

I would like to start with 1 year ago! This was fun! New job, new coworkers, you remember! Our boss and I took everyone out to a teambuilding day. Solving difficult situations out in the woods. We had to solve them together!

Rember we are 7 people, the thing is… we have decide how many of us are to stand on the box, balancing for at least 5 seconds. The boxes kept getting smaller and smaller until one was about the size of a regular-sized sheet of paper. We made it… all 7 of us!

The place that arranges all of this also have a hotel and regular conferences. It is all high up un a hill and on top of the hill is this tower. I couldn´t capture the whole thing from where I was standing. On the top there is a big platform. We were allowed to try to climb it. This was more for our own sake and not a team building exercise. The two most atheltic people made it all the way to the top. I made it to the middle, which is the skinniest part of the tower. I just didn´t want to (read dare to) jump over to another pole! It was a windy day so you had to sort of watch out for the hanging dangling things on the side.

It was really fun. I would like to go back and try that tower again!

We had a little bit of summer in 2007, most warm days clustered right at the beginning… May or early June. Then came the rain and never really left. All the rest of our summer and the fall months were well… fall like. Then came what is usually winter months but the fall weather stayed. Raining, no sun, clouds, NO sun!

We haven´t had any winter, just dark rainy and windy days. And then came Spring! Wonderful spring with sun and warmth. The days are longer and it doesn´t feel like walking around at night all of the time.

Last Sunday (the Sunday before Easter) was wonderful. We took a long walk and brought some coffee. I tried to capture the sun playing in the water running in the ditch next to the road. Our camera batteries died just then so I had to use Sam´s cellphone camera…

We walked through the forrest and enjoyed the view from above Jönköping.

It all seemed like a great start for Spring and the nice summer we are all expecting this year.

But NO! Things are not the way they used to be. There is no order in nature anymore. From fall to spring and now to winter. We get the first of winter at the end of March. Monday morning, the day after our nice forest walk and the first picnic of the year, we woke up to snow, cold, and ice! It hasn´t left us since. Who knows maybe we will have winter in the summer now? Nature, the climate, it is not what it used to be!