December 31st, 2008

As we would say in Swedish: Gott Nytt År!

December 23rd, 2008

Merry Christmas!

December 18th, 2008

As you can see from the picture below we have snow!! Christina is as excited as a kid in a candy store. We actually got the first snow a few days ago (Saturday night), but by Tuesday most of it was gone. We did have freezing temperatures though, so the last few days the roads have been pretty icy. Christina was rather disappointed as she against all hope always dreams of a white Christmas. But then last night the snow returned, and it has been snowing pretty much throughout the day today. The dogs (Simba is spending the holidays with us again this year) and Christina have been out enjoying winter while poor Andreas had to stay inside and work. We may get more snow by Sunday, but it’s also supposed to get warmer, so it’s unlikely we’ll actually have a white Christmas – but we are taking what we can get!

Yesterday a package containing Swedish candy and Donald Duck pocket books arrived in the mail from Christina’s parents. Yummy! Nothing compares to Swedish candy and rest assured, we will gorge on Christmas Eve!

In other news, the pregnancy is going well – baby is kicking like crazy now. We just realized we’ve only got another three months or so to go now, so panic is starting to set in… :) Guess it’s just one of those things you can never really be prepared for, you just have to go with the flow. Somehow we don’t think actually having a baby is going to be quite as easy as being pregnant…

Tomorrow afternoon Andreas’ two week Christmas vacation starts! Needless to say he’s looking forward to some time off. We don’t have any particular plans, but will try to get some hiking/snowshoeing in, as well as a trip to Leavenworth. Otherwise we’ll probably hang around at home enjoying the holidays. We’ll try to get an update in as well as putting up some new photos, so keep checking back!

Until then: MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all!

November 30th, 2008

"Oh no!" as Sebastian would say; The Thanksgiving weekend is almost over! Why is that all the long nice weekends pass so fast? Anyway...

The holiday started with Thanksgiving on Thursday. Andreas had both Thursday and Friday off from work. We started cooking around noon or so, and we left (together with the food) for the Olsen's around 4pm. Dinner was great with a very tasty 17lb turkey and different sides. With that we drank some very nice Pinot Noirs that Andreas picked up from Seattle Wine Company. The evening ended just before midnight with everyone feeling slightly ill from all the good food.

Friday morning we went shopping for doors for the fireplace. Andreas finally had enough of not being able to leave it unattended over night. Fireside will come by on Tuesday to take measurements and the doors should show up in about 4 weeks. Wheee! Once back at the house we took a long walk with the dogs (yes, Dakota the foster dog is still here!). Later in the evening the Olsen's showed up to help us finish the turkey leftovers. We managed to eat most of it and sent the remaining part home with Dorde and Jesper. In return we received mandarins and cookies. Like we needed more food...

OK, let's chat about Saturday. Most of Saturday was a normal dull day which included shopping for Christmas presents and walking the dogs. The evening however had a nice treat in store: We went to Teatro ZinZanni with Chri and Adrian. Food was OK but the show was REALLY good. It's been a long time since we laughed so much! We are still convinced that the guy doing the part of Ceasar is the same person doing the voice for Plankton in Spongebob Squarepants... :)

Today was fairly hectic. We had a Christmas photoshoot scheduled for 10.45am at Paws-Abilities. The same photographer (Creative Indulgence) that took our Christmas card photo 4 years ago had set up shop over the weekend. They did a really good job this time as well and we are really looking forward to getting our copies. One of them WILL end up here on the page... :) Once the photoshoot was done we met up with Dagna in Wallingford, where we had a a "fika" at Chocolati Cafe. After that we went past Whole Foods on the way home to pick up some groceries. And now, here we are, stretched out in the sofa watching animation domination on Fox!

We also found time to put up some Advent decorations, replace the cable modem and make our own glögg! We used this recipe and it turned out great! A second bottle is already in the making... :)

November 14th, 2008

We know something you don't! Ask yourselves: Does the ultrasound picture below look like a boy or a girl? Well? Make a guess in the guestbook! :)

9pm, November 4th, 2008

Tonight, for the first time in many years, I'm proud to be living in the US. As someone said on fark.com: "OK Obama, we did our part, (not me, can't vote on greencard, sigh...), your turn!"

October 26th, 2008

This will be a short update, Family Guy starts in a few minutes: Andreas has FINALLY updated the picture page! So, now you can all stop whining! :) There is a new layout of the actual pictures now, which allows for a small, witty header above the picture. Hope you like it.

October 15th, 2008

October 10th, 2008

Unfortunately, it seems like this is becoming a pattern: One update per month or so. We all know that is kind of lame, but there are just too many things that take priority over this page right now. Things such as work, travel, Jojo, dishes and picking up half a cow from a farmer!

Thursday October 2nd we left Seattle for Puerto Vallarta and traded dreadful weather for 90F and sun! iSEC had a company retreat over the weekend and Andreas added three vacation days, so we got back Wednesday evening (and traded nice weather for dreadful). We stayed at CasaMagna Marriott, where we made decent friends with the waiters at the pool. It is just too nice and easy to order food and drinks while you're stretched out in a sun chair. If you ever happen to be there, make sure you get Juan as your waiter and try the fish tacos, you will NOT be disappointed!

Christina is growing and she hates every second of it. Although, so far the pregnancy has been mostly painless, at least according to Andreas and Jojo! :) We have done two different ultrasounds so far and are in the process of scanning the pictures. They'll hit the page as soon as Jesper has completed the scanning... Nudge , nudge... Everything looks ok and the current due date is March 23rd, 2009. After that date, this page will probably never be updated again. At least then, we have something decent to blame the lack of updates on.. ;)

We also started adding our Christmas wish lists on "The rest" page. Happy shopping! :)

September 7th, 2008

Surprise.. No one showed up to paint the guestroom, so Andreas had to do it. That also means there will be no update to the photo page this time around! You can't blame anyone but yourself! :)

Last weekend was Labor Day weekend and we did our annual trip up to Mazama. The car with everyone and all our stuff left the house around 3pm Friday afternoon. We arrived at the cabin (A cute Cabin) later the same evening, after a very nice meal at "The Eatery" in Marblemount along the way. Since Andreas took an extra vacation day, we stayed in Mazama until Tuesday morning. That gave us time to do 3 different hikes and spend some time in Winthrop. Weather was kind of cold this year: We have been spoiled with around 85 degrees F for 3 years straight, this year it was much colder (we saw snow on the first hike!). As a consolation, our cabin neighbors were very nice, they invited us over for drinks about 30 minutes after we arrived! :)

This weekend has been fairly busy. We did a barbeque with Steve, Val and Jacques at their new house Friday evening. It is located in Mill Creek, which is about 8 miles north of us. The house was very nice and well planned. Saturday we went shopping for some gifts for Dorde and Jesper. They are having their birthday party next weekend, can't show up without gifts.. :) The rest of the weekend has been spent trying to finish off some projects around the house. It never ends....

Oh, in case you didn't know... Due date is April 2nd according to the ultrasound we did Thursday... :)

August 24th, 2008

Woho! Andreas is back at the keyboard after a long stretch of working on the house, growing vegetables, building an HTPC and more. So, what has happened in the last two weeks you wonder? Where to start?

Andreas spent a bunch of evenings putting together a Home Theater PC. It's a low power (low wattage but still powerful) AMD based PC with a card that can tune cable TV. So, the Comcast box is now removed and the PC is doing that instead. On top of that, it can record shows, stream movies and music from the file server, be used to play games on, and stream media from online sites such as Hulu. After working through a few bugs, it seems to work really well. To save anyone going down the same road some time: XP cannot do MPEG-2 hardware acceleration, MediaPortal works great and finally, if not using MCE, use Vista Business edition. Puh!

On Friday we are heading up to Mazama again. It will be the fourth time we spend Labor Day up there. This time around, Andreas has taken an extra vacation day, so we wont be back until Tuesday. Also new for this year is that Chri and Adrian most likely will join us for a few days. It's not 100% certain, since Chri is recovering from a three week old cold. In any event, it should be 3-4 days of good hiking and relaxing.

The weekend has been very good so far. Since the weather was very nice yesterday, we went hiking around Skykomish. The trail we walked took us to Frozen Finger Pass, just above Pear Lake, after passing Fortune Ponds along the way. All in all is was about 14.5 miles (23.2km) roundtrip. All three of us were quite tired afterwards.. :) Today we started the morning with a walk down to Kirkland and breakfast at Hoffman's Fine Pastries. After that, we headed over to REI to do some shopping for next weekend. Bought a few trail maps, a water purifier and some other small knick-knacks. We also found time to look at a house belonging a friend of a friend, which might hit the market soon. It was very nice but probably a bit too small for us.

Andreas is very much aware the photo page is falling way behind. But lets make a deal, if any of you reading this promise to come over and paint the guestroom, Andreas promises to update the photo page. Ok?

August 10th, 2008

Yes, yes, yes... We know it's been a while. We have received several "complaints" that our website hasn't been updated for a while, so at this point we're giving in to public demand. Håll till godo as we say in Sweden!

It's been a busy summer so far. On June 13th Christina quit her job. It was expected and she gave several months notice and there were no hard feelings. She's happy staying home, but will go back to work again at some point. JoJo is very happy to have her home all day and expects to go with her everywhere. He doesn't feel that the fact that it's 80 degrees (25C) and the car gets VERY hot VERY fast are good excuses for him to stay at home.

Christina's parents and grandma came to visit on July 12th. They stayed for a couple of weeks - weeks that were filled with wine, beer, food, and, for Carina and grandma, crosswords. We took a road trip to Southern Oregon for 6 days and went to Crater Lake and Grants Pass and then worked our way up to Willamette Valley where Carina got sick and the rest of us tried lots of fabulous wines (Willamette Valley is known for its Pinot Noirs). The wine region consists of many little towns, and we rented a wonderful little house in Dayton, not far from McMinnville, which is the bigger of the "wine towns". The house is called Martha's Cottage, and you can read more about it here.

McMinnville is an absolutely lovely town! Andreas and Christina spent a couple of days here two years ago on their way home from the Oregon coast vacation they took. There is a little restaurant on the main street called Orchard's Bistro where they serve the most wonderful tomato soup. They had lunch there on their trip in 2006, and just had to come back for more! So Andreas, Magnus and Christina enjoyed lunch during a sunny afternoon. Obviously we all had the tomato soup.

If you ever have the chance to visit Willamette Valley, do so! Not only is it full of very good wines, but the landscape itself is fantastic. There are vineyards everywhere and there are many good viewpoints. It feels very country like, yet the area is full of tasting rooms and fabulous restaurants. You could certainly spend a week's worth of "eating, drinking, and being merry" here. The only possible downside would be that they are very focused on Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. You don't get to taste many Syrahs or Cabernet Sauvignons. Nevertheless, we did find some fantastic Pinots and of all the places we visited I think we can agree that the wine we bought at the Winderlea Winery tasting room (with an amazing 360 degree view of the surrounding vineyards) and Amity Vineyards were the best. Very tasty!

Speaking of landscapes, Southern Oregon is truly fantastic. We were all "aweing" and "ooing" at the sights - even the freeway appeared to be a "scenic route"! Crater Lake was of course out of this world. On our way there we also drove on what must be one of the straightest roads in the USA. It was unbelievable, and the nature reminded all of us of the northern parts of Sweden. All in all it was a great trip, although we did spend quite some time in the car.

We had one more week with our visitors after we got back from the trip. We didn't do too many things - mostly shopping, drinking wine and eating good food. We made beer can chicken for the first time one night, which was outstanding. On the last day of the visit, Magnus, grandma, Christina and Andreas went to Seattle for some sight seeing (Carina got sick again and had to stay home). Among other things we went through Pike Place Market, looked down on the city from the Smith Tower (MUCH cheaper than the Space Needle!!) and had a late lunch/early dinner at some seafood place along the waterfront. Magnus had oysters and persuaded Andreas to try one. Apparently it wasn't that bad. On the very last day we went to Red Hook Brewery for lunch before it was time to go to the airport. As always it is a little sad to see family / friends leave after a visit - this is when we feel that we do actually live quite a distance away! But after a day or so life goes back to normal, and it helps having so many great friends here.

We just got back from Las Vegas, where we spent four nights at The Mirage. Andreas usually goes every year for the annual computer security conference that's held there and this time Christina got to come too! Although Andreas said it was cooler than usual this year, Vegas still treated us to 95-100 degrees (~35 degrees C) and we spent some time by the pool working on our tans. :) Andreas did have to work a little bit, but we still had plenty of time to explore a bunch of other hotels - we really like The Venetian - and managed to actually find a pretty good restaurant (food in Vegas is usually mediocre at best...). We spent some time with friends and also attended Andreas' company's party on Thursday night.

Our garden has been producing peas, beans, lettuce, kale ("grönkål" in Swedish) and tons of herbs. We are now also harvesting zucchini and it looks like we will have plenty of tomatoes in a few weeks. Our eggplants are finally growing some, but since it's been such a cold summer compared to what it normally is, we're not expecting much there. Looks like we might get a couple of cucumbers though, and if we're lucky we may get a green pepper. We did harvest some potatoes a couple of weeks ago and had it for lunch along with butter, parsley, sour cream and chives. Andreas found some herring in the fridge and enjoyed that as well. Felt like Midsummer!! :)

June 1st, 2008

Please tell us what happened to the summer! Last weekend was beautiful with warm and sunny weather. Then it all went to hell. Right now it's about 13 degrees celcius with cloudy skies and it's only going to get worse over the next 10 days. Woho! On the bright side, most vegetables in the back yard are growing fairly well despite the bad weather. Our peas and potatoes have really taken off. If this keeps up, we should have new potatoes for Midsummer!

We finally got around to buying bar stools for our eating bar in the kitchen! Ended up buying this one from Trica, but with a black fabric instead of that brown leather that is in the picture. If all goes according to plan, we will be able to pick them up in about 10 days or so. Sweet! We are almost done now... :)

What else? Andreas is considering throwing out the cable TV box and replacing it with a small, power efficient computer. Large amounts of the TV content can now be streamed from sites such as Hulu and others. We should be able to pick up the rest in HD over an antenna. And with dual tuner Hauppauge card, it will function as a DVR as well. If nothing else, it will be an interesting experiment!

Happy Birthday Johan!

May 1st, 2008

Well, it’s been over a month, and no updates. You might be guessing that we are either :
a) busy
b) lazy, or
c) all of the above
If you guessed c) – congratulations! We have been quite busy, and yes, we have been a little lazy too, at least when it comes to updating the website. Anyhow… What have we been up to you wonder? Well, a little of this and a little of that. Andreas has spent a lot of time onsite at a client’s, although the last couple of weeks have been spent in his usual work corner of the couch at home. Next week it’s back to working onsite again. Christina came down with a nasty cold a couple of weeks ago, and was sick on her birthday so all the fun stuff we had planned had to be postponed. Nevertheless, Dorde, Jesper, Sebastian, and Simba invited themselves over for pizza on her birthday, showing no fear of potential contagion :)

When the weather has been nice (which has not been that often) we’ve spent time in the garden, planting, potting, and planning for this year’s harvest. Andreas has become quite the little gardener, and Christina is not allowed to do too much out there – this is clearly Andreas’ domain! We’re getting quite a lot of tomatoes it looks like, and the peas are coming along just fine, as are most of the other vegetables. Dorde and Jesper reported that the radishes we planted in their garden are starting to come up, but the carrots aren’t quite there yet. Andreas has also decided to try growing potatoes in a couple of pots! If we’re lucky we’ll have some for midsummer!

The remodeling of the guest bathroom is coming along fine. Frank has tiled the floor, Andreas has painted and will start with the baseboards this weekend. Frank will custom make a new vanity, and then it will be just about done. Once the bathroom has been completed it’s on to tiling the patio. We’re hoping to have it done by the end of June.

In mid May Andreas will travel to Brisbane, Australia where he and a colleague will hold a speech at a conference. He will only be away for one week, but at least he’ll have a couple of days off to enjoy the visit. Christina can’t go with him due to work, but it’s probably just as well since it’s such a short stay.

Speaking of Christina’s work, she has given her notice and will quit her job in June. Although it will be sad to leave well liked colleagues and clients, she is looking forward to having more time reaping the fruits of Andreas’ garden labor! As most of you know, we are striving toward getting away from processed foods as much as we can, and growing many of our own vegetables, but all of this is quite time consuming. We are also looking at adding a second dog to our family in the fall/winter!

Christina’s parents and grandma are coming to visit in July. We are looking forward to it and have planned a little trip to Oregon during their stay. We will visit Crater Lake National Park, the Oregon Caves, Imagine Wildlife refuge, and the Willamette Valley for some wine tasting. It will be a fun trip.

Our house hunting has come to a halt at the moment. Our neighbors on both sides are selling their houses (one has now sold), so we’ll need to wait a little before putting ours on the market. We’re also rediscovering what hard work finding the right home is! We keep a close eye on the market, and there are a few houses we may want to take a look at, but so far we haven’t found our dream house. Still, we are looking forward to our move, as that will bring more space for our garden. In the mean time we are enjoying what we already have, although we both wish the veggies would grow a little faster…

March 23rd, 2008

Andreas is finally back from his trips to Raleigh and Kansas City, and there is no more travel planned for the immediate future. In his own words: "Nice to be home!" :) Last weekend was great! We drank, eat, walked around Leavenworth and did a short hike up Icicle Ridge (which has a nice view of Leavenworth). Andreas took a few photos after a LONG camera break. One of them ended up on [PHOTOGRAPHY AT JUNESTAM.COM] in the "Landscapes" section.

This weekend has mostly consisted of shopping and gardening so far. We went to the U-District Farmers Market yesterday morning, as we do almost every Saturday. After that: Borders, REI, Lowes and Wells Medina Nursery. We are now happy owners of four "Top Hat" blueberry bushes and a bunch of starter seeds! Andreas spent the rest of the day moving a few herbs, putting up two new lattices and adding compost to the plant beds. We are planning to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, lettuce, spinach, kale, sweet pepper, leek, squash, eggplant, herbs and of course blueberries. Dorde and Jesper have told us that we are welcome to use a part of their vegetable patch, where we in that case will plant potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and maybe something more. It will be an interesting and hopefully tasty summer!

Frank, Dagna and Sava are coming over tonight. Frank and Andreas are going to install a few moldings and then we are having dinner: Irish stew!

March 8th, 2008

Another 3 weeks have passed with no updates. Andreas has been traveling quite a bit and is flying out again tomorrow (Sunday). This time it will be for one week in Raleigh, NC and one week in Kansas City. Two weeks in fly-over-land, oboy! We will have well earned break next weekend though. Christina won a "almost everything paid" weekend in Leavenworth from SRS, which is happening March 14-16. Even Jojo can come along since the place we are staying at, The Sleeping Lady, allow dogs! It will be a weekend filled with good food, wine and winter hikes.

We've slowly started doing some work on the guest room and bathroom. Planning to repaint the guestroom and change floor, paint and stain the vanity in the guest bathroom. Shouldn't take too much time to finish once Andreas actually has a full weekend at home.. :) After that, we only have the tiling in the backyard and some minor things left to do. So, it is time to move!

Before anyone asks about the additions to the reading queue in the Library section, especially "The Case for Christ": Yes, Andreas is an atheist.

February 17th, 2008

To cover up the fact that we have been really slow with updates, we have created a new section! If you look at the menu at the top of the page, there is a new item: Library. Take a peak!

Otherwise not too much has happened. Andreas is on an assignment in San Francisco for the next couple of weeks, although he'll come home on the weekends. Christina has just cut down her work hours to 35 hours/week and is enjoying the extra free time. JoJo was misbehaving with his dog walker, and so we had to cut him back to going out only a couple of times a week, resulting in Christina needing more time to take care of him. So now she gets to leave work early twice a week and hang out with Jo.

In other news, we've started looking for a new house. We've decided that it's time for us to move on to a bigger house with a bigger yard to expand our vegetable garden. Yesterday we went out with our real estate agent to look at what's available. We found a couple of houses we really liked, but both were too small unfortunately. We're not in a hurry to move, however, so we'll go on looking. Last time it took us about 6-7 months to find a place we really liked, so we don't expect it to be any different this time around! :)

We had dinner with Dorde and Jesper yesterday to celebrate Sebastian's second birthday. Technically his birthday is tomorrow (February 18th), and they had a birthday party today, but thankfully we were excused from attending the kid party and got to come for dinner instead... :) We were treated to good food and good wine and after a day of looking at eight different houses, we needed it!

We have finally enjoyed a break from the gray, rainy winter days and enjoyed a gorgeous sunny day. Andreas spent some time out in the garden pulling weed and then we all took a walk down to Kirkland, where We had a coffee break in the sun before heading home again.

By the way, if you ever wonder why we have chosen to change our way of life, enjoy this video. Please don't fool yourself into thinking that Europe is better when it comes to anything food.

January 21st, 2008

We just made it back from a wonderful weekend in Whistler / Blackcomb. Paras and Stephanie invited us to spend the weekend there with them, an invitation we of course did not want to turn down. They had 2 rooms at The Westin in Whistler, one for them and one for the nanny and the kids. We slept in the sofabed in their room.

The drive up Friday took about 6 hours, with a one hour border crossing and a slow drive between Vancouver and Whistler. This is because they are rebuilding the highway up to Whistler in preparation for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. We arrived in Whistler around 9 in the evening, dumped our bags in the room, said hi to Paras and Stephanie (they were both really tired and needed some sleep) and then went downstairs for some sushi.

Saturday morning started around 6am, with Maurya and Liam waking up early. After a breakfast in the room, we headed down to pick up our lift tickets and rental equipment. Paras and Stephanie met us at the Whistler Village Gondola at 8.30am, so we were among the first people up. It was a great day of skiing and boarding which ended around 3-3.30pm. Stephanie was a bit tired and headed back to the hotel, so Paras met with us for drinks at Black's Pub at the base of the Blackcomb Gondola. After a few drinks there we headed back to the hotel and the hot tub. Spending an hour in warm water is quite nice when your legs are feeling a bit stiff and sore. :) After getting dressed we walked down to the village for a dinner at Umberto's, a really nice Italian spot.

We left Whistler yesterday (Sunday) around noon with mixed feelings. Getting home to Jojo (who stayed with Dorde and Jesper during the weekend) was something we looked forward to, but at the same time it was so much fun spending time with Paras and Stephanie in Whistler. Even though they won't be there, we are planning to go back sometime during the summer for some hiking. The drive back was uneventful except for traffic through Vancouver. The border was a breeze for once, most likely due to today being Martin Luther King, a holiday in the States.

Christina is working while Andreas is spending MLK doing absolutely nothing! :)

January 15th, 2008

Guess what? We've got winter! Snowed some yesterday, ice on the roads during the day and tonight. Winter. Didn't see that one coming.

We went to Dagna's birthday party this past Saturday. For "some" reason Christina was not in a state to drive later that night. Or the day after.

January 5th, 2008

Come on! It's only been 2 months! Not even 2 FULL months! What can we say? Andreas is the one doing the updates and he has been fairly busy. Most spare time before Christmas was spent finishing the new floor in the living room. Andreas finished the baseboards the evening before his parents showed up from Sweden. The rest of December was vacation!

Ok, lets do a quick and dirty run-down of what we have been up to:
* We have installed a new laminate floor (12mm, looks and feels more like a hardwood than laminate), together with new moldings and baseboards.
* Replaced the tiles at the front door with left-over tiles from the kitchen remodel (Jesper, thanks for the help!). Looks awesome.
* Bought a new dining table (Skagen from Dania).
* Bought a new armchair for the living room (Ektorp from Ikea), together with a new rug under the coffee table.
* Bought a new espresso machine (Granos from Bodum). We walked into Macy's, which had it on sale at 50% off. Funny enough, when they rang it up at the register, it was more like 65% off.. :). We paid and ran.
* We spent 2 weeks with Andreas' parents celebrating Christmas and New Years. This included four nights in a cabin at Lake Wenatchee (4 feet of snow!!!), New Years eve dinner with Chri and Adrian, and loads of food and drinks. We really enjoyed spending some time with the family.
* We have taken care of Simba for 3 weeks. The Danes owe us for this... :)
* Breakfast with David, Therese and Lukas. David is a childhood friend of Andreas' passing through Seattle with his family while on their way to New Zealand.
* iSEC partner meeting. 6 guys with different views on the near future of the company, locked into a conference room for 4 days. Cozy! :)

We know we have promised (actually, Andreas has promised) to snap some pictures of the house. This will hopefully happen soon.. :) Together with a bit more regular updates of junestam.com...

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