December 24th, 2010
As Christmas Eve is winding down in Sweden, ours is winding up and the guests are arriving in 1.5 hours. Before the house is crowded with kids and dogs, we just wanted to take the opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! Or as we would say in Swedish: God Jul!
December 22nd, 2010
As we wrote earlier this this winter, we are multiplying. If you're uncertain what that means, we are adding a "Junestrom" to the family as you can see below:
We'll wait a few weeks to announce if it's a boy or a girl, the guestbook is open if you want to guess! We have also finally adopted Apollo and he is now living with us. He still has plenty of house manners to learn, but he seems to catch on fairly fast.
We've abandoned all hopes for a white Christmas. In stark contrast to Sweden, we are getting rain instead of snow and the temperature is hovering around 5-6C degrees. With our luck the city will shut down due to snow sometime in January instead.
November 23rd, 2010
-9.5c and this much snow is definitively not normal for November! We know it can't be compared to Sweden where trucks are being blown off the roads, but for Seattle this is kind of extreme. It's quite entertaining watching the news, people are leaving their cars and walking... On the freeway...
November 21st, 2010
This year is a La Niña year, which means it will be unusually wet and cold. They aren't kidding: We've never seen snow in November here before (as you can see on the above picture). If we ever get snow, it happens in December (or April). It will be very interesting to see how much snow we'll actually get and if there will be a white Christmas!
The weekend has been very busy, lots of small projects that needed to be completed. Everything from buying some new appliances for the kitchen to looking for a coffee table for the formal living room. We also started some of the Christmas preparations: Andreas started the glögg and Christina has been busy baking ginger snaps and "lussebullar". Our annual Swedish Christmas Coffee "party" is on December 5th, so we need to prepare for that. No worries though: There will be enough glögg left over! :) This year we are making both the normal red one, as well as a white glögg.
Well, it is 7.30pm here. Tilde has just gone to bed and the fireplace is running. Time to enjoy the few hours left of the weekend!
November 16th, 2010
Almost 3 months without any updates (except for some movies and pictures of course!)?! We think that might be some kind of record and not something we are really proud of... But we do have some good excuses. Both Christina and Andreas have been busy getting stuff done around the house: We are about the put on a new roof, install a fence, do some remodeling in the kitchen, and we already finished installing an alarm system and running network cables throughout the place. Add wiring for generator (power outages are common here and the winter is expected to by fairly snowy), yard work, buying furniture and other small stuff on top of that and you burn through 2-3 months quite easily. Oh, and on top of that, iSEC Partners was sold to NCC Group about a month ago; something which kept Andreas quite busy during October.
Next week is Thanksgiving here in the US. For once we are actually not hosting, but having Thanksgiving dinner with friends at their place. They recently bought a weekend house in Index, WA and are having a combined Thanksgiving / House warming. The entire family is looking forward to a day away from home and eating turkey at someone else's house! :)
We are considering adopting a new dog. His name is "Apollo" and he is a Rottweiler / something mix. Apollo spent last weekend here so we could get to know him before making a decision. Well, he is a super sweet dog, Tilde loves him and he is great with her... So.. Second week of December we'll have two dogs!
By the way, we are multiplying. Due date is May 3rd.
August 29th, 2010
Another 2 months have passed without any updates (except for a few movies and pictures). We've been super busy with packing, signing papers and moving. We are now in the new house and are in the unpacking stage. Andreas still has some travel coming up, so it will take a few more weeks until everything slows down again. But we promise to be better with the updates when the dust settles!
June 27th, 2010
Added five new movies on the movie page, enjoy!
June 21st, 2010
We just spent an awesome weekend outside of Freeland on Whidbey Island. Friends of ours (Deanna, Jorn and Nikolai) managed to find this gem of a house. Yes, it sits ON the beach! We left Bothell 2.30pm Friday and arrived at the house around 5pm after taking the ferry from Mukilteo to Clinton. We spent the entire weekend relaxing, eating, drinking and just hanging out, something we all needed. Around 3pm Sunday we had to say goodbye and drive back home. We took the long way around so that we could see Deception Pass Bridge, which was well worth the drive even though the weather sucked. Stay tuned for some pictures and movies from the weekend.
The house hunting is as stale as ever. We are really getting fed up with not finding anything we really like. Actually, we have found a few houses we really liked, but they have either been too expensive or they've been bought before we could make a move. Seems like the area of Seattle is set on us not finding somewhere to live.
June 6th, 2010
Happy Birthday Sweden!
We have spent most of the weekend (parts of Saturday and Sunday) with house hunting. All in all we a looked at nine different houses and found zero we want to buy. For some reason it seems impossible to find a house / yard combination that fits our taste, unless we want to pay an inflated (overpriced) amount of money for a house that needs about $100k in updates. And no, those houses do not sell. They sit on the market for 6 months before the owner realizes they need to lower the price.
Tilde is doing very well. She started walking about one month ago and now she is almost running. She has also started to become very verbal and tries to repeat everything we say. That in combination with a temper can be kind of annoying sometimes.. :) To make up for that, she has learned to say "tack" ("thank you" in Swedish) when you give her something. Kind of cool to have a well behaved 14 month old. :)
There are two new movies on the movie page. Enjoy!
May 24th, 2010
Clearly, updating this website has not been a priority lately… We apologize for the lack of pictures, videos and written updates. Life has just been very busy in the past few months and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down any time soon. Most of our weekends are spent house hunting, which is exhausting. We have still not found The House, but now we’re starting to see homes we like, which has been a nice change. After house hunting, walking the dog, taking care of Tilde, and other various errands have been taken care of, there aren’t many hours left in the day. House hunting actually wears you out quite a bit. Although we will be busy with other things once we’ve moved, at least we won’t be spending half the weekend driving around viewing homes for sale! So we are hopeful things will slow down somewhat eventually…
Tilde is growing like a weed. She is happy and healthy and has a heck of a temper… Andreas says that must come from Christina’s side of the family. Christina is not convinced. Tilde doesn’t care which, as long as she gets what she wants. She is now walking quite well, and is enjoying it too. She could take a few steps at 13 months, but didn’t want to walk without holding on to someone or something (chairs are apparently great to push around as walking aids…). Then one day she decided “today is the day” and just got up and walked. It’s been fun watching her grow and learn.
Tilde and Christina went to Sweden in April to surprise Great Grandma who turned 80. They had a great time visiting family and friends. Among the highlights for Tilde were: hanging out with Grandparents, Great Grandma, uncles, and extended family during the Great Grandma’s birthday cruise; getting to go to the other set of Grandparents in Vastervik and experiencing on all kinds of adventures with them (like playing in the sandbox, drinking coffee and learning to say “cheers” in Swedish…). All in all, both Tilde and Christina had a lovely time and are missing everyone quite a bit.
Lots of pictures from the trip and other random events are up on the picture page. Enjoy! By the way: Happy 14 months Tilde!
May 5th, 2010
Five new movies on the movie page.
March 24th, 2010
Today is Tilde's first birthday! Mom and Dad just wanted to take the opportunity to say: Happy Birthday Tilde!!! She celebrated with cake:
February 7th, 2010
I think we can summarize the last month with one word: Busy! The weekends have been filled with house hunting, running errands and everything else that needs to be done. The result is what you've seen on this page: No updates... :)
Tilde is growing and acquiring new skills by the day it seems like. She can now easily stand up with support and side-shuffle around things such as the coffee table. She also understands the words "katt" (her favorite soft toy), "mamma", "pappa", "Tilde" and "Jojo" (her second favorite soft toy, he is less thrilled). As it looks right now, she will be walking within a few months.
The house hunt is moving along slowly. We've found a couple of houses we've liked, but most of them are overprized. Seems like sellers have a hard time understanding that their houses are worth much less now compared to 2 years ago. We still have high hopes of finding "the perfect house" during the spring!
There are two new movies on the movie page. Yes, Tilde has realized that the camera is fun to grab...