Midsommar 2016

Since The Swede's folks bought the summer cabin, we've spent Midsommar out in the country. The first year was absolutely perfect, but since then we've come to notice that tiny, flying insects that bite happen to hatch out there on that exact weekend. It took three years for us to realize that it was an unavoidable pattern, so we finally got smart and decided to stay in Kungsängen and celebrate at Mama and Papa Swede's. So the Segerstens came up and Gurra and Gunilla came over and we ate lots of food and played games and danced around the maypole and were just merry in general. 

My team during the games. We were killing it till the last challenge when I let everybody down with my inability to count.

For me, though, the day will stand out in all my other days as the day that I got to wear a folk costume at Midsommar. 'Member back in January when I vowed that I would? Ingvor made my dreams come true when she dug out her grandmother's 100-YEAR-OLD, HAND STITCHED blouse, dress, apron, and embroidered sash. Let's just think about this for a minute, shall we? Five generations ago, a woman with no electricity or running water painstakingly created this outfit with her own hands, to be worn during all of the biggest events of her life and then passed down to her daughter and eventually her daughter's daughter, Ingvor. Can you even imagine what this garment has seen? My heart pounds just thinking about it. Ingvor and Roland had done some research and asked around and found an authentic scarf since that part was missing, then helped me put everything on correctly yesterday. 

The Swede and I didn't have a real wedding, but I can imagine the pride I felt in this must be what a bride feels like. Sarianne took literally 129 photos of me around town in this getup. She was amazing and kept insisting on taking more until we got it right, since I've apparently been talking about this forever. It was, for sure, a once-in-a-lifetime outfit and I will be floating on clouds about it for a while.