Three Days Of Awesome

Oh, we are having some good times, my friends! The Swede has three weeks of vacation-slash-parental leave ahead of him while Jamie's school is closed for the summer. I have less vacation time so I'm saving up for our trip to the States later this year but will join my boys for five days next week. I did, however, take yesterday off, so we just finished the three-day weekend of a lifetime.

We started by asking Jamie what he wanted to do with the weekend and he told us that he wanted to see monkeys. Fine by us, we love a good monkey as much as the next guy. So we swung over to Parken Zoo, a little over an hour away, and spent the day there checking out the animals and animatronic dinos and riding kiddie carnival rides.

On Saturday we decided to venture even further, to Dalarna, where we spent a few days around Jamie's birthday last year. We spent the day at Sommarland and the evening at one of the hotels we stayed at last year. It is the prettiest area and we wanted to stay forever.

On Sunday we sent The Swede to the spa to relax by the pool before it became available to children at noon, and Jambo and I played outside, took a walk into town and had a popsicle to kill some time.

When it was time for us to join The Swede, we changed into our swimming suits and splashed around in the pool and the hottub and got Jamie good and tired before the ride home.

Summer has just begun and if the rest of it is even a fraction as fun as this weekend was, it's gonna be a good one.

Daily Jamie

You'll Like It, It's Beer

Sometimes I like to make the people in my life try American foods. They should know about cornbread, Rice Krispies Treats, and green bean casserole. There is no better group of captive taste testers than my colleagues. Who's going to say no to free food, first off, and second, you kind of have to be polite to your coworkers and try their weird foreign food. Today I used July 4th as an excuse to make them root beer floats. They all gasped over the calorie content of the soda, then compared the flavor to a Swedish bubble gum, then said that they were very good. I'll never know the truth about whether they really liked the floats or not and consequently they will never know if I like them or not. Because obviously root beer floats are awesome and the benchmark by which I judge people.

Daily Jamie

The Bright Side

I was in a meeting when my phone rang; it was Jamie's teacher calling to tell me that he had fallen on the playground and one of his teeth felt a little loose so we should probably get it checked out. I called the dentist and made an emergency appointment then picked Jambo up. Jamie was a champ and it definitely helped that the visit took less than five minutes and the dentist determined that the tooth was fine. Afterwards, The Swede met us and we picked up some lunch and had a picnic. Obviously the circumstances weren't awesome, but it sure was nice to get out of work for a couple of hours and hang with the fam.  

Daily Jamie

And The Livin' Is Easy

After weeks of clouds and rain, it finally feels like summer. Perfect for evenings of play and happening upon friends in the park. 

Daily Jamie

Daily Jamie

Surprise Party

Another unexpected event of the past weekend was birthday party we hosted on Sunday afternoon. After we got back from Gävle, we bought a bunch of hotdogs, blew up balloons, and hung a couple of banners in preparation for Erin and Shaena, their husbands, and two little boys each to come over and celebrate Shaena's oldest, Ethan's, fifth birthday. All the little boys got along amazingly well and it was a circus in the very best way. In fact, they all played together so well that we adults got a significant amount of time to actually converse. Felt like MY birthday! We went for a long walk around the neighborhood and ate cake and wore all those rascals out. This unplanned get-together was more fun than anything I could have spent a ton of time preparing.    

Baby Rio kills me.

Daily Jamie

June 28th

June 29th

Just A Little Jaunt To Gävle

What an unexpected, fun weekend we just finished! We didn't have a thing planned, except that The Swede had to work a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon, so when we woke up on Saturday morning he suggested we drive a couple of hours north to Gävle. We would visit a zoo there and use up some hotel points and stay over. The weather was a little chilly in Stockholm but downright cold and rainy two hours north, but we were troopers in our hoodies and spent several hours at the park before heading back to the hotel (and it's perfectly-placed playroom right by the TV and off the dining room) just in time to watch the evening's World Cup matches. We all cuddled up in the same bed, slept in (according to Jamie's standards) and enjoyed a leisurely hotel breakfast. A perfect, spontaneous little trip.

Daily Jamie

June 26th

June 27th

Life

It's a really, really messy bowl of cherries. 

Daily Jamie

The Best Friend I Never Met

Is there any mom better than my mom? I think not.

Love Party

I don't think I mentioned anything about this before the fact, but last Wednesday I flew to Cleveland so that I could marry my friend Cary and her fiancé on Friday afternoon. Cary had asked me to the do honor of officiating their wedding a few months ago so I got online, found The Universal Life Church and a couple of clicks and a few bucks later I was an ordained minister who can now legal marry couples in the state of Ohio.  

Those dang Germans beat me.

Minus the fact that Cary is one of my very best friends ever and anything that happened that day would have been special to me, it was such a sweet wedding. Cary and her mom and sister had fixed all kinds of beautiful details all around the lakeside mansion where the ceremony and reception took place; everywhere you looked there were personalized, romantic decorations. The food and drinks were awesome, they had a frozen custard truck drive up instead of a cake (which we all loved), and I got to dance with lots of lovely folks I haven't seen in a long time. It was all totally worth two days of travel to pop in to Cleveland for this fantastic day in the lives of some of my favorite people. 

Daily Jamie

June 18th

June 19th

June 20th

June 23rd

June 24th

Daily Jamie

Beyond Dawn

I've been waking up at five o'clock to take a walk, not every day, but most days for the past few weeks.  It's warm now and by that time the sun has been up for hours. I see a few people, and sheep, and listen to the birds. I don't think much at all, except when I see a view like this that takes my breath away, and then I think about how lucky I am to live just beyond those trees.