Kroko has visited

The mascot of Hugo's and Adam's class at kindy has visited for the weekend.


There is a lottery and Hugo won the right to take Kroko home with him last Thursday and keep him until Monday. Kroko has a diary in his backpack where you can write down what he has done over his stay with his different classmates.

Snow!!!

Today we had the first snow fall. Proper snow that you could actually make snowballs out of. Happy happy happy and much later dinner than usual as later outdoor play was "needed".

Very happy Adam playing in the snow for the very first time.

Watch out for the snowball fight!

This years first snow lantern

Cold weather, finally

The weather has finally cleared, and the temperature has dropped below zero. We're currently at -6 C and a crystal clear night with a full moon lighting the landscape. Magic.
This morning, on our way to day care, Hugo stepped on the ice that had formed on a puddle. When the ice cracked, he was completely awestruck. "Daddy, it's ice!". This revelation was then the conversation topic with the teachers that morning. Quite amusing to see him experiencing his first real winter.

Äntligen lite kallt och klart vinterväder. Minus sex och en fullmåne som lyser upp landskapet ger det hela en lätt magisk känsla.
I morse när vi gick till dagis klev Hugo på en vattenpöl som hade frusit. När isen sprack utbrast han med ett förvånat uttryck i ansiktet "Pappa, det är is!". Denna revolutionerande upptäckt var senare det som diskuterades med fröknarna. Det är onekligen ganska kul att se honom uppleva sin första riktiga vinter.

One year since Adam's Christening

It has been one year already. Today we lit both Hugo's and Adam's candles from their christening ceremonies.

Adam didn't really grasp it but Hugo was excited and insisted we lit his candle as well.

November 2008, the Swedish Church, Singapore. Hard to believe. Time surely flies. Our minister, Katarina, is now on her way down to Afghanistan to serve as a military priest within Sweden's International Unit on site, Angela has had her darling little daughter Ishbel quite some time ago and we have moved from Singapore and miss our friends dearly but have settled down well back in Sweden.

November 2009. Adam fighting Hugo for some space on the same chair...

Pictures updated

Please feel free to brows through the new pictures. August has been updated, and we've added September and October.

Visitors

Now we know why the last sets of rose buds were cut off and had disappeared all of a sudden...

There were two of them but when they headed for Elisabeth's lovely flowers, I scared them off (would have been a nice photo though).

Autumn is here

We're slowly but surely coming closer to the white season. The leaves are turning in all possible (and a few less possible) colours, and the temperature has actually passed below zero a few nights now.

We have been buying a lot of warm clothes to the boys, since shorts and t-shirts somehow seem inadequate when they spend most of their days outdoors at daycare. Both of them seem to be loving the time at school, and their motor skills are developing rapidly. Having a forest to run around all day in does help in this regard.

For Cissis birthday, we took a weekend trip to London. The boys stayed with grandma and Anders, and we spent the weekend shopping and sightseeing. Great weather to top things off, with a splendidly clear morning in the London Eye on Sunday. Pictures will follow eventually.

Vi närmar oss vintern, och höstens alla färger har kommit. Plus ett par som inte riktigt finns. Det har varit under noll ett par nätter, och vi har spenderat en hel del tid och pengar på att skaffa varma kläder till grabbarna. Av någon underlig anledning räcker det inte med shorts och t-shirt längre när de spenderar i princip hela dagarna utomhus på dagis. Båda gillar verkligen dagis, och deras motorik utvecklas snabbt. Att ha en skog att springa runt i hela dagarna hjälper en hel del på just den fronten.

I helgen fyllde Cissi år, och vi tog en weekend på tu man hand i London. Pojkarna fick stanna hos farmor och Anders över helgen, medans vi shoppade och strosade runt. Kalasväder var det också, och vi fick en fantastiskt solig och klar söndagförmiddag i London Eye. Bilder följer vad det lider.

New web server

We have moved the site to a new web server in Sweden. Uploading the pictures to the Singaporean web hotel we've been using just didn't work well enough to be feasible in the long run.

If you have any problems with the site, please let us know.

Vi har flyttat hemsidan till en svensk server eftersom det tog oändligt lång tid för oss att hantera uppladdning av bilder etc till det singaporeanska webhotell vi använt oss av tidigare.

Om ni får några problem med siten, hojta gärna till.

Starting day care

The standard in Sweden when starting at a new day care is for two weeks of acclimatization, both for the kids as well as for the class/teachers/parents. This is of course especially true for young ones like Adam, where the transition from always having mum or dad around to spending the whole day with lots of other kids and adults can be quite a change to cope with.

Starting Tuesday this week, we have been doing the acclimatization of the boys at the local day care. The pre-school is located a short walk from our house, and most of the kids are staying in the village. They have a HUGE yard, which is basically a forested ridge running behind the school building itself. A lot of the time at school is spent outside on the yard, regardless of weather/season.

The first day we just spent a little over an hour at the school before we left. The rest of the day was spent at home playing in our yard as well as a trip to buy a bicycle for daddy. On our way back, we stopped for a snack and watched the harvest for a while. Countryside living does have its perks.

Today was day 2, and Hugo is mainly wondering why he can't stay the whole day. For Adam, the slow pace is probably quite good, but he hasn't shown any signs of getting too upset with the situation. The school has age integrated classes, which means that Hugo and Adam are in the same class. Within each class, they do have age groups, so Hugo is with the oldest kids (age group "Lynx") and Adam is the youngest of the class (age group "Ants"). To have big brother with him at school definitely helps.

It was a very wet day, so we all had our rain gear on. On our way home, the absolute highlight of the day was to run and jump in the puddles on the school parking lot. Daddy included.

Det är dags för dagisinskolning, och igår tisdag drog det igång på lokala dagiset som ligger en kort promenad hemifrån. De flesta barnen kommer från byn, och de har en mycket stor gård som i princip består av en skogsklädd ås bakom själva byggnaderna. Det är mestadels utomhusaktiviteter som gäller året runt, även om det inte är ett 'ur & skur'-dagis.

Hugo har ju vanan inne, så han undrar mest varför han inte får stanna längre om dagarna, men för Adam är det bra med lite mjukstart. Dagiset har åldersintegrerade avdelningar, vilket innebär att Hugo och Adam går på samma avdelning. Grymt bra för Adam som på så sätt får en trygg punkt i den mycket annorlunda vardag som börjar nu. Inom avdelningen har de viss uppdelning i åldersgrupper, så Hugo och de största barnen är i gruppen 'Lodjuren' medans avdelningens junior Adam tillhör 'Myrorna'.

Igår var vi hemma och lekte i trädgården efter dagismorgonen, och sen åkte vi och köpte cykel till pappa. På vägen hem fikade vi i bakluckan och tittade på en skördetröska som gjorde sin grej. Det finns vissa tydliga fördelar med livet på landet.

Idag var det regnigt värre, så vi hade full galonkostym på oss alla tre. På vägen hem var höjdpunkten att springa och hoppa i vattenpölarna på perkeringen utanför dagis. Pappa var med och plaskade också... :)

Finally some new pictures

After a lot of problems getting the uploads to work, we have finally managed to get the pictures up for May through August. So surf on by the picture page and enjoy!