ungkarlslyan

My dear cousin sacrificed his own bed for me to sleep in, a true gentleman. We've had a nice time together. Yesterday I dropped my bag off at his apartment and then we went in to town and I got to see the office where he works.

Coming to Sthlm almost feels like coming to London. Tubestations and busy people, more busy than in GBG it seems at least. And no tolerans for waiting in line, if it means you might miss your train.

After having lunch at Gallerian we went down Drottninggatan and I bought a CD. I'm also looking for a new purse but I'm picky and I didn't find anything I liked. So it will probably take until Christmas before I find anything.
J is off to Moscow today so we're leaving the house soon to go into town again. my train leaves at 2.10 pm.
please pray that I'll make it to my yoga class!!!!!

Hufvudstaden

Now I'm in Stockholm on a conference with work. The weather is terrible...well, at least very cold for this season but since we spend most of our days indoors at lectures it doesn't really matter.
Just heard from my family. They are in Finland visiting a friend and flew over there this morning. I received an MMS with a picture of J in the airplane, she is just really cute my daughter if I may say so!! :)

Tomorrow I'm seeing my cousin who lives here and I'm spending the night at his house. Hopefully on Sunday I'll make it back to my yoga class on time. HAve a good week end, dear family and friends.

doctors and others

Today, I had two good experiences with people in "sjukvården". The first one was a doctor who gave me a vaccin againt hepatitis A och B; didn't feel a thing.
the second one was a midwife, with gentle hands. So all is good, because I thought it would be a tough day and it turned out really well.

I also took a long, fast walk home with my new walking sticks(?) - know what I mean? - it felt good and the sun was shining. We've actually had more of a summer's day today than spring. It got really hot in sun, which is nice.

Everything is in full bloom and I'm very thankful that I haven't got any allergies this time of year :-) now I'm off to bed.

Safjället

Since moving in August, I haven't yet gone out exploring all of the surroundings here. But today was the day for a bike ride on Safjället.

Safjället is a lush hill with nice dirt paths for walking and they are lighted in the evenings and during winter as well(like the green walk for all of you in Winona Lake :-) ).
So J and I jumped om my bike and went up there...and i tell you, waaay up there! It all started out with climbing this uphill path at a 45 degree angle (that's what it felt like anyway...) Which means, I had myself, my bike and Julia on my bike to push up the hill.One third of the way up I realized that this wasn't working. So there I was, getting Julia out of her seat while balansing my bike. We both had to walk up the hill.
But in the end, it was worth it. A really beautiful and quiet oasis in the middle of town. Birds singing, lots of people out taking walks and nice fresh air. Julia loved running around up there.
We looked at flowers and trees and had a snack on a bench.

Julia did not want to leave to go home, but I think she was just tired 'cause she fell asleep on the way home.
Another great day in the sun!

I'm back....I think

It's been a while but now I'm back....and so is the sun!!!! J,D and I had a great day yesterday and today.
Yesterday, I took a walk to church and in the afternoon J and I had our first bike ride of the season. She loves it so it's great.
And today was another day that started with going to church and then heading out in the park, enjoying the beautiful weather. We meet up with my cousin and had "fika" and then looked at different kinds of animals. J loves running right now; she screams "springa, springa" and then off she goes!

We also think she has a new routine going on. She usually takes a nap in the middle of the day for about 1-2 hours. But yesterday, all of a sudden, she refused to take her nap. She was being hysterical and angry, screaming for 2 hours and ended up sleeping only for 20 minutes. So last night she fell asleep in 2 seconds at 7 pm and slept until 9 am this morning!!! Alas, today we tried the same thing; she didn't have a nap during the day and went to sleep at 7.20 this evening. We'll see how this new routine works out.

I'm also aiming to do some yoga, on my own, tomorrow afternoon. We'll have to see how that works out too......

the sun

I had a look at the weather yesterday and noticed that they had a little info-thingy that said that the sun came up at 8.37 in the morning and set at 3.28 in the afternoon. No wonder I'm tired....I work during all those ours of daylight!!!!!
But soon enough it will turn around again....sometimes I wonder why I live this far north!

Belgium and back

I just came back from a mini-vacation to Belgium over the weekend. My sister and I went to visit a friend of ours who lives there and just had her second child 4 months ago. It was great to see the whole family again! Little Annabel is adorable! Kasper, her older brother, is great with her and is very social and talking like crazy....we didn't understand a thing but he had a lot to tell us :-)

First I took the train down to my sister's place and spent the night. Then we got up at 4.15 am and drove to Copenhagen (takes about 2 hours). From there we took a plane to Brussels, where Kersti and Annabel greeted us and took us home to Bertem outside of Leuven.

We had a great time, but it was actually a bit colder there than it was in Sweden and that surprised us.
We went to one famers market in Heverlee and one big Christmas market i Brussels. We also had a day to browse the shops in Leuven. And of course we spent a lot of time talking and cooking and playing with the children. Just a really great time.

And coming home, it was wonderful to see J och D again...of course! It was a time-out I really needed.....And now it's back to work.