Swedish Books

I love being married to a non-American. I love that my daughter will grow up speaking a second language. I love the Scandinavian culture. I love the diversity it brings to our home and how it has planted the seeds of curiousity into my children. I love that it sparks such an interest in them and hopefully it is something they will continue to want to be more knowledgable about. I love the opportunities we've had to travel and live abroad with our children. I hope that because of that, they will grow up with a better understanding of the world and an appreciation for other people and ways of life. I love the early start on foreign language learning they have gotten.

As you can imagine, we have quite an array of Swedish written books in our home. It's so wonderful to listen to Andreas reading these stories. I hope one day I will be able to read them in their entirity also!






Ah, Mumin. We love Mumin around here. We have about 6-8 Mumin DVDs as well, although we haven't watched them in a while for some reason. They are strange creatures, not sure what they even are. Like a cross between a hippo and a marshmallow!


I couldn't love how they put this book together anymore! They are so different, so creative and colorful.





Little comic book style here.




Astrid Lindgren...


A cute picture from Emil




Lilla Anna is a favorite here. I know we have about 6 or so of these books but for some reason I could only find 3. Hm...Eden must be hoarding again.


Pettson and his cat Findus are always having crazy adventures...funny stuff.


Reading about tiny forest children is always fun.


Well duh, of course we have Hans Christian Andersen, we lived in Denmark!


And to be fair, some cute American books as well.




This is a picture from one of Emma's Swedish books. It reminded me of last summer, when we were walking through the forest trails in Glendalough Park. Emma had an accident and we didn't have any extra pants with us so she had to walk the rest of the way naked from the waist down. LOL

Poop water on the table

Funny story....

Tonight, after dinner, I sat down at the kitchen table to check my email and help the girls with their homework and suddenly Andreas yells from upstairs,

"HONEY! Can you come here for a minute please!"

I sighed and took my time getting upstairs. I got up to the bathroom and Andreas is standing on top of the toilet as a waterfall of poop water was flooding the bathroom floor faster than I'd ever seen before.

My first reaction was "HOLY CRAP!" (no pun intended). My second reaction was "why is my good towel on the floor soaking up poop water?".

Andreas: "How do I stop it!!??!!??"

Me: "um....turn off the water!"

Andreas: "HOW?"

Me: "Turn the knob!"

Andreas: "What knob?"

Meanwhile...turd lake is spreading across our bathroom floor, running down our heat vent, threatening to turn our cream carpet a very undesirable color and the kids are downstairs shouting for me.

Finally we get the water shut off and when I'm fairly certain Andreas isn't going to drown trying to get out of the bathroom, I leave to get some old towels. That is when I hear more clearly what the girls are shouting about.

"MOM!! There's water coming out of the light!!"

I run downstairs and there is waterfall #2 coming straight out of our light fixture....pouring all over the kitchen table containing my laptop, Hanna's homework and various other items.

Can ANY MORE disgusting things happen in our kitchen?? (think dead mouse incident). I mean, how barftastic can you get, having poop water spilling all over your eating surface??!!??!!

Needless to say the kitchen is going to get a good dousing with disinfectant...as soon as it stops dripping.

Seriously, I'm probably never going to have dinner guests again if I keep telling stories like this!

Blizzards and blogging about nothing

Yep we got one, just a day later than expected. A blizzard.

We woke up to one nasty morning here today. The wind was blowing the snow so hard we could barely make out the houses across the street. They cancelled school, which was smart. I didn't want my girls out in this stuff.

Speaking of my girls, we have been without them for a bit longer than expected. They were supposed to come home from their dad's last night after the Vikings game. But it was decided in the end that he would just bring them straight to school this morning. Of course, that was impossible with the storm. And now it is 8:30pm and it looks as though they will be spending a second extra night there. Hopefully they can make it back tomorrow morning.

Anyone see the Vikings game last night? We never (I mean NEVER) watch football but we decided that since it was the last game before the super bowl and they were doing so good this year, we would watch. Sorry Vikes fans, I guess we jinxed it. Somehow I knew that would happen. I can't believe the amount of fumbling going on in that game. It was definitely not a dull game. It's too bad they will miss out on the super bowl this year. But I guess they had a good run.

I'm trying something new tonight...staying up past 9:00. So I'm blogging about nothing, trying to keep my mind off my nice warm bed. Usually when Emma goes to bed (around this time) I go up with her to read her stories until she falls asleep and then I just turn over and go to sleep myself. I mean, why stay up when it's already 9:30/10pm. Just because hubby stays up late, doesn't mean I need to, right? IDK, he makes fun of me for it. He says, "You gotta fight it". But you know, it's such a cozy bed. It's a "made for us" mattress from Beds By Design and what a bed it is. Ahhhh....sweet bed, here I come!

Lots of snow and slush

We were supposed to get this huge blizzard this weekend. So far, all it ended up doing was dropping a ton of wet sloppy goopy snow on us yesterday, with a nice layer of sheer ice underneath. It sure was a beautiful morning though, watching all the beautiful giant snowflakes fall.

This morning, it was a FUN time snowblowing and shoveling all that heavy stuff!





A good day to make a snowman.










And the giant snowman is complete!



Andreas is throwing snowballs at the poor defenseless camera woman.



Good thing she was in the safety of her living room.


Emma had to try to throw a snowball at me too. It didn't make it very far.



Andreas was going to make another snowman but it ended up having too big of a booty so he gave up.

Ahh....peace and quiet! What a luxury.

My two oldest daughters are with their dad this weekend. That means it's going to be pretty quiet around here until Sunday.

I just spent the evening eating leftover pasta, watching King of Queens, reading Napoleon Hill, playing a little Vancouver 2010 on the xbox with my husband and even had a candle-lit bath. (my littlest peep has been snoring on the sofa since about 6pm) Life just is too kind to me on days like today. I feel serene.

Now I'm sitting in the dark with my laptop, listening to the rain (and Emma snoring) and contemplating watching last nights Grey's Anatomy episode that I missed.

And tomorrow, I'm getting my groceries delivered to my door (ahhhh) and I'm not planning on doing a darn thing, other than check my Farmville crops, make something in Cafe World and read. These easy going weekends are great. Last weekend was a super fun mini vacation, but it was also very tiring. So tiring that I need another vacation...LOL!

This reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry makes fun of George for going on a vacation, because he didn't have a job. He says something like, "Who goes on vacation without a job? What...you need a break from getting up at 11:00?" And although I am not really "jobless" with 3 kids, and I certainly don't sleep in EVER, it still makes me think of that whenever I voice the fact that I feel like I need a vacation.

This week, I needed a vacation. I'm talking, somewhere tropical, preferably with a spa....and no kids. But right now, I'm so relaxed it almost feels like a vacation. And I'll take it!!

Weekend in Minneapolis

I was planning on taking tons of pictures of our trip to Minneapolis this weekend but since my new camera is a bit bulky, I decided not to bring it with to Nickelodeon Universe or Underwater Adventures. It's hard enough just keeping track of 3 kids sometimes. At least I got some cute photos of the family swimming.











It was a nice trip. Other than running over a mattress with our van, it was a fairly uneventful drive.

To elaborate on that, we were driving back Sunday afternoon, a day earlier than planned. The car ahead of us changed lanes quickly and there straight ahead of us, in the middle of our lane was a mattress. Andreas didn't have much time to react, he swerved to avoid it but you don't really want to overdo it when you are going 75 mph. Long story short, we hit it and we don't think the man on the side of the road, whose pick up was one mattress lighter, was going to be able to use it anymore. Unless a giant tire mark fits into his decor.

It was a pretty scary experience. I thought for sure we were going to roll the van. Just the first of 500 thoughts that popped into my mind in that second before we hit it. Thank goodness it wasn't a couch or something a little less "fluffy". Gives me shivers to think of it.