Having grown children is harder than I expected. I keep wanting them to be as cute and easy to order around as when they were young and they keep insisting on having their own way, making up their own minds and doing whatever it is THEY want to do at the moment. It's been a little rockier than I anticipated, this holiday season, but it was still ( Read more... )

It's been a very relaxing long holiday weekend here in Flyinge. Unlike most of North America, we've had no snow, which is a pity...it's been the usual southern Swedish mix of rain and grey, but inside candles, advent lights and the Christmas tree area all lit. Martin arrived home on December 19 and time is already flying by. I took two days off so ( Read more... )

Headache day. I've had headaches almost every day this week, waking with them early enough to sometimes medicate and fall back asleep but not always. Today's was a doozy and I ended up staying home and seriously (!) being a slug. I slept on and off most of the day, reading a bit in between and keeping an eye on work emails, since I have a lot to do ( Read more... )

On summer nights, with the windows open, you can hear the frogs in the pond across the street from my mother's house chuckling. They laugh all night long. At least it sounds that way from the distance of a driveway and a gravel road ( Read more... )

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It's a kid-free evening! I dropped Martin off at work at noon (late start today), where the apple orchard and cafe were already hopping, and he had plans to go to a party this evening and then spend the night at a friend's house. Karin is also at a party, and won't be home until around 1 a.m. though I am hoping she'll be responsible and come home ( Read more... )

Martin actually updated his resume, printed it out and went around knocking on doors and talking to managers all over Lund, looking for another job today. Very happy about his initiative! He and his friends bought the plane tickets to Peru yesterday, so apparently this trip is really happening...EEK. Now he just has to get shots, order an ( Read more... )

When I proposed having a party this summer to celebrate all the big events & milestones in our family, it never occurred to me how it might snowball. I persuaded my mom to let me invite the entire family, never suspecting that so many of them might actually come. I thought it would be like my plans for my 50th birthday trip with my friend Russell: ( Read more... )

It turns out, when I am selecting photos from vacation, that I tend to take all the ones with people in them. Even though I appreciate photos of the places we've been and the things we've seen, the ones that get me, that contain the things I most want to remember, are the ones with the people we were with in them. You can find fantastic photos of ( Read more... )

I am the lamest blogger that ever lived. Okay, not really. There are lamer bloggers out there (naming no names). I guess when you are a blogger who is no longer really blogging, you are an epilogue ( Read more... )