family

We started off the day with some sledge riding.

The hill was not so steep, but the kids loved it anyway!

It was not as cold so it was more pleasant to hang out with Musse today.

Back inside to celebrate a late Christmas and the New Years Eve.

I woke up this morning and the thermometer showed -22.1 C, which is -7.8 F!

With 4 kids between the age of 2 and 5 you dont really have a choice but to keep them occupied and pretend it is not cold at all when they are complaining.
They proudly showed me their new horse, Musse the Welsh Mountain Stallion.

This is my parents place, where I grew up;

I had to run some errands in the “big city” and when I got back home, the kids had decorated the Christmas Tree, we are celebrating Christmas tomorrow, one week after everyone else.

I woke up to a beautiful winter wonderland, this was the view from my sisters kitchen window this morning;

The kids put me to work right away and we kept ourselves busy all morning baking bread.

My mom made a fire in snow in the backyard and we had hot dogs for lunch.

The sun sets really early so by the 3:30 evening walk it is already turning dark.

Just because I made it to Arlanda last night didn’t mean I made it to my final destination. I arrived at Arlanda Airport at 11pm last night and it took us about 3hours to drive to my parents house cos of the bad weather. Had a few hours of sleep and then on the road again to head south.
There’s apparently a 30 minutes snow free guarantee on the major roads in Sweden, but the Snow God does not care about that. This is the major road you would take to if you were to drive from Stockholm to the European continent. The snow was falling so heavy there were no time to maintain the road and keep it snow free.

My family says we’re related to Per Brahe, the dude that lived here. I’ve been driving passed it countless times, but I have actually never stopped to take a closer look at it. I will though, next time…

My parents didn’t want me to drive in this road condition so they put me on a train down to visit my grandfather.

I made it to Båstad at 4:40pm on the 26th, about 39 hours after I left Los Angeles. This is possibly my favorite place on earth, I have yet to find a place which I feel so strongly about. I spent all my summers here, from the age of 1 to 20.

This is the doormat that welcomes you to my grandfathers home.

Be aware of the Old Man

My grandfather has got the coolest things, just look at this wallpaper!

I think this might be one of the reasons we get along so well…

Order is just for idiots, Geniuses can handle chaos!

When you are from south of Stockholm, everything north of Stockholm is “up north” even though there’s still 2/3 of the country north of Stockholm. If you are from Malmö, which is the 3rd largest city in Sweden, you see the country like this.

I took off at 5:30pm on the 24th. Over the last few years, I for some reason always fall asleep just after boarding the planes and miss the take offs. I don’t mind, I hate the take off’s anyways since I always get motion sick from them. I usually wake up 20-30 minutes into the flight and 30 minutes after that I get restless. I picked a really good seat this time thought, with a power outlet and extra legroom so I could play around with my computer and not getting bothered by the passenger pushing his seat back in front of me. I managed to get about 4 hours of sleep and woke up while we were flying over Ireland – the green island that was covered in snow and had turned white!

I had a 5hour layover at Heathrow Airport, an awesome way to spend Christmas Day! I had plenty of time to visit the shops and pick up gifts for my parents and grandfather.

Grandpa’s favorite cheese is the Blue Stilton Cheeses from Fortnum & Mason in London, They didn’t have it at the airport so I got him the one from Harrods instead, I’m sure he will like it as well.

The Christmas Day beer was Guinness!

And I was about to fall asleep right about here…

Super excited to have made it to a snow covered Sweden!

When I made it to the luggage claim there were bags from what seemed like two planes just waiting there to be picked up by their owners. I kept thinking of how many gifts that was in those bags and never made it in time for Christmas Eve, felt sorry for the people who didn’t get their bags, and at the same time worried it would happen to my bags as well.

I have lost count in how many times my luggage has been delayed. My bags were among the first ones to show up on the carousel this time though!

My sisters kids