England

At Arlanda we had juice and shared a burger while waiting for the plane (which actually took off on time!).

Alice had her first ever tea and crumpet. She liked both very much!

I went to a spa for 3 days with Juliet, Rose and Joyce. It was very very very nice!

We watched Finley have a riding lesson.

Elias and Alice fed apples and stroked some horses.

Ice skating

Sorry for going on about it but it's so nice to finally have some winter. And Elias loves it too. Alice hasn't quite embraced this season though...

We've been ice skating with Elias twice and his progress is quite good I think. The first time he wouldn't let go of us at all but the second time he was quite happy to try on his own and managed to walk around on the skates. He doesn't skate yet, but I'm sure we'll get there in the end!

On Sunday the weather was amazing and we had a lovely morning down at Långsjön (together with pretty much everyone else..)

The kids liked the hot chocolate!David pulled them on the bob while I skated one lap around the lake. I must get skates of my own asap!

Dave didn't mind the HC either ;-)

Finally snow!

Yesterday it snowed pretty much the whole day. Yippie!!

Dreaming of snow

On Sunday we made a trip to a skiing slope nearby. Mainly to check they place out and to see if we can sign Elias up for some skiing lessons. We couldn't because the office wasn't open. The slope wasn't open yet due to lack of snow, but quite many familys were there tobogganing. We felt like the meanest parents for not thinking of bringing ours. Oh well. Elias still loved spending some time in the slope and tried his very best to have fun without the toboggan. Bless him..

2 years

2 years... Such a long time and at the same time just the blink of an eye.

2 years ago you entered our world with the impatience and drama that is so significant for you.


1 year ago you were busy discovering the world and learning to walk.


In the last year so much has happened. You've learned to walk, talk and sing. You love playing with dolls, to take socks off and shoes and hats on . You're extremely cheeky and will give your parents many grey hairs. You love ice cream and sweets but hate potatoes (chips are ok though). You bully your brother from time to time, but he is you biggest hero, we know!

Alice, you rock our world and we love you tons! Happy Birthday!

Last week of the year

Anki and her lot left on the 25th and mum and dad stayed until the 28th. We had a few fairly quiet days playing with all the new stuff. David and I made a trip to IKEA to get some more storage for the playroom and a bed for Alice. She is now sleeping in a proper bed instead of the cot. She's such a big girl.Elias loves the Lightning McQueen "laptop" he got for Christmas. It is a toy laptop with a tiny display and a few educational games. He's really into his letters so I think it is a good thing...

On New Year's Eve we were supposed to have guests but they didn't want to come when we discovered the kids had head lice. As it turned out our supposed guests came down with a stomach bug as well so I guess it wasn't supposed to happen. We ended up having a quiet night in but dressed up and had some nice food and lit some sparklers at least. David and I just about managed to stay up until midnight.

And now it's 2012... What will this year bring?

Christmas

Christmas was lovely (even thought the little snow we had melted on the 23rd). My parents came on the 20th and my sister and Felicia on the 21st (Per joined on the 22nd). We had a few lovely days leading up to Christmas preparing some of the food, decorating the tree and just hanging out.

On Christmas Eve we managed to squeeze "everyone" in and we were 11 adaults, 4 kids and one dog. Crazy but fun! While mum, dad and I prepared the food the others mingled with some glögg. My cousin Therese had the baby on the 31st so we were lucky they could join us!


At dinner the kids had a table of their own which I think they quite liked. After lunch Father Christmas came (Elias said straight away "it's granddad" so we had to come up with some explanation for that later). Alice borrowed a dress from Felicia and she looked absolutely adorable.

Baking

Today we had some friends over for some "pepparkaks-"baking. We made both cookies and a house each (although, the house was pre-made and only needed assembling and decorating)

Let the baking begin!

Fredrik decorating their house

Our house. Did I mention that our friends are professional designers? Both of them!

Elias loved decorating the cookies. (He didn't mind tasting them either)

Family day out

The nursery was shut today and both David and I took the day off work and we had a family outing. We started by going to look at the Christmas window display at NK - a very posh department store in Stockholm. Their Christmas display is always really hyped and many people has made it a tradition to go and look at it. This was our first time and Elias especially seemed to really like it.

All the letters sent to Father Christmas is "uploaded" to his memory

Father Christmas as an octopus making all the toys.
To see the whole display, click this link

After looking at the window display we went to Rum för barn at Kulturhuset. This time it was open! I think all of us really liked it. I wish I had been able to film Alice's reaction when we got in, she was so excited and happy.

They had a live advent calendar and door no 9 was opened today. It was done really well, I think. The woman in the box was painting to music and the other one got the children watching involved. Elias was mesmerized but Alice got bored after a little while. Her attention span is not quite as good as his yet..

After the advent calendar and some play and reading we went in to the art studio where both kids did some paining.