SURPRISE!!!

My very favorite mom and dad are celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary this week.  I'm sure all kids say this when their parents reach a major milestone like this, but I can't think of two people who have better demonstrated love, patience, humor, forgiveness, and determination throughout their years together. I am so thankful for the work they have put into making their marriage an example of how rewarding a Christ centered relationship can be.

My parents are smart enough to realize what an accomplishment it is to spend three decades together so they celebrated by taking a dream trip to Europe. Seizing the opportunity, Gracie and I booked two tickets from Gothenburg to Frankfurt to surprise them for the last few days of their trip.

Now, I want to take a minute here to try to convince you that I’m not bragging.  I mean, yes, it is undeniably awesome to be able to buy a dirt cheap ticket and hop a ninety minute flight to Germany.  But, what I want you to realize is that this is completely out of character for me. I’m not a brave person. Taking a two-year-old through not one, but TWO airports where I don’t speak the native language and have to rely on cave painting graphics just to find a bathroom is intimidating to me.  As is airport security, hoping that my luggage won’t get lost, and praying to a kind and merciful God that the aforementioned toddler won’t completely lose it during the flight. This is how desperate I was to see my parents.

Lufthansa has pretty good food on their flights...

My worries were, as usual, completely unfounded. We landed in Frankfurt without incident and my father (and partner in crime) was waiting outside baggage claim with my very excited mother. I can’t describe how overjoyed I was to see my parents after all this time, but if I were filming a reality TV show there would have been plenty of tears to document.

We spent three wonderful days together exploring Schweinfurt and Rothenberg in the somewhat warmer weather, enjoying delicious German food, and the company of Gracie’s great-great-grandmother.  It has been so important to me that my Granny and Gracie would meet, and I am thankful that our move to Sweden and its close proximity to Germany helped make that possible. My sweet Elisabeth Grace is proudly named after my Granny, the youngest of five generations in my family currently living with Elisabeth (or Elizabeth) in our name.

Gracie thought this was a princess castle.

Is there anything better than a fresh German pastry?

Ok, we had some American food too...

It turns out they both love Angry Birds

If you can't act like an idiot with your parents, when can you?



Four out of five generations of Elisabeths.  Gracie is seated next to her Great-Great-Grandmother!

 The trip was delightful and the whole scheme was a success; mom was surprised when she arrived at the airport, and then surprised again when I told my parents that I will be having another baby in May! What a relief to finally be able to share this happy news with my parents! Knowing that I would be able to tell them in person was the only thing that kept my lips sealed for three long weeks.  And now that YOU know, dear readers, I ask you to join us in prayer for this precious child. Please pray for healthy development for the baby, energy for me, and that we will continually put our family in God’s ever-capable, loving, and merciful hands.

A Good Excuse

My dear readers, I have failed you.  I really try to update my blog on a weekly basis, but it just hasn't happened this month.  Here's why:

1. Gracie no longer takes naps during the day. While a 2-3 hour afternoon nap allows me to do things like update my blog and eat Pringles without being stalked, it also means the girl is up until after eleven at night, and that's unacceptable.

2. I fall asleep by 10. Now that Gracie goes to bed at a reasonable hour, so do I. It's delightful. You should try it.

3. I left the country. Have passport, will travel.  My parents were in Germany, and I couldn't let a little thing like an 90 minute flight keep me from seeing them. I'll tell you all about it in my next post... in a week or so.

A Little Potty Humor

During the past two weekends we’ve stayed close to home to explore a bit of the local attractions Jönköping and neighboring Huskvarna (the city where Matt works) have to offer.  While we enjoyed what we saw and I took lots of beautiful pictures to share, I’m just too tired to write a sufficient description for you, so I’m saving them for another week.

My exhaustion is due in small part to the nonstop work that is potty training.  After several conversations with fellow MOPS moms (oh, how I miss MOPS!) that were simultaneously laugh-out-loud funny and distressing, we decided to go with the bare-bottom method.  Of course, this helped initiate the timing of our adventure; if I’m going to have a half-naked rugrat running around the living room I have to do it before it gets too cold. 

After surprisingly few accidents, and virtually no prompting from me, Gracie is now able to determine when she needs to use the potty and get herself there in time to do so.  Our quick success is due in part to a savvy real estate negotiation.  We now have a hot pink princess potty adorning the center of our living room.  But, better a plastic potty that a puddle, right? 

We’re also moving on to thinner and prettier butt-covers.  Why wear unflattering Pampers with that telltale sag when you have a drawer full of princess panties to coordinate with every outfit?  And yes, they have to match the outfit or she won’t wear them.

Eventually we’ll get to the point where we’re living totally diaper free, but we’re still not quite brave enough to leave the house without some assurance of absorbency.  Diapers also still show up at naptime (Why? She naps on a white couch!) and bedtime.  But cutting down to two or three a day is doing wonders for my budget.  Gracie may yet have a shot at a college fund.

Though it sounds silly to ask, please pray for perseverance and patience for both Gracie and myself. It’s exhausting and exciting watching your little one grow up, and it does funny things to the way your brain works.  I leave you with this incredibly inept parody that I’m sure makes Robert Frost turn over in his grave.

Whose seat this is I think I know.
It sits beside the TV, though;
She will not go in the bathroom
Where toilets flush and water flows.

My neighbors all must think it queer
To see my daughter’s little rear
Dancing naked inside my house
But it’s a sight I find quite dear.

The seat is plastic, pink, and bright,
And though a decorator’s blight,
If she will use it, it’s alright,
If she will use it, it’s alright.

My House the Mathnasium

We moved to Sweden just after Central Florida kids bemoaned the end of summer and started a new school year.  This means that my last week at home was spent, by and large, removing tutoring advertisements hanging from my front door and dodging rowdy kids fresh off the afternoon school bus on my way to collect the mail. One of the more amusing (and persistent, arriving via the door and the mail box) advertisements we received was for Mathnasium.  Apparently math can be fun AND make sense. While I’ve never struggled with math as a subject (I do have twelve credit hours of calculus tacked on to my English Language Arts Education degree) I can’t say I’ve ever classified it as fun either.

I find myself using math all too frequently here, an occurrence that I find both annoying and amusing.  To date, I have no idea how much I’m paying for gas; Swedish Kroner per liter requires not only figuring out the current exchange rate, but also how many liters are in a gallon.  Too much calculating for me, I’ll just wait for an unpleasant little surprise on my credit card statement. And cooking, which I used to find relaxing, now feels like a chemistry experiment. For starters, I didn’t even realize my liquid measuring cup had gradations in deciliters. And setting the oven is like a game of Russian roulette. 

Oh, United States, I blame you for this. I understand that change is difficult, but if you had only tried a little harder back when Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 before giving up on your carefully planned decade-long transition, my personal transition to Sweden would have been so much simpler.  If I had grown up in a world where temperatures were measured in Celsius rather than Fahrenheit, liquid volume in liters rather than cups, and weight in kilograms instead of pounds, I might actually be able to blend in as a European. The last time I had to think in metric was for my AP Physics class, a good eleven years ago.  Now, I am left desperately grasping my cellphone, woefully reliant upon my ConvertPad app (a fantastic free Android app) just to figure out the temperature and how much cucumbers cost. 

It’s not all bad though. I enjoy seeing my weight in kilograms (I see kilos, but think pounds) and my computer is courteous enough to display the week’s weather in Fahrenheit so I can plan accordingly. My attempts at estimation are getting faster and more accurate, so I’m actually spending only slightly more at the grocery store here than I did in the states.  And I’m still really good at counting. Today Gracie and I counted at least thirty ducks in the pond, we got two cards in the mail, and I baked one plum cake.

And, for those of you counting along at home, we left Florida exactly one month ago. At this rate, I’ll be back to ounces, teaspoons, and miles per gallon before I know it!

How to make a two-year-old happy.

The New Normal

It's funny how quickly three weeks can reset your "normal" view of things. Life in Florida for the past sixteen years had me convinced that rainy, sixty degree days qualified as winter weather. My stay-at-home-mom routine consisted of at least one daily outing, lest I succumb to cabin fever, and my day always began with a morning phone call to my mother. My new normal, though not exciting, is beginning to take shape. And, as is life wherever one lives, there are things I truly enjoy and things that are *this close* to pushing me over the edge to full-fledged crazy.

I am learning not to waste sunny days and sixty degree weather. When the sun is out the kiddo and I are becoming brave enough to venture out with the jogging stroller and GPS-enabled cell phone to explore our new home. We've walked downtown, to the local grocery store, to feed the ducks, and to the playground.  I enjoy the exercise. I enjoy the conversations Gracie and I have. After all, she's one of the few people I know here who is a native English speaker. I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment in successfully navigating to our location and eventually getting back up the hill to our house.

I am immensely enjoying the Bible study I've started attending. Gracie naps on the couch in our living room, so I can't default to mindless television viewing during naptime. There's only so much time you can waste on Facebook when all of your friends are six hours behind you, so I'm making more of my day by spending time in God's Word and the Twelve Extraordinary Women we're reading about.

I'm learning to enjoy cooking real food with real ingredients again. I didn't realize how strong my reliance on convenience food and dining out had become, especially right before we moved, but neither is a viable option in Sweden.  Though some convenience foods are available at the local ICA Maxi Supermarket, I can't read the labels to clearly identify the ingredients and my fear of accidental seafood ingestion keeps me from purchasing them.  Restaurant dining in Sweden is decidedly expensive, relegating it rightfully to an occasional indulgence.

Today seemed to sum up these new things I'm enjoying. I woke early, checked my email, Facebook, and US News in that order (priorities...), prayed for my family, and avoided walking on our creaky wooden floors until Gracie called for me from her bed. We enjoyed a breakfast of Multi-Cheerios, cleaned the house, and prepped dinner. We took two slices of bread to feed 80 ducks in the pond up the hill (my thoughts at the time were a mix between the loaves and fishes miracle and Hitchcock's The Birds), and then spent an hour at the Stadsparks Playground. We returned for lunch, Skyped with my parents, ordered a moss green slipcover for the couch (we had a run in with an orange crayon on the white rental couch yesterday), took a nap (worked on my Bible study) and then made some brownies.  

I know it's not exciting, but it's fulfilling.  I made my daughter happy.  I took care of my home.  And now I'm going to bed feeling content. Besides a quick chat with my mother and a sleeping dog at my feet, what more could one ask for?

Our Visby Vacation

This weekend Matt and I decided to take advantage of the warm weather (our temperatures here seem to be making a rapid descent into autumn) and hop the ferry to the island of Gotland, Sweden's largest island and the largest island in the Baltic Sea.  Our final destination was the city of Visby, a UNESCO World Heritage site and remarkably preserved medieval walled city. Now, I get excited just going to the Medieval Times Dinner Theater, so staying in a town that dates from the 12th century was a real treat for me.



From the top of the hill you get a great view Visby all the way to the Baltic Sea

 To begin our mini-adventure, we had to drive from Jönköping to Oskarshamn. During the two hour drive, we realized that the Swedish countryside is (1) breathtaking and (2) devoid of highways in the American sense of the word. Apparently, driving across Sweden is something to be enjoyed, not just accomplished, and (GPS malfunctions notwithstanding) enjoy it we did! From Oskarshamn we boarded the ferry and settled in for another three hours.


Leaving Oskarshamn



On board our ferry

Our reservations in the city of roses and ruins were at the Medieval Hotel, originally built in 1302.  Our room was small, but comfortable, the breakfast buffet delectable, and the location was perfect.  From our room we could see the towers and hear the bells of the Visby Cathedral, built in 1225, and dedicated to Saint Mary. 


As Gracie would say "It's Eat Time!"





We had a room with a view!


After breakfast we started on foot to find bicycles to rent for the day. What should have been a ten minute walk took over an hour since we completely lost our focus every time we saw a set of ruins, or a beautiful garden, or stone sheep.  (Gotland Sheep were established by the Vikings and are famous for their silky grey and black fleece.)  Eventually we rented our bikes and enjoyed the city of Visby, the Ringmuren (Ring Wall), views of the Baltic Sea, and the Gotland Museum.  We took over 400 pictures in the 24 hours we spent in Visby, so I tried to select the best ones for you.  Enjoy!

Leaving our hotel in search of adventure!

This is why we left the stroller in the room.

I think Gracie sat on every stone sheep in Visby.

We finally got our bikes!  This is the main entrance to the city.

The Gotland Museum had some great artifacts (including REAL VIKINGS), but since flash photography was forbidden, clear pictures were few and far between.

Outside of the museum

Look!  A Viking!  Actually, this is a female viking, wearing jewelry around her neck. Gracie bluntly told me she was dead and not to take pictures.

Runestone

From one of the many church ruins

Armor.

It is important to wear one's armor properly.



Viking treasure.  According to the sign, this collection of coins was found in a rabbit hole by a group of school children.



Finally, some pictures of the Visby Cathedral.  This is the only church from the period still in tact in the city.  After the reformation most of the churches were largely abandoned and finally destroyed in the 1500s.

Though we missed the annual medieval festival and we only stayed for two nights, we were blessed with beautiful weather and mesmerising surroundings.  The city is stunning, I only wish my photojournalism skills were better able to capture the experience for you.

Farewell Visby.