Tagged: famdamily

19
Nov
2016

ALIVE AND WELL, WELL, AS WELL AS CAN BE, CONSIDERING

I’ve only posted twice this month so far, and to be honest, I haven’t had the heart or the energy to post much more. I read the news every day and fall a little farther into disbelief and despair each time. Anders came home late last night from 2 weeks in Italy for work. He worked today, came home, declared he didn’t feel well, at which point all three of us promptly fell asleep on various sofas, and then he got violently ill. Then he told me he was freezing and went to bed. Not good. I really, really hope...

19
Sep
2016

THINGS I FORGOT TO WRITE ABOUT

Twice recently I drove home in the evening and marveled at the full moon. It was huge and silver and beautiful. When I got out and parked the car, I went into the back yard, where the streetlights aren’t so bright and stared up at the sky. Black and clear and spangled with stars and that huge glowing moon hanging over the side of the sky. We’re supposed to be getting our election ballots by the end of this week. If you are American and reading this, you had better be voting. If you are American and living overseas, it’s...

13
Aug
2016

WISH YOU WERE HERE

When you live this far apart from your loved ones, time together is never long enough, even when some days together it feels like it. I would like another couple of weeks together just to RELAX, without plans, without parties, without anything but time to sit together, talk more deeply about our lives, get to know my niece and nephews better, give my children more time with their grandma, their uncle, their aunt, their cousins. Time to do all the family things together that we so rarely get to do with each other: play games, go shopping, eat meals, hang...

10
Aug
2016

FILLING THE YEAR

In Sweden, the phrase for having a birthday is “fyller år” which literally means “filling the year”. In Swedish, you don’t turn 100, you fill it. The word birthday is the same in both languages; födelsedagen. In my family, we have a pile of birthdays in March (Sarah, John, Simone, Bryce) and a pile in the summer, mostly in July with mine lagging in early August (my grandmother, my mom and dad (same day), me, Sammy, Karin) and another group in December (Danely, Martin, Jakob). My sister’s husband Tom, and Anders, are the odd men out, with birthdays in January...

09
Aug
2016

FUN WITH FAMILY

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: all our family and friends would come…when in reality not even my brother could make it (we had a great time regardless). And we had a LOT to celebrate this year: big birthdays, graduations,...

08
Aug
2016

FUN WITH FRIENDS

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 the Statue of Liberty and New York and Boston anywhere online, but if you want to see what I love, then here you go. Three posts coming up full of smiling faces...

01
Aug
2016

WELL HELLO THERE!

Did you miss me? I missed me! I missed you, too! It’s hard to believe that it’s been a month away and now we’re back. It was full on summer in the States but back home in Sweden, I feel we’ve landed in the early onset of autumn and I have to say I am SO GLAD. I never do well in heat and humidity and we had enough of it this past month to last me a lifetime. There’s a lot of reasons why I love living in Sweden, but cool weather and no humidity trumps just about everything....

02
Jun
2016

ALL AT ONCE

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. There have been lots of things to write about, but they are all happening at once which makes sitting down and finding words harder than you would think. This past weekend was Swedish Mother’s Day. I was given flowers (peonies!), a Pandora bead for my bracelets of a lion with a crown and a little bag of my favorite dark-chocolate-covered cherries. In the...

23
Apr
2016

SAD IN SPRING

My Uncle Sam died yesterday morning, before my mom could even get on the road. She called me at work and I couldn’t leave right away as I was waiting for Karin, so had to try really hard to stifle myself a bit so that people didn’t get concerned and make it worse by being nice to me. I’m so sad. This is the second time in the space of a year that a close relative has passed away and I can’t get home to be with my family. GAH. It’s sunny and beautiful today, a bite in the air,...

20
Apr
2016

ONE OF THOSE…DAYS-WEEKS-MONTHS

I have a huge pile of mixed emotions right now. I was really happy on Monday after WW because I finally (!) hit -15 kg*. It’s taken forever to get down this last kilo, thanks to Pie Night, Easter, Anthon Berg and my own lack of motivation. One step forward, two steps back, rinse & repeat for way too many weeks. So, it felt really good to have finally hit that milestone on my way down. 🙂 Still a long way to go, but now the sun is out and I am getting moving again. My mom called Sunday and...

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