Tagged: holidaze

11
Aug
2026

BIRTHDAZE

It was my birthday yesterday. 62. What a weird number to be. I had a busy day planned so I got up fairly early. Anders is working from home this week, and he had roses and presents waiting for me. A poster of 100 Swedish sights to see that you can stamp off once you have seen them or been there. And 2 gorgeous hanging bird baths. I had asked for one, and he found 2 really nice ceramic ones…one in deep teal and one in off-white. The only problem is that they only have a center hole with a...

06
Aug
2026

THE KEY TO PRODUCTIVITY IS TO ROTATE YOUR AVOIDANCE TECHNIQUES*

It’s only Thursday of my first week of vacation, and I’m already more halfway through my clean/sort/purge list. I’ve done the our bedroom (my stuff at least), study, living room, bathrooms, playroom hallway, dining room, front hall closet, and today I went through all the drawers in the kitchen, and cleaned out the pantry. I still have some of the kitchen cabinets to look through, so I’m not counting the kitchen as done yet. It’s very satisfying: purging. Even when there’s not that much to purge. But the pantry got a MAJOR cleanout, which was way overdue. It’s been a...

06
Jul
2026

PARTIES AND PROVISIONS

And suddenly half the year is gone. That means the light is receding as well now, and the days are growing shorter, but la la la la I can’t hear you. Unfortunately it doesn’t matter if it’s always cloudy anyway, and we’re back to cool temperatures and lots of rain. We actually got SO lucky this past Saturday for the 4th of July because the entire week had been forecast as rain, and as we got closer to the day (and the big party we were hosting for the AIC), we were watching the weather changing while biting our nails....

19
Jun
2026

GLAD MIDSOMMAR!

It’s midsummer eve and a public holiday here in Sweden. Midsummer is celebrated across Northern Europe and the Baltic countries, but I think Sweden is the only one that celebrates the eve of it, per typical Swedish custom of celebrating holidays the day before. The actual solstice isn’t until Sunday. After weeks of pretty cold temperatures and lots of rain last week, today arrived HOT and sunny, nearly 30C, which is too hot for me, given that there isn’t much of a breeze either. I slept in, while Anders went early to a fish store in Landskrona where he got...

18
Jun
2026

AND BACK AGAIN

We left The Netherlands behind and drove on the autobahn most of the day through Northern Germany to Lübeck. The autobahn is both scary and thrilling. For most of it there is no speed limit (it slows down to 120 kph near the cities and sometimes slower in construction zones, of which there are many). Anders set the cruise control and was clipping along at 130 kph most of the time, and there were still cars constantly whipping past us in the left lane. They must have been going well over 200. CRAZY. At one point, as we were nearing...

17
Jun
2026

CRUISING TO THE NETHERLANDS

We left Arromanches in the morning of June 6 (the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings) and headed north. Our plan was to swing over to Étretat on the coast. I had read about a place with lovely gardens on the cliffside above the town. However, due to the tiny country roads that led up the coast, it was nearly a 2.5 hour side trip that we couldn’t really afford as we needed to be in Bladel, The Netherlands latest by 9 pm. When we got to Étretat, it was sunny and beautiful, and while parking the car near the...

16
Jun
2026

GOLD BEACH, MULBERRY HARBORS, AND LESSONS IN HISTORY

I was a military brat, and as such, most of what I learned about WW2 in high school was from an American perspective. I knew the name of Omaha Beach, but very little else about the D-Day landings or the military operations of the war. I read a lot of books about the resistance, the holocaust, and the lives of ordinary people living through the war, and as an adult have educated myself much further with movies, books, documentaries, and other sources of historical information. I’ve been to Berlin when it was still behind the wall, and I’ve been to...

15
Jun
2026

NORTH TO NORMANDY

The day we left Saint-Malo and headed north to Mont-Saint-Michel was quite cloudy, but no rain was forecast. We arrived at the parking lot on the mainland just before noon, which was later than I would have liked, but we weren’t in any hurry. We knew there would be a lot of people on the island, but were hoping that because it was off-season that it wouldn’t be TOO crowded. You can either walk across the bridge that leads from the tourist center and the parking lots or take the free shuttle that runs every 12 minutes. It takes about...

14
Jun
2026

ROADTRIPPING TO BRITTANY

Brittany and Normandy, or more specifically, Saint-Malo and Mont-Saint-Michel, have been on my travel wishlist for a very long time. I first heard and fell in love with wartime Saint-Malo in the book All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. If you haven’t read it, you’re missing out, it’s amazing. Mont-Saint-Michel has been on my list even longer. Having had not so great experiences traveling in France when I was young, however, meant that the Normandy coast was always pushed aside in favor of other destinations. I also wasn’t super interested in visiting the D-Day beaches and all...

29
May
2026

WHIRLWIND WEEK

Well, that went fast! John and family arrived just in time for dinner on Saturday and we were going full throttle ever since. We had absolutely perfect weather the entire week as well; Sweden showing off its best side. The lilacs are in full bloom and our yard is looking beautiful thanks to Anders. We played lots of games including Yardtzee (coined by Karin), 0-100, Uno, City-Country-Idiot, and lots of Trivial Pursuit questions. The kids were great, and Lola was the most well-behaved dog ever. We went to Lund’s Pinball Academy, and the Moose tour, and played mini-golf. We had...

August 2026
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