Tagged: holidaze

As long as I’ve lived in Sweden, I’ve tried to keep my American heritage alive for my children, and for myself. I would say we celebrate certain traditions religiously throughout the year, but truth is, we’re not religious about it at all. We just think it’s fun. I’ve had to learn to compromise my expectations for some dearly-held family favorites and we’ve learned to create our own meld of Swedish & American celebrations. Christmas, for instance, is a 2-day festival here. Halloween is organized down to the minute. There is no real outside motivator for my kids when it comes...

This has been a very Halloweenie-weekend. Karin had a girlfriend over to spend the night on Friday who wasn’t going home until late afternoon on Saturday and to stave off any whining about having nothing to do, after breakfast I got out the meager bag of Halloween decorations (which include toilet-paper ghosts made by the kids when they were around 4 years old) and told them to have at it. They had a great time decorating the kitchen and little hallway, hanging ghosts from the ceiling lamps and paper pumpkin strings across the bay window in the kitchen. They found...

If I’m not careful I will be turning my biorhythmical clock upside-down. It’s really easy for me to do when I’m on vacation. I stay up later and later and then I wake up later and later. I have to start restraining myself or I end up sleeping all day and being up all night. When we’re traveling, however, it’s harder to do, since we usually have things scheduled: places to be, things to see, goals to achieve (my goal for Iceland: find a silver puffin charm for my countries-i-have-been-to-charm bracelet). It’s funny, I didn’t actually inspect the paper money...