Newsletter 2009

The wind blows the snow into piles and south Sweden has the first proper winter in a long time. It feels good to sit in the dark winter night and think back on the year that has just ended. As usual we notice the flight of time by looking at the children and how they grow. As for us grown ups, we look approximately the same as when we were twenty or so. At least that is what we want to believe...
 

The family now shares a hobby that makes us all happy. We have all become great fishermen. We fish in the salty sea and Kersti has the largest catch with a 4-pound pike that tasted excellent. Unfortunately this is also the only pike so far. As for the rest we have caught herring and cod. Johan caught the nicest cod last summer and it almost pulled him out of the boat before he managed to pull it in with Cacke's help. The children are proud owners of proper fishing equipment and we have found out that fishing herring with neon-coloured tufts on the hooks actually gives fishing a new dimension.

Together with two other families we visited Legoland (yet again) and Lalandia. This was as always a favourite with the kids, but the grown ups were very convinced that we really do not need to go there again any time soon. The greatest holiday trip of the year took us to a little town in Sweden called Halmstad. We actually aimed for northern Germany, but we missed just a little. In three days we managed to cover a nice down town, a Pippi Longstocking playground, an adventure land (twice), a street theatre featuring an interesting whipping session (mostly enjoyed by men...), down town beach volley ball, a terrarium and a nice swim hall. The coolest was a merry go round for cows. It could take 40 cows at one go. The boys naturally want to go there again.

This year we have given the house a new drainage system. It all started with some cute rats in the garden. We did not really think that they made for good house guests and had them exterminated. The third time the rat exterminator came around he said that we maybe should take a look at the 80 year old sewage system as the rats came back all the time. Cacke started to think about the drainage system that was connected to the sewage system, and how these systems could be connected to our problems with high humidity levels in the basement. These thoughts resulted in many hours of digging around the house causing us to have a rat-free garden and a dry basement.



Axel is now a big boy. He is eight and attends second class. He knows multiplication and division. He reads books and comics and he is very happy that there are some things that he knows that his parents actually do not know. He gets ideas for new books to read in school where they discuss books every week. He has also given several talks in school on subjects like the squirrel, the fox and Legoland. He likes Star Wars, Clone Wars, Bakugan and marbles. Axel plays tennis every Saturday and actually hits the ball every time.

Johan is now six years old and attends preschool. He proudly counts, calculates, builds and constructs. He has just started to get the reading and writing and he is fascinated by words. They should preferably be very long and complicated. Johan also invents new words all the time. He has learned to ride a bicycle and the cool guy wears a Mohawk hairstyle and black trousers with a chain on one side. Johan takes Jijitsu or Jujitsu or Jujutsu or Jiu Jitsu or whatever it is called classes. He has a lot of fun and an orange belt.



Cacke has managed to paint the rocket, all the windows of the house and to renovate our bedroom. His boss thinks that he should put more time into designing thermal cameras instead. Kersti has a new job at Phase Holographic Imaging (www.phiab.se) where she does everything from the webpage to selling the product to developing new applications and everything in between.
 

Kersti & Cacke

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Last update: Feb. 7, 2010