Newsletter 2012
This last year was the year of kitchen. We have finally all walls and cupboards in their right places. Cooking without getting tools in the food is wonderful, and we were actually ten people making ginger bread men simultaneously! Our main concern now is when the kitchen can be defined as being done. Is it when all lamps are in place (note done yet) or when the baseboards are nailed tight (done!), or when the sockets all have electricity (done!)?
This year we have been visiting capital cities. We ran through Paris, Vienna and London. The kids love it, but most of all they like hotel breakfasts. In Hilton Vienna Johan ate three bowls of oatmeal with equal amounts of honey every morning, in Hilton London he had three bowls of oat puffs with equal amounts sugar, and in the pirate hotel close to Disneyland he had six doughnuts for breakfast. Axel settled for the more traditional luxury sandwiches, pancakes, waffles, muffins and guglhopf. Cacke was quite happy when he found out that a friendly smile could earn him no less than four cups of cappuccino every morning. Disneyland Paris was marvelous! It is beautifully made and full of wonderful attractions. Going there in relatively low season was also a good one. The Eiffel tower is memorable, the Louvre is large (and holds so many beautiful things that we cannot understand why Mona Lisa is so popular), Salvatore is the most wonderful tuc-tuc-driver in all Paris and the subway musicians the touristiest. In Vienna, the Hundertwasser architecture (http://www.kunsthauswien.com/en/museum/hundertwasser-architecture) and the catacombs are the total winners, Schönbrunn is the most beautiful and there is huge amount of beautiful buildings. In London, the children voted Harry Potter Studios and Madame Tussauds for winners, while we grownups voted for the Indian restaurant with an indoor waterfall. We also enjoyed the dinosaurs as they made us feel young again, at least compared to them. Johan and Cacke improved the British economy by shopping, a lot. Cacke managed to capture as many photos of surveillance cameras as of his beloved family. Even though he did not wear a beard, he immediately became suspect of being a potential terrorist when he insisted on capturing safety installations in the airport. This year our sweet little rabbit, Tuva, caught pneumonia and passed away. The children were comforted as they built a memorial in the garden.
We spent the Christmas with the Helgesson family about 500 kilometers north of here. They had actual snow! Enough to go skiing! The Helgessons got a lot of laughter out of teaching four flat-footed south Swedes how to use skis. Cacke cheated. He has actually been skiing like twenty-thirty years ago, and behaved like an expert. The rest of us got snowy cold but it was great! We also built a lot of snow men (cold and large), snow rabbits (cold and cute) and a chair (cold and comfortable). There is actually only one problem with snow. It is cold. Kersti has to be grownup now. Otherwise Axel is not allowed to use bow and arrow as he is under thirteen. We both attended the beginner’s class in archery this autumn, and it is really fun. Watch out, Robin Hood! Kersti continues at PHI as she can be Mrs Know-it-all as much as she wants to, and the cell images are really beautiful!
Cacke is still at Axis. This year he has been to Bahamas, Belgium and Ullared (a large Swedish shop) and tried to convince people that it is no coincidence that Axis cameras are best. Cacke got a bad chock this summer when his beloved grill had lumbago and almost had to pass to the next world. Fortunately Cacke had all the screws he needed to repair it in the basement (among the 60 000 screws he has there).
Last update: Feb. 5, 2013 |
