Newsletter 2022This year has been filled with both good and bad, mostly good. A main insight has been that we are no longer the parents of children. Instead, we have amazing young men, heading out to start their lives. Neither Axel nor Adam are still actually in the house, leaving Johan to receive the brunt of our parenting, both good an bad. He patiently accepts that we nag until he gets out of bed in the morning, but that it is maybe outweighed by extra dessert and a back rub.
For many years, we have had a big comfortable second hand couch. After enjoying it for many years we decided to let it pass on to a new life in a scout cabin, and we invested in a new couch. It is remarkable that a new couch feels a like a game changer! After almost a year we still are not quite used to having a new couch. Every four years there is a carnival in Lund, and every time there is a theme. This time it was a catastrophic carnival. We decorated our garden rocket and invited people to get a hot dog and a beer in the garden. The carnival arranges for everyone who wants to, to create and donate a painting. The paintings are then sold, and the proceeds go to arranging the carnival. We made a beautiful painting! Axel managed one of the carnival floats.   Sadly, Carl-Eric fell ill in the summer, and passed away in the autumn. Despite his illness he kept his warmth and awareness until the end. We miss him dearly and are again reminded to enjoy life with relatives and friends every day. Johan’s life has changed very much this year. He went from being a high school pupil to a university student, studying to become a physics engineer here in Lund. He really enjoyed celebrating the end of high school, but also the very long initiation and celebrations in the beginning of the university studies. He is required to wear orange overalls for many of those activities. Johan also got his driver’s license, built parts of a house in Wales, and became the boss of ZebraMount (www.zebramount.com). His D&D gang meet in our kitchen every Tuesday, making Tuesdays our date day :-)  
  Axel has paused his student life, and is doing his military service with the bridge-building soldiers in Eksjö. He has learned to walk long distances with a heavy backpack, sleep in the forest when it is cold, shoot automatic guns, throw grenades, clean bathrooms, play with plastic explosives, drive a truck and build quick-bridges. He comes home Friday evenings, tell a lot of new stories, sleeps, eats, sleeps again, and Sunday evening he goes back to Eksjö. In the picture above he is going to a ball, wearing an evening dress with tails made for his great grandfather Gösta in the 1950’s. Adam has moved to a student apartment in Gävle to study computer programming. We had a lot of fun buying a shower curtain with pink flowers, a pink tooth brush cup and many other important things. He still baking and cooking, but also experimenting with homemade lemoncello and meloncello. He has also made cardamom-flavored white chocolate fudge and other advanced things. At Christmas he performed the duties of Santa Claus at our neighbors.
In the summer we sneaked away on a child free road trip to Norway where we visited “The End of the World”. It was beautiful.
Kersti is still at Phase Holographic Imaging. She is spreading the tidings of digital holographic microscopy worldwide, and in November she spent four weeks in the US to start up a cooperation with other companies and institutes aiming at making regenerative medicine accessible to more patients. Wikipedia defines regenerative medicine as "the process of replacing, engineering or regenerating human or animal cells, tissues or organs to restore or establish normal function".
Cacke is enjoying working at Axis, where he utilizes new technology to improve the safety at railway tracks, around businesses, and even in the homes of elderly people. In the picture below he has been sneaking around in the shrubs, to test how well cameras can detect sneaking people. He has spent much time in Malmö this year with Kerstin and Carl-Eric, and he and Kerstin even attended a magic performance with Labero. His summer project was to finish our outdoor “spa”. A lot of work hours and parts scavenged from the old heating system have has made it possible to take a warm nice bath while watching the stars even in November.   This painting was made by
Cacke and Kersti and donated to the carnival in Lund.
 Based on the painting, Johan
created this sculpture with a 3D pen for Kersti.
Cacke, Johan, Axel o Kersti Latest update: March 19, 2023 |
