Eijla is 3!

Happy Birthday to our dear Eijla!  woke her with song and of course a princess crown!  she was so cute and got excited about every little present. love what a positive girl she is.

 she had to give some birthday snuggles to her little brother...

 zoe and eijla decorated the cake themselves.  eijla said she did not want frosting, so they made all kinds of pretty decorations out of mandelmassa.  creative little monkeys.

 we hope all your wishes come true eijla!

we are so glad that you exist and for the the love and fun you bring to our family.  there is only one eijla!  happy, happy birthday to our unique and amazing eijla!

lucia!

well, many of the swedish traditions are still new to me. but i am getting better at them,  this year i even managed to remember lucia, and fix costumes for the girls.  the both wanted to be tärnor this year,  which is good for me as it is an easier costume than being lucia!  they were so cute.  thomas and i got to go to both eijla´s dagis lucia, and zoe´s school lucia.  zoe even sang some of the songs this year.  anyway, i thought they were so very adorable!

jeans and binkies

our girls are growing up, finally convinced zoe to wear her jeans to school.  think it is the second time i have got her to wear them since we bought them.  luckily we bought them big.  funny thing, once she gets them on, she likes them.  it is just getting them on her!

 then mormor is heading to the states so she offered to take all of eijla´s binkies and give them to the little babies in the states that needed them.  she was such a big girl about it searched the house and put them all in a bucket for mormor!  she is really excited to share them with the american babies.

picture day for eijla

today was picture day at eilja´s daycare.  i tried to grab a decent shot of the little monster, but she was full of buse today, and this is what i ended up with!  what a ham!

precious moments

so as summer tends to be for us, it is work, work, work.  but since it stays light so late, we are often bad parents and keep the girls up a little bit later so we can spend more time with them.  so we do get our snuggles in.  i have learned to really appreciate the time we get with them.  we were so spoiled in india.  but i miss my girls now.  here are a couple of recent pics that just melt my heart.  eijla giving her baby puppy snuggles in the hammock, baby puppy has replaced her baby elephant, which replaced her baby, which she carried around india for five months.  i suppose we should be grateful that she is not so attached to just one toy, but it makes you wonder about her loyalties.  ha ha.

 then zoe, our little artist.  here she is proudly displaying one of her most recent masterpieces.  that kid has creativity just pouring out of her. 

and lastly,  sadly, i have not had much time for the greenhouse, i think thomas actually waters it more than i do now, but luckily it is still going strong and the green is getting greener.  yeah!

we miss pappa!

thomas has been away working most of the week, so i have been trying to survive what it must be like to be a single mom.  i do not know how people do it. get up insanely early, get the girls ready, drop them at dagis (daycare), work all day, pick them up, go home, make dinner, feed kids, put kids to bed, clean up, and try to get in bed at a decent time to do it all over again the next day! so when the weekend came we made the best of of it.  we had popcorn and a movie, we made the girls favorite cookies, molasses.  yeah, that is cookie dough...

 then there was lots of princess dress up and dancing.  eijla has some moves!

 and i of course just think that she is so damn cute.

then there were lots more snuggles.  seems like anya has gotten the chicken pox, so we are going to head over there tomorrow to try and see if they can rub off on our girls.

EIJLA IS 2! HIPP HIPP HURRA!

 today our baby girl turned two!  can hardly believe it.  she has become such a little girl, talking so much, running around like a crazy monkey.  she has even started with 3 to 4 word sentences.  it is going too fast.  but then i think almost all parents feel that at this stage.  so our little princess got up an the first thing she did was put on her princess dress.  open her presents, and then it was birthday hugs all around.

 when it is your birthday your breakfast is allowed to consist of licking nouget off of a toast..

 after singing, presents, and breakfast we headed to periyar wildlife park,  where we went on a boat ride, that well, honestly was a bit of a disappointment, though we did see a bison, a couple of fox, and a few birds.

 the tired birthday girl fell asleep standing up in the car.  stubborn monkey refused to sit on my lap.

 then in the afternoon we went on a spice garden tour,  where we saw lots of plants and flowers and coffee beans.

 but the highlight was definitely finding out the cafe had korv!  the girls ate 8 of them together!  only second time this trip we have found korv. yum!

then it was what might just become a tradition, elephant riding on eijla´s birthday.  farmor waited back at the elephant camp due to the seats not being knee friendly, but the rest of piled on a couple of pachyderms and headed out.

 we were there at the very end of the day, so the girls got watch while the put away the elephants for the evening.

 then it was dinner, the girls has pasta, and then back to the hotel for cake!  happy birthday our dear little eijla!  hope you had a wonderful day.  we loved spending it with you, and look forward to many more!  we love you, you crazy little monkey.

life in goa..

we are still enjoying the nice relaxing pace of life in goa.  zoe has been in school, so we have had a lot more one on one time with eijla.  thomas has been taking her to the beach while i have been working on the computer,  and she usually comes back looking like this!  happy and full of chocolate ice cream.

 eijla is such a little character, she loves shoes.  i think it is because she hardly ever wore any her first year of life, and not she is trying to make up for it.  such a little grown up girl with her purse of legos and her shoes, she prances around like a little princess!

 

yeah, needs no words...

the carpet cleaner, the ballerina, and the one and a half year old teenager

yep, as i have mentioned the cold is here,  which means that it is time to take out the carpets!  but ours have been on our back porch since last winter, so they were due for a good washing.    good thing thomas built us a nice big back deck for him to wash them on!  ha ha!

 auntie zita and fredrik brought the girls adorable tutus on their last visit.  and zoe just realized how much she loves hers,  now we cannot hardly get it off her!  she has been dancing all over the house.  gotto find some dance classes for that kid!

 yeah,  need i say more?  we are in trouble!

a little bit of eijla...

our little charmtroll hamming it up..

and she loves papa's carrot soup!  but insists and eating it by herself.  "kan själv!" it would be more adorable if i did not have to clean it up!

and we had a big painting day the other day.  eijla created all kinds of pretty pictures.  she is much more art interested than zoe was at this age.  who knows. maybe we have a painter on our hands!

and the results... both zoe and eijla love their pinks and purples!

chillaxin with the österstöm girls...

we enjoyed the company of the young österström girls today.  zoe and maya basically ran off to play in the garden all day.  so anya and eilja ruled the indoors.  they were super cute, and played pretty well together.  it is so fun to see them reach the age where they play together instead of side by side.  they shared their spaghetti for lunch,  not sure what it is with these two, but they sure like to share food.  they do not eat nearly as well if forced to eat their own food off of their own plate.  such crazy little silly monkeys.

then anya was serenading eijla and her doll.  it was pretty cute. anya played.  eijla hummed along, and rocked her little baby.  such sweetie these two little blondes are.

then zoe managed to find a huge cucumber out in the greenhouse and decided to make a phone call with it.  i believe she was calling babyland (the imaginary place where babies come from, and a million stories that she has from there.)

the semi calm after the storm...

after a crazy last week and weekend with our zoe celebrations it is nice to slow things down a bit and just enjoy the everyday life out here in the almost countryside.  when we planted zoe's flower garden we put in all kinds of seeds.  many of which we had no idea what they would be.  however, there has appeared this amazing looking poppy.  thought it looked so interesting that it warranted a picture here.  we are definitely going to try and save some seeds from this one.  i just have convince zoe to stop picking them before the seeds dry out.

this was a cute moment,  zoe got a pair of roller skates from mormor for her birthday and little eijla just had to give them a go.  she did pretty well with a bit of help from pappa,  maybe would have been better with a video.  she was pretty happy, though zoe threw a fit cause she wanted to use them,  but only because eijla was using them of course.  oh has the sibling rivalry begun already?

thomas snapped this shot of the girls and i playing on the trampoline.  those two are wild, but insanely fun, though my bruises prove they are not the calmest, most mild mannered, gentle little girls in the world.  but we love them just the wild way they are.

summer days are flying by...

the other day we had a lovely visit with the österström girls.  anya and eijla have an amusing way of eating.  eijla usually puts her food on anya's plate and then anya feeds eijla.  eijla will eat anything, so i think she ends up eating both hers and anya's food in the end.  pretty entertaining for the rest of us.

then the garden has been producing, yeah!  here is zoe with two of our first cucumbers.  they are canning cucumbers but she loves to eat them anyway.

then one rainy afternoon we headed over to mormor's house for a visit with her friend ellie and her daughter kimberly.  zoe and kimberly really hit it off.  boy how those girls can pyssla!

home with the girly girls

always nice to be home with the girls in the summer.  they are so entertaining.  zoe rode her four wheeler around the yard, amazing how much more comfortable she is with it now.  love the expression on her face in this shot,  one determined little monkey.

 

 the other day we got up super early and drove thomas to work.  we loaded the girls in the car half asleep, and i was not much more awake myself.  all went well until we came home again.  that is when we realized that thomas had locked the doors, and i had left my keys in the house.  so i had two half naked girls and no cellphone locked outside in the way too early morning hours.  they were great sports, they cuddled up on the back porch while i tried to figure it out.  luckily we had left zoe's window open one the second floor and we had ladders, so i ended up breaking into our own house.  however it has made me realize how easy it is to get in.  so now i close all the windows whenever we leave!

 i have been shooting a lot in black in white lately.  the other day the girls and i had a little fun, and i got a few cute shots.  really love this one of eijla clapping. 

we finally moved the slide to the back yard, and now the landing is a bit softer on the grass instead of the stones out front, so zoe helped eijla slide down it, again, and again, and again, and again...
they had lot of fun.  it was a real treat to watch them playing so well together.  so glad they have each other.

so after months of having huge dirt piles in our front lawn, we finally leveled them off and made a new flower bed.  the poor lilacs and magnolia have been standing in pots for months waiting to be planted.  hope everything survives.  i think i will head to a nursery soon and pick up a few more plants though.  just so much nicer to look into our front yard and have it look like a yard, well almost.  still waiting for the grass to come in.