roses and dishwashers, that kind of combo works for us!

so yesterday, my dear husband bought me beautiful red roses.  he better be careful or people are going to think he likes me or something. 

after a great family day yesterday, thomas was working today, but the girls managed to have a lovely picnic lunch, while i tried to install the dishwasher we bought yesterday.  love that zoe is eating a bit piece of asparagus.  we are pretty lucky our girls love their vegies!

and install i did, though thomas had to help me with the last little bit of mounting when he got home from work.  here is the girls starting our brand new, very quiet dishwasher for the first time ever.

luckily i had installed it right, and there were no leaks.  it is amazing we can now talk in the kitchen while the dishwasher is running, in fact we have to check the little window with the the time to see if it is running it is so quiet.  the old one sounded like it was going to explode.  not to mention while i installed it i fixed the plumbing under the sink, so the sink no longer drains into the dishwasher!  yeah!  yeah!  yeah!  only lived with that problem for a year and a half.  the things we put with up with due to our own procrastination!

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.

zoe turns 5 part 2

so zoe got two birthday parties this year, lucky monkey that she is.  farmor, farfar, and mormor came over for a sunday afternoon feed, bringing presents and snuggles.  zoe cornered mormor right away for a book reading...

while eijla entertained farmor and farfar with her extensive vocabulary of rolling r's and funny fish sounds.

and what does a 5 year old pick for her meal of choice?  why artichokes of course!  one of her all time favorite foods,  just wish i could get them to grow faster out in the greenhouse!

and then there was chocolate barbarpapa cake with lots of rainbow sprinkles. 

you could say we had one satisfied 5 year old on our hands.  seems like she is growing up faster than i can keep up with.  but i love sharing these milestones with her.  i am afraid i am going to blink and she will be off to college! 

zoe is 5 years old today!

we woke the birthday girl up with singing and presents and of course ribbons and pink balloons.

an extra big birthday kiss for my amazing and oh so grown up 5 year old. i even wore purple today in her honor.

then she had her favorite girlfriends over for a bit of cake and celebration.  they were so cute.  but i think there was almost always one that was grumpy and avoiding the others. but luckily they switched it up, so i think they had some fun in the end. 

zoe and her big creamy, chocolate, my little pony, with pink butterfly candles cake.  yeah, we got ourselves a real girly girl princess!  congratulations zoe!  we love you and are so proud of you and all the amazing things you do.  you are our little ray of sunshine.  happy birthday.

bracing for the big 5 year old day...

we have been getting ready for zoe`s birthday here.  she has all kinds of ideas and plans.  today we went out to the garden to see if there were not enough ripe strawberries to pick that we could maybe use for her cake, but well, we ate them all.

but we decided to make chocolate cupcakes instead as a trial run for her cake.  the girls waited with great anticipation while they were in the oven.  you could feel the tension in the air...

then out came the cupcakes and we put on creamy chocolate topping and sprinkles (thanks auntie zita!) and they were a real hit.  she is looking forward to her yummy cake in less than a week!

a garden day with my little ladies

what a great day to spend with my little girls in the garden.  they helped me water the greenhouse...

zoe helped to find as many cucumbers a possible in all the big cucumber leaves...

it is nice to see there is so much more green than there was a month ago. the tomato plants are turning into a tomato jungle.

yum!  cherry tomatoes!  now they just need to turn red,  i have not been able find any red ones yet because zoe always beats me out to the greenhouse and eats them all, buse unga.

then we had a picnic lunch out in the yard.  finger food, the only safe bet with crazy eijla`s crazy eating habits.

then our neighbor came over and told me i should make a bush fort for the girls.  our neighbor is great when she comes with ideas, she says them as commands almost.  always makes me laugh. but it was a good idea and they had bushes that needed to be trimmed so it worked out for both of us.  the girls seemed to like it, now we will just wait and see if they grow roots and survive.   this has been one of these days when i cannot thank my lucky stars enough about how lucky i am to be a mom to these two amazing little munchkins.

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!

getting crafty with farmor

yesterday we  had a crafty date set with farmor.  but pappa found out that he could get off of work early so we waited for him before heading south.  so we had a bit of fun with mormor while we waited.  eijla and puppy got a swing assist...

while zoe flew through the air all on her own. 

then we said bye bye to mormor and headed south.  where farmor was waiting with her clay all rolled out ready for us to play!  zoe and eijla helped to cut out the shapes.  there were not so surprisingly lots of hearts, butterflies, and seahorses.  and it seems as though eijla has an affinity for hedgehogs.

zoe took this pic of farmor and i working on the clay shapes, with my camera, the thing is heavy so it amazes me she can lift it and focus it and manage to get her subjects in the shot.  go zoe!

and here we have some of them after the first painting,  but we will see what colors they actually turn out after being burned.  exciting!

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.

back on swedish soil.

none of us are morning people, but we all managed to make it up and out the door to the airport on time. thanks to tony our wonderful chauffeur. so we flew back to göteborg...

and do not tell tony, but on the way home we stopped by for a visit withe franz and anna and their two adorable little ones.  they had this great outdoor farm/play area nearby.  had a fika, did a bit of playing and enjoying the company...

little inez was just so cute and so little.  not sure i remember that eijla was ever that small.  now she is jsut a bit ball of buse!

they even had some animals there that the girls could pet, including this huge rabbit.

great seeing franz, anna, esikil and meeting inez.  zoe and eijla though inez was just the greatest.

and the two good looking gentlemen of the house...

still a bit of drive ahead of us, we stopped an hour or so from home and bought picnic supplies at ica, and headed to the nearest beach we could find. 

some moments in life are just too perfect for words...

believe it or not. zoe took this picture, she is really turning into a little photographer.  i might have some serious competition soon!

what a great trip.  i tell ya,  traveling with my family is just one of those things i am so grateful for.