a weekend in röke

well, we kinda miss the egg dyeing around easter, or at least it was a very weak showing. but we pulled out the dyes the other day, and zoe dyed all the eggs we had in the house.  hey, why not,  it is fun to have girly colored eggs any day of the year!

then we drove in the the building store to buy a fan for our bathroom and ending up buying flooring for our bedroom.  who knows what we were thinking.  we ripped down the old loose wallpaper in our room, and put down a new floor.  what else does on due when they have a day off?

luckily we took it easy on sunday and played in the garden. the girls love picking all the spring flowers.

and my seeds are in.  hope it turns greens, but not just with weeds!

spring has come to visit our house. i just hope it stays.

a bit of garden help

this my last week of freedom before i have to start work again, so the girls and i have been out in the garden getting as much done as possible.  the girls planted all the seeds for their flower garden.  not sure how many actually got in the ground and how many blew away...

 eijla picked a daffodil in the field and put it in her hair.  she was so very proud of it.  so cute.

 not sure how, but eijla can pull zoe up the slide.  she must be crazy strong, cause i can tell zoe is not helping that much.  super eijla!

 continuing her superness, she decided to rake my garden, good thing i had not planted any seeds there yet.  what a great helper she is.

garden days

anya came over to play today!  eijla and her play so well together now,  they took turns pushing each other in the swing

 then the girls got a ride while we went out to the field to steal flowers..

 

then it was more work for pappa,  man, that boy can rota-til!  gonna be nice to have grass instead of stones.  our feet are really going to appreciate it this summer.

despite the cold it is almost impossible to keep warm clothes on our girls!  but they kept themselves warm hopping on the trampoline with our neighbor ebba.  they loved india, but are glad to be back with their friends.

bring on the spring!

it is nice to be home again, despite the cold.  we are spending as much time as possible out in the garden, getting it prepped for when it stops freezing at night, and well, just playing around and having fun.  the girls gravitated back to their play tower right away.  eijla was so cute even though we made her have her winter overall, she insisted on wearing a tutu over it!  what a silly goose!

 zoe playing tit-ut from the tower..

 and while we played, pappa rotertilled up both my garden and the girls soon to be wildflower patch.  what a great guy, think we will keep him.

 then we found a great deal on a riding lawnmower on blocket, and could not pass it up, even though the grass is not even growing yet.  it is still fun to ride.

 and then of course there is much planting of seeds in the greenhouse,  it is not so green now, but it will be.  oh yes it will be, the girls are helping see to that.  bring on the spring!

the leaves are falling

fall is here.  the cold weather has set in,  time for us to leave.  but before we do, best to have a bit of fun!  we raked all the leaves in a bit pile at the bottom of  the slide and let the girls go crazy...

 it was so much fun.  fall is also a great time of year, even if i am sad to say good bye to all my green things....

fall harvest, birthday party, and missing teeth

yep, the summer is over. there are freezing temperatures at night.  so we harvested all we could from the greenhouse.  here is eijla proudly showing off our last pickings this year...

then we headed south for the weekend again.  for a lovely evening with the annermalms, though we all we so tired we crashed way too early.  but the next morning was a birthday party for mathilda.  eijla and zoe joined in the festivities.  apparently rebecka and eijla won the popcorn game!

then there were goodies and ice cream cake, you  know eijla and her little sweet tooth loved that!

 then today we lost tooth number two.  zoe had let it hang so long, that when she finally let me pull it out today,  it barely touched it and it fell out.  pretty cute smile she has now.

 

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.

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!

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.