under construction...

so we have been accumulating all the stuff we need to redo our kitchen, and now it has finally happened.  new big sink, fancy induktion stove, new wooden countertop, and a nice new window that opens easily!  yeah!

so happy to be rid of the old rotten window that the previous owners had so smartly painted shut.

 then zoe even helped with the tiling. she is quite the little renovator!

 

all done!  even got the christmas curtains up, and most likely they will be up until christmas next year as well.  but loving our new kitchen!

thomas the builder

finally after two and a half years, we bought a new door for our pump room.  the old one only had a handle on one side and was, well, fit to be retired.  my super hubby installed this door in no time flat!  think it took me longer to put the lock and handle on!

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.

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!

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!

deck building time

this weekend thomas went crazy and built a deck in literally a few hours!  but first let's say good morning to zoe!

this was after about 2 hours... the man works fast!

then the next day we had to go and get some more wood.  but after a few more hours it was really starting to look like a deck!

the girls were lots of help and were even careful of their ears when pappa sawed!

eijla just would not stop helping with the screws!  i swear i put them up at least a million times.  and if we did not catch them when she handed them to us, she would shove them down in the gaps for revenge.  stubborn monkey!

the only way to get her out of our hair and away from the screws was for her and zoe to share a bit of ice cream.  that is the best bribe of all, it never fails.  i am so excited to have a finished deck for the grill, and finally a flat place to put the inflatable swimming pool! 

avfart fardigt!

so we finally finished shoveling all the stones and stenmjöl, and i finally laid all the stones, so it was time to pack it all down.  thomas brought the sugbil home, and instead of raking the stones out everywhere, we blew them out, which was much easier and faster. yeah!  then we packed. and we packed, and we packed it down with the packer.  eijla and zoe helped too.  zoe thought it was great fun. 

 

the left over stones we used to build a path from the greenhouse towards the back of the house.  i love a challenge, but i was pretty brain dead by the time i got all the stones to fit where they needed to.   cannot wait until the garden and yard are all done. maybe then we can take it easy!  yeah, right!

baking and driveways...

zoe loves molasses cookies, though i am not sure if it is because she gets to roll the dough in sugar, and then sneak pinches of sugar when i am not looking.  my little sugar monster.  but eijla got in on the action today. they were a great little baking team.

 they were barely cool from the oven before the girls were devouring them.  good that our cookie jar has a lid, or i think eijla would have eaten them all!

 this evening i was working on the driveway, and so to keep eijla happily occupied i put her in her wagon with the itouch.  should i be worried that my one year old already has such a good grasp of touch pads?  she loves the thing, and goes absolutely crazy when she sees it and doesn't get to play with it.  think we have created a monster!

 the stones we ordered for the driveway have a "random" layout, which means it is a detailed layout that looks random.  i was trying to puzzle it all together,  you can see it is not going that well.  but i can say i am much happier to be laying stones than shoveling them!

first breakfast in the greenhouse!

we enjoy our first cozy morning meal in the greenhouse today.  relaxing before the storm....

which of course was shoveling tons and tons, i believe the total to be 26 tons of stones for the under layer for our plattor in the driveway.  thomas and i are sore!  but we are ready for the stenmjöl now,  hopefully it is a bit easier to shovel!

and the girls were so sweet playing together in zoe's princess tent while we worked.  sometimes it amazes me that we produced such well behaved children.  not sure we deserve them, but love having them! 

and the projects just get bigger and bigger...

yesterday was a busy day. not only did i finish building the greenhouse, but the digging guy came and helped us finally reclaim our yard again after installing the geothermal heating. he was amazingly fast and leveled the yard really nicely. i was also nice to have to shovel the last ten tons of dirt by hand!
and there we have it. a big even, though not level yard that is just waiting for some grass.
meanwhile inside the girls were super good while we were working. they just cuddled up and watched a movie together. too cute.
and then after fixing the yard. they dug up the side of the house for fixing the draining, and they dug up a big section of the driveway so we can lay stones. the projects just keeping piling up!
pappa managed to get a well earned snuggle session with the girls out in the greenhouse. but he does not get to rest for long! poor pappa!

randomness for the mellendagarna....

zoe was happy for christmas day, as she woke up and found that the american santa claus had been here last night and filled her stocking with glittery things and even left her a purple sparkcykel! but best of all it meant she got to wear another princess dress! as we headed down to spend the evening with our extended swedish family.
speaking of princesses, i was treated like one for my birthday, including breakfast in bed!
eijla has started sleeping in her own bed, but it only seems to work at night, not for nap time...
her second ever ponytail. what a cutie if i do not say so myself.
and we finally sold the tyringe house. but to avoid paying too much in taxes, we went through all our reciepts for the last 8 years, and organized and added them up. doesn't it look like i am super organized?
and tonight we are off to furulund for some frolic and new years fest.

we finally have a kitchen table!

that is right. thomas finally had enough time off of work to make us a new kitchen table. the one in tyringe may have been "floating" but this one has wheels! not to mention tons of storage space (yeah!).
we all helped a little bit. though eijla mostly just tested out the durability and banged her head a few times.
thansk for the new table pappa! you rock!

when pappa goes away....

the girls will play! thomas and farfar went to scotland for a few days. so the first thing we did was have someone come and dig up our yard! no seriously we put in geothermal heating. and of course they had to come and do it while thomas was away. so now we have a huge muddy mess in our yard, however, the house is nice and warm!
poor little eijla, that kid falls and bangs herself up more than any baby i ever met. this nice big bruise on her cheek she got from just bonking her face on the floor while crawling. good thing she is so darn tough.
zoe was really hamming it up the other day. loving the hairdo. this kid puts more things in her hair than i can count.
speaking of putting things in her hair... now that there are no more flowers to pick she had started picking leaves instead!
she looks so calm and innocent in the pictures, but i tell you this kid is crazy. she almost never stops wiggling.
her little teeth started popping up the other day, but this is one of the first pics i have managed to get of them, when you can actually see them. if you look really close there are two small white teeth sticking up from her bottom gums. she managed to fall and smash her face the other day, and out popped her two teeth in her upper gums as well, now she has four teeth!
and then farfar and pappa came home from scotland. they came bearing many wonderful gifts as well. including some beautiful heathergem necklaces for us girls. i am really looking forward to using my new gardening book in the spring. better start reading it now! eijla also go the cutest pair of slippers with little sheep. so adorable.