back in the land of smiles

so after our insanely annoying change of plans and failed attempt to leave sweden, we have finally succeeded. yes, they let us on the plane! yeah! we flew into phuket instead of bangkok, but that worked out fine, we are a little sad to have missed bkk, but will hit it on the way back instead. we are currently in krabi, that is the town next to the beach ao nang, where we worked and lived 2000-2001. it is crazy being back, everything of course is built up in vast amounts. tomorrow we are heading to tonsai beach to see and our dearest and oldest thai friend daum, who has started up his own dive school finally. yipee daum, way to go! we are at an internet cafe, and our food just arrived so this is a short one. sadly our computer crashed the day we left so we have not been able to upload pics or write proper entries, we are going to try and get it fixed asap, and that will help us be better at keeping this up to date. in the meantime, we are doing well, and hoping all our friends and family back home ( wherever that may be) are as well.

arrival in thailand

we made it to phuket. not our favorite place in sweden. but it was nice to have a nice long nap in a big bed after that long flight. we are heading down to krabi as soon as possible (tomorrow morning). but in the meantime, we enjoyed a thai massage and some nice cold drinks, as it is really hot here compared to sweden. going to take a bit of time to acclimatize.

last family gathering in sweden

well, we have left tyringe, and hopefully are not coming back till the end of march. we headed down to farfar and farmors house as they live much closer to the airport. anders, cilla, emma, and moa came over for dinner. it was fun having the family together, and we were able to discuss the upcoming trip. the girls were really silly, a little bit of hear no evil, see no evil posing...
and a cute one of the cousins together
and i just thought this one of little moa was just too cute not to post. it was a great last evening in sweden. looking forward to seeing them all again in a few weeks in sulawesi.

neighbor's snowy photoshoot

we are leaving tyringe today, but before heading out of town, we had a bit of a snowy day photoshoot with the neighbors. linus was in a bit of a silly mood so it was basically impossible to get any normal shots of him, but at least his unique character really comes out in the shots that i did manage to get. here a a few shots i thought turned out well. the lighting was a bit difficult for me to work with, but i think i managed to get a somewhat good balance of light and color, though some of the exposures were a bit off.

snow and saying bye to maya

a bit of snow on the ground, so pappa and zoe hit the hills. that is right, sledding season is here. this really the first year that zoe has been sledding as we are usually away in the coldest months. she seems to be enjoying it, but she is a bit of a chicken. though she suddenly becomes very brave when sledding with our neighbor, ida.

also managed to get this shot of her today which i thought was quite cute.

then maya and monica came over for one last ficka before we head to thailand. we are really going to miss them.

zoe's first lucia

today was zoe's preschool's lucia. it is a fairly big thing here in sweden. the lucias get to walk around in white gowns with candles singing. and they are followed by kids dressed up as gingerbread cookies and little elves. due to the average age of zoe's preschool being 2 years old, it obviously was not as sophisticated as the usual lucia train. however, the kids did help sing a bit, and it was really adorable. farfar and mormor were also able to come, so after the "lucia train" zoe showed them all her artwork and her very own book that she has at daycare. this was her last day of preschool. i think they are really going to miss zoe and she is really going to miss them.

here comes the gingerbread kid

it all started out innocent enough. zoe was very excited to make some pepparkakor or gingerbread cookies as we english speakers call them. she got her cookie cutters out and ready, and even put on her little gingerbread baker apron. not to mention, we invited mormor over to join in the fun.



zoe was a really good baker, picked up on it right away, think it might have to do with all those hours of playing with her play-doh. mormor helped her to refine her rolling expertise, and all seemed as if it was going well, but girls will be girls...
thats right, they got into a flour fight. silly kids, i think zoe might have won, mormor claimed she was covered head to toe. zoe of course played all innocent...
who could have done it? i sure don´t know and neither did zoe. these things just happen you know. is that thomas trying to roll zoe´s hand into the cookies? what kind of pappa is that?
no, silly momma, we are just making handprints for christmas tree decorations. see?
the cookies mostly turned out, though we burned a few being so caught up in the cookie rolling and cutting process, we forgot to watch the oven. talk about short attention spans, these cookies only need about 5 minutes to bake, but we just could not remain vigilant. go figure.

disappointedly stationary

as i am sure most of you of heard in the news, protesters have occupied bangkok airport for a week in hopes of ousting their prime minister. as it would happened, we were scheduled to land at that same airport this morning. but i am writing this still in sweden, so things did not go as we had hoped. it has been a bit of back and forth frustrating experience. when we heard about the occupation, we callled our airline, and they assured us, that we could rebook to another airport, or another date, or be refunded, but it was early, and the airport could be working again by the time we flew, so just wait and see what happens.

three days before we were to fly there were still no signs of the airport being opened so we called the airline again, they said they could not do anything directly, but to call the people we booked the ticket through and they could rebook us to a different airport or date. we called the online travel agency we booked through. they said there was nothing they could do until the day before we should fly, so wait until then. the next day we got sick of waiting, as we have other planes to catch in asia after landing in bangkok, and did not want to miss those flights. so we called the airline again, luckily we had gotten the numbers needed from the travel agency, so they could help us directly this time. they told us that all the flights to bangkok were full up to and including the 20th of december (we fly from malaysia to indonesia on the 23rd, so this was beginning to look real bad). little bit frustrating after having been told earlier to wait, and now it seemed to late. thomas found a flight on their website going to phuket on the 14th, but the agent said that she could not book us, because they did not sell that flight. after thomas insisting they sold the flight because he could book it on their website, she finally looked at it herself, and said, oh yes, i guess you are right, should i book you on that one then? yes, please! in the meantime she had offered to fly us to goa or the maldives instead, neither option would have really helped us catch our flight from kuala lumpur on the 23rd.

so there we were, readjusting to the fact that we were not leaving for 10 more days. that meant grocery shopping, as we had been emptying our fridge in preparation for our trip. also changing some plans and whatnot.

HOWEVER, the next day we recieved a call from the travel agency. we were flying on the 4th, but into the military airport 200 kms from bangkok. i was quite happy to be going to thailand afterall. thomas asked if we couldn´t keep the 14th, as we had already made plans and it would be a bit stressful, as we would have to leave that same day and stay over at his folks house in order to get to the airport early enough in the morning to make the flight. she said we had no choice, and that it was 100% confirmed, and we were going. we both asked her repeatedly if she had confirmed this with our airline as they had just rebooked us the day before. she assured us repeatedly that she had. okay, so we had about 6 hours to get ready, change all the plans again, finish packing and head south. farfar was very nice and came and picked us up.

so the next morning we all woke up super early and headed for the airport, once again super kind farfar drove us. we headed to the check-in counter. check our bags, ready to go, just waiting for our boarding passes, when the agent runs into a glitch. hmmm. there we stand for 30 minutes while he tries to figure out what it might be. finally he sends us over to a specialist, as he needs to check in the rest of the customers standing in line, as the plane is going to leave soon. this does not look good. looks like we might miss our flight. luckily the agent did not send our bags yet.

off to the specialist. she is confused. we are booked on a flight that has no clearance. the travel agent has book us on a flight that has not been cleared for passengers. the lady reassures us that you ARE NOT allowed to book passengers on a flight with this status, and the travel agent has made a big mistake, and that in their system we are still booked for the 14th of december. argh! so we are not flying today then? no, no way, sorry. okay, so all the stuff we did in a huge amount of stress to get ready to go was for nothing? yeah, i am afraid so. crap. so between paying for the bridge between sweden and denmark, the parking, and the gas, the trip to the airport cost us (and farfar) nearly 150 USD. not to mention we had avstalled our car, which means we cannot drive it. obviously we were pretty mad at the travel agency. anyway, we drove back to thomas´ folks and had a nice relaxing day with them. except of course for the hour i spent waiting on the phone to talk to someone from the travel agency, who just said they did not do anything wrong and the airline had issued the ticket, and there was nothing to discuss. those of you who know me, know i was not happy about this. however our only option at this stage is to make a formal written complaint. so that is the plan. in the meantime, travelpartner.se deserves to have some mud thrown in its face.

farmor and farfar were great hosts and helped us to stay cool and not get too upset. thomas made an amazingly delicious appetizer plate.
and then farfar blended up some yummy martinis. zoe was super funny, she really wanted to have a strange glass like we had so farfar put some water in a small glass kinda shaped like ours with an olive on a stick, and zoe was content. she is big fan of "skål!", that is cheers in swedish, so she was toasting and drinking her olive soaked water with gusto. so now it´s 14th instead, hopefully.

toothfairy

i am so glad that zoe loves to brush her teeth. although it is not always this easy, but usually it is, thank goodness. she was very proud of this picture, and i of course thought it was adorable, so i had to post it. brush, my beauty, brush!

leftovers

yes, that is not an illusion, that is eimi´s child chowing down on a HUGE turkey drumstick. thomas was really looking forward to some thanksgiving leftover turkey. sadly he did not get much of the drumstick as amazing this little turkey of mine chewed it down.