Category Archives: Life

This is my life, just simple entries with thoughts and observations

Wildlife is cruel

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One night we forgot to close the screen doors of our outdoor room. As we had been eating in there before we got a little friend helping us to clean up the floor. It was really effective. (Our son is good at eating but he is throwing the leftovers on the floor when he is done, I guess that’s normal for a one year old).

Hedgehog in our outdoor room

I really like the hedgehogs; they are nice animals, to look at from a distance. Don’t want to pluck out spikes after touching them.

Our cats are really nice ones. If I sit on the couch watching television they always come and get cosy. They are still a bit scared of our kids and I think that might be wise if you don’t want your tail to be pulled, especially when it comes to our son. They have decided that the couch is their favourite spot, most of the time (as long as the kids aren’t too close) you’ll find them like this.

Milo and Siam in the couch

When our son is sleeping they actually come and lay beside him sometimes. That is nice. They are gone faster than a lightning when he wakes up though.

They are really good hunters too. They from time to time (now a bit more seldom) come with “gifts” for us. Most of the rodents they catch they eat themselves. But they are a bit picky sometimes, leaving some intestines on the rug as a not so pleasant surprise walking to the shower in the dark in the mornings. Just the other day, (or maybe a week ago) they had left somethings that looked like intestines again, but this time it was no less than 6 mouse foetuses, four of which still in the uterus. I don’t know why they didn’t eat that, but as my brother has had a similar experience before it might be intentional.

They really are a threat to the small animals around our house. We like them to kill the rodents, but sometimes they kill small birds too (and a rabbit) and that isn’t really as nice. My brother saw Siam catch a bird that was trapped in our outdoor room. I just saw him walk away with the bird in his mouth. There still was one other bird in the outdoor room, panicking of course, so I opened a window and let it out before it would have been the next victim of the feline killing machines.

Some reflections on the first weeks

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I have been home with the kids for almost two weeks now and I think things are going good so far. Most times I went shopping with only our son, but yesterday we went all three of us. That’s more of a challenge, but with the arrangement below it went really nice. Except for the last 5 minutes when our son fell asleep. Not the best place to fall asleep. He did wake up as soon as we left the store and didn’t sleep until late in the afternoon.

Our daughter and son in the shopingcart at the store

Sleeping during the daytime is a bit of a challenge too (for our son, or maybe for me getting him to sleep). It seems like it is easier for him to get to peace than it was for our daughter though. So far he has slept a while every day. The best time is when our daughter is at preschool, right after lunch. Then I will have some time to fix things here without having him to watch out for. It is also good as he then will be tired in the evening when we want him to sleep. Some days that’s just not possible, luckily our daughter can amuse herself long enough for me to get him to rest the days she is at home or when he didn’t sleep before we picked her up again.

We have had a great harvest of plums this year. (Last year we didn’t realize that we had a plumtree until the one plum fell down). This has resulted in a bunch of cakes like this one.

Plum cake

We did some other things with the plums too, like chutney and compote, really nice. The blackberries are still in the process of being harvested, so far we have made some jam, but the plan is to make sorbet out of some we already have gathered.

4 years!

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Today 4 years ago our daughter was born. So I made a cake in the morning (cake for breakfast is tradition in my family at birthdays).

Cake for our daughters 4th birthdayWe were kind of hungry so I took the picture after she left for the preschool.

It is nice to celebrate her birthday again, it just is a clear mark that she is growing bigger and bigger. She got her first LEGO’s with the small pieces and she really enjoyed building it. It was fun helping her too.

Time to be a house husband again

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Since today I’m a house husband. I will stay at home taking care of my kids, the kitchen and all other things connected to the house while my wife goes to work. The last two years I did the working, but now it’s Susanna’s turn again.

I have done it once before, one year, when I stayed home with our daughter, now it is time for me to take care of our son and our daughter since she only is in preschool for 15 hours a week.

Preschool started today too, so today was really a day of changes. Our daughter needs more friends to play with than we can provide here at home so preschool it is. We have gotten a place at a really nice preschool in the next village to the south from us so it’s not far away. I’m just missing the bicycle path there; otherwise I would have used the bicycle trailer most days. Now I think I might do it once or twice as I have to take backroads that are more than twice the distance. I just don’t bicycle with my kids along a main road with a speed limit of 90 km/h.

That is just one way this time will be different than last time. Living in a house changes things too. There is always something to do when taking care of kids and household isn’t enough. I doubt I will get bored. I doubt I’ll get many other things done, kids and household has a tendency to be more time-consuming than I anticipate.

Anyhow, if you have your ways by Gamla Bo, give me a call and maybe you can stop by for a cup of tea.

Inauguration of the balcony

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We have now lived in our house for more than one and a half year. The house has a nice balcony on the west side with a beautiful view of the fields and woods (and lake if you know where to look) around our house. Already when we bought it we saw the potential of calm evenings on the balcony just sitting, chatting and having a nice glass of wine.

Tonight we finally did it. And for the occasion we used the Schorndorfer sparkling wine we got from our relatives during our summer Germany tour. It was just as nice as we thought it would be. (And we can sit there without a baby monitor as the window to the bedroom is not too far away and open so we hear them that way).

This is just one of the things that start coming into order now. Until this summer we have had a bit of chaos in the house and garden but now things are starting to come together. Books have been organised (there are probably more than thousand to sort out) into some kind of order, plans for the garden are made, windows are being fixed, tiles on the roof that were broken been replaced and many more things. Sure some of the fixing will never end but it has started.

The reason we inaugurated the balcony now was that one thing on our list was to clean off the moss from it and impregnate it with new oil was done this week and now it is a much nicer place. And that the kids went to bed early enough for us not to be dead tired.

This place is just such a great place to live. This year we are enjoying the fruits (so far strawberries, cherries, blackberries and plums, later apples) and some vegetables too (radishes, tomatoes, broad beans, potatoes and some red onions). The children have plenty of outdoor space to play, with our sandbox, the swings and the small children’s house that is under construction but well playable. We even got a hammock, but I’ve got to repair it now as it was old and the strings broke after a few uses.

Here are some pictures forms our place:

Our yard with the vegetable garden on the left

Our garden, with the fence to keep out rabbits and dears on the left.

Playhouse, hammock and sandbox

The playhouse, hammock and sand box, chill and fun for parents and kids.Our green island with our house on the left

This green island is our home; the house is just about visible on the left.

Lakeside sunset

short walk from our place you get to the lake, were sunsets like this one can be enjoyed (or swimming and canoeing weather dependent).

Happy Easter

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Happy Easter to you all!

I know Easter is almost over but this year I’ve been busy not sitting at the computer more than short bits. The weather was some kind of typical April weather with sun, rain, hail and thunder.

My parents were here and my dad made some pictures of the highlights that I like to share:

We burnt the branches and twigs from our property. As the darkness fell the fire was really beautiful, and the full moon made it less dark.

The fire in the night with moon

On Easter Sunday our daughter and I prepared the Easter eggs.

Prepairing Easter-eggs

Later that day we had the egg-hunt in the garden. To find them there was some climbing involved.

Daughter on the rocks finding an egg

The new wheelbarrow was a great success. Now she can help when we have to move things around the property.

Trying the new wheelbarrow on our front lawn

5 Years

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Five years ago she said YES. The best person in my life stood beside me at the altar and said yes. It was wonderful then. It is wonderful now! It has been wonderful between then and now.

You and me, Susanna and I at our wedding

Imagine that this great woman found me! And what a journey we are on. Life with her is a ride better than any you could find.

Susanna you are the best thing that has happened to me. You are the Milky Way on the clear winter sky. The soft breeze at the beach. I love to hear your voice. I just long to see you every time I’m away from you.

Picutres of our great journey

We have already been through many things. Made some big changes together, enjoyed life, worked our way through difficulties and had two great kids. I’m looking forward to all the things that are to come.

Picutres of Susanna

Today we are celebrating our wooden wedding. The traditional gift would have been silverware. I doubt that we need more silverware. Life is a dream with you. Sometimes I wonder when I will wake up. Then I realise that this is all very real. I just hope I cherish it as much as I should.

Picutres of our dream life

And it has begun…

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You who know us know that one of the reasons we moved out on the countryside was the fact that we want animals. In the long run we dream about having both chicken and sheep. I don’t know how long it will take until we are there. For the sheep we will need some extra land so the chicken are probably closer in time.

So before Christmas we finally got up the birdfeeder. It’s a start. So now the birds are able to get some seeds when the stock is short in nature. Not that it is this year, but we didn’t move to Skåne for the winter.

The birds really like the place. Most of the time the small ones are there, but in between crows come and raid the place too. Then we have to fill the feeder with new seeds. The pheasants are also finding the seed fallen down on the ground and once we saw a woodpecker too.

Pictures of the birds: How many kinds can you see?Collage of Birds And today things became even more serious; we have two new family members of the feline kind, Milo and Siam. A friend of ours couldn’t keep them anymore and asked if someone would like to take them over. We really wanted cats too. It is a start when you want to have animals and they are nice having around too. And it’s good to have them around when you have kids so they will learn how to interact with animals. Our daughter ran herself tired the first day excited about the fellas that came to our place and tried to figure us out. When she was asleep they were less reserved and Siam sat in Susanna’s lap for a while.

Here are some pictures of them today: (Milo is the black one, he is a bit more reserved than Siam).

A collage of Siam and Milo

Much needed break

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This autumn has been crazy. We all have been under a lot of stress here at home and I’ve been working much and traveling with work too.

Anyhow…

sometime this summer we decided we need a break this autumn. We want to see our friends and family in Stockholm some time again. So we planned to take a week off in November to go there and visit everybody. We had no clue of how hard times were ahead of us.

Then time flew. Like it always does. We hadn’t planned anything real and one weekend when we just realised it was all too much. We need some time as a family, just the four of us. So just before we had planned to book the tickets to Stockholm we decided not to. We started looking for an alternative. Staying home was not an option as there are so many things to do here so I wouldn’t have been a vacation that way.

Last week we did it. We left our little house in Skåne for a smaller house on Lolland, that’s a Danish island not too far away. Five nights away doesn’t seem like much, but it did great! I think the best part of it was that there was no internet there and as we are cheap we didn’t pay for roaming on our phones either. We had all the time together. Except for a few short trips to the village to get groceries, trips that would have been so much longer and trickier taking the kids along.

We played games. Sat in front of the fireplace. Enjoyed each other’s company. Relaxed in the bubblepool and sauna, no really it was relaxing, even the time my three year old was in it with me. Made some simple food, it tasted great. Got fresh bread from the baker a few mornings. Had a walk on the beach. Made a trip to the zoo and to Germany.

Not everything was perfect. I wish we hadn’t gotten colds, except Susanna, she was spared. I wish we had started cleaning out the place an hour earlier this morning. We made it out before the owner came though. I wish I had understood how the fire stove worked, now it was a bit of an ordeal to get it burning. (Maybe the wood was a bit too wet).

In total it was great! I always have said that the best time for vacation is in November. Even staying in this area of ever grey weather is better with a break than just chugging along. Just have a break. I warmly recommend it and my family does it too.

Sorry all of you friends in Stockholm that would have loved to see us. Most of you didn’t know what you missed as we hadn’t made appointments yet. There will be another time. We just don’t know when.

Sometimes I’m crazy

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Sometimes I do crazy things. Like today. I biked to work. All the way. It ended up being 58 km. I took a wrong turn at least twice. The entire trip took me 2 hours and 45 minutes. Not too bad as I haven’t biked much this last year. Now I only have to get the bicycle back home.

I love biking to work. It’s so liberating. I get to enjoy the great outdoors in the morning. Sunrise is a wonderful thing. Today it was hidden in the clouds, but the clouds left and the sun started to shine.

I just live too far from work to do it on a regular basis. I won’t bike when the weather is bad or if I already biked once that week. It would just take too much of my free time. But if I do it twice a month I should be satisfied.

Now the bike will get some new parts, a bunch of the gears just don’t work anymore and the chain is stretched. Then it will be an even more pleasurable experience.

Summer is a short thing,

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even if it’s eight weeks long.

Collage with picutres of the Summer of 2014

Somehow this summer has passed really fast. Sure summer isn’t really over yet but as I this week started work after the vacation/parental leave it somehow feels like it. It has been an exciting summer. So many things have happened. Still it also has been a slow summer, not doing even one overnight trip, only staying at home. (Except for the few nights when we were at the hospital for Gabriel’s birth in the beginning).

Ah, there you have the name of our son too: Gabriel. We had a hard time to decide, so it ended with us drawing sticks. We had two names, equally nice, but both of us had a different one as favourite. But if we get another son some day we have a name for him.

Most of the summer has been about taking care of our kids and getting food on the table. A few other things have been made though.

I fixed the lawn-tractor. It wasn’t that hard and now cutting the grass isn’t hard labour but fun labour. I think I’m becoming more of a mechanic as I live here, I kind of like fixings things.

I built some mosquito-nets for our bedroom and work-room and with the help of dad the guest room too. (My parents wanted to sleep there and it was warm so a mosquito-net was not a luxury). The one for the work-room I like the most, as it is a door.

We have made it to the beach twice. Once as a family and once with my parents but without Susanna and our son as a day on the beach isn’t the best thing for a new-born. We did go for a swim in our local lake a few times too, it’s just a five minutes’ walk so it really isn’t a big deal.

Our garden isn’t really giving that much produce, we haven’t really taken care of it as we should. But still; we have potatoes; we will have carrots and some beans. Three of our apple-trees have apples, so we will have apples too, (actually I baked an apple-cake with apples from one of the trees yesterday that we had at work today). Our blackberry-bush is having plenty of berries and they ripen over a long time, it now has given us a few portions with ice-cream and a pie, but there is much more on the bush. The only downside with the blackberries is that they have so many thorns and that makes picking them a bit painful. (We haven’t taken care of it the right way this spring).

We have spent some time with family and relatives. My parents have visited twice, Susanna’s a few more times, and we visited Susanna’s parents too (Susanna and the kids stayed over there one night even). We had a few friends visiting, been to the zoo in Höör with friends and have visited friends for a few hours, so it has been things going on even if we had to time it with our sons feeding, leaving us less punctual than usual.

Now I’m back at work. This first week has been calm, as most people still are on vacation. It is fun though; I’m working on a project where I will simulate railway traffic and I really enjoy that.

Now it’s weekend!

 

And he was born!

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This morning at 10.53 our baby boy was born in Ystad after only 1 1/2 hours at the hospital. He was 48 cm long and his weight was 3175 g. Now we are resting.

image

Mother and son.

Poff is due soon

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In the beginning of the year I wrote about the fact that we are expecting our second child. This time the working name is Poff. Poff is due on the 8th of June, or at least somewhere around that day.

Last Wednesday we went to a second ultrasound. We have a few of those booked due to the fact that Susanna has gotten pregnancy diabetes again. She had it while we were waiting for our daughter too. This time, as we live in a different part of Sweden now, they tested her much earlier for diabetes. Susanna wants to have the child at a certain hospital. So she made up her mind to treat her diabetes with food, rather than with insulin. The hospital where she wants to have our baby doesn’t take women that are treated with insulin.

So now she is eating a very strict diet, basically a LCHF diet. It’s hard. Especially at the holidays like Christmas and Easter right now. She can’t really eat any of the sweet stuff. And she doesn’t. I’m so proud of her.

It does rub of at me too. Most days she doesn’t make different food for me. I don’t mind it at all. I do miss the pasta and rice, but it’s not hard like I expected it. And it does me good.

Here is a picture of Poff:

Three pictures of Poff

We are now really getting our house in order. During the last week I have started putting up our paintings on the walls. We haven’t had them up since we left Stockholm. (Okay, we had a few up where there already were nails on the walls in Höör but most of them were stacked away). The house becomes so much more homey with paintings.

The garden is also getting into place. A few weeks ago my parents were here and they helped me build a sandbox for our daughter. The sand we had delivered. It came in a really old truck.

The sand truck:

The preperation, the sandbox, the sandtruch and the filling of the sandbox

I have also been digging up a little garden. I don’t know if we will grow much this year. I have started some tomatoes; they will be a bit late though. Susanna wants to grow a few more vegetables. One day in the future we hope to have most of our vegetables during the summer from our garden. That was one of the reasons that we wanted a big plot like we have.

The trees are now starting to get leafs. We have one little tree just by our house that blossomed with small white flowers. We are not quite sure what kind of tree it is but it has long pointy thorns too. Most trees on our plot are birches; we do have a few apple trees, a bunch of cherry trees some beeches, a chestnut tree, some oak trees and some shrubs we don’t really know what they are yet. Oh, and we do have two small spruce trees, they will become Christmas trees as they don’t really fit on our plot.

I’m so happy we have this place. I really love working in the garden. I love hearing all the birds in the morning, especially when I go for my morning run. I love the sunsets from our balcony. The fireplace in the living room. My lovely wife, our daughter and Poff that soon will join us.

We have some wildlife here too. Most are rabbits and moles. We do have a lot of birds. The pheasants are strutting around. Kites roaming the sky in search for some small rodent. Gees living on the field. All the small birds that live around the house. One morning as I ran my round a badger crossed my path. And last weekend, as Susanna and I went to bed far too late we saw deer buck just outside the window. We have rabbits too, but I’m more ambivalent about them as they might make it hard to grow our vegetables.

The full moon the other night: The moon up in the sky, and on the way down

 

Spring!

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Today was a nice and warm day. It is so nice walking back to the train station from work when the temperature is 12°C, birds are singing and the wind is from the back.

Then I saw something that made me really happy:

Early leafs

The first spring leafs. I’m so happy to see them. This is so much earlier than I’m used to from Stockholm. The last couple of days Facebook was been swamped with pictures of snow. Sure we haven’t had super spring weather here either, but it didn’t get cold, only windy and some rain.

This is something I have been looking forward to moving to Skåne!

Snowman and snow house

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Winter has arrived. With snow. That’s fun.

Our daughter thinks so too. Today we spent a few hours outside in the snow. First I fixed some things at the shed and garage then I built a snowman. A few days ago my dad shared some pictures with us from my childhood, reminding me of the time we built snow houses back then. So I thought I might try to build one too.

As the snow was the sticky kind today it was easy to roll big balls and construct the building. Our daughter made smaller balls that we fitted to the house too.

Here is the result.

Snowman

The snowman

Snow house and daughter

The snow house

Winter here is something different. A couple of weeks ago Susanna and me went to the cinema in Lund. On the way home we ran into some serious snow-drifts. They were really deep and all across the motorway making it hard to drive. Before we came to our exit we caught up with the snowploughs, so they had just cleared the snow and it was already back again. And all this while there was barley any snow on the ground.

Today as I drove to the store in Stehag I passed some snowdrifts (today it wasn’t windy like the day we went to Lund) that were more than one meter high. I doubt that the road was passable when the snow came.

2014 – A year to remember?

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2013 was an amazing year. As it started I didn’t know what it would hold for us. I had a few expectations, but they are dwarfed by what actually happened.

(See my post from the 10th of January last year: http://blog.wolfmaier.se/wolfie217/2013/01/10/new-year-what-will-you-bring/)

Here are the points that I thought of as certain last year:

“

  • I will go back to work. (Just the date is not decided yet).
  • Our daughter will turn two. (She actually turns 16 months today).
  • We will travel to Skåne a few times, the first trip to see my cousin in law become a priest in the Church of Sweden.
  • Our daughter will learn so many more things.

“

Little did I know then that some of the things on the list would be bigger, more altering than I thought.

We had already been thinking of making the move when I wrote this, but nothing was planned. So now to what actually happened:

  • I did go back to work, just not the work I used to go to. I’m doing so many new things. I’m having great new colleagues. It’s in a new town.
  • Our daughter turned two and is easier and easier to understand. She even talks in two languages some times.
  • We travelled to Skåne many times. Now we travel to Stockholm. First we travelled to look for houses, then to get the key to our apartment. After that the direction changed and we travel to Stockholm to visit family and friends.
  • Our daughter is still learning so many things.

But the biggest things that happen were not thought of:

We made the move, leaving our home in Stockholm for a new one in Skåne, first in Höör, then in our house in Gamla Bo.

  • I got a new job. A great job at Ramböll in Malmö.
  • We bought a house on the country side.
  • We are expecting a little Poff to join us in 2014. Poff being the working name of our next kid.

This leads me up to the headline question: 2014 – A year to remember?

It definitely will be. We will have our second kid; that is really big. We have been looking forward to have at least one more kid, but as things dragged along it wasn’t easy for me at least. I wanted the kids to be closer in age. One just has no say in how fast things go. Now there won’t be too long between them, just a little less than three years and that is fine, it was just longer than I hoped for.

I don’t know how our daughter will react to Poff arriving but I think she will become a great big sister. She already talks about the little little baby living in mom.

I do know that Poff will be born into a nice home.

By the way, Poff comes from the fact that at some point a friend of ours called Susanna and me Piff and Puff, as the chipmunks in Donald duck. Our daughter had the working name of Paff before she was borne.

Now we just have to get the home in order. We have had my parents here for Christmas and New Year and they have helped us a great deal, making our home liveable. There are still plenty of things to be done until some real ordinary life will show up, many boxes to be unpacked, lamps fixed (they have to stay at the apartment until it is clean; we keep it until the last of January). Curtains and pictures on the walls might take a longer time.

Owning a house is much more an ongoing project than renting a place. The list of what is to do will grow faster than we can check things off.

Back to the question, now a few points to remember from 2014 that we already know:

  • A trip to Zambia.
  • Poff being born.
  • The first summer in our house.

There will probably be a few more things. It won’t be an ordinary year. It will just not be the life changer that 2013 has been.

(And we do have a guest room).

Yellow Danger

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We are now the not so proud owners of the Yellow Danger. If you haven’t guessed it yet; it’s a new car.

We need a second car as we move to our house as it takes too long to take the bus to the station (and the bus only goes every now and then) making the commute to work just annoying. So we decided we buy a small cheap car that would take me the short trip (about 10 kilometres) to the station. We looked at a few ads. And last Tuesday I went to a dealer and bought a cheap little thing.

We are now the owners of a yellow Hyundai Atos from 2001. Yellow Danger is its name. (Gula faran in Swedish). It isn’t the nicest car there is. (I do like the fact that it is yellow though). It has some parts missing. (Nothing important I hope). It has an electrical motor pre-heater, which is good for starting the car in the winter. Not much else is electric in the car (kind of Stone Age but less things that can break). It has some dents, but they are “fixed”.

I think it will do fine taking me to the train. I won’t need a super wide parking space and it won’t use much petrol either. I don’t think we’ll drive far with the car, I sure hope we don’t have to, it’s just not as good on the motorway as our Škoda and its steering is made for city driving.

Here is a picture of the car type. (Not the one but a similar one with a few less dents).Yellow Danger

Boat owners

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Now “our” house has passed its check-up and the water-test came back with good results too, so we will get our keys in the beginning of December.

Today we went over to the house to clear some things with the previous owners; among other things we decided what things they didn’t need to trash to clear the house. We had talked about the things in the garden shed before. We also knew about the fact that some of the shelves would stay. What we didn’t know that with the house we would be boat owners. Okay it’s just a canoe but still it’s a boat. Some nice surprise there; not only do we live close to the lake, but we have the means to get out onto it.

We will also get one sofa; it will complement our lounge perfectly. We are now in the process of filling our model of the house with furniture, so that we know where to put the things when we move.

Maybe we should be starting packing now? There are still some things to figure out before that, like the fact; can we use the boxes we used in the last move, or will they want the boxes back just during our crazy moving days? We will try to move before Christmas, we just don’t know when we will have time to sleep too. (As I work and our daughter keeps Susanna busy during the day). I can already announce that if anyone feels called to help us with the move (we’ll do it ourselves this time) and needs a break from Christmas shopping, just give us a call. We will probably need help more than once during December.

Our daughter seems to like the house too. Today Susanna showed her the room we are thinking will be hers and she approved of it. And she really loves the stairs. And the cat. But we won’t get the cat.

We found our house

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Last Wednesday we signed a contract to our new home. It’s a little house in the village of Gamla Bo, just south of Ringsjön in Skåne. That is just about 10 kilometres south of where we live now.

We will have access to the place by December 2nd but we haven’t decided on when we move yet. We will have our flat until the end of January, so there won’t be any rush.

There are still some small hurdles to pass. On Tuesday we will have the house checked by a professional to give an opinion on what flaws there are to the house. We will also check the water to see if we have to connect it to the public water supply as it has a well now and it could be contaminated. (The previous owner thought the water was fine though so we hope it is).

The house is situated on an almost 3000 square meters plot of land with a driveway, a bunch of trees (some of them are fruit trees) on a grass lawn and a garage/shed. The shed part has to get its roof fixed; the rest is okay as it is. Surrounding the plot are fields belonging to a local farmer, though he doesn’t farm any more, but he cuts the grass there.

The house

It’s about 100 meters to the lake. We will have a guestroom, if we use the rooms the way we think now. There are trees in perfect distance for a hammock, space for growing some vegetables. Maybe some chicken?

The house doesn’t have a basement. I don’t mind that. It uses the ground for heating and has a little fire place too. There is a balcony on the second floor and an outdoor room in the back, with a nice view of the field and the evening sun.

Detail of the house

Somehow it’s scary to buy a house. There are so many things to think about. I hope we have thought about most of them.

There are budgets to make, maintenance lists to create and plenty of new things to take care of that one doesn’t have to do when renting an apartment. Both of us grew up in houses. But we didn’t have the responsibility of taking care of them back then. The practical things I have seen. The paperwork I haven’t.

We will have to get one more car too. That is a bit of a bummer. And we just can’t afford an electric one like I would like to. (That would be perfect, commuting by electrical car). Now it has to be a small (but still 4 doors) thing with low fuel consumption. And cheap. Not too old. Did I mention cheap? I will use that go get to the train station, either in Eslöv (probably not as there are too few parking lots there), Stehag (even less probable as there are just a handful of parking lots there and only the local trains stop there) or Höör.

I have started to make a model in SketchUp of the house. It makes planning and moving in easier. I still lack some measurements so I will try to get them on Tuesday.

All the pictures are courtesy of Våningen och Villan, the real-estate agent helping in selling the house. http://www.vaningen.se/

Two Years: The best!

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Today our daughter turned two. It has been an amazing trip. I don’t have words for how blessed we are with her. We celebrated her both yesterday and today, yesterday it was with some relatives, today it was just us as a family.

It is wonderful to see how she is growing up and learning new things by the day. We start to understand more and more of what she says. Her sentences are getting longer. She is playing with her things, letting them having long conversations.

Today we had the possibility to skype with both my brother and my parents so they could wish her happy birthday too. It is great what technology can do, making it possible to sit face to face and still be in different cities or on different continents.

Here are a few pictures from the celebrations:

Our daughter dancing away at the zoo.Our daughter dancing away at the zoo.

Four generations

Four generations, from Oldemor (great grandmother in Danish) to our daughter.

Tricycle

Now this tricycle moved here, it’s a good mode of transport to the playground.

Going down the slide

Going down the slide is great fun.

TV-repair man

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Our TV has been acting strange for a while. I don’t know exactly when it started but it might be a bit more than a year ago; it just didn’t start at once anymore but clicked a while until it started. In the beginning the clicking was just going on for a short time but it soon increased to be about five minutes. And this way it stayed until recently.

One Sunday evening a few weeks ago I wanted to chill in front of the TV and I started it, thinking it would take about 10-15 minutes (it had after the move started to take a little bit longer to start up). Half an hour later it still clicked away in the living room and I started getting worried. After one hour I gave up. I had chilled in front of the computer instead (not as chilling as the TV) and it was about time to go to sleep. I did not go to sleep, but started searching the internet if there are other people out there with the same problem.

I was not alone. Not alone at all. There are plenty of people who had the same problem as I had. Some got it fixed by the warranty. Most (that I found) didn’t due to the fact that the TV was more than three years old. Bad quality Samsung TV, with things in them that just barely survive the warranty. And it was all kinds of models affected. Ouch, that didn’t feel good. I already saw myself trying to find a new TV (from a different brand) spending lots of money we really don’t want to spend. (And no, I don’t want to live without TV, it’s just too nice to chill in front of it after a hard day).

But then I looked at the links that Google had shown me a little closer. And there were some people talking about fixing the problem. So I looked at one of the links; http://redpushpin.blogspot.se/2011/08/repairing-samsung-lcd-tv-with-clicking.html

and it looked kind of easy to fix. So I decided I would give it a try. One or more of the capacitors could have popped. The fix being replacing the capacitors and then it would work again. Just make sure you don’t use the same ones as they were not really good enough only coping with 10 V, one should use at least 12 V or higher (all other things the same).

The day after, in the evening when our daughter was asleep, I unscrewed the back of the TV and saw the problem right away. Two of the capacitors had popped.

Before

Here they are marked.

So I unsoldered them and ordered new ones. Then the big wait started. It took ten days until the parts came. Ten long days without TV. Okay it was not that bad, but still.

When the parts arrived I soldered them into place. I’m actually kind of proud of my soldering even if they are not as perfect as the others on the circuit board:

Solders

It is the two objects called CM 852 and CM 853 that I replaced.

After

This is how they looked from the other side. (It’s the two black ones with a “K” on top).

After that I put everything together again and plugged all the parts in. I pressed the on button, it started right away and I had a little victory dance.

Sure all warranties are void now but hey, they were void already before due to high age. And watching TV isn’t an activity that needs to be planned ahead anymore.

First run (in Höör)

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I finally did it, my first run in Höör. I haven’t really taken care of me for the last couple of months. My last run was in mid-May. That’s just too long ago. A week ago I decided that after the cold I had I should start running again. Now the cold is kind of gone, it doesn’t bother me anymore so I decided that it was time.

I thought I’ll put up a note here once every now and then about how it goes, maybe that motivates me more. I have to keep up exercising, now that I’m not using my bicycle as much as before, due to the fact that I won’t be living in bicycling distance from my work. (And that almost everything else is within walking distance and we have a car).

Here is a picture of the route that I ran today, it took me 23 minutes for the 3,14 kilometres it is long.

Map of first run in Höör

I also got my speedometer for the bicycle working again so now I will know how fast and how far I’m actually going. Today we (my daughter was in the trailer) went to City Gross (a Supermarket) a round trip of 5 kilometres. Not really that far, almost walking distance actually.

The art of settling

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We have now lived here in Höör over one month. Time has gone really fast. We have had plenty to do. But now things are getting to some kind of normal. And then it all will change again when I start working in three weeks from now.

The apartment is getting into shape. We only have a dozen of boxes left to unpack and they are mainly things that belong into our children’s room. (That room also houses all the empty boxes, 179 so far). That doesn’t mean that the room is not used yet, our daughter uses it all the time as we have made her a little desk there where she can paint. We also put most of her toys in the room, leaving the rest of the apartment less of a mess.

Susanna is getting into her “new” job, just the way it was planned. The days are not that much longer than in Stockholm, though she starts earlier to get home in time for dinner. Traveling by train is also much more pleasant for her than traveling by underground. We visited her at her job once and had lunch at the Malmö festival.

Living in a small town so far has had mostly pros:

  • There is walking distance to most places.
  • If it isn’t walking distance it’s only a short bicycle ride away.
  • Traffic isn’t too heavy for using the bicycle.
  • People are friendly. (Not that we have met all but the ones we met were).

Living in Höör gives a few extra pros:

  • It’s close to my parents in law.
  • It’s close to Malmö and Denmark.
  • It has a zoo. (We haven’t been there yet though).
  • It has a butcher. Meet just tastes better from a butcher than from a supermarket.
  • It has a few lakes to swim in that are within bicycle range.
  • It has beaches (nice sandy ones) within one hour by car, in two directions so one can chose depending on which one might have the warmer water.

There are some cons to though:

  • It’s far from my parents.
  • The place we live in doesn’t have that nice a view like we had in our place in Blackeberg.
  • I won’t be able to take the bicycle to work.
  • It’s far from many of our friends.

We have also started with looking for a more permanent place again. So far we have looked at five (if you read this after Sunday afternoon six). We now have plenty of time to find the right place. But it is so hard. One place hade everything but was located too far out so that we would have to take the car for 10 minutes just to get to the closest store. Even the closest bus stop was three kilometres away. One other place had a beautiful garden. Just a little bit too beautiful, we don’t need a garden that takes all our free time to take care of. We want one that is practical and where we can grow our vegetables and have some chicken in the future. Basically a big grass lawn with a few trees would be perfect, not an intricate sculptured garden with bushes, ponds and flowerbeds that want plenty of attention to not look unkept.

Skåne here we are!

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We did it. Or maybe we are doing it. We have gotten all our stuff to the new place, but we still have to make the place liveable. Thanks to my parents in law where we all slept good last night. Susanna and our daughter slept the night before that at their place too and might sleep another night, while I did sleep in the cupboard the first night after I drove down the car from Stockholm. I chose that room as it is the only room without windows and I didn’t feel like putting up blinds in the middle of the night.

But first let me take it from the start.

On Monday we had our last guests at our old place, after they left we really started dismantling the place (We had done some of it before but were far from done). We had planned it this way as we had decided to have a company help us with the packing and moving.

On Tuesday we dismantled the rest of the things we could get done. We also got rid of all the things we didn’t want to keep. It all took a lot longer than we thought, but at three in the morning we were done so far that they could pack up the rest the day after.

On Wednesday three packers came and boxed up our place. We tried to keep out of the way and started to dismantle the furniture that they emptied. We had a fairly calm day this way, Susanna was mainly taking care of our daughter outside and we had all our meals outside too as it wasn’t really possible to be in the apartment during their packing. After they were done I joined Susanna and our daughter at the beach, meeting with a good friend of ours.

In the eventing we went back to the chaos and took care of the last things that had to be done before the move.

On Thursday we moved. Susanna and our daughter left early on a plane to Skåne to prepare a few things in the apartment and I stayed behind to oversee the loading and cleaning.

The truck came early and they started filling it up. With all our stuff. We have a lot of stuff. We have too much stuff. The stuff didn’t fit in the truck. Not so fun. But the moving company said they could get another truck (small one) and fit the rest. Now we know how much stuff we have, 67 cubic meters. This is exactly the amount that one other firm thought we have in their bid. When we got that bid we didn’t believe it. How can three people have that much stuff? Good we did some cleaning out before, otherwise we would have had even more. We’ll have to continue cleaning out stuff after this.

While they were fetching the other truck I had lunch with my mother. That was really nice. She took me to a good Italian place just by her work. It was a good break.

As I came back the cleaning was on hold as they needed to get out the last things from the apartment to get it done. I packed up the things I was to take in the car and had some nice talks with the neighbours. I’ll miss the neighbours, they were nice people.

At five in the afternoon the last things were loaded and the cleaning was done. I checked the cleaning and after about one hour I was on my way.

Driving is fun and went smooth; I arrived at home (yes this is home now) a few minutes after midnight. After unpacking the car and winding down a bit I slept well, for the first time in our new home.

On Friday the trucks arrived and they started filling up the place. I only had to direct them where to put things. At noon Susanna joined us and at two they had unloaded everything. We had some lunch, I had some rest and we put the bed together before we left for my parents in law.

Today we slept in. We will go back to the place later and I will stay there overnight trying to fix as much as possible so that we all can stay there from Sunday on.