An unusual angle of an Öresundstrain in Arlöv. I was on a field trip with work, looking at the then newly constructed changeover from Left-hand traffic to Right-hand traffic.
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2nd of Advent (4)
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1st of Advent
Advent Calendar 2016
It has become a tradition; I’m having an advent calendar. This year it won’t be a contest, I just don’t have the time to set it up properly. I’ll post some information on the pictures, but there might be some things that aren’t correct or you have some more information, or an anecdote, please share them in the comments (they are monitored by me, so don’t be surprised if they don’t show up right away).
This is just a teaser. The inside of a dining car in Zambia, the luxury train that makes excursion to the Victoria falls bridge.
Püff is on its way
Today was a very special day. And no, it wasn’t the fact that I’m back at work after more than a year of parental leave that made it special.
Today we saw Püff for the first time. Püff is scheduled to be born in the beginning of January and will be our third kid.
Here is a picture from the ultrasound. We are looking forward to become a family of five!
Reap what you sow.
I just have to tell you about our garden. We had a bit more time to put into it because I was at home with the kids. So we got it looking really good.
Now we are earning the reward for the hard work. Today we gathered all this food in our garden. (Sure the work effort to get plums isn’t that much, basically just gathering them before they all fall to the ground).
Today we collected squash, plums, blackberries, beetroots, two kinds of onions, potatoes, parsley, dill and carrots. It’s such a joy to have all these good things to gather in the garden.
How can dinner be anything other than good?
Sorry I started eating before I took the picture, it was just so good. Almost everything came from our garden, just the meet and the small stuff you can’t see isn’t home grown.
2015 in pictures
I have finally got all the pictures from 2015 sorted out. This last year I’ve made more than the years before, mainly because I’ve a new phone with a better camera, I’m just not dragging my good camera around as much as I wish.
Here a little preview:
Here comes the link to the pictures: http://wolfmaier.se/2015-in-pictures/
Enjoy!
Sugar wedding
Today six years ago she said yes! I did too and we were wed. Time really flies. She is really something, wonderful to live with, great to have by my side. I’m so happy and lucky that it is us.
So the sixth wedding day is the sugar wedding, at least in Sweden or the English tradition. I like that.
Here she is.
We celebrated today by going to the movies and tea after without our kids. It’s the first time we have done something like this since our son was born.
Bird-feeder
We have a bird feeder in our apple tree next to our house. Today I decided to look a little more careful to see what kind of birds there are. Here are my findings, with translations to Swedish and German. I didn’t get all of them on photo, I wasn’t thinking about taking pictures first, here the ones that did end up on camera:
Goldfinch Steglits Stieglitz
This morning I first saw this little bird at our feeder, probably the reason I’m writing this blog post.
Nuthatch Nötväcka Kleiber
Here the Goldfinch has gotten company by a much more common visitor at the feeder. (I’m sorry for the dark pictures, not so easy to get them right they really move fast.
Great tit Talgoxe Kohlmeise
This is the most common bird at our feeder, here one is picking up seeds from the ground.
Here it is competing with the Gold Finch.
And a lucky shot of one just after lift-off.
Common blackbird Koltrast Amsel
I love this bird for their songs in spring and early summertime. Here it looked a bit cold. There are not that many of them here, but they are coming regularly.
Blue tit Blåmes Blaumeise
This small bird is also fairly common and normally one of the first to come to the feeder.
Marsh tit Entita Sumpfmeise
I’m not entirely sure I’m right with this one; it could also be a Willow tit (Talltita Weidenmeise). This is in my guess the smallest bird we have here.
Here a list of birds I didn’t get pictures of:
Magpie Skata Elster
Jackdaw Kaja Dohle, I’m usually trying to chase them away, as they empty the feeder within minutes.
House sparrow Gråsparv Haussperling
There are also Pheasant Fasan Fasan visiting the feeder, but I haven’t seen it today. I did see the tracks though. We also found tracks from European rabbit Europeisk kanin Wildkaninchen by the feeder. I followed the tracks around our place and it seems they do not live in the pile of rocks we have but somewhere else, probably closer to the lake.
Merry Christmas
Winter is here
Yesterday it started snowing while we were driving to Malmö. As we went back the roads had transformed to a slippery white adventure. Lucky us we had put on the winter tires in the morning. (Na, I had checked the weather report and it said something about snow coming).
I just love snow. It makes life just a little bit better. Especially in November as it is so dark otherwise.
Our daughter and I made a snow-family the first night:
A close up of the snow-lamp in the background:
Today was filled with outdoor activities. First of all had the driveway to be cleared from snow. That took a while, luckily I wasn’t alone on that. Here is the before:
And this was the result:
Our house looks so nice in the snow.
You might notice something different in the picture, last weekend we had great help from a friend of ours and Johannes parents taking down the birch-tree just next to the house.
Here it is after it was cut down:
And here is the house from the field without the tree:
Thank you so much for all the help.
I’ve also been doing things with the play-house, first I made all the corner-boards, but they still have to be painted in this picture:
To paint them I moved them into the shed:
I had great help holding the boards and tools from my son. Now some of them are back up, but as I can’t paint them all at once and now the cold came there are still some waiting to get done.
As the snow stayed I also built a snow-igloo for our daughter this afternoon. It’s kind of hard work playing in the snow. Here she sits inside enjoying the candle I put in as light:
That’s all for now; Enjoy the snow and drive safe.
My legs hurt
I did it. Today everything was right. Our son didn’t sleep before it was too short for him to sleep before we have to pick up his sister from preschool. It was dry outside and I was in the mood. So I packed our son in the trailer for the bicycle and off we went, to pick up his sister by bicycle.
I had checked the route and it gave me a hint that it wouldn’t be easy. Back and forth along the small backroads, I won’t take the main road, it’s not safe. It should be about 8 km, and more than 50 meters up and down. It turned out to be a bit longer and the last part the wind came straight against me.
Our daughter was happy that I picked her up with the bicycle. Her brother slept on the way there. On the way home I had some time to make pictures.
We live in an electricity producing area; there are wind turbines all over the place.
As I got a bit tired I had to make a few short brakes, just to rest my legs and arms.
Just before we come home I have to lift/drag all of us across this old stone wall. It is hard to imagine that I can get both bicycle and trailer through the shrubs behind the wall, but the path is wide enough.
Doing the pickup this way made the day feel shorter. (A good thing when one has to entertain a 1 and a 4 year old kid). It was fun to actually go somewhere and not just going back and forth along our little road we live at. I just love bicycling.
On the downside I realised in how bad shape I am. Okay, the wind was against me, but 8.5 km in just short of 40 minutes, that’s not good. I will have to do this on a regular basis to get back in to some kind of shape again. It would do me good. So I will try to do it at least once a week, as long as it isn’t raining, I’m comfortable that way and dirt roads just aren’t fun to be on when wet. I won’t do it with too much snow either, who knows how well the snow is cleared off the small backroads.
Now I will try to sleep, my legs are killing me.
Bicycling with kids again
Now I’ve done it (or actually last week some time).
Made the first bicycling trip with our son. One afternoon I crammed both of them into the trailer and bicycled a few round in the neighbourhood. They seemed to enjoy it.
We have to do it more in the future. Someday I might even pick up our daughter from the day care by bicycle. To avoid the big road I will have to take a trip more than three kilometres longer than by car. There is a long term plan to build a bicycle path along the big road, but who knows when that actually will be built.
Getting things done
Now I’ve been home for one month. Time has gone really fast. It’s already October. And the weather has been on my side. Plenty of days with sunshine and some kind of warm feeling in the air. So much that my daughter has asked me if we could go swimming a few times. Today I was actually contemplating it after my digging up the garden session. Didn’t happen though. We did go for a walk as family in the afternoon. It is really nice doing that. In Norway they call it “gå på tur” (walk a “tour”) and it’s all about getting out in the nature. Today we went west from our place along the shore of Ringsjön. It was a bit tricky the last bit.
Here are some pictures from the walk:
This was as the path we chose. No, it’s not really a visible path. Didn’t get much further than this.
Due to the low water level the shore was further out (behind the reed) leaving us fairly dry on our walk.
A view of western Ringsjön, most of these rocks are below water normally.
I have been doing a few projects around the house. I mentioned the digging of the garden before, but there is pruning of trees too, fixing some shelfs for our books and ground painting the playhouse. Pruning the bushes in front of the house was very satisfying. The result is clearly visible.
Not all projects went the way I wanted them to: I wanted to take care of some rust on our car, but as I started up the grinding tool it died on me. And it was brand new. So no fixing of car was possible and that frustrated me a bit. So I “grabbed” my family and we dragged our canoe to the lake and we made our first (very short) canoe trip. It was a bit windy and our son was tired so we didn’t get that far out.
The canoe after the trip. I have to remember to take a picture with us in it next time we do this.
We only stayed inside the rocks visible in the picture; the waves were a bit high for us canoeing amateurs.