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Tag Archives: Pictures
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1st of Advent
Advent Calendar
I will again this year have an Advent Calendar here on my blog. There will be a new picture of a bridge for every day, similar to last year. The first entry appears at 6 in the morning on the 1st of Advent and then from the first of December all the way to Christmas day for you all to enjoy.
This year I have a contest going with this Calendar: You get points if you can name the bridge and tell the location. The first three correct answers in the comments everyday will get 3, 2 and 1 point (so you better get up early). After Christmas I will announce a winner who collected the most points. The winner will receive a free beer from a local brewery next time he or she visits us. If you don’t like beer there are non-alcoholic alternatives too, just let me know after the announcement.
Just remember, don’t wait for me to post it on Facebook, I typically don’t get up this early now and some days I might forget to post it at all, still the posts will appear on the blog at 6.
I will moderate the comments, so you might not see it on the page until later and you might not be first just because there is no comment on the post yet.
Here is the first bridge:
This one isn’t in the contest; it’s the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Have a joyful time!
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.
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.
Wildlife is cruel
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).
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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).
We 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.
Inauguration of the balcony
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 garden, with the fence to keep out rabbits and dears on the left.
The playhouse, hammock and sand box, chill and fun for parents and kids.
This green island is our home; the house is just about visible on the left.
short walk from our place you get to the lake, were sunsets like this one can be enjoyed (or swimming and canoeing weather dependent).
2014 in pictures
I finally did it, updated the homepage with pictures of 2014:
Here are a few previews:
Our house in the Winter
Victoria falls
To see them all check out the homepage: wolfmaier.se/2014-in-pictures
Happy Easter
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.
On Easter Sunday our daughter and I prepared the Easter eggs.
Later that day we had the egg-hunt in the garden. To find them there was some climbing involved.
The new wheelbarrow was a great success. Now she can help when we have to move things around the property.
5 Years
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.
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.
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.
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.
And it has begun…
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?
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).
