Thursday, November 30, 2006

Sightseeing and barn sale

(Holiday ro-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ad, holiday ro-o-o-o-o-ad!)

One week in New Jersey made it possible for us to do a little bit of everything.
We had donuts and watched a score of football games. Aaah! How we have missed college football!
Joakim got his Miller Lite beer (?) to make the experience complete.

During the days before Thanksgiving we went on a road trip to the Amish country up in Lancaster county, Pa. Pop-pop acted as the backseat driver with the cookies by his side.

After a while, horse and buggy scenes became more common which slowed down the traffic considerably. The landscape in Pennsylvania resembles the countryside in southern Sweden.
Since we live in politically correct Sweden and are well aware of the debate over the Kyoto protocol we think that the Amish way of fighting climate change is a pretty neat solution. When we visited the cute little town with the unfortunate name Intercourse (!) we saw buggies parked outside houses in town. The only bi-product of these vehicles is manure (and that's good for the farmers' soil).

On thanksgiving day we spotted this turkey that was going to be spared this year. He belonged to some neighbors and seemed to be more like a household pet than a walking future meal.


The day after Thanksgiving we teamed up with Tara's parents and her brother and hosted a barn sale with things from Tara's Mom-mom and Pop-pop.

Although it had been grey and pretty dull weather the day before, things seemed to clear up during the Friday and there were quite a lot of people that showed up as the garage doors were opened.





To the right is the back side of the house in New Jersey.







This house would be a perfect backdrop for a horror movie, according to Joakim! Cape May, New Jersey - it is hard to grasp that this was once a bustling coastal community and the oyster capital of the US.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Thanksgiving

The Angelo/Gibson clan gathered around the turkey dinner in Cape May, NJ. Tara and Joakim flew in from Sweden. Tara's dad took a flight from New Mexico and her mother had a three day drive up from Texas. But we all made it there on time!

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Allah al akhbar!!!


Our latest asset in the household- an Azan "call to prayer" alarm clock! Tara's generous employer whose kid she is tudoring recently went to Oman. And what better gift to give your kid's teacher than an alarm clock (especially since Joakim is such a heavy sleeper)?
Our version looks just like the one above, except ours is painted in a tasty lime-green shade.
In the morning the clock screams (!!!) out several different chants on the lines of "Allah al akhbar". Yep, after a while you have to agree that he truly is great... great enough to get you out of bed. (You can also set the alarm to call out evening prayers.)
Did somebody mention the word kitsch?

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Mårten Gås

We went up to the summer cottage in Båstad to celebrate St. Marten "Goose" Day, on the 4th of November, which is one week too early since "Mårten" is supposed to be honored on the 11th of the said month.
Martin and Ida came down from Stockholm, and Joakim's grandmother and grandfather as well as his maternal grandmother also took part. Since Joakim's mother seems to have something against geese (she was chased by one when she was little) we had duck instead.