New Year's Eve 2010

Our New Year's platter: lobster served with crème fraiche, red onions, red and black cod roe, slices of lemon, and toast. We washed it down with a nice, dry Chardonnay - Blason de Bourgogne 2009. Later, at midnight, we had some Champagne (Nicolas Feuillatte 2004) while watching the fireworks from our window. More than half a foot of snow fell between 10 PM and 2 AM, which created a wonderful winter landscape in the city streets (see below).

Fun to do indoors in December

Drawing with Daddy with my new crayons!

Taking my Brio dachshund for a walk in the apartment. (To the tunes of "I want a dog".)

First of Advent

 

 Sweden celebrates First of Advent by putting electrical candlesticks in the windows and start opening our advent calender. And so do we. 

 Read more about it here:

By the time December comes round, Sweden has very few hours of daylight. The sun drops out of sight in the afternoon. The first Sunday of Advent comes as an eagerly awaited sign that Christmas is approaching. Although by then, of course, the world of commerce has made sure we know what is coming — sales campaigns begin in mid-November and Christmas shop windows and street decorations are already in place.

Our son opening his own advent calender, assisted by Mom.

Coffee for the Holidays

Seasonal coffee. Dunkin' Donuts Pumpkin Spice!!! Our X-mas gift from Aunt and Uncle Angelo: Sista Sarah and D-Rock.

Fun in the snow during X-mas!

Our son loves the slopes in our neighborhood.

Dad joins in the fun on his old Snow-racer by Stiga.

It's fun in the su... snow!

In a country where snow-plowing is not an everyday business in the city the streets are perfectly prepared to go sledding. In the picture above WC is pulled by Dad across the tramcar tracks.

Yet another snowfall buries the cars down below in snow. We saw plenty of fresh snow in between Christmas and New Years Eve.

Merry Christmas, dudes!

American Christmas Day in our home

In the morning: Santa left presents under our Christmas tree!

WC opening presents by the "fireplace" with Farmor and Farfar.

Farmor and WC posing by the Christmas tree.

A young version of PopPop! WC in a US Navy Pea coat.

Our table set for the Turkey dinner.

Our table in its standard Christmas outfit.

Junior Jingle Bell Rock between two cousins. Frosty the Snowman playing the piano is an old Hallmark gift from MomMomMom and PopPopPop.

God Jul!

God Jul 

from All of us to All of You!
 

Season Greetings

The Nilssons

Swedish Christmas celebration

Swedish Farmor with WC and his cousin.

 To celebrate a real Swedish traditional Christmas evening, we went to Aunt and Uncle Nilsson's house outside of Stockholm.

Plenty of spruce and fur trees heavy with snow. And the streets are as white as the surrounding.

Our son, watching for when Santa is supposed to arrive.

Our hosts, Aunt and Uncle Nilsson, with the delicacies prepared for a traditional Swedish julbord - a seasonal form of a smorgasbord. Lots of herring, pickled herring, salmon, achovis, Jansson's temptation, ham etc etc.

Two cousins enjoying gingerbread cookies and milk.

Santa and Warren Christopher

Swedish Santa finally made it to our home to meet with our son and deliver a whole bunch of Christmas presents.

Santa is on his way!

"There is no bad weather, just bad clothes," say the Swedes. And winter is just another season. Right now the thermometer shows  -6°F (-21°C) in Stockholm. With winds that reach 16 ft per second, the wind chill factor pushes the quicksilver even lower, to -26°F (-32°C)! The picture above is from a country road just south of Stockholm. If you want to see a wonderful video clip from a snow-clad Sweden (showing Santa leaving his home in Swedish Lapland)  you have to click here!

Farmor's birthday!

Farmor had her birthday, and we just had to give her this kewl Urbanista design called Dramaten, color: The Pink Panther. Hopefully it will be a good help during her grocery shopping trips (since we kind of "stole" her old one).

Comments are now available!

Happy B-day Debra! To celebrate your birthday we are now opening up for comments on our blog - something you have been very keen on pointing out to us. So... here it is! Our posts are open for comments from everyone (though we will use a moderator function)! Just click on the comments section below each post.

And have a very happy Birthday!

/Tara and Kim

Do you have what it takes to live in darkness?

We are moving in for the darkest week of the year. On December 21 the winter solstice makes it the darkest day of the year with less than six hours of sunlight. It could be worse. Stockholm is located in the south of Sweden, and if you travel just a little bit north in the country, above the Arctic Circle, you will have complete darkness for an extended period of time (basically beginning of December until mid January). Still, those "six hours of sun" needs some explaining. Today, the "sunrise" was clocked at 9.20 AM. That means that the top part of the sun disc was visible by the horizon. And throughout the "day" the sun never ever leaves the horizon, making it tricky to drive cars if you are not used to avoiding low sunshine. Also - keep in mind that when we have low pressures (fronts of snow and overcast that can linger for weeks) you do not see the actual sun itself. You just notice that it gets brighter as though the sky is in a foggy haze. (You can see what we mean by looking at the photos we took during a mid-day event at Skansen.) Anyways, around 10 o'clock we have daylight. And that continues until 2 AM, when the sun starts to "descend". The recorded sunset (defined as when the top of the sun disc is below the horizon) is at 3.12 P.M. but with the sun placed so low in the sky it actually gets dark around 2.30.

The included video from Longyearbyen (where they experience complete darkness - the "Polar Night" - for 11 weeks per year) gives you a good insight into what it is like to live in this part of the world.

Winter Market at Skansen Heritage Park

We braced ourselves and went out into the cold to experience this year's wonderful Christmas market at Skansen Heritage Park in Stockholm. Our son enjoyed being able to keep his feet warm inside his new Ajungilak Little Mammut winter sleeping bag. Swedish grandmom and mom posing for the camera at the market square at "Bollnästorget".







Shopkeepers selling anything from newly baked Nordic tunnbröd (flat bread) to sausages made of moose, caribou and wild boar (we bought a boar sausage for our Christmas smorgasboard - yum!) and lots of herring and smoked eel and candy and "glögg" (a traditional Swedish version of mulled wine, served hot) and reindeer hides ... and everything in between.








Tara inspecting the mistletoe stand. Notice how all the shopkeepers at the park wear traditional folklore costumes.





The candyshop. Adorable candy-cones hanging.

Horse and carriage through the snowpacked streets of Skansen.



Tara gives a guided tour of Bollnästorget and the Christmas market. Grandmom is "dancing" with WC in the pram.


Traditional Christmas dances in some kind of rock'n'roll version. See if you can follow Mom and WC and Grandmom dancing in the middle. Hint: Try to look for Tara's read hat. Oh... and notice the steam coming from everyone's breath...

Grandmom and WarrenC at Skansen.

Dad and Grandmom by Seglora kyrka in the snow.

Fishmongers: Smoked herring (cabinet in the middle) and grilled herring "sotare" (to the right).

Freshly baked bread. Already refrigerated...

A nice way to see Skansen is to use horse power. Notice the sky in this photo. It is around 1 PM when this photo was taken. And this is about as much sunlight as you can expect here this time of year. Around 2 PM the sun is starting to disappear by the horizon (it never really gets very high up on the sky anyways) and by 3 PM is is pitch black!

Tara is greeted by the local "townspeople" at Skansen.

 Warren Christoper and Grandmom dancing together to keep warm.

Lots of people, and then WC and his Grandmom in the middle of the line dance.

As soon as it got dark our son crawled back into his sleeping bag in the pram.

It might be cold and dark, but the "fish" at the kids' fishing pond were biting. Mom and Grandmom helps WC to hold the fishing rod.

View of Stockholm from the main stage at Skansen.

The park closed at 4 PM, and by that time the cute lanterns outside of the heritage park's many cottages were guiding us through the picturesque streets.

Brand New Baby Slippers

Warren Christopher's new slippers. He absolutely loves them! And they keep his feet warm on our somewhat cold apartment floor.

Kim's guitar is back!

Yeah! Finally, we were able to get the old guitar back from the Paul Guy guitar body shop. Everyone is elated (and WC loves to dance whenever daddy plays really cool riffs)!

Kim: "It is an accoustic Ibanez AW85, with molded frets on a mahogany neck with a rosewood bridge and fretboad. The solid spruce top has grown over the years since I bought it in the mid 90ies, making the resonance much more mature now. It has a wonderful 'glow' and a deep subtle voice that can make me wanna just sit and play tunes for hours.
After extensive use for almost 15 years it was time to give it a few new parts instead of the ones that had been worn down. I went to guitar-builder/inventor Anders Thidell in the SoFo neighborhood of Stockholm to have it looked at. He replaced all the frets and adjusted the neck and bridge. The difference is astonishing! Not only is it sounding better with an entire set of new frets (duh!), the adjustment of the angle of the neck makes the strings follow the fretboard so much closer and it really enhances your feel for playing. I can 'tap play' without any difficulty and the sustain is awesome! I am so happy - and I sure could not find a better guitar builder; Anders Thidell has invented the tilted fretboard, called True Temperament, and builds guitars for numerous great guitar players, like Steve Vai, for example. I might not be able to play like Vai... but at least my guitar now comes from the same builder as Vai's TT guitar."

 (Svenska Dagbladet: Article in Swedish about the True Temperament fretboard.)

WC's first pulka ride!

With lots of snow coming down during the past week we finally were able to go and treat WC to his first pulka-sledding experience. As you can see in the photos he absolutely LOVED it! (A pulk (from the Sami language "bulke", or "pulka" in Swedish) is a Scandinavian short, low-slung small toboggan used in sport or for transport, pulled by a dog or a skier.)

Many towns in Sweden do not clean the streets or walkways of snow in the wintertime (nor do they sand, or use salt to clean off the ice and snow). Instead, it is up to the pedestrian or the driver to use good judgment when traveling across snow-clad streets and parks. This of course makes for wonderful winter-settings and perfect sledding environments pretty much everywhere.

Mom and son going through the snow-packed streets in the Nacka municipality. 

Snow sure is fun! WC thinks this is far superior to going in the silly baby pram.