| Vol 1 | Vol 2 | Vol 3 | Vol 4 | Vol 5 | Vol 6 | Vol 7 | Vol 8 | Vol 9 | Vol 10 | Vol 11 | Vol 12 | Vol 13 | Second Year | Main Page |
If you want to go straight to Vol 7, you may do so now!
...
December started with the family separated. The kids and Kajsa in
Sweden and Tim and Tasha in the US. Things were quite quiet
for Tim for those two weeks, the only things that stand out in
memory are: the panic when Tim tried to get someone to look after
Tasha after the person who was originally arranged to do it
pulled out; and the Office Christmas Party. That was a very long
day with lunch starting around 11am and finishing with dinner at
close to 11pm, with a session of prayers (free drinks) in between.
There is tell that there was a lot of snow in Sweden while Tim wasn't there and it just sort of disappeared when he arrived. It was cold enough in the middle weeks of December for the lake to freeze enough for skating just before Christmas. That was fun and there are some photos in the gallery to prove it!
Christmas was very Swedish with many presents being given (so many that there was a bit of a scare that we would not be able to get them back!) and there was also a visit by Tomten (Swedish Santa). Kalle was over the moon to meet Tomten. Taltarni somewhat less so.
On Christmas Day we visited some friends in a nearby town. They are a fun bunch and had put together a video called "The Girl who Met Death", a homemade horror film. It was very unprofessional and more amusing than scary - that didn't stop Kalle though, he was terrified, so much so that we had to turn off the video half way through and he hasn't stopped talking about monsters since! It seems that he thinks that monsters live in Sweden because he keeps saying that there are no monsters in America.
We came back to the US on 28 December and had a stroke of mixed luck. We were worried that we would not be able to get all the luggage into the car that was picking us up from the airport. Especially as we had been given an old(ish) Emmaljunga stroller. Well, when we got to the carousel all the luggage came except the stroller. We asked after it and were told that it wasn't there and possibly had been directed to New York instead. They said that they would ensure that the stroller was put back on the plane it arrived on, sent back to Iceland and redirected to Washington and would therefore be delivered to our house within two days. Great, we don't have to worry about it being too big for the car.
The next day we got a call from Iceland Air. The stroller had not be sent to New York. It had been sent to Baltimore Washington International with us. However it had fallen off the trailer and been damaged. Oh no. But, there were going to pay for a brand new one! Not too bad at all, even though we had to go around and get quotes. New for old is quite good. That is where the good news stops for the moment because we are still waiting on the 10th of January for the check (Am.) to arrive. Probably it will, perhaps it won't. A few more phone calls are in order!
The evening that we returned it snowed. Not heaps but more than I have seen in Sweden anyway. We were able to go on the sled in the backyard which was fun. The benefit of it not being heaps was that we didn't need to shovel the driveway but there was enough snow to have fun in. The snow hung around for quite few days. Hopefully we'll have more in the New Year.
New Year's Eve was celebrated with silly hats and champagne at the Moran's. It was a good evening even though we were still suffering from the kids' jet lag. We were back in phase but they weren't and they woke up between 4 and 5 in the morning, every morning. Oh well, we have survived.
For the computer literate fundamentalist types out there you'd all be aware that we only have one more year left. Let us explain. When representing negative numbers in binary code, the first digit is a 1. It is not too obscure a jump to the realisation that a one before a number represents an inversion (a negative number is merely a rotation of a number around the zero point). Therefore 1999 is really a representation of 666. The Year of the Beast. Basically the end of it all. This is a bit sad really, especially after all that preparation for the Olympics. (Note that no spaceships disguised as comets are required.) Is it too late to set up a cult?
So on that sensationalist note, we bid you farewell - for now!