Hip Hip HOORAY!

I forgot to mention that this happened the other day.

Thanks BYU for having such affordable tuition I could 

Birthday, bike rides, and Vacations

So I haven't been up on the bloggin as much as I wanted lately. So hang on we are going to cover a lot of ground as a lot has happened in August.

When Gini left me alone in July I realized just how many dishes our family does. So we bought a dishwasher and got it all hooked up. I LOVE it. So does Gini.

We took a spur of the moment trip to Amsterdam. We left on Thursday afternoon, and landed and Owen was about done by the time we got on the train. It was a really exciting time. it is interesting to see these towns that are just so old. gini and I kept commenting to each other about what it would be like to be there in the early 20th century.

This is Owen falling asleep on the train.

There are over 168 bridges in Amsterdam.

It was hot so Owen decided he wanted to go for a swim in the public park. He wasn't the only kid in a diaper.

Owen loved vacations

There are about 1000 house boats like this that are fixed in the canals. They have every amenity that apartments would. 

We went to the Anne Frank House. The house with the black doors and the small group in front was the shop and building that the annex was built off of. We walked through it. It was really cool walking through the annex where they all hid for so long. It was incredible.

They had these all over the town. If you look closely they are just a concrete slab about 3 feet high, and 12 inches wide. They were restrooms for men to use on the street.

Aren't they so cute.

I love this picture because you can see how the building slowly angle out as they go up. 

Owen spent all his free time chasing pigeons. They stunk. They all smelled like rotten fish. But he would run into the middle of them and just start laughing when they would fly off.

There literally was a line waiting outside the Abercrombie and Fitch store. It was a joke.

This picture kills me. It was from when we were flying back. Sometimes it blows me away that our family is living in Sweden and traveling Europe. 

Lately, I have been riding my bike to work. It takes about 30 minutes and is really nice. I snapped this picture on the way in to work the other morning. 

This past week the crown princess of Sweden came to Lulea to kick off a new public space. They retrofitted the South Harbor from a freight space to a park/events center. The crown princess sailed up on this restored ship. It is one of the largest wooden ships still sailing these days.

On the way home, we picked Owen up some rain boots. He loves them and just wears them around the house.

Isn't he so cute?

Life is good. We are getting excited to return home on the 12th to kick off some wedding festivities. Hope to see many of you during that time.

So I am trying to blog once a week to keep everyone up to date. It has started getting dark, last night Gini and I had to drive with the headlights on! I shouldn't complain about the dark because soon there will be more than I think any sane person can handle but it feels good to go to bed and it be semi dark at nights.

I uploaded a number of pictures to document this past week.

When I come home from work I walk in and say, "Where is Owen" and he usually giggles and runs and hides and I chase him. Well the other day I came in and this is what I saw.

When he heard me come home he was sitting on Mom's lap and he just pulled her sweatshirt over his head and burrowed himself right up to her. He is a nut.

He usually wakes up and wants to read, he was sitting in his bed reading and decided he wanted to lay down. 

Gini returned on Tuesday!!! YAY!!! It has been so nice to have our mom back. Since she has been back though the weather has been pretty crummy. I have felt really bad for her because it is A LOT harder flying West to East so the return trips always kick our butts. She wasn't feeling good from that and then all the bad weather just made it worse. So Saturday it was really nice and we went for a bike ride and a little trip to the beach. Yes even in the arctic circle we have beaches.

He likes to wear sunglasses.

We took a break to soak up some of the sun.

This is the North Harbor. If you look at Gini's blog from the winter, this is where the ice path is.

Owen loves this beach, it is really sandy, no waves, and he can wade out about 30 M and still touch

In the background of this picture is a dock. Owen would run down to the end and then lay down and scoot right off the edge like it was a step. He would land in water that was about chest deep and just start laughing and then wade in to the shore, and do it again. He was totally fearless about dropping off a dock into the water. I have mixed feelings about it because it is nice to see him just being adventurous but makes me worried that we'll have to watch EVERYTHING he does.

On Thursday my boss' girlfriend came in from Utah for a week. Poor guy has known this girl for 10+ years and it wasn't until he moved to Sweden that things worked out for them to start a relationship. Now they are 8 time zones away and trying to figure out how they can make it work. There is a boat that takes about 50 people out for a 3 hour boat ride with all you can eat shrimp. It was fun and quite an experience. The shrimps were all boiled, whole, with the head whole, so you had to peel them and tear the head off. It was really fun though.

She is so beautiful, I don't know how I got so lucky.

The sun was actually setting on the boat ride back in.

Owen loves nursery because they have cars and animals. He has struggled to experience anything other than that though, hopefully soon. The boy with Owen is named Leo, they are a few months apart and the other kids in the nursery are all only there for the lesson and then go to sharing time. I volunteered for the third hour to watch these two. It was a lot of fun, it was neat seeing Owen interact with other kids. My parents tell a story that when Mallory was little I pulled her arms out and tried to touch them together behind her back. I didn't understand limits and playing softly. Neither does Owen...he was playing with Leo and decided he was going to "Get him" and he pushed him over and then put his hand on his head and just pushed it into the ground. Leo just looked at Owen like, uhh what are you doing. And Owen just laughed and then walked off before I could pull him off. We are working with him on "being soft". Heaven help us.