The beauty of thanks

A few photos from our Thanksgiving celebration... 11 adults, 5 children -- 16 beautiful people in one home, sharing a meal and laughter.

The table... and the first day of sunshine in weeks!

Steen's mom joined us.

Along with Steve, Rob, Kristin and Eva...

And Jen and Camille...

And Will...

And Nick's good friend Bea...

And we ate and talked, laughed and chatted... and ate... and ate! Don't even get me started about the amazing sweet potatoes, the incredible cranberry sauce, or the pies! The pies! And pears with some kind of melt-in-your mouth sauce. No no... don't get me started!

And then we sent the guys off to the kitchen. They did a great job of cleaning up (here you see Steen, Martin, Steve and Klas)!

It was very special to celebrate this special holiday with all of these people who I am thankful to call my friends!!!!

Thankful

Tomorrow our home will (hopefully!) fill with the conversation, laughter and smiles of many of my American and Swedish friends as we gather to celebrate Thanksgiving.

[If you're wondering "Why tomorrow?" The quick answer: because this is Sweden, and Thanksgiving day is not a holiday.]

So, nearly every day I drop Lucas at school and then walk 30 minutes from Lucas's school to work, and then after work I reverse the trip to pick him up. I relish those walks and usually use them to plan out my day, make lists in my head (I'm a notorious list maker), or listen to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" on my iPod, laughing loudly to myself the whole way down the street. Rarely do I use those trips for one too-easily forgotten purpose -- to relax. To let go of my job, my responsibilities at home and everything else that finds itself running around in my brain and just let my mind wander.

But I did it on Tuesday. No iPod. No list making.

I started, instead, to think about Thanksgiving tomorrow.... and not about the shopping that needed to be done for it or how we should fit 16 people into our modest home for a meal.

But about "thanks" and "giving".

And at the risk of sounding all sappy, I thought of how incredibly lucky I am.... so unbelievably, fate-testing, lucky. And how inexpressably thankful I am for so many things.

Sometimes, when we're discussing a sad story in the news or someone's struggle, my dad says some version of "There, but for the grace of God, go I". And isn't he right? My life could be so many things... it could be filled with sadness, despair, frustration, illness, poverty, hunger, struggle, war.

But it is not.

I have a beautiful, healthy family. And I'm not just talking about my four guys at home, but also about my parents, my brother and his family, grandpa, all of my inlaws, cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews... I'm also talking about the hundreds of people I can count as "relations". And my good friends, the ones I can call on a day when I just need a smile. The ones who drop a line just to say hello.

And my amazing education, without which who knows where I'd be. My skills. My life. The smiles I can share with others every day. I'm thankful for rainy days and happy. And so much more.

And as I walked, my heart swelled with happiness.

There is so much to be thankful for.

And then I picked up Lucas and we headed home. When we got there, he took off his shoes and hat. And I was thankful for this.

Sun, sun, sun

Our boys can now testify that it takes three plane rides to get from Sweden to one of the many paradises on earth -- Langkawi, Malaysia. And, yes, it takes another three to get home again.

One of these plane trips lasts 13 hours. Nicholas was fine with it in the beginning, but after about 8 hours, he'd had enough (as I'm sure anyone who was on the plane with us that day will tell you.)



But, after hours and hours of flying, we ended up here.

And it was all ok.

We spent most of our time (i.e. three hours a day) at the pool. Nicholas fell in love with swimming -- jumping into the pool without fear (even missing the pool completely and landing flat on his behind on the edge) and, in the end, dunking himself under the water and coming up all smiles.

The bigger boys, of course, loved playing in any of the hotel's five pools too. The challenge was to keep track of them.

When the pool wasn't good enough, there was always snorkelling....

We spent an afternoon sailing through a mangrove forest, where the trees grow by the thousands right in the water - their roots entangled in one-another in a vast network that absorbs the tides like a sponge.

A few monkeys joined us as we sailed.

And we also had a chance to feed the fish at one of the many local fisheries (yes, that crab Lucas is holding is ALIVE!)...

We visited a wildlife park and bird sanctuary, where the boys had a rare opportunity to interact one-on-one with the animals.

We enjoyed great Malaysian, Indian and Thai food, of course.

And basically just enjoyed a week of getting to know each other again -- laughing, telling stories and relaxing. An unforgetable time!

Wow, aren't my guys handsome????

And to top it all off, we had sunsets like this.

Bonus photo -- a bit of Malaysian humor.

Light!

I don't like the darkness that characterizes Sweden in the fall, winter and early spring...

I don't like losing around 12 minutes of daylight per day between June 22 and December 21.

And I really don't like getting up when it is dark, going home when it is dark, buying groceries in the dark...

Cuz it's really dark here in the winter.... like really dark... like in December, it hardly gets past twilight, even at high noon.

But today, while I was getting ready for work, the sun burst onto the horizon. The picture doesn't do it justice, but here it is anyway. It made me forget, for a moment, how I dread the oncoming winter.

A dance and a lecture

Nicholas has always been a dancer, but I thought his newest addition to his repertoire deserved sharing.

Also, he's talking like a waterfall... I know that waterfalls don't talk, but you get the point. The only problem is that this language is one we haven't yet learned (i.e. it's not German, French, Danish, Swedish, Spanish or English, as far as we can tell). Still, I think it's amazingly cute, but I am a bit biased. Listen up!

Conversation with an evolution theorist

The experts say that today's children are those who will develop ground-breaking, currently unimaginable technologies and save our world in the future. They will grow up to become the new Einsteins, Gates and Friedmans. They will be respected for their findings, their research, their academic ingenuity.

I'm proud to say that I have give birth to three of these amazing creatures.

One of them, the middle one, is currently showing signs of becoming a scientist... the kind of scientist who will shake the very grounds of the scientific system.

Here is a recap of our conversation this morning over a breakfast of oatmeal and brown sugar. Please note that I was not yet fully awake, so, as you'll see, I wasn't very quick on the uptake. If you are wondering, the "we" in the following story refers to the human race.

Lucas: "Mom, what were we when we were dinosaurs?"

Me: "I'm sorry. What did you say?"

Lucas: "I said, what were we when we were dinosaurs?"

Me: "I'm sorry, honey. I don't really know what you mean."

Lucas: "Well, as you know, we were once tiny fish in the sea. Fish that could feel any -- I mean any -- movement in the water! Isn't that cool?! Like, we could feel a movement hundreds of miles away. That's how sensitive we were!"

Me: "We were?"

Lucas (rolling his eyes): "Of course! But what I want to know is -- what we were when we were dinosaurs!"

Me (I'm slowly catching on....): "Hmmm. I don't know. We'll have to look it up."

Lucas: "Well, I know one thing. There is NO WAY we could have moved from being monkeys to being humans if we weren't also dinosaurs way back then. We must have been some mad cool dinosaurs."

And he returned to eating his meal.

I'll have to look it up. Any ideas?

Romance in Edinburgh

Steen and I spent this weekend alone in Edinburgh. We left the three children in the safe, happy care of Steen's parents, boarded a plane and whisked ourselves away.

It was lovely...

Filled with scones and high tea...
with champagne...
laughter and long walks down cobblestone streets laden with history. Of course, we must not forget the whiskey...

Unfortunately, we forgot our camera. So these are our phone-based photos of our weekend.

This boy can move mountains

In July, Matthew, Steen and Steen's dad spent a "guy week" way up north.

I mean way up north. As in north where you could see the Northern Lights -- if it were dark.

But it wasn't dark. Because it's the land of the midnight sun. As in sun 24-hours a day. While they were there, at least.

This is far enough north for one to run into Sami reindeer herders and a herd of reindeer. I'm not kidding!

These men decided they wanted to spend their "guy week" trekking in the mountains of northern Sweden, as in "in the middle of nowhere". They flew to Kiruna...

...took an hour-long bus ride, got of the bus, and then had to walk 19 km, with their backpacks, to the mountain station where they stayed for the five days.

19 km.

On day 1.

Can you see why I didn't go on this trip?

While they were there, they spent their days hiking, talking, sleeping well, and generally enjoying the time together.

And on one day, Matthew and Steen decided to climb up Sweden's highest mountain. It's called Kebnekaise. The mountain is 2,104 meters high. It is covered with snow year-round at the top. It's a 12-km trip to the top (which requires the hiker to cover 12 km on his way back down, of course).

24 km in one day.

And my 11-year old climbed it. Here he is, standing just below the peak he has triumphed over. Doesn't he look terrific standing there with his dad?

On the way back, the men decided to take a helicopter. Here's the co-pilot.