Out of the blue 2

Some more phone photos for your rainy-day enjoyment.



This first one has to be one of my favorites. My dad, boating enthusiast that he is, has a tendency to buy one really big sailboat model every time he and mom are visiting us here in Sweden. Amazingly, the two of them have managed to get every one of them home, safe and sound.



However, Nicholas found the master of all sailboats. It's gi-normous! I mean, look, the boy's head barely goes past the bottom of the sail....



Want it, dad?



Nick at the playground -- the first time he dared to try the swirly slide (with assistance, just in case). This must be taken the same day, as he's wearing the same clothes... Or maybe that's just his uniform.



Lucas's last day of third grade. Here is with his pals Zaq and Alfred receiving their award for winning the invention competition, which was hosted by the Swedish Technical University.

And here we have the crazy, but lovable, inventor himself at our traditional last-day-of-school lunch. I can already see signs of the wacky inventor shown again and again in the movies... Ever see Back to the Future?

An afternoon of dad-boys time, building Warhammer.

Matthew's in on the Warhammer fun...

Out of the blue

I'm one of those people who is always using her phone to take pictures when a camera isn't handy.... you know those situations where you think "If only I could catch this moment on film" and your next thought is "Hey! I can! With my phone!".

Thing is, I never use those photos for much except to pass them time while Tina's Taxi Service is waiting to pick up one child or another from an activity. So this week I decided that I'll try to share a few of them with you each day.

Aren't you lucky?

Here's Matthew putting on his I'm-almost-a-teenager face...

In this one, I love the light coming in from above, making Lucas even more handsome than usual.

Here's Nick on the neighbor's trampoline... our neighborhood couldn't have gotten a better form of entertainment!

Nick waiting for his first "real" ride on the bus into the city. He's getting very impatient because the bus fails to arrive at his command...

Nick pushing his buggy home from daycare.

Matt waiting at the starting line for the mini-marathon.

Here's the whole group waiting at the starting line.

A tale of caution

I have a few words of advice for anyone willing to listen, but first I thought I'd introduce you to Ida, one of Nick's closest buddies since they were both teeny-tiny-itsy-bitsy babies. Ida and Nick are a bit competitive, as you can see... a few days ago I was able to catch the two of them in a rock-til-you-drop race. Aren't they just sooo cute?

OK, so today I have three cautionary tales to tell you. The first one begins like this.

Don't sell your old bookshelf until you have a new one in your possession.

You see, before the summer, we ordered a new bookshelf to replace our old, worn Ikea version (yes, the old one took at least 5 days to build and made one husband very, very angry at it back in the day because it just wouldn't build right!). Last weekend, my husband informed me that the new bookshelf was finally ready and that he would pick it up on Sunday.

Being the crazy woman that I am, I put the old bookshelf up for sale on a Swedish site. It was sold and picked up in less than two hours (I am convinced that people are more than willing to pay for pre-built Ikea furniture... it's well worth the investment just to avoid having to build it yourself).

Then, lo and behold, we realized that we couldn't pick up the new bookshelf because the store was closed on Sundays (as you can probably guess, the store is not Ikea).

So we ended up with this sight all over the house:


Nice furnishings, eh?

Anyway, this past weekend we were smarter -- Steen picked up the bookshelf during the week (all 20+ boxes of it) and yesterday he and Nick (!) put it together. Nick had a crazy good time and was, of course, very helpful. So helpful in ways we could have never imagined.


Surprisingly (or not, depending on how you look at it), the bookshelf came together relatively quickly. Steen and Nick had it up in the span of four hours or so.

And here's the final product:

My second cautionary tale is this: if you have dark brown hair with blonde highlights, don't -- I repeat -- don't every try to dye it yourself at home with a box of haircolor marked "medium brown with red highlights". Seriously, don't.... because this is what you'll get:

HAIR

(pink hair)

I am not kidding.

Believe me, I speak out of experience. Then you'll be forced to drop your kids off in the morning at their respective schools/daycare centers with pink hair... and your youngest will cradle your face in his hands and say:

"Mommy, you've got new hair!"

and the middle one will say nothing, until you ask "What do you think of my hair?" and he goes "Mom, it's PINK!" and roll his eyes.

After that lovely experience, you have to head to the store and pick up a box of haircolor marked "dark brown", and what you end up with is midnight-black hair.

Which is better than pink.

And puts you right in line with the Twilight-saga-vampire lookalike trend.

My third, and final, cautionary tale is this: If you meet a little guy who looks like this, beware!!!! He's probably up to no good in a way that will have you crying with laughter.