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Maddie the star

Maddie’s daycare class put on a little 30 minute show at dagis today, it was so much fun the kids did a really great job. The music room at dagis is great, they parents committee have raised money throughout the year and gave 15,000kr which is close to $3,000 for them to deck out the room. Maddie spends most of her day in this room at dagis, she loves to sing and dance around and put on a little theatre for anyone who is willing to listen. She’s our little star and Jonas is following right behind in her footsteps.

Here’s a few pics of the theatre, Maddie was a troll. I have some video footage to load up too… that will be up soon.

You know you’re Australian when…

Got this in an email a while back and thought I should post it. It gave me a good cackle that’s for sure… I’m a true blue Aussie daggo!

1. You know the meaning of the word “girt”.

2. You believe that stubbies can be either drunk or worn.

3. You think it’s normal to have a leader called Kevin.

4. You waddle when you walk due to the 53 expired petrol discount vouchers stuffed in your wallet or purse.

5. You’ve made a bong out of your garden hose rather than use it for something illegal such as watering the garden.

6. You believe it is appropriate to put a rubber in your son’s pencil case when he first attends school.

7. When you hear that an American “roots for his team” you wonder how often and with whom.

8. You understand that the phrase “a group of women wearing black thongs” refers to footwear and may be less alluring than it sounds.

9. You pronounce Melbourne as “Mel-bin”.

10. You pronounce Penrith as “Pen-riff”.

11. You believe the “l” in the word “Australia” is optional.

12. You can translate: “Dazza and Shazza played Acca Dacca on the way to Maccas.”

13. You believe it makes perfect sense for a nation to decorate its highways with large fibreglass bananas, prawns and sheep.

14. You call your best friend “a total bastard” but someone you really, truly despise is just “a bit of a bastard”.

15. You think “Woolloomooloo” is a perfectly reasonable name for a place.

16. You’re secretly proud of our killer wildlife.

17. You believe it makes sense for a country to have a $1 coin that’s twice as big as its $2 coin.

18. You understand that “Wagga Wagga” can be abbreviated to “Wagga” but “Woy Woy” can’t be called “Woy”.

19. You believe that cooked-down axlegrease makes a good breakfast spread.

20. You believe all famous Kiwis are actually Australian, until they stuff up, at which point they again become Kiwis.

21. Hamburger. Beetroot. Of course.

22. You know that certain words must, by law, be shouted out during any rendition of the Angels’ song Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again.

23. You believe, as an article of faith, that the confectionary known as the Wagon Wheel has become smaller with every passing year.

24. You still don’t get why the “Labor” in “Australian Labor Party” is not spelt with a “u”.

25. You wear ugh boots outside the house.

26. You believe, as an article of faith, that every important discovery in the world was made by an Australian but then sold off to the Yanks for a pittance.

27. You believe that the more you shorten someone’s name the more you like them.

28. Whatever your linguistic skills, you find yourself able to order takeaway fluently in every Asian language.

29. You understand that “excuse me” can sound rude, while “scuse me” is always polite.

30. You know what it’s like to swallow a fly, on occasion via your nose.

31. You understand that “you” has a plural and that it’s “youse”.

32. You know it’s not summer until the steering wheel is too hot to handle.

33. Your biggest family argument over the summer concerned the rules for beach cricket.

34. You shake your head in horror when companies try to market what they call “Anzac cookies”.

35. You still think of Kylie as “that girl off Neighbours”.

36. When returning home from overseas, you expect to be brutally strip-searched by Customs - just in case you’re trying to sneak in fruit.

37. You believe the phrase “smart casual” refers to a pair of black tracky-daks, suitably laundered.

38. You understand that all train timetables are works of fiction.

39. When working on a bar, you understand male customers will feel the need to offer an excuse whenever they order low-alcohol beer.

40. You get choked up with emotion by the first verse of the national anthem and then have trouble remembering the second.

41. You find yourself ignorant of nearly all the facts deemed essential in the government’s new test for migrants.

42. You know, whatever the tourist books say, that no one says “cobber”.

The snow is here now

Well the snow has finally arrived now and we had the tractor down doing our driveway this afternoon for the first time this winter. The kids were soooo excited! The place is completely white and really is beautiful. With the First of Advent being this Sunday everyone is getting ready to put up there Swedish decoration, big star lights in the windows and the special Xmas lights too. I will take a pic this weekend when we put ours up. The town is full of nice bright lights now that we are in the midst of the winter darkness, we are almost at the darkest point now.
Here’s a pic I just took from the Kommuns website it’s of the park in town right now.

The park in Jokkmokk

The park in Jokkmokk

Our princess has lost another tooth

Well, just a few weeks after losing her first tooth Miss Mad’s has lost another one, again on the bottom. She was so grown up about it this time, it was pretty loose so she wanted Farmor to pull it out, so we ducked over there on Wednesday arvo and had it pulled.

Here’s our proud little girl.

Here she is flashing her pearly whites… minus the bottom two.

She kept getting up during the night to check if the tooth fairy had taken her tooth and left some money and was disappointed each time to only find the tooth sitting there… big surprise in the morning though, she was totally stoked.

Now Jonas thinks it’s his turn, he keeps asking us to feel his loose teeth… hehehehe… monkey see… monkey do.

I took these photos last week, it was a full moon and it seemed so close that I felt I could almost reach out and touch it.

This one was taken at around 2.30pm

This one was taken around an hour later… yep it’s that dark at 3.30pm

This was taken at the same time as the last one but I think it’s without a flash.

Winter has arrived

Well winter is here and we’ve been getting some coldish temps.  It was -15 last weekend when we left home to go shopping up in Gällivare.  Most nights are in the low minuses and it seems that now the days are as well.

Here’s a new pic of the lake all frozen over.

I’ve learnt to love the bright sunny days now.  Those days are usually the coldest, the brighter it is the colder it is.  But up here where the winters are long and super cold, those days are the ones I absolutely love, though the bright sun offers no warmth it’s still wonderful to be outside for a while.  The days are getting darker now and before too long we’ll only have a few short hours of sunlight in a day.  Such a stark contrast to just a few short months ago when we were experiencing 24 hours of complete daylight.

During the summer Maddie pines to see the stars in the sky, but it’s too bright to see them, but come August she’s excited to see them shining brightly in the sky.  Now she’s getting to see them shining brightly by 4pm each afternoon and before too long she’ll see the moon as we are driving to dagis at 9am and then again at 2pm on the drive home. 

The kids are excited at the prospect that there’ll soon be snow.  Snow means skiing and Maddie has been waiting since May to be able to ski again and Jonas is sure that he’s now big enough to ski as well and I don’t doubt it.  He thinks that anything Maddie can do, he can do better… hahaha

Dagis halloween party

Up here we celebrate things a little late LOL.  Last night the kids had their dagis halloween party at a hall in town.  Maddie and Jonas were so excited to be getting dressed up, they tried their outfits on early in the day and then complained that they wanted to go to the party, which wasn’t for another 3 hours.. hehehe

Anyway here are our little halloween heroes.

Even Pippi Longstocking was at our party!!

Maddie’s huge fish

I had meant to talk about this before but had forgotten.  During the summer Stefan, the kids and I went out fishing on the lake in the boat and low and behold Maddie caught a beauty, it was a 4kg gädda (pike).  The local newspaper was running a fishing competition for the kids so Stefan sent the pic off to them and we didn’t really expect to hear anything more, but she actually won one of the categories, we got a phone call whilst we were off on holidays and we arrived home to her great prize, a brand new flash rod and reel, a couple packets of lures and a cap, she was stoked to say the least.

Here’s our little angler.

And a few other random fishing pics from the summer.

The sun is sooooo bright Mummy.

Jonas fishing with his hookless rod.

Our budding photographers

Maddie and Jonas love to get hold of my camera and take photos of themselves.  I took some pics the other day and when I downloaded them all I found a whole batch that they had taken, some of them are surprisingly good, others are of them being silly.

Here’s a few and I’ll put the rest into the gallery in an album called Our Budding Photographers.  Check em out!

Maddie contemplating.

And Jonas striking a pose.

 

 

We’re going hunting

It was recently hunting season in Sweden and the kids loved watching what was going on back here at home as the men did the thing with the moose when they bring them home from the forest.  The kids would ask if they can go hunting every afternoon.  So I took a pic of them ready to go into the forest to pretend to hunt moose like Daddy and Farfar.

 

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