Last days in Miami and back to school

We left Miami only a couple of days after Christmas but we did have time for a park visit and more outside play. 

A reluctant king David :-)


He loves pulling all his books out and just sitting in the middle of them looking through them. 


After getting back to Ormond Alex and Uncle Cory and the boys went to Madison for a couple of nights. They came back for new years so we had some fun celebrations and fireworks. One of our neighbors came out twenty minutes past minutes and asked us to be quiet since it was after midnight already!!! We kindly stopped but were a little frustrated. 

Our handy little Gabriel made this awesome “organizer” for the baseball bats all by himself!!


❤️❤️


Testing out his new helmet and bike :-)


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A somewhat cold boat ride on a beautiful evening. 










Noah having his presentation of a Lego creation at coop


Marlee had another visit at the orthodontist to put in the expander. Looks like a torture device to me! 

A mold of Marlee’s teeth with the expander on it. 


It’s in! 🫣

Christmas Eve

So it finally arrived, Christmas Eve. Even if we try hard to take the focus off of gifts and presents it is difficult. I must say, the joy of giving makes it hard not to buy gifts… This year all the boys had made sure to get gifts for all their brothers and cousins. It probably started with Gabriel wrapping gifts early. His love language is with no doubt gifts and he is such a thoughtful gift giver. It was sweet to see them care for each other and plan each others gifts without me intervening at all. I will admit though that they did threaten each other more than one time to not give the gifts on Christmas when another brother upset them. 😂

We started Christmas Eve by going to church and when we got home it was time to start sharing gifts.

Christmas Eve was a very cold day this (last) year but we enjoyed some outdoor time where the kids could try out some of their new gifts. David got to wear his new sweater that mormor made him. It is a copy of one of her sweaters :-)




A great end on a great day. Farmor had made a delicious dinner and we did our best to keep the kids behaving at the dinner table after all the fun this day. 


Merry Christmas!! God Jul!!

After repeating myself we are finally at Christmas

No wonder I cannot catch up when I post the same thing over and over again. I apologize for that. Thank you pappa for pointing that out!

We drove down to Miami to celebrate Christmas with farmor, uncle Cory and the cousins. We had a great time. A little crazy at times but that’s how it should be right!? :-)

Gabriel and David decorating the tree ❤️❤️

Organizing cars never gets old!


Lucky boys got to go on the jet ski with uncle Cory!




He wanted to sleep like his big brothers, on a mattress on the floor ❤️


Since this little guy has been very reluctant to talk farmor had the great idea to just practice each letter in the alphabet. He seemed to like that!


As every Christmas the Swedish television (SVT) shows the Adventskalender. Thanks to the online streaming we could watch all the episodes. 


Yay, me and the boys managed to take a trip to ikea before Christmas. So delicious and fun shopping!!


Visit to Deering Estate. So much fun and very interesting. Found some Swedes in houses - Greta Garbo (actress) and Anders Zorn (painter). We also saw manatees and a very unafraid pelican. 


























Alex, Cory and I were going to go camping with the kids on one of the islands. However, the weather got pretty chili and I did not feel like I was well enough prepared to bring David so I stayed home with farmor. The boys had a wonderful time but I was still glad that me and David stayed home in a warm bed :-)


Preparing labels for the stockings. 


I did not prepare a lot of candy, drinks or food for Christmas this year (except for lussekatter) but I did end up making fudge/taffy right before Christmas. It ended up perfect, not too hard, not soft, just “lagom”. 




Getting closer to Christmas Eve…