Here Now:

Dagis, BarnLoppis Deals, and Apples

With the start of dagis-preschool, we got a dose of the community germs and all got a snarfaly nose and were dragging a bit this weekend. Maybe tomorrow we will stay home from school until everyone is 100% better. I was missing Florida a lot last week, and switched my mind to just appreciate all the things around me.

Here we ARE. We are having a third baby, and we are in Sweden, no changing places in the world for at least two years. I am opening to absorbing more Swedish language, but also to maybe moving back to USA someday too, if I can not understand my kid by the time she is seven. Increasingly, I do not know what is going on in her world and that will become more of a problem as she begins to read, have meaningful friendships, and do school work. And in general, I miss over stuffed bags of english library books, small talk, friends, work, and understanding what the hell is going on around me. But I love Sweden. And most of these things would be remedied by learning some Swedish. We will see. We always said we were trying it out.... so we are.

For now, here we are. And it is lovely.

The parking lot at school is next to a field of sheep.

So we sing Ba ba black sheep when we get to school.

The baby loves to watch the sheep, and goes running to them yelling BaAAA! BaaAAA!! and scares them away.

There are chickens at school, too

When I picked her up Friday, I had to retrieve SwedeGirl from the potato patch in the school's kitchen garden where she and her new friend were digging up earth worms. Then I had to wait while she fed them to the chickens.

And the little sister playing peek a boo on the pirate boat in the sandbox

Our runny noses did not stop us from heading out to the big second hand clothing sale in the town I love to mispronounce, Höör, (which is right past the village of He by the way).

We outfitted the girls with 50 kronor snow suits ($7), 30 kronor boots, and 30 kronor rain suits ($4.50). We finally figured out that the second hand shops here are lame, but the spring and fall barnloppis sale in the village of Höör is not to be missed.

The cute 35 kronor fuzzy bunny newborn outfit for the baby to come...

Since we were up at 'em early this weekend, we extended the trip and went to the Kiviks Apple festival. They are a big distributor of apple juice and other juices in southern Sweden, and they have a legendary apple festival each year in the little harbor town of Kivik where the 'big' (still tiny by USA standards) juice processing plant is. The festival is famous for having a huge apple mosiac each year.

Apple Mosaic

The big apple mosaic featured 7 kinds of apples, 35,000 in all. The man pictured is Fritiof Nilsson Piraten, the author most famous for Bombi Bitt och Jag published in 1932 about Bombi Bitt, a young boy often described as the Swedish Tom Sawyer. In the story, he heads to Kivik for the big market and goes to the circus and has other adventures, thus the circus motif.

How do like them apples?

Really.

Apples. And Candy Apple. And Apple Donuts.

The circus tent was full of apples of all types....

Please do not eat the decorations.

These apple balls were made of one variety each, to demonstrate the types of apples used in the big mosaic.

The whole ten was lined with apples on a rail, all different kinds. We did not count them but there were HUNDREDS. We simply did not know there are THAT many kinds. We decided our penchant for eating organic galas is like always drinking merlot...a sign of our lack of knowledge of varieties, and generally unadventurous.

The town was all mist, apples, and sea side festival.

We stopped on the way home and picked big bouquets of rogue sunflowers we found growing on the roadside, bought fresh picked organic apples, and bought a big juice pack sampler from Kiviks on the way home.

I do just love Swedish Autumn.