Gräsö

We spent a week up in the archipelago on an island called Gräsö over the 4th of July week.  The weather was not-so-great at the beginning of the week, but luckily it perked up towards the end of the week so we could get in some beach time!

The first night that the weather started clearing, Aaron got some nice pictures of our view!

Our little cabin!

View of Oregrund, a little town across the channel.  The yellow boat that you see was the car ferry that brought us back and forth from Oregrund to Gräsö.

The kids had fun swimming on great beach near our cabin.

Sophia is showing off her swimming skills and, if you didn't catch on, Ben is saying, "I cold!  I take a shower!!"  Funny!

Another Countdown!!

July is a big month!  31 days until we move and only 17 days until Grandma and Grandpa Staloch visit!  We started off the first morning of summer vacation by making our 3rd and final countdown chain to keep track of the 17 days we have left until G&G arrive!

Don't mind the "bedhead" and PJs - we always seem to do projects in the morning :-)

PS.  I almost labeled this post, "The Final Countdown".  Since my last post title was a "School's Out for Summer"...I held off.  Although The Final Countdown is by a Swedish band!!

School's out for Summer!

Yesterday, the kids had their last day of school in Stockholm.  They had a great year, so it was sad to say goodbye.  Thank you, Planet Kids teachers, for a fun year!

And a tribute to everything they did this year...

Glad Midsommar

We were invited to a traditional Swedish midsummer celebration yesterday!  Our friends, Mikael and Cecilia, brought all of the traditional celebration food - including herring, new potatoes, aquavit, beer, meatballs, and a fabulous strawberry cake.  Yum!  Cecilia brought flowers to make our flower crowns and we listened to music and watched people raise the maypole.  It was so fun to take part in the festivities!

Dancing and singing around the maypole!

Sophia and I with our flower crowns on :-)  Can you tell I made my own??? :-)  Apparently, I used too much greenery...but not bad for a 1st attempt!  Ben also had a crown, but we couldn't capture him on camera.

Leksand

Last weekend, we headed off to Leksand to visit friends and see the Dalarna region of Sweden in the summer.  We had a really great weekend!  Thank you to Fredrik, Maria, Love and Axel for hosting us :-)

On Saturday morning, we braved the rain and took a walk to see their neighborhood.  The kids are enjoying the rain puddles while checking out the chickens.

Sizing up the cows!

Snails!  Lots and lots of snails!

In the afternoon, we checked out the town of Leksand.  Beautiful views of Lake Siljan.

On Sunday, the weather was better, so we went down to the shore of Lake Siljan in front of their home.

These beautiful purple (and pink) flowers are all over!

Traditional Swedish cabin/home built on stilts.

Lots of "Swedishness" in one picture.  Swedish flag, last year's maypole and an old car painted in Swedish design.

Dancing and singing "The Little Frogs" around the Maypole (or Midsummer Pole).  We were actually one week too early (Midsummer is July 24/25), but the town we were visiting decorates this pole each weekend for tourists.

Gotland

We recently took a trip to Gotland, a large island off the east coast of Sweden.  We saw a lot of really beautiful sites and had a great time.  The weather wasn't too bad, but definitely wasn't as warm as we were hoping (we had visions of laying on the beach)...but it was Memorial Day weekend - and even though we were thousands of miles from Minnesota, I still shouldn't  have expected perfect weather, right?  (For those of you not from MN or WI, it is not Memorial Day weekend without a good dose of rain!)

We took a huge ferry to Gotland.  I read that 500 cars fit on this bad boy.  I don't think I've ever been on a boat this large!

This is how we drove onto the boat.

We took off on a road-trip the first morning and headed north.  There are a lot of Rauk formations around this island - Rauk are stacks of limestone that have been created by years of erosion (I think??).  Anyway, there were lots of them and we checked out quite a few.

A recommended side-trip from the woman at the tourist office was a little bit of a bust.  While the scenery was nice, it wasn't extra-nice compared to everything else we saw and it was along a dirt road filled with potholes!  Oy...

We took a car ferry to another island, Färo.  Färo is teeny-tiny, so we covered most of it in a couple of hours.

We headed to a beautiful sandy beach.  We pretended that it was a nice, sunny day and played around for a while! :-)

(I'm not sure why Aaron had that look on his face :-)  )

Sophia fell in love with this jean jacket after seeing me wear one and wore it non-stop...even if it is a tiny short!

Sheep!  What would a Staloch trip be without a bunch of pictures of animals?

More Rauk formations.  Even though Färo is very small, the landscape changes dramatically.  Remember the sandy beach?  Just a short distance to the other side of the island and this is what the shoreline looks like.  So fun to see such different beauty in such a small space.

On day 2, we headed to the southern-most tip of the island and experienced more beautiful coastline.

They could throw rocks into the water for hours.

We went for a small hike.

On our last day, we toured around Visby.  Some of these pictures are actually from other mornings before we headed out of town for the day.

Visby is a very well preserved old town and very beautiful.  It is a walled city and considered a UNESCO World Heritage site - I can see why!