Life in Motala

Taking a walk along the canal during a break at work. The canal boats are laid up for winter.

Board game season again…

Ingrid excited about Halloween. She’s off to a party. Only a few Swedish kids go trick-or-treating. If they do, they hand over small painted cards in exchange for the candy.

We had a great party! Lots of food and fun and we finished off with a Metallica Guitar Hero battle.

I won the lottery again for crayfishing in Boren! It was a fantastic night, warm with no wind. So fun! We caught 103!! Here we are getting the boats ready to go out at 6 in the evening. Later at midnight we picked up the traps.

I seem to live in the Sports Hall these days. Ingrid has swim practice three times a week, and we are often there for other events. Last time it was MSS (Motala Sailing) that had rented the swimming pool. The kids got to practice flipping and turning a dingy, climbing in and out of a huge liferaft and testing life guard wet suits for rescue missions in a cold sea. Very fun!

Here Ingrid is pulling a dingy in a race against the clock. She and her team mate did pretty good!

After a month of full-time employment I needed a break! We went to Egypt with good friends and the kids had a great time.

My favourite moments were snorkelling in the Red Sea (we saw dolphins too!)

 … and horseback and camel riding in the desert at sunset. Ingrid loved her camel Michael Jackson. On the way home she rode Moses who had a bit of a fit and threw her off, but she bravely climbed back on again. The guide was great, the kids loved him and he took us all on a fast gallop across the dunes so we could see how that felt.

It was good to go away and nice to come home.

The last weeks before Christmas are always busy. Ingrid thinks it is the best time of the year. This week was extra nice, we had good friends staying for a few days. The little girl didn’t know what was best - honey on yoghurt or Lucky the dog. I think the yoghurt won by a small margin.

Amy Diamond came to Motala again to sing and sign her new Christmas record.

December 13th, is Lucia. School ended yesterday and Lucia was celebrated as well. Ingrid sang in the school choir with an apron on as a "sockerbagare". The teachers put on a fun show, doing the story of Jesus birth dressed up as Disney characters. My favourite was Sponge Bob as one of the three wise men.

The rest of the evening (and half the night) was Bränna Krut - a huge teenie disco and talent contest. Ingrid and her friend competed with 12-15 year olds from other schools. It went well, but the competition was fierce and they scored in the bottom half. Ingrid is determined to try again next year! A short video on Youtube for those who want to hear the HSM song again, this time in front of a huge audience.

Yesterday Ingrid got her first backstage pass! She is going to sing at a concert/disco in the Sports Hall on Friday night. She is so excited! She will be singing a song from HSM together with her friend (see earlier post) This time they will compete with kids from schools all over Motala.

Ingrid and her friend won the talent contest at her school yesterday! They sang a song from High School Musical. The prize is they get to record a CD, make a video and in two weeks sing in the town square. She is so excited! A stylist is going to fix them up for the video!!

Later some friends who have been doing the program at Teaching Drum came by for a visit. A different world!

Last year a good friend introduced us the the fantastic board game Carcasonne. He also tipped us about a great site: board game geek. Since then we have tried lots of different fun board games. Our most recent purchase is:

This game is SO FUN !!! I guess you might need to be over 10 years old to play - there are a lot of different things to keep track of. You can include warfare, but we stick to exploring and trade, that is more than enough. I love strategy games and this board game has all the ingredients. You get lots of cool money pieces as well.

Last week we also played this thrilling computer game together. As Nancy Drew we got to go kayaking, whale watching, learn about whales at a museum, learn the morse code, crack lots of puzzles and solve a tricky mystery. Though it is a computer game you need a notebook and pencil to write down clues and keep track of everything and it is a great game for playing two because you really need help! The only downside of this game is that you can only play it once. Luckily we have two more Nancy Drew mysteries to solve.

The extra dog is Ingrid’s new job, she is taking care of a dog with a broken leg for 9 days while the owner is in Spain. The broken leg seems to have mysteriously gotten a lot better since he came to us because he is running around all day. We are now counting down the days.

Ingrid has spent her earnings - here she is on her new kick scooter!

Ingrid showed me tricks on her scooter down at the marina where we also had a nice picnic supper. Here is the beautiful view we had.

School starts in August here in Sweden so now Ingrid has been back at school for a whole month. She loves school, she bounces out of bed every morning, all excited about going there. When other kids go on about how they think school is boring she goes "School is  best!" She doesn’t like the math homework though. She feels she get too much and not enough time. She started grade 7 this year. She is supposed to be in grade 6, but she got moved up so she could be with kids that were more mature. Anyway yesterday I walked to the school and talked to her math teacher. We’ll have to talk a few more times, before I can start asking for change. Here is a picture Ingrid took.

I spent part of the day listening to a lecture on the computer and studying, while Ingrid went over to a neighbour and played with their two new kittens.

Later I tried a Nigella Lawson recipe: Rinse some pears and chop them lengthwise, don’t bother about the stems or seeds (this is so Nigella!), chuck them in a frying pan with some olive oil and fry them lightly brown on each side. Mix some sherry and honey in a bowl, pour over the pears and let it cook awhile. Put the pairs on a plate, throw some walnuts in the pan to soak up the last of the sticky syrup and then it’s done. I added a few dates because I had some at home. It tasted great, but a little heavy because of the sherry. Next time I am going to try mixing concentrated fruit juice and honey.

Then we curled up in the tv-bed and watched National Treasure 2. Ingrid took this great picture with the self-timer. The cat and dog have eyeshine - the light is being reflected twice inside their eyes - and of the two you can really see that Onion Cat has the superior nightvision. Some primates have eyeshine, humans don’t. One of my eyeglasses is shining from three reflections, that is the prism patch that breaks the light at several angles.

Today Ingrid didn’t want to go to school. The weather is beautiful here today, so I think we will go for a swim and read out loud from Danny the Champion of the World. This is my absolute favourite Roald Dahl book. I loved it as a kid. I wanted to live in a gypsy caravan and have a totally reliable dad like Danny had.

Vättern is full of crayfish and on Friday the official crayfishing season started. Friday night we waded out and laid traps that we emptied very early in the morning the next day. It was fun! Ingrid really enjoyed it too. We had help from visitors from Malmo who were here for the weekend, on their way to Urvision, a gathering in the woods of a very diverse group of people interested in outdoor life.
Otherwise the weekend was a lot about sailing, as Ingrid had a follow-up weekend with her dinghy class. This time she sailed solo right across Motala bay and back again and then went out on Vättern on a high speed Rescue boat.

Here is a fun site about crayfishing around the world! Some good tips there I am going to try.

who bought Ingrid the super huge ice-cream Vättern? Several people have wondered. Here he is again. 
Adam calls himself a hippie (as do I about myself sometimes). I think the word hippie originally comes from being "hip" but I tell Ingrid that it is short for Happy, Interested, People.

An old school friend came for a visit and invited us out for ice-creams before he left (that’s him fixing with his hair). He told Ingrid she could have anything on the menu so she went for Vättern, their largest ice-cream. 16 scoops of gourmet ice-cream. She was so pleased!
I asked the staff how often they sell those and they said 1 or 2 a week. They also told me there is an ice-cream place in Söderköping where they have an ice-cream that is twice as large as Vättern. Hmmm… maybe worth a trip?