Good ol' times

After a few days of being together that weird out of body feeling started to go away. We talked about how it felt special to be together in San Jose, but this time it feels even more special. Being apart for that long and knowing that you will only be together for two weeks makes you want to cherish every moment. In the morning we played a dice game that Nick taught me and tried lifting each other up (for some reason :P). Nick does that to me once in a while so I decided that I wanted to do the same. Lo and behold I can actually carry this guy :P haha unless he tenses every musle in his body and acts like a rock.
 
For the first week Nick had Swedish meat balls for breakfast every day, haha! He remembered how good they taste from when we bought them at IKEA in Palo Alto. Since he is American we tend to eat real food for breakfast nowadays instead of a typical Swedish breakfast. But when I wake up later in the day I always do that anyways so I am used to it.
 
On this day I wanted to show Nick our old summer house. My grandparents got it from my grandmother's father in 1960 so it has been a huge part of my childhood. But ever since my grandfather died 11 years ago it has been harder for us to take care of it. We just don't have the money or time and our grandmother's helth is declining. Luckily my mother's cousins who have the summer house just next door offered to buy it from us. They wanted it to stay in the family too since they have lots of memories from it and wanted to make sure that no one bought this gorgeous landscape and built new houses on it. So we are welcome to go there whenever we want to visit our childhood summer paradise :) <3
 
The actual building is about 100 years old, It has such old things in it and the history fanatic in me screams of joy every time I am there. It is surrounded by a wide landscape of grass, flowers, cherry trees, "the mountain" that seperates the two summer houses, meadows and forests. Much of the furniture and little things are not there any more since we moved so you can't really live there but I think Nick got the idea. Now it will be fun to show him home videos again from that place so he can see how alive that place was. We met up with Josefine, Johan, Agnes, my mom's cousin Helena and Kristina and her daughter Johanna for coffee in their summer house. Nick got to see the very old hats that we were for our annual crayfish parties! I think they were bought maybe in the 60's and we love how silly they look.
 
We said good bye and took a short walk in the forest behind the summer houses, where you can find lots of wild berries. Then we went to pick up Helena again at her house so that we could go and visit her mother Chris. She was married to my grandmother's brother Börje who passed away many years ago. They used to live at the farm where my grandmother grew up and Börje also started building a golf course there. It is a very important place to all of us relatives because we descend from those four siblings - my grandmother, her brother and two sisters. But they farm was owned even by THEIR grandparents too. Pretty damn cool. Seeing Chris again was so great. She is apparently moving from her house (a smaller house on the farm where my grandmother's parents lived in when they got older too) so we got a tour of it one last time. I had forgotten what an amazing painter she is, you can see some of her artwork below! She also surprised me with her English skills. She told us that she went to school during the end of world war 2 when children were taught German and English, but when the war ended in 1945 it was only focused on English. My grandmother doesn't remember any English except for "Happy birthday" (we recently found out) so it's fun that Chris remembers so much.
 
We took a short walk around the golf course so he could see the buildings that used to have cows and pigs in them, but are now restaurant lol. Then we made a quick stop by the church to visit some of my family graves. On our way home we went to Anundshög, the historical area from the Middle Ages where they used to have trials and the prosecuted would stand surrounded by big rocks. They also have a big burial hill, not sure if there are still bodies under there though. This is actually a beautiful place and very popular both among tourists and us who live here. But we cut our visit short since we all of a sudden were covered in tiny black bugs!!
 
In the evening Nick got to cook for my parents for the first time. He chose to do his Ducket's Bucket soup :) my parents have never had anything like it so they thought it was interesting! It was fun to see how Nick experiences the same emotions that I had when I was going to cook in America. The food doesn't taste quite the same because you can't buy the exact same ingredients like you would in your home country. It's frustrating and yet a good culture exchange.
 
Salmon, potatoes, meatballs, eggs and a lemon/dill sauce.. such a Swedish meal for Nick :P
In our old summer house
A baby seat that I am sure me, my sister and a couple of other genereations have sat on
Agnes' very first visit to Orresta!
My grandparents would sleep on this pull out couch and me and my sister would sleep in that little bed. When we grew out of it we slept on the floor in sleeping bags.
Nick in front of the storage rooms and outhouse
Kristina got to hold this little one for the first time!
The mountain
The big house where my family lived for generations and where my grandmother was raised
Chris had this very cool bible from the 17th century
She is such a great painter, I could immediately see that this was her husband
Björksta church
Anundshög
Showing my parents pictures from our day

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