Samuel's quickly becoming a big boy. Not only is his group at daycare changing from being playschool to being kindergarten (vuggestue til børnehave), he's also skipping his midday naps. And THAT is hard!

One minute he was moving about on the ottoman, the next he was fast asleep :-)

He nows naps on Monday, Wednesday and sometimes Friday too.

The first week of our holiday was spent in Sweden at the holiday centre Framnäs, the methodist church in Sweden runs. Close to a lake there is plenty of possibility for bathing, splashing, fishing, sailing in canoos or just walking in the woods or enjoying the view. The stay comes with five meals a day (yes, five!) following old swedish dinner times.

We went there with the Gaarde family - Lina and Mikkel with their two daughters Anna, 7, and Thilde, soon 5.

The kids played and explored, and by the end of the week, Samuel was gone for hours at a time, going around with the "big girls". Bliss.

Here he's helping Anna explore a puddle:

Father and son canooing: (Please don't ask about the first part of the outing. It was a test of our marriage.... We'd placed our selves all wrong in the thing, and I couldn't stear and Duncan couldn't paddle and...) Samuel sat perfectly still for two hours just talking about the scenary, the birds and the water.
In the evenings we sat out side the door to our little house and read, knitted, ate chocolate (which only appeared at night post-children's bedtime) and talked while fighting off the moscitoes. Here is Lina with a new cook book bought at our "big girl's outing" to a real town centre.

Nearby is a little village called Grenna, that is famous for a man, who tried to reach the North Pole in an air balloon and failed miserably; the airballoons lost air after about a week of the expedition, they continued by foot and a month later they had all died. This man is celebrated with an air balloon festival once a year. Why, I ask, why?!

The other thing the little village has is a production of "polka grise" (literal translation: dansing pigs - a boiled sweet that's a bit like Blackpool rock). Lovely!

And here's Duncan and Samuel at the ferry on our way over to Sweden. The ferry was so big, that Samuel never quite accepted it as the boat, we'd been talking about before we went.

(See next post for pictures of Framnäs)

Framnäs is an old summer residens that belonged to a baroness. She wanted to donate the place to a church, and the Methodist church of Sweden was the only of two candidates, that agreed with the terms: the place was to be used for the recreation of retired ministers. And the poor people of the area was to be fed - at the usual dinner times :-) Hence the bizare times of meals: light breakfast at 8.30 am, then actual break fast at 10.00 am, coffee with three types of cakes at 2pm, dinner at 5 pm, and tea with bread and jam at 8 pm.

Several new houses have been build around the site to facilitate meal times and people sleeping. This is the view from the kithcen and dinner house:

The baroness' house is still on the grounds, decorated as she left them. The baroness' maiden name was Nobel, and several famous peoples have stayed in the house such as Rudyard Kipling.

This is the lounge upstairs:

This is the sitting room downstairs:
And this is the library:
We stayed in a little house with three rooms. Duncan, Samuel and I had the room down stairs. The Gaarde family stayed upstairs. All rooms had their own bathrooms.

Here's Mr. Thompson showing off:

July in the summerhouse is a real time for relaxing for us. And also a chance to see family and friends.

Here Samuel and I are enjoying the sun, each other and the red currants (ribs). He's delighted at all things you can pick and eat outside!

The little gravel road outside our house leads down to a big farm, that produce milk. Duncan and Samuel went down to see one day and met the farmer, who showed them around. They saw his tractors, the cows and a little calf who was only a couple of hours old. It couldn't even stand up yet!

The farmers name is Allan, and because that is also the name of the farmer in Postmand Pat, I'm afarid he thinks that's what all farmers are called! :-)

One the workers came to repair the little road - huge lorries drive in and out everyday, so it takes some maintanence. We wathced, and Samuel was captivated. A real tractor working on "his" road!! We even plucked up the courage to ask, if Samuel could drive with the guy in the tractor. He drove about ten meters with him. All along having an arm out for me. Afterwards he's been so excited telling everyone willing to listen about him driving the tractor - alone.

Uncle Lasse came to spend a day with us. He was also placed in the hammock :-)

His girlfriend, Lisette, came and we all had dinner. Here Lisette and Samuel are taking pictures of the two of them.
And, off course, we saw mormor og morfar. Samuel and I went to visit a couple of days, and they came over for dinner at ours. Here morfar is helping Samuel crunching little biscuits into his youghurt (koldskål).

Summer-holiday is over. I'm tempted to say it's summer, that's over. It sure feels like it with wind and rain, but Duncan refuses to let me take August away from him as a pure summery month. So I won't mention, that I think summer is past us.

Still, it's been lovely as long as it lasted!

Uncle Alistair and auntie Sam also came to visit us in our little summerhouse. This was the first time either of them saw the house. Samuel particularly enjoyed having them around - constantly dragging one or the other by the hand to show or get help for some thing or another.

Here Samuel is helping or hindering Sam in making dinner.

We went to the sea a couple of times, as it is quite close to the house. At a particular beach we had icecreams and ended up being rather wet, as Samuel ran away from the waves.
Alistair and Sam went all in to try the much-talked-of icecreams!
Being full-time aunt and uncle takes its toll. Luckily we have a hammock!

Here everyone is captivated by the adventures of Postman Pat - or Bob the Builder...

In June several new things saw the light of day. Most importantly our friends became parents to little boy Frode. (The name is rather difficult to pronounce, Duncan tells me, as the d is "soft".) The picture is from when I took Samuel to visit in the middle of July.

Our little house had a new front door put in. Oh joy! It is no longer necessary to kick the door a little to get it opened. It is easy to lock, and it is in fact completely tight.

And Samuel cracked the secret to riding a three wheeled bicycle (which I guess is then a tricycle?) And had great fun making morfar ride it too!