Three Crowns

At grandma's (mormor) kitchen table this morning, I felt that we needed some culture and history. I am big on visiting important sites and learning new things - I love it myself, but especially for my boys. The boys studied Norse mythology in 5th grade, so what is better than visiting a local site that provides just that?! Truly amazing.  Sometimes I am slightly jealous of those who home-school their kiddos and are able to do cool excursions like this for a lecture. We still have a few more days in Sweden - I will try to come up with a few more things for us to visit and learn about. Mormor's partner is a walking wikipedia, and he suggested Sigurdsristningen, also known as the Sigurd Runestone. This is an ancient runestone in Eskilstuna, Sweden. It dates back to the Viking Age, specifically to the 11th century. We headed out there - it took about 25 minutes by car.     How blessed to be able to visit such a historical and cultural artifact. My son asked: "how come this is...

The middle sister and I grabbed 4 of our kids (my two boys, her youngest son, and then our third sister's youngest son) and headed to Dalarna for a few days. Middle sister had rented a cabin at a camping place that would sleep all 6 of us. She has been there before with youngest sister, but that was a decade ago before all these kiddos were born.   True to form, we hadn't really planned out the trip. One of my ongoing goals/commitments is to be more proactive/do more planning. STAR, STAR. (One of my professors during my undergrad used to say STAR, STAR when something was really important and would show up on the exam. ) So becoming more forward looking is definitely STAR, STAR for me.   Anyways, on Saturday morning when we were at the gas station before we headed off on the 4-hour drive, we googled a beach about halfway to our destination, and we came up with: Jägarnäsbadet . We definitely thanked our lucky star for sending us to this beach, as it was astoundingly beautiful wi...

My sons and I are currently in Sweden for our yearly visit. We hope to travel back home to Sweden once a year, but ticket prices are gruesome currently! I am a big fan of experiences over things, so for this year we made the choice to travel although it made a big dent in the wallet. Couple that with the fact that I have been an ostrich about my finances lately, and we can easily say that anxiety levels are running high when it comes to money.  So far we have had a great visit, and I will post several different posts from our trip so far (we are 2 weeks in). This year I have a rental car as we are staying here for a month, and we are wanting to go see some new places around Sweden.   A couple of days ago we celebrated my sister's birthday at their place outside Stockholm, so we drove up from Eskilstuna to Stockholm. Waze is my favorit app for navigating around.     My niece made a homemade Swedish birthday cake and my sister made a lovely potato soup. I am working on...