Ahh Sweden... We Have Arrived

It is that time of year again... summer vacation time... and for us that means Sweden! We approached this year's trip to Sweden differently that in the past in a couple of ways. First we did a home exchange. So we have a Swedish family stay in our house while we stay in their house. It is working out quite nicely.

Fredrica also came over about almost a week before Isabella and I did. The main reason Fredrica went early was to be in Sweden for the Swedish Royal Wedding. Fredrica remembers has strong memories of when she was 6 and the current king and queen of Sweden got married. This was a big deal in Sweden.

Crown Princess Victoria married a commoner... e.g. not someone of royal decent. That was both a big deal and something that the Swedes really loved. This is a great shot with her new husbad Daniel.

There is a great photo gallery of Royal Wedding here

Yep... so that mean Bella and Dad did the transatlantic flight on their own. To break up the trip we left Saturday afternoon and spent the night in Chicago. This is Bella posing in front of a nice Fish restaurant we went to. She was such a tropper on the flight... while she almost fell asleep as we were waiting for our food, she ate and we got a great night sleep.

Great pic of the grand canyon as we few over. Before we left Chicago on our flight to Stockholm, we had the morning to play around. We got into the hotel pool and ran around alot.

On our first full day in Sweden we went to Junibacken, a kids museum dedicated to several great Swedish authors of kids books

The most famous is Astrid Lingren, author of Pippi Longstocking... among many others.

Sitting on the throne of winterland

Bella flying an airplane

Cuddle time with a dinasore

Bella inside Pippi's house

Dad and Bella on Pippi's balcony

The view form Junibacken

After Juniback, we went to one of our favorite restaurants on Djurgården

The next day we say Molly and Olivia. Isbella asked 'are we going to see Olivia now?" on the drive to our place from the Stockholm airport. These dancing queens didn't waste anytime getting down to some serious dancing... Take a look here and here

But most excitingly... Olivia has a new baby brother Herman. Boy he is cute!

We went back to our favorite restaurant Hermans... We've blogged about this before. The view over lunch was spectacular as always!

And... they added Hammock! I mean what better thing to do after a satisfying lunch that to have a quick snooze in a comfortable hammock :-)