Love..

Today I was planning to take some pictures in beautiful Hörvik, but its too cold by the ocean...

Christmas gift...

I just ordered this absolutely gorgeous kitchen from Kidkraft... I think it'll be a very appreciated gift for Christmas!  I wanted this one because it's a little taller than many others, made in wood and seems to be good quality! I've seen some swedish websites that sell KidKraft so its possible to get in Sweden to!

New in...

A few new things that will fit our house...Two pillows, two blankets and a basket for fruit or so...all from swedish HM HOME (hm.com)..

Back in Sweden...

Me and the girls are back in Sweden! I'm going to finish the long process of get a visa issued... For allowance to stay in USA longer then 90 days in a row you must have a valid visa. There are many kinds to apply for but we are going through the very long process of getting a so called immediate family related visa. Its a visa you can apply for if you are a spouse of an american citizen. I'll tell you all about that another day! 

Anyway this time we flew Bozeman- Chicago-Copenhagen with SAS.  It was a challenge to fy alone with Jamie and Natalie, but all (except 15 min while boarding the night flight to Cph...) of the door-to-door 26 h trip went really well. 

The only hard time we had was right before the long flight from Chicago. I booked a late evening flight with hope of the two girls beeing a sleep most of the trip... and they more or less did that. But when we were about to board at 10 I had to wake a deep sleeping 4- year old and make her walk by herself into the plane...unfortunately I couldn't carry a sleeping J and my big girl by myself. It was very hard and scary to wake up in a strange place and forced to do that..I even asked the crew members for help already in advance but when the time came for us as last passengers to board, they were not allowed to hold a child even if I insisted...the situation didnt get better until a female (the others were men and obviously not parents...) helped me carry Jamie so I could calm N down.I felt so helpless right there all alone! And the whole situation could so easily been avoided if someone just would have carried one of the sleeping girls! Anyway we made it home and all in all the trip was not too bad! I dont mind travelling alone with them again... ( still preferable overnight flight.)

This day after we were very sleepy and just relaxed down in Hörvik. Now the challenge to get the girls back to swedish time and sleeping routines starts!

Just an evening...

It's been a little windy in the evenings for a while, but last night we all of a sudden decided to light a fire. The plan was to just grill some hot dogs but then I remembered how fun it was to grill "bread on a stick" or campfire bread , " pinnbrod" when I was younger ( and how good it tasted..) so I made some dough for that.
Super easy recipe for campfire bread:
( make at home and split to 10 small portions at the fire)
2 cups ( 5 dl) unbleached flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Cold water..
Mix together then add water and mix with your fingers till an even and nonsticky dough.

Nice sunset but it got cold quick with darkness!

Natalie's birthday...

Soon..

Snow on the ground...

Last night we had a storm rolling over... and also got some snow! So this morning we played a little outside in the nice clear weather... a little cold for me, I have to buy better shoes!  Both girls seemed to enjoy the snow. Hopefully we still have sunshine this afternoon so we can grill outside...Natalie has talked abour making smore's for a while so I guess we better try it now in the snow.. It' s like a "graham cracker sandwich" with chocolate bars and marshmallows in between, you put it on the grill. I'm gonna take some pics and give a resume' tomorrow..
Oh tomorrow it's Natalies birthday so tonight it's time for baking and wrap the last presents! It feels like she's getting alot of pink and soft gifts this time... We are going to celebrate her a little this weekend and then have a birthday party later. ( and one for the swedish friends and family at home...) I found pretty paper for some of the present...unfortunately I didn't read on the paper and when I came home it was only enough for a few... In sweden you always get 5-10 m when you buy a roll, this was only 1,5 m...so I learned that I have to pay more attention next time!

Shipping!

Soon...

Harvest fest and shopping in Billings...

Saturday we drove to Billigs for some shopping to the girls and a visit to a Harvest Festival downtown. It was pretty nice and some fun things to look at for the girls. There were some locally grown veggies, pumpkins apples and also some crafts and foodstands. The food area had a little New Orleans smell and mood..( or at least how I imagine MardiGras...) with good bbq chicken and cajun cuisine among the streetfoods.. we ate Carribean chicken. Tasty!

As always in places like festivals its interesting to study people and their styles. I can say that the
' cool' girls in Billings ( age students and up) were wearing bling bling jeans with some kind of kneeboots leather or suede and were really maked up and curled their hair..since it was saturday
I assume that they were all going out later... I felt little unfixed with just mascara on..but didn't plan to go anywhere else than an afternoon harvest fest for kids...hihi..

Anyway, we also bought some presents for Natalie at the rimrock mall. 
It's a good shoppingcenter! 
They have a playarea for children so one parent can sit there and let the kids play.
For kids clothes you have children's place, gap, gymboree, crazy 8 and a big store, scheels, for all sports and outdoors.I hope I get to go there and just look for myself oneday, but that usually doesn't happen with the kids..there are a whole lot for me to buy so maybe next time...

I bought some clothes for Natalie at
Place and gap kids and a winterjacket with pants for jamie.
It seems like there are 4 major quality brands that people buy to their kids in this area, the north face, colombia, 
Spyder and canadian jupa. 
All 4 are supposed to be really good, and parents here are used to real winters so they know what keeps you warm anddry.
We picked colombia to our little wild girl. 
I like that they have adjustable size so you get 2 sizes in one. 
She got gloves from jupa because they were easiest to put on and fit her best..hopefully she'll stay dry and warm over the winter...

Spyder have really cool gear, and 
I think we wil try them for 
Natalie, but this time she refused to try anything on....

Spyder will make all clothes for the us olympic ski team to next winter games. so that's gonna make them extremely popular...and the reputation i already very good overhere.

Sorry for the weird looking text..don't know what happened to make the lines go crazy..

Indian Summer...

The other day, me and the girls took our regular afternoon walk or bike ride and almost got really hot! It was a beautiful day, probably the last with t-shirts on... sunny and almost 25 degrees.. so a real Indian Summer here ( like Brittsommar). And such a big contrast to all snow by Crystal Lake last week!

I've been told it was getting colder quick and that was surely right. After that day it's been cooler, a few mornings icy and today snow on the ground. So from now on we'll probably have more "Downsouth Swedish winter" until winter starts here..And we are going to have a real winter here..Today I told Natalie  that she'll see more snow then she has ever seen before. So we are preparing for that!  But first we hope for some more fallish days to come...

I took some pictures and as usual Natalie posed in all weird ways you can imagine!

Crystal Lake....

Text soon...

Finally at the Ranch...

After driving for 8 days and totally 2945 km (+- 10 km), we reached the goal for our roadtrip! We made it to Big Snowy Mountains and the ranch where we are going to stay. The ranch is located outside smalltown Judith Gap in central Montana, or actually 20 min east of Judith Gap, by the foothills of Big Snowy Mountains. Easy to find on a map right between Great Falls and Billings. This mountain range doesn't look so huge at the map, but it's quite big and the tallest peak is still over 2500 m. We have really pretty views of the mountains!

This ranch is family-operated, which raises calves and sell them when they are around 8 months old. Usually the calves get sold by end of october. They run around 750 cow/calf pairs of mainly Black Angus and some Red Angus. And like most all ranchers here, they cut their own hay. ( Alot of it!)...I don't know exactly how big this ranch is...( you don't really ask a rancher/farmer how much land they have..here or in Sweden.) but I've been told around 10.000 acres so around 4500 hektar..so huge!!

All cattle always goes outside, more or less in huge pastures. Usually they are up in the mountains until the colder season starts, then they come down to lower elevation before shipping and in time for start haying them. I think the rule in Sweden is that cows are granted 5 months outside, the rest of the year inside in a barn...if you don't apply for permission and pay quite alot of money. I know more and more farmers want to do it  "natural" so we'll see if that will simplify the rules. Here you don't see any large barns...only small, sometimes half covered for calving or doctoring... so the cows live a natural life outside and almost  undisturbed! ...

I put up some pictures from the cellphone, but tuesday we'll get better connection so I can put up real pictures from my camera....

(And sorry for my bad english and spelling...it takes a while to write with my phone..and I miss sometimes... )