Sweden!

April 5: When we clicked “confirm” last night on Expedia, Bryan and I firmed up our plans to travel to Sweden this July!  Bryan’s best friend from college, Kaleb, is getting married in Sweden, and Bryan is going to be his best man:)  The kids are going to stay with their amazing Granny and Grandad while Bryan and I jet off to Europe for a week.  Wow.  Kaleb’s fiancee , Karin, is Swedish, and they have been living in Stockholm.  The wedding is to take place in a rural town called Årbotten.  Here’s what Karin said about it:

My mom was born in the little town Årbotten, which is in the middle of the forest close to the border of Norway. Värmland is the landscape of fairytales and poems, the landscape of many lakes and streams and the place in Sweden in which my families roots reach back hundreds of years. My granddad was a miller, as well as his dad and his granddad, and the water powered mill is still standing just by the the house my mom and her sister grew up in as the fourth generation. The house now a days belongs to my auntie and her husband but we get to enjoy it too! We all help to keep the place in shape and last summer’s project was to paint the mill. I have always been dreaming about a wedding in Årbotten, it is a very romantic place!

I can’t wait to spend some time in the land of “fairytales and poems”!  Bryan and I will be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary in June, so a big trip in July is just the thing to celebrate.
Here’s a map showing the two main locations we’ll be playing.

View Larger Map
Kaleb and Karin just had a baby boy last week.  We’re really looking forward to spending some time with them and meeting their new little guy.  I found lots of inspiring photos of Stockholm and Värmland on Flickr. In happy anticipation…
~Althea