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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.

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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

April 5: Joe called me last night from Sri Lanka.  He sounds good.  We talked about summer jobs and his recent activities and the growth of Sylvie and Andrew.  In the last few weeks, Joe has done quite a few posts to his blog.  A couple of my favorites are about Nutella and about the animal life in his living quarters.  He also wrote about his first trip to the Indian Ocean.  Ahhh.  He’s planning to start an internship at an orphanage/compound located near the ocean in mid-April.
Joe recently uploaded hundreds of pictures to his Picasa album.  Andrew and I went throught them all and picked 75 of our favorites.  I posted them here to my website.  Enjoy!

April 3: I’m an on-again, off-again knitter.  In 2007, I started a sweater for Andrew.  I worked on it very occasionally over the last year-and-a-half, and last night, I finished it.  I actually finished it a few weeks ago, but when Andrew tried to pull it on over his head, the neck hole was too small.  So I ripped out a shoulder seam, and last night I added buttons.  In the last month, I’ve also knitted three baby hats.  And I’ve got two more projects in the works.  I love reading and knitting.  And editing photos.  I could do any of those three activities for about 10 hours a day.
One thing that has made knitting even more fun is a cool website called Ravelry.  It’s an online knitting community, and it’s so neat!  Seriously, if you like to knit, you should check it out.  You can post pictures of all your projects, but then the great part is that you can look up patterns (many of which are free), and if you’re thinking about doing a pattern, you can type it into the database, and you can see the pictures of all the people who have made that pattern.  You can see what kinds of yarn people used, what modifications people made…it’s so helpful!  For really popular patterns, there might be hundreds of pictures of the finished projects.  It really helps get an idea of what you can do.
Thre’s also a yarn section where you can type in a yarn and see what projects people have made with that yarn.  I love it.  I’ve spent hours tagging favorite patterns to try.  I’ve been meaning to post about this for quite some time.  If you join ravelry, look me up!  I’m adotzour!

Here’s a screenshot of Jessica’s Ravelry prjoects page.  I do one sweater, she does 16 projects:)

April 2: I think I can fairly, openly, and truthfully say that I am a chaotic and procrastinating correspondent.  Before email, it was letters, and now my gmail inbox is…well…it’s frightful.  Yesterday, when I sat down to begin to dig my way out, I had nearly 100 messages that needed something done.  I’m down to 40 now, and that’s a good thing.  I really liked Simple Mom’s email management suggestions.  Seems like I fluctuate between being really productive and being completely, utterly unproductive.  Like this week I didn’t do meal planning, and each night I’ve been at a loss for what to make for dinner.  It’s so stressful for me when it is 3pm and I don’t know what I’m making.  Fortunately, lentils came in handy on Tuesday and we did pancakes and sausages for supper last night.  This weekend, I’m making plans for sure!  Actually, I was thinking about just using Simple Mom’s April meal plan since she looks like she picked out some good meals.
I have about eight blog posts I’ve been wanting to do, but I just heard Sylvie roll and bump into her crib walls, so me thinks I won’t do it now!

March 30: This past weekend, Terry, Tom, and the four of us drove up to St. Paul to visit with Maretta and Kyle.  We haven’t seen them since Christmas, and it was so nice to spend some time together again!  Kyle broke his leg and had surgery in late February.  He’s recovering, but he’s going to be on crutches for at least several more weeks.  We hadn’t met Kyle and Maretta’s kittens yet.  They got Lucius and Pullo in January, and they are just adorable!  Pictures of the kittens and our weekend are in the gallery.

During our weekend, we played in the hotel’s pool, visited the beautiful Como Gardens, and ate a great dinner at Bucca di beppo.  The kids really enjoyed our travels.  Tom drove home with us and kept the kids entertained for the entire four hours, allowing me to finish my book!
Our visit was short, but we all had fun.  And now it feels nice to be back home again.

The kids both have runny noses, and Sylvie clearly isn’t feeling great, so it’s helpful to be back in our own environment.  Oh, and last night we learned the fun news that Bryan’s friend Kaleb had a baby boy!  There’s a new little person in Sweden we want to meet:)

March 28: Sylvie had her first full morning of daycare on Friday. I have started her going to an in-home daycare on Friday mornings.  My goals are 1) For her to be OK being away from me 2) For me to have some non-Sylvie time and 3) For her to get to play with a bunch of kids.  I was really worried about her maybe feeling scared and abandoned, but Donna said she did well.  Relief!
While she was at Donna’s, I worked on the last couple weeks of pictures.  They’re all now uploaded and in the gallery…the last of the winter ’09 album and the start of the spring ’09 album.  Yay Spring!!
Photos in this most recent batch of uploads include:

• Eli and Andrew playing and climbing trees
• My goofy, goofy, silly kids
• Peeks of green in the garden
• Goin’ to the zoo with friends
• Michael’s birthday
• Knitting projects
• Lamb farm visit

March 27: Our hyacinth bulbs have passed on, and I’ve since gotten some cut daffodils (and now some cut tulips) to add a little spring to our home.  They don’t smell as amazing as the hyacinths, but they’re so bright and beautiful.  Here’s a picture of some daffodils in high resolution to brighten your desktop.
Also, check out these adorable knitted eggs.  I love them!

March 25: The kids and I had our first Music Together class at Happy Bambino this morning.  It’s the first class (aside from story hour) that I’ve taken with Andrew since I was on maternity leave with him!  I’m excited to have a class to go to every Wednesday morning.  Attendance is Sylvia’s birthday present from Granny and Grandad…and she LOVED it.  She was grinning and bouncing and squealing the whole time.  (Andrew was curled in the corner with his bottom lip protruding most of the time…it was a little boisterous for him.  But bizarrely, when we left, he lept up and down exclaiming about how fun it was (!!??).)
Tom is playing with Andrew now, and Sylvie is napping, which is giving me a chance to catch up on the happenings of the interwebs.  I haven’t been on the computer in the evenings for a few days.  I started a book and am knitting a baby hat, and both of those activities are addicting.  When I am reading a good story, I have a very hard time doing anything else.  Like feed my children.

The other day, I thought, “I won’t read my book until after the kids are in bed.”
Then I wandered into the room where the book lay innocently on my nightstand.
“I’ll just move the book to the bed so it’s ready for me tonight,” I thought.
There it lay, nestled upon my comforter.
“I’ll just lie down on my bed for a moment.  Feuf!  I’m tired!” I lied.
“Wow, this bed sure is cozy, and Andrew and Sylvie aren’t in imminent danger, so maybe I’ll just cozy up to this large book that also happens to be on my bed.”
“I’ll open the book to the spot where I left off last night.”
…
…
Bad, bad, bad.  Isn’t something considered an addiction when it interferes with your normally functioning life.  Yes.  Reading addiction.
But after that, I’ve gone cold turkey for the last couple days.  Instead I’m working on a sweet little hat.  Almost. Done.  Must stay up one hour more…  Another addiction.  I think I have an addictive personality.

Anyway, enough about me.  Today is my brother Joe’s birthday!  21 years old today.  In Sri Lanka.  He’s done some great posts recently.  You can read them (and comment too…that’ll make him happy) on his blog: Plato’s Footnotes.
Michael’s birthday was last week.  We went to dinner together and had a nice time and ate yummy cake.  I have photos.  They’ll get edited and uploaded soon.

Soon as I finish my book!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!
<runs to bedroom>