This week has just rushed past us together, partly filled with moving boxes and bubblewrap (But i still have been able to find perfect excuses to not pack more porcelain ?)
But the main reason for me to write this post is thanks to all the positive energy and feedback we have received from people we, in some cases, even don’t know. Strangers that has read our blog has come to us and told us how brave we are and how much they enjoy to follow our journey here on the blog. It has really given us a lot of positive energy in everything we are currently doing.
We visited Lukas school the other day and a complete stranger (who turned out to be Lukas needlework teacher) came to us and asked if we were Lukas parents and when we confirmed that we were, she started to give us kudos and tell us how cool and brave we are when doing this adventure ❤ It gives you a lot of warm feelings and a lot of positive energy.
We had a meeting with Lukas principal regarding the future of his schooling. We are so lucky to have both teachers and the principal, they are really understanding and helpful when it comes to this move ❤ Instead of judging and see problems with all our trips they enter with positive energy and help us in any way they can, with the focus on giving Lukas as ”normal” schooling as possible, it’s really mighty!
We have also received a lot of different questions this week (and before that too), for example Why Portugal? How did you come up with this idea? What are you going to do while there? It’s really fun to see that people are so interested and that they dare to ask, I will try to summarise the questions in an upcoming post and try to answer them all (It might be really boring ? but hopefully you will enjoy it ?)
But I’ve got one question that I will answer in this post that we’ve received several times, the question is how can you be so brave and pack down a whole house, buy a new one in another country (that we have never visited before we bought the house) and really turn your life upside down?
Hmm I’ve never thought about it in those terms, that the things we do are brave, for me it’s pretty normal but I completely understand the question.
My answer to that question is the man on the picture, he makes me braver each day ❤ Together we have sooo much fun, even if we are doing really boring stuff (like bubble wrapping somewhere 1700 plates…)
These pictures are from our wedding, we haven’t published them before. But we are doing a game about how well we know each other, as you can see we are pretty clear on who does what (you should answer a question, for example, who clean the plumbing at home? and raise the shoe for the person that does that ?) It was crazy fun! And we were not always on the same page ?
It was a really happy and blessed day, i’m so happy that he wants this madcap as his wife ?❤
My best friend, my man and the dad of our wonderful kiddo ❤ So there is the answer to the question ”How do you dare to do this?” – We do it together! ❤
Mm I don’t think that i can avoid that bubblewrap + porcelain so much longer, in some weird way it has been placed infront of the tv ? so I see it all the time ? I think this porcelain is trying to tell me something – ”please wrap me so we can go to Portugal?” ?
A REALLY big Thank you ? to everyone that is cheering on our adventure, giving us positive energy and feedback, asking questions or giving us comments/ideas, it’s really helping us and giving us a lot of joy and warmth ❤
So it’s finally time! Lukas has longed for this day to come! So what’s going to happen? Well, Lukas dad is going to come to school with him on a visitors day ?
Lukas school sent an e-mail a couple of week ago and invited all parents to a visitors day this week. We haven’t been in Lukas school during school-time before as he’s not been really keen on having his parents in school with him together with all his pals ??
But this time he really wanted us to join him, or at least Fredrik (It seems that my invitation got lost in the mail ?) So ever since it was decided Lukas has REALLY been looking forward to the day when his dad will follow him to school, he’s so cute ❤
The mom that was not invited ? got regular updates from the kind dad ? It was pretty hard to know which one of the boys that was the most excited when they left this morning ?
The day started out with woodwork where junior made a nice doorstop to his mom from some left-over wood ? So cute! (If you read this post Lukas you know that I can still call you cute ?)
After woodwork it were a lot of different subjects, like math and Lukas also managed to do some reading aloud for the whole class, at least he doesn’t seem to suffer from stage fright ??
His dad was carefully checking out so junior maintain his desk in perfect shape ? But by looking at the picture a.k.a. the evidence it looks like he passed the inspection ?I wonder how you get him to keep his desk at home that neat ??
Fredrik really enjoyed visiting school and he found it very interested to join junior during a schoolday. It was a really nice initiative from school to invite parents to a week like that. But they will always let the parent visit in school, even if it’s not visitors-week and that ’s really appreciated.
We are two VERY proud parents over this miracle ❤
So .. Packing.. How does it go ? Well it actually goes forward ?We have small isles that we can walk in between our cartons now ? Our living room is currently a warehouse for most of the cartons now, both the stuff that are going to be given away and the stuff that will be sent to Portugal.
We did a really good job this weekend and got a lot of stuff cleared and packed so it feels really nice. I’ve been able to avoid the bubblewrap whole weekend, I’m still hoping that another solution will ”pop-up” for the porcelain that we have to pack ? But i haven’t figured out any better way to pack it ? So I guess I have a date with the bubblewrap soon enough ? But I might still have a couple of other things to pack before I have to face that boring task again ?
Eight years ago I became mom to the most incredible and amazing creator in this world, our son Lukas ❤ It’s the best thing ever, but our adventure with ”kids” started way earlier then that!
Me and Fredrik has always had dogs around, even before the first day we met. And they were actually a really big reason why we met. We started our adventure with three (big) dogs on roughly 50 m3 but with a lot of love, we lived together with my two german shepherd-girls Amber & Alice and Fredriks beautiful rottweiler Tyson ❤ in our small apartment.
Then life happened! We managed to buy our wonderful house and finally we could give the dogs even more space, both inside and outside and a big garden to play around in. That was really one of the nicest things we could give them. Then life came again, I had to be without my hearts when I got preeclampsia and had to stay in the hospital. Two of them managed to get sick during that time which I didn’t know as I was in the hospital focusing on becoming a mom and giving birth to our son.
But pretty quickly after we got back from the hospital it was time to face the real world outside of the happiness-bubble that a child is. Especially when we got our son earlier then expected.
One by one we left the oldest due to sickness and when you felt very small in this world when you were standing there to say farewell forever ? You felt that you had missed so much when you were in the hospital but it was not a choice of our own, we were forced to stay in the hospital for a month. The sorrow to never be able to do enough never leave you. Believe me, I was not an easy patient, I just wanted to go home all the time, even after several attempts to ”escape” I didn’t succeed to leave, in my world they were holding me hostage and keeping me from my normal life, not listening to a single word I said when I were telling them that I felt fine, because that is actually how I felt.
To come home to sick ”kids” was devastating and I didn’t think about any new dogs at all! Buuut then came Boss, the cute, little puppy that took everything really calm, with a no stress attitude that we had never seen before ? and another thing, with the most beautiful and kind eyes I’ve ever seen ❤
I had no choice, my heart was sold. Lukas two months please meet Boss 8 weeks, which was the start of a life-long, beautiful friendship. It was love at first sight. Boss was always by Lukas side. Boss was always there when he started to crawl or turn around, watching over him. And he really got his plate full when Lukas started to walk around ? There were times when Lukas got sick of his constant companion, lurking around like a shadow around him but it was very rare, they were like siblings and loved each other so much ❤
Apparently that is how it is, no matter if you have four legs or two, fur or not, communication is not needed and you can really be like brothers. It might sound weird but you have to see it to believe it. However, this picture gives you an idea of the strong bond that they had.
And something must be wrong if you were not blown away by Boss! World kindest dog in all categories! When I had a rough time and didn’t know where to turn, I could always sit down next to him, pat his big head and look into the kindest eyes around. I felt calm and always felt the love he spread around him ❤
So I will miss this guy forever! I do miss all of the dogs that has fulfilled our life ❤ We miss you all, and Boss, my beautiful, big pony! I am sorry, we really tried to help you again but we couldn’t fix this sickness ❤ You get an animal, it’s our responsible to do everything for it and always give it the best, we did that with all of you and we miss you unbelievable much ❤
We are finally back in Portugal! After a WHOLE month in Sweden ? We got sick of colds, slippery roads and fifty shades of grey, so we went a liiiittle earlier then planned ? And what a contrast ! It’s summer and shorts-weather here, everything is growing and looking lovely! ❤ Some of the portuguese people still look at us and wonder what planet we are from ? It’s winter here for them with thick jackets and winter-shoes, so of course some tall people in shorts and flip-flops will make their minds wonder how we are thinking ? but we gladly give them that, it’s fun ?
We took the train this time too and it worked out perfectly, we even arrived early even after switching trains at Stockholm central ?
4 hours of waiting time is no pain when you do it in the company of these two lovely guys ❤ The trip continued in the same way, the airplane left in time, the flying and the staff was perfect, the food was delicious, pampering us as always ❤
Sadly it was dark when we landed so we couldn’t see the miracle that our gardener had done to our garden but as soon the sun went up we were out there enjoying the beautiful sight ❤ Our garden is now absolutely perfect thanks to them ?
I know that it’s been a long time since I last updated here, sorry ! I would like to thank everyone that is coming back all the time and that regularly come here to follow our blog ❤. The motivation has been low since we got back to Sweden, and when we were in Portugal we focused on enjoying each second there so I barely started the computer in two weeks ?
But now it’s time to update you about the latest news.
We went to Portugal during the school-break and finally my dad came and visited us for a couple of days ❤ he hasn’t seen the house live, only through Skype and picture so it was REALLY nice that they had the opportunity to come and visit us. BUT! Me and Fredrik managed to get an nasty flue on the way down to Portugal so sadly we couldn’t show all the things we wanted to show, we had a high fever for several days and rested mostly in bed. We hope that they come visit soon again so we can show them all the cool stuff our neighbourhood has to offer!
Anyway, it was really nice to have them around for a couple of days and they really enjoyed Portugal.
Luckily they managed to keep busy while we were sleeping away the fever ? They managed to swap a toilet, some faucets and build some furniture ?
We really appreciate that they fixed these things, we have a list of things to fix and we are really glad that they managed to minimise that list ? My dad is outstanding when it comes to fixing things and he knows a lot of stuff, it doesn’t matter if it concerns replacing faucets, toilet or to program the electronic gates so Fredrik can open them from his smartphone ?
The days got back to normal when we were back in Sweden, home-work, packing stuff and cooking other types of food. Junior had some homework with him to Portugal so he wouldn’t fall behind.
We feel that it’s hard to travel this much and especially when you don’t want to go back to Sweden … So … Now it’s for real! The date is set when we leave Sweden for Portugal, the trip is booked so now our house number #1 looks like this:
We have moving boxes in each room that we enter ? but it’s ok! It’s amazing that we finally have a date set and a specific goal to work towards, it’s A LOT of work to pack down a whole house that a family (us) have lived in for the last 10 years but we will do it!
We left this …
And came here ? The choice is not hard for us anymore, it will be a lot of work and everyone feels differently. Some people like to have four seasons (or what do you call it in Sweden? ?) and some don’t. So we think that all this work will definitely be worth it.
This time we faced different types of weather again, not just warm and sunny, something we really like and one of the reasons why we decided to buy a house in this area.
No matter how the weather is, we think it’s so beautiful here and we really love our house and the adventure we are living ❤
I just realized that we haven’t published so many pictures from our christmas celebration we made it big this year and even bought a big christmas tree with a lot of different decorations ?
I’m not a big fan of christmas decorations, i rather put my energy on the christmas food than porcelain figures or christmas curtains But when we arrived in Portugal we suddenly met a lot of christmas spirit everywhere, all the stores were decorated to the max and all the streets and plazas were ”screaming” christmas to us, santas and christmas decorations all over the place.
So we fell for it, we bought a christmas tree and a LOT of decorations as you can see The whole car was flooded with christmas things (i’m just glad that we skipped the santas and christmas curtains)
I got a bit scared when the christmas light was in the tree I have a phobia for blinking lights and I quickly realised that if the tree was going to blink like it does in the video I would go crazy and NOT have any christmas lights this year
We had sent some of our stuff down from Sweden this time also and we made sure to include a Swedish Ham (skinka) and some sausages (prinskorv)
Junior isn’t interested in the things we pack and ship all the time so he didn’t know that we had sent one of his christmas-food favourites down (the prinskorv), I wish that I had a photo of him when he picked up a prinskorv with a sceptic face, tasted it and said ”mom, it’s weird that this sausage tastes EXACTLY as the swedish prinskorv does, it even looks the same” Yes Junior, it IS swedish prinskorv that has travelled all through Europe for you
We made the rest of the christmas food by ourselves with lovely ingredients from Portugal. I even tried to make my own rödbetssallad for the first time, it’s one of my favourites for christmas I thought that it was done on fresh red beet that was cooked, great I thought as I had seen that in the stores before but when I read all the recipes I quickly understood that I had to use pickled beets I had not seen that in any stores but thanks to Fredriks ideas and a great app we managed to locate it and shop it in one of our stores we often shop in And shortly after I had produced my first rödbetssallad ever (And everyone loved it)
We also did home-made ribs, our version of Janssons frestelse and ofcourse, our swedish imported ham That and a pan filled with swedish meatballs and the christmas food was complete
It’s still a bit tricky to get hold of the ”correct” creme for gratins and such, potato gratin isn’t a common dish in Portugal so it’s hard to find someone to ask about which creme to use So we continue to try different ones and at least we got the jansson creamy this tip
We gladly accept hints on which creme is the correct one to use for gratins and such
It might seem a bit late with a christmas post but christmas lasts all the way to easter as we say in Sweden I also included a lot of food but I love to both cook and eat food so I don’t mind?
we made it big this year and even bought a big christmas tree with a lot of different decorations ?
But when we arrived in Portugal we suddenly met a lot of christmas spirit everywhere, all the stores were decorated to the max and all the streets and plazas were ”screaming” christmas to us, santas and christmas decorations all over the place.
I have a phobia for blinking lights and I quickly realised that if the tree was going to blink like it does in the video I would go crazy and NOT have any christmas lights this year 
I had not seen that in any stores but thanks to Fredriks ideas and a great app we managed to locate it and shop it in one of our stores we often shop in 
And shortly after I had produced my first rödbetssallad ever 
(And everyone loved it)
