After another looong day

Things are getting closer to a final state. The crooked piece from yesterday is fixed too. Still have two small ends on the fence, one by the wall to the left, and one by the higher dividing fence, and the gate isn't finished either. Think I'll wait until Thursday with those pieces. I'm totally exhausted, have to strech all muscles in my body, I think.

In the meanwhile, Klara keeps us entertained. Only a kid can poke herself in the nose (or rather just be amused by the fact she found a new place to put her finger in her face), laugh out loud, and pick the nose again. The three pictures are in chronological order...

Crazy slow progress

This right here, took me over six hours. If you look carefully, you'll see, that the middle section is not aligned. So I fixed it just now, by changing the section, because it wasn't stragiht. The fun part is, that it still isn't. So all I can think of now, is that the holders are not equally far down in the ground, though it looks that way.
Tomorrow we'll see...

Oh yeah, the front is the easy part. The left side will be a real bitch. :/

What took so much time today?

Hard to say just looking at the picture. Didn't think that elevating the flower bed would use up that much soil. Have poured in more than 7,5 bags (50L each) of soil (bought 5 bags at noon), and we're still not even with the lawn. So I got five more bags, but those will have to wait (the white blocks at the right side of the deck).
It has been great to have my parents so close by, they have taken care of Klara for almost two days now. Also, Klara's other grandmom helped out, though she lives a lot further away.

By Sunday I'm hoping to have the fence up there.

This is no vacation

Spending saturday with shopping for the garden, gives that it also needs to be fixed. So today I began, moving all the small bushes at the edge of the lawn to the edge of our garden.

After figuring out how to do it,


...it went along just fine.

Now "all" that's left, is to elevate the soil to the same level as the lawn, and to put up the fence... 8)

My girl

Two weeks in the "program", getting used to staying at home with Klara, but really need to prioritise going to the gymn more often. This week Tuesday is all I managed up until now. Summer is almost here, so getting beefed up needs some work. :P
She is just as much fun, as she is a pain in the butt from time to time, but the good times make it all worth it. :)

Easter is coming

Klara tries to hide the fact that she likes it.

I got myself a Nikon D40. It was actually meant as a replacement for the Ixus, should the third one have been faulty too. It wasn't. It isn't. Still, I could not return the D40, and decided to keep it after having it in the box for three weeks. It was like waiting for Christmas. :P
Needless to say, I'm completely in love with it, and the pictures it delivers are crazy good. And the Ixus was good, but the D40 is off the chart. For 3000SEK it was a bargain, and pictures from now on will mostly be from this baby.
.


Btw, if anyone needs a good recipe for pancakes, here's the winner. ;)
(The recipe is from an old Hungarian cookbook, Horváth Ilona szakácskönyv.)

• 20 dkg of flour
• 2 eggs
• 5dl milk
• 0,5dl oil
• Pinch of salt

Mix all of this in a bowl, but use only 3dl of milk, let it get all cozy in the fridge for a couple of hours. When it's time to fire up the pans, mix in about 1dl of the remaining milk, and check if the texture is good enough (just try one portion in a pan, if it doesn't flow around easily and evenly in the pan, then add more of the remaining milk and try again).
Use medium-high heat on your stove, and constantly adjust, around 15s per side should bake them nicely.
For the best result, use a pan that is thick, and preferably has a sharp edge around it. If the edge between the wall and the bottom is rounded, the pancakes won't have nice, even edges.

On track

Honey rum with cola

Pancakes

House music

Sunshine outside

Friday

Spring

Happy wife and kid

Life is good!

Food critic

Today I was going to make some good food, I thought. Sort of hamburger meat and mashed potato. The recipe looked tasty, and we like the home made mashed potato, so I got to it. Let me give you the recipe (found on the internet).

• 500g minced meat
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons of potato starch (what?!)
  
• 2 tablespoons of water
• 2 tablespoons of lingonberry jam*
• Salt
• Pepper

* If you don't know what lingonberry jam and drink tastes like, go to your nearest IKEA.

And now, forget the recipe. Forever. I mean it.
It tasted like moose piss. This was the worst recipe ever, from a moron that should be forced to eat this every day of his/her life.
Everyone that have ever made hamburgers or similar at home, knows that you use some kind of dried, baked breadcrumbs. Potato starch is for sauces. Contrary to what I shoud have done (adding bread) I went for the recipe, and I ended up with something that would make pudding feel solid like a brick. It did improve when fried, but not the taste.

The mashed potato then? Something went wrong there too, no treat there either.

So we ordered pizza. Portofino in Lund was a great place 6 years ago, with the most tasty and beautiful pizzas. Was is the correct word. It's been a long time since I had pizza this worthless. It didn't even have the decency to taste bad. It was just annoyingly tasteless.

Tomorrow I'm going to my hairdresser, and then I'm making pancakes. THAT I'm truly good at. :) Even got Nutella, an absolute must.

Anyway, at least I bought some beer today for the days to come, as it's going to be 15C this weekend, and relaxing in the garden may be nicer with a chilled drink. If only we could find the bolts and nuts for our garden furniture! :/

Double vaccine and a good camera

Finally, I have a camera that works as it should. The third Ixus 870 delivers. I'm very happy about this, but it also means, that I'll be returning the Nikon D40 that would have taken it's place, to the store. :/
I'm not sure if it would have given me much better images quality wise, or if it's just a new gizmo, and that's why I would like to have it anyway.


Today, Klara got her third round of shots, and it being a double vaccine, she got one in each leg. It's not fun at all when she knows from experience, that something is going to hurt, and you still have to do it to her. But she was very brave and didn't cry for long. She measured in at 8850g and 78cm. :)
Later she got a fever from the shots, and slept for quite a while this afternoon, and went to bed with no fuss just after seven o'clock.


I hope tomorrow morning she'll be better, and wake me just like today. The Mrs. brings her in, puts her next to me and Klara just lays there, says "papa" while looking at me, and gently pats me on my cheek. Waking up to that is the best thing ever.
Last day at work for 6 months! OMG!

Our crazy neighbours

There's a war going on.
A war that lays a smoke curtain over the houses. The two clans gather points almost every day by turning on the charcoal barbecues. Sausages give only half a point.


The sad part part is that they take children as prisoners, and make them work in their camp. It may look like Klara is enjoying the sun, but she's trying to escape.


She has only two teeth left, trying to chew her way out, rounding off the top of the fence she's pointing at.


Here you can see the labour party feast like there's no tomorrow.
They really are great neighbours, but starting up the barbecues when it's only +5C outside is just plain crazy. :)

Not so tough cookie

At 5:30 this morning she wanted breakfast, and then didn't really want to go back to sleep. Two hours of what felt like coma followed, Klara switching back and forth between lying down pretending to sleep and singing lalalala and being happy about it.

Eventually I got the windows done. Our parents came over and we had a great time all seven of us. Klara bounced like a pinball between the grandparents, and we rounded things off by showing them how she can walk outdoors with her walking-car on her own.
The only problem was, that the parent (me) that should have had total focus on the kid (Klara) didn't, so after walking on 3m of concrete and 5m of grass, she fell to the side like a tree and managed to land her head on the concrete sidewalk. Luckily the blow was cushioned by her cap. Actually the fall wasn't that bad, but her worst so far and it was horrible how lousy we felt. We can't be there all the time, but how do you let go the correct amount?

Tonight we are nostalgic about the things that happened a year ago. Right now we had been at the hospital for two hours... :)

Spring cleaning

Today I got an awakening by Klara around 8 o'clock, with perhaps 10 kisses. There are worse ways to begin the day, really. :)
Then the Mrs. had a major spring cleaning of the house, and it turned out really wonderful. In the meanwhile I was away on an annual meeting at the gymn. All that remains, and what I have to do tomorrow, is clean the windows. Our parents are coming to celebrate Klara's birthday, she turns one on Monday!


In the afternoon our neighbours came over, and brought take-away Thai dinner. We always have much fun with them, and Klara seems to be especially fond of the smallest one.

Two great things with kids

No clue at all what a family photo is supposed to be like.


Quite happy that we collect stuff in drawers for them to throw around.

5 minutes of noseblood

On Friday we tested the infamous 5min method, which is a way of making your kid fall asleep on its own. In short, you put it to bed and leave the room. No matter what, you must not enter until 5 minutes has passed.
The problem is, that our kid thought we were going to abandon her. 5 min is almost forever for her in a semi-dark room. The comfort of us always responding to a real cry was yanked away from her. Needless to say, we gave it less than one try, as we were both on the verge of crying.
We don't have that big problems with putting her to bed, it rarely takes more than 5 min anyway. Are we too soft parents perhaps?

Then tonight, it was payback time. She poked me in (yes, in) the nose so my nose started bleeding. A new experience, I think for both of us.

In three weeks, I will be staying at home with Klara for almost 6 months, my paternity leave. Wonder what it will be like. Probably lots of fun, but also quite strange not going to work every day.

A night at the Roxbury

Haven't been out partying for a while, now it was time for a trip into the night.
My good friend Henrik thought Tequila was a nice choice for the occasion, and he sure was correct. We went to (IMO) the best place in Malmö, Skeppsbron, where we met some old and some new friends. The music was good, the people fun, and the heating outside made it feel like Ibiza, bwahahah not really, but... I can't remember when I shivered as much as this morning.
We had a really, really good time, I was at home around 06:15 and am not quite myself yet, I hope Henrik is alive today... ;D

Another gate

Today evening the Mrs. got an idea, and wanted to see if Klara could climb the stairs.
 She could. And it's fun and she's fast.
 Fortunately we found out before she thought of it herself. So before she even fell asleep, the bottom gate was up.

Valentine's day

We started the day with going to my mum and dad, leaving Klara there until tomorrow, her first sleepover without us. The leaving her part was initially not as bad as we thought, but now, tonight, it is pretty sad seeing her little chair and thinking of how she usually sits there... anyway, back to the story.

All day they promised clear and sunny weather, and mother Earth delivered. We drove to Helsingborg...

...took the ferry across to Helsingör, where the Mrs. met "mat-Tina" ("food-Tina"), a famous cook and TV-celebrity :) . It was fun being "abroad" for a short while, eating an semi-expensive, but very tasty sandwich (worth the money so to say) and walking around on the shopping street. Then we sat on a bench for half an hour, in the sun, in warm clothes, like an old couple.


Back in Helsingborg, we ate at the restaurant that we were in on our first in-official date. There we ran into mat-Tina and her family again. We had a hard time leaving the place, due to the amount of food we ate, we both felt like we were going to explode.
IKEA is another favourite place on Valentine's day, so we got that in the program as well. :P

On our way home, we had the chance to race a little with some danish cars, so I got to have some extra fun.
So far, this has been the best Valentine's day I can remember.

Back home it's a little strange. We didn't live here long before Klara popped out, so this house without her is... just strange. I wonder how she feels right now... :(

Instant adoption

This morning I started with shoveling in front of the house. We got 10cm of snow during the night. Then I rode my bike to work, I love doing that when there's snow on the ground. Also, I have to, otherwise my socks would be soaked by the time I'd get there walking. :P

Yesterday afternoon, my sister in law and her two kids arrived, creating an instant huge family for me, since I suddenly had the regular kid, plus two on my back, literally. Her two kids are old enough to climb around and jump around on me, which they didn't have problems with doing today evening as well.
While it's fun to be so "appreciated", it also leaves me feeling really bad for not being able to give Klara more of my attention. I mean, it's quite hard to play with her, while being a human tree house at the same time. :)
Tomorrow evening it will just be the three of us again, so I'll try to make it up to her.


We just finished watching a great movie, Taken, with Liam Neeson, who does a great performance here. Luc Besson is one of the writers, and it shows. There are great action and fight scenes, and the bad guys get what every normal person wants them to get. Dead.

Why complain?

This is what the weather has been like this week.
Today it should have been somewhat sunny according to the forecast, but no, still foggy. So, instead of going on a small picnic somewhere, I got a nice headache due to tension in my neck, and the massage at the gymn made it even worse.
On my way home I wanted to cheer myself up by buying some sweets, or other treat, just because I felt so lousy, but I didn't crave anything really.

Then, when I got home, my family reminded me how good life really is...

I have an adorable daughter and a precious wife, who both were at home to greet me.
I have my ever loving and supporting parents no further than 15 minutes away by car.
I got a really delicious lunch that boosted my energy back to a normal level. Something I am spoiled with every day, thanks to my wife being a great cook, though not realising it herself.
I have a job. Even better, I have a job I like and my co-workers and boss are great.
I live in a new house, in a nice neighbourhood, with great neighbours.
I've got a good, reliable, fast car (a generous gift from my parents), that never fails us.

I realised, that despite the headache I have, there is so much (immaterial and material) that makes me a lucky man, that I could just ignore the pain and focus on other things. Things that one often take for granted. And that, one should really not do.

Lousy news from Hungary

Just saw this on the news, geese are being plucked while still alive.
The beginning of the clip is in Swedish, then at around 25s the under cover team films on location. It's really sad to see how they treat the animals. There are laws in the EU that prohibit this behaviour, but apparently, joining the EU, this wasn't a law that they cared too much for.
Being from Hungary myself, I can't say I'm proud.