How cold is it?

When it gets cold in Sweden, even the statues wear winter gear. We saw this on our way to get groceries in Lund the other day. Yes those are what appear to be leg warmers. What makes this even cooler is that someone had actually taking the time to sew them on. Crazy Swedes!

Happy Easter!

The biggest difference between here and the states for Easter is the time off.  The official holiday begins at noon on Thursday before and last through the Monday after, a 4.5 day weekend!!  Everyone here gets pretty geared up too.  Here are some treats in the local bakery.

While walking around our town, Staffanstorp, we noticed trees with feathers in them.

Then we saw them for sale in the farmer's market in Lund.  They are stuck to the ends of sticks.

Notice all the flowers?  They sell flowers everywhere, even Ikea!  Mostly daffodil bulbs, and cut tulips.  The tulips here are beautiful.  They are all fairly small, but the colors and color combinations are so unique (I'll have to snag some tulip pics).  Anyway, back to feathers.  We decided the feathers were Easter decorations and now we notice them everywhere.

Oh yeah, and then there's this difference..

I can't say I ever remember waking up, putting on my brand new Easter snow suit and going out to hunt eggs in the snow.  Happy Easter!!

Get ready for the good stuff

OK, so I blew up the blog today with posts that I have been slacking on publishing. Going forward you will be reading posts on the life of the Tennessee Swedes.

When we landed in Copenhagen on Saturday morning it was -8 Celsius. Incase your not sure how cold that is, it looks something like this from a plane. Yes that is snow and no the pilot would not turn around. What have we done?

Turns out it does snow in southern Sweden and if anyone ever tells you that it doesn't get that cold during late March in southern Sweden... punch them in the face! At least the house is warm. 

Farewell to Richmond Friends and Family - take 1

We headed up to Richmond on March 19th. It was hard to leave our house that morning, we love our little house in South Knox. We have decided to rent it out just incase we need an evacuation plan in the next year or two. Here is a picture of us saying good bye to the house.

We got on the road and headed to Richmond to see my friends and family. OK so we have a very large dog named Charlie and he is one of our spoiled kids. If you didn't know we also have a cat named Tyler Durden. (insert Fight Club reference here) Both of our kids were on board for the journey to Europe. I will go ahead and let you all know now that both kids did great on the plane and are now living the dream in Sweden, more on the kids later. Here is a picture of the two of them trying to figure out what is going on as we head to Richmond.

We got to Richmond and stayed at my buddy Drew's house. Big thanks to Drew and Amanda for the hospitality to the Everett's that week. Wednesday was friends day so I had the day all planned out to hang with my buddies and chill downtown. We started the day at Legend Brewery. The plan was to have a beer or two along with some apps and then head down the road for some some lunch in The Fan. It was so nice that day we stayed on the patio at Legend for 5 hours in the sun. Did I mention that I got super sunburned? Well i did. It couldn't have been any nicer! Later we went to my buddy Jerry's house and he cooked burgers on the grill. We got to see his family and they were nice opened their doors for longtime friends to stop by and say hey. This truly was a great day!! Thank you friends!

Thursday was family day. We met up with my dad at his house and headed downtown to Strawberry Street Cafe for some lunch. My aunt Betty came into town with her husband Jim to send us off with their best wishes. Big thanks to them for stopping by, it was really nice. Sister Sara and her husband Brandon came with the twins and we all had a nice lunch. We ate at Mama Zu's that night. If you asked me what I was going to miss most in the states I wouldn't have to think to hard about it... the answer would be Mama Zu's. Hopefully Michelle and I will be reporting in the future that we made it to Italy and found somewhere that compares or dare I say it, is even better than the Zu. Anyway, we had another awesome meal at Mama Zu's with my sister, Brandon, and my dad. It was a great way to spend our last night in the states. Thanks family!! 

We hit the road on Friday morning and headed to Dulles International Airport to catch our flight. We headed to my dad's for one last goodbye. Miss you Dad! My sister and Brandon rode with us up to the airport and got us unloaded and checked in. They then got our car back to Richmond for us. Thanks to both of them for being troopers that day, we owe you guys big time. After we checked it at the airport we both took a few minutes to send out a few text messages and the then our journey began. Hej då!

 

Knoxville Farewell - Bonus material

I wanted to add some more pictures of our last couple of days in K-Town with friends. Thanks again friends we miss you all. Enjoy!!!