Familjen spel

"Familjen spel" means "family games" in Swedish!

Here is yet another little red house.

 

Let's talk about my family.  This is Aunt Marie.  You might remember her from my last blog.  She is my Farfar's (grandpa or "dad's dad"s) sister.  (So, really my great aunt.)

 

My middle name is Marie, and I'm named after her.

 

Last time I went to Sweden this is what I looked like.  (I was so cute and adorable.) I was only four.

 

 

Here is a picture of Aunt Marie and her family last time I came.  In the back row, left to right are my cousin Johannes, my Uncle H.G.  Bottom row is my cousin Alexander, Aunt Marie, my great grandma (Farfarsmor) and my cousin Sebastian.

 

Now this time we visited....I feel short!  Left to right on back row is Sebastian, Alexander, and Johannes.  (And me and Kieran in the front row.  I am 5'5" so you can guess how tall the boys are...yep, tall.)

 

Speedo again.

 

This is how he looked last time. (Cute and adorable - both of us.)

 

 

Still cute and adorable!

 

Last time Farfar (my grandpa) and Farfarsmor (his mom, my great grandma) were with us.

 

 

This time we had to go see Farfarsmor (and Farfarsfar - my great grandpa) in the cemetery.

 

 

And even though Farfar (Grandpa) was at home in Salt Lake City, he was in the newspaper in Sweden!  How weird is that? 

 

 

One morning we were just looking at the newspaper and we were like, "Hey!  Look!  There's Farfar!"  (He is world famous in Sweden because he was a super awesome high jumper "back in the day.")  It was an article about "looking back" in sports.

 

Treeeeeees.

 

Kieran with treeeeees.

 

Flowerrrrrssssss.

 

The ocean of treeeeeeees that can be seen from the top of the mountain by Aunt Marie's house.

 

Cool moss on the roooooocks.

 

Flowwwwweeerrrs.

 

Hammmmmmmock.

 

This is a game called Kubb (say it Koooooob.)  In a nutshell, the object of the game is to knock down wooden sticks with other, longer wooden sticks by throwing them. 

 

 

Yay!

 

Ooohhhh......

 

I almost got that one!

 

Ahhhhhhhhhh!

 

Another thing Kieran did for fun was play Legos.

 

Well, here's a barn full of Legos...That you can come and play with...Whenever...For free...Some guy who won the Swedish "Survivor" show just wanted to open up a barn with Legos.  I don't know why.  But we went there.

 

 

He also had toy boats.  I don't know why.

 

But we played with them.  Thanks, Lego Swedish Survivor Dude!

 

We learned something new and bizarre about Christmas in Sweden.  We thought we knew all the Swedish Christmas traditions, because we do a lot of them.  But this we had never heard of.  They watch Donald Duck at 3:00 every Christmas Eve.  Everyone does it.  Seriously.  At 3:00 PM.  We asked people all around.  They said, "Yes.  We do that."  Weird.

 

Some playground at the beach.

 

This is Boda Borg. (In case you can't read.)  It means "Boda Fortress." (Meaning roughly, Fortress of Boda.)  I do not know who Boda is.  Maybe Yoda's brother?

 

Basically it's a bunker inside of a cave inside of a mountain that has been turned into a Fortress of Boda.  What is a Fortress of Boda, you may ask?  Well, that is what this guy explained to us.  (Luckily, he spoke English pretty well.) 

 

We are now standing in front of 16 different signs.  Each one points in the direction of one "Quest."  A Quest is made up of three different rooms that you have to go through and pass a combination of physical and mental challenges in a time limit.  When you get in, you have no idea what you have to do.  There are no instructions (even if there were, we wouldn't understand them because they would be in Swedish).  Even if you pass the first room, if you don't pass the second room, you have to start from the beginning again.  Make sure to watch for clues in previous rooms.  If you don't, you will most likely fail the other rooms.  Each room must be completed by a team of at least 4-5 people.  They are impossible to do alone, or even with 2-3 people.  On our team we had me, Kieran, Mom, Dad, and Alexander (who had been there before several years earlier and helped us out a lot!)

 

We completed twelve of the sixteen quests.  It was super fun!  Join me next time at Fortress of Boda.

 

***Thank you to Uncle H.G. for some of the pictures on this blog***

 

 

 

Midsommarafton

"Midsommarafton" means Midsummer's Eve in Swedish!

Here's a red house, like I promised in my last blog.

 

So in case you were wondering, Midsummer is not really the middle of the summer.  It's the first day of summer.  (That makes no sense...)  It's the longest day of the year and in Sweden that means a really long day, especially in Skellefteå in the north of Sweden, where we were!  It pretty much never got dark.

 

There are a lot of traditions for this holiday, so it's a really big deal.  Luckily, my Aunt Marie is Swedish and she told me all the things to do.  The first thing we did in preparation was pick wildflowers.

 

Lots and lots of wildflowers...

 

Here is Aunt Marie!  She is working on a crown made out of birch branches and flowers....

 

...while I pet the cat, Speedo.

 

First you have to weave the branches into a circle the size of your head.  Then you make a small bouquet of flowers and attach it to the crown using thin wire.  Then you get another small bouquet and attach it to the crown on top of the stems of the other bouquet.  You do this all the way around the crown.

 

While we were working on the crown, Uncle H.G. was building a Midsommarstång (a Maypole, even though it's June....that makes no sense...so a June Pole....)  He did this by cutting down a tree, stripping off all the little branches with the leaves on them, and then he cut the trunk into two pieces to make a "T" and then tied all the branches and leaves back onto the pole and then propped it back up.  (Hmmmm...That makes no sense.)

 

Here is the finished crown!

 

And here is the finished Midsommarstång (May/June Pole) with two wreaths and we covered it in flowers.

 

Then we went to the big, crazy celebration in the historical section of town called the Bonnstan.  The Bonnstan is an early settlement in Skellefteå where farmers from the surrounding area would come and stay for the weekend at least four times a year so that they could go to church.  (It was mandatory for them to go to church at least four times.) 

 

People still own these little homes for fun. 

 

Here is the church that was close by, but it is probably not the church they originally went to back in the 1600s.  It looks a little newer.

 

So the first thing they do is to put up a ginormous May/June Pole.  Then some old ladies with microphones and a small band began to play traditional Swedish songs.  Then everybody starts dancing to them.  We asked Marie what the songs were about.  She said they were about foxes on the ice and frogs hopping and rockets blasting off.  (That makes no sense.)

 

For some reason on Midsummer it seems everybody takes out their old classic cars and drives them to the place where they dance and sing songs about foxes on the ice.

 

Here's another one. Kieran got a big lolly-pop in case you didn't see.

 

Here is another tradition: On Midsummer's Eve, if you want to dream about the person who you will marry, you must follow these simple steps (according to my Aunt Marie.)  Step 1:  You are supposed to jump over seven wooden fences.  (Like this one...)

 

Step 2: Pick seven different types of wildflowers, and put them under your pillow before you go to sleep.  (Okay, that makes no sense.)  Number one, how am I supposed to jump over this fence? Number two, there is no way you can make me do it seven times.  Number three, what do flowers and fences have to do with each other?  Number four, I'm only twelve!!! 

 

Like I said, it never gets dark.  We set up a camera to take a picture every hour from 11:00 PM to 8:00 AM.  As you can see, there is not complete darkness....I promise these pictures have not been photoshopped.

 

This picture was taken at 11:00 PM.

 

Thanks, Aunt Marie, for teaching me all about Midsommarafton!

 

And thanks for reading my blog, even though you may have thought it makes no sense.