Thursday, August 21, 2008

The End of an Era


Back at our house in Eugene two years later!!!!!!!!!!!

This will be our last post. We are going to bind these experiences into a book for the kids to keep. A little to relay since our last entry. We spent a fabulous time with my mom in L.A. We also visited with our friends, Eleanor and Brian, and their great kids, Molly and Tess. After a weekend with them at the beach we were relaxed and readied ourselves to deal with the innerworkings of American culture....or not. The next weekend we went to Las Vegas to visit our friends, Heather and Josh, and their two also great kids, Conner and Aidan. While there, Saniya and Rowan's had their first try at bowling. Also, they were able to check out and get in a real police helicopter. So fun. We also went to Disneyland with Grandma. Rowan's favorite ride was the train and Saniya's was Dumbo.

We left my mom's on the 2nd and drove to Eugene in one day. What a long day. But, the kids were great. Our house is good. We are feeling settled and loving the simplicity of small town familiarity.....oh, here is Rob...butting in my entry...I guess I can share this entry with him, after all I do say to the kids, "our family shares, that is what we do...Ahhhhh hummm...Rob the floor is yours.....

First though, I will post these pixs:

Here is Saniya, Rowan, Tess and Molly having a bubble bath.


Grandma, Saniya and me at Disneyland.




Yeah! Dumbo ride!


Bowling with Conner, Aidan, Saniya and Rowan in Las Vegas.


Back in Eugene at the County Fair with Saniya, Rowan and great friends Sam and Ben.

It's hard to believe it's over. A little over 2 years has gone by since we started this blog. As you can see so much has happened. It has been good to return to the familiar as well as bad. The most striking thing for me has been seeing the homeless. In Sweden, there are almost none. It has me questioning our society. Particularly about how we take care of the least fortunate. Do we embrace and lift them up or ignore and focus on entertaining ourselves with trivial matters? It is always easier to avoid the hard questions. I find myself doing just this when I contemplate the fate of the poor in the US. I can easily think about many other things as I'm not sure I'm ready to grapple with this question. Certainly not in this blog. I purposefully kept it relatively free of politics and policy to focus on just our time in Sweden.
As you can see the Culture Shock is ongoing and will likely continue for some time. I don't know how many times we've had artificial sweetener since we've returned but it seems like an excessive amount. It really isn't something you get there. I want my sugar! You have to look at the packaging closely here to see if it's got the fake sugar in it.
Onto other important things such as swimming. Saniya and Rowan are becoming fish. Saniya just started a swim class and is having a blast. She really loves the water and going every day to the pool is a lot of fun for her. Nana is visiting right now and we're going to the pool with her. Saniya spent the night with Nana at her hotel so we'll hear tomorrow how that went.
It went fantastically and the ducks are a little fatter.

All good things must come to an end! It's been fun. Maybe we'll start another blog to document the next chapter. Until then, hej då!

Rob, Yasmiene, Saniya and Rowan