Catwalk

Well, walking the cats, in Högbo on a warm fall day.

Sebastian took this picture of me with his golfclub that he wants to bring everywhere. I updated my profile picture with this one as I was telling Bart the other day not to use an old picture for something and then I saw my profile picture that was 6 years old. Well my looks sure has aged, so here I am, all natural.

We call it the Winnie the Pooh game when dropping sticks (or leaves) to see which ones comes out first on the other side- always popular.

There is an actual old train on the playground!

 

Pretty Melissa.

Snowflake gained a huge belly this summer (he weigs 20 pounds!) so this running does him good  big plus he is on a tight feeding schedule. He only gets fed in an activity ball so he eats slowly, otherwise he chows it all down at once. He is actually happy about the new intent as he knows he will feel better when gets lighter again.

Gorgeous fall photos

We are filming a music video of Julianna on a beautiful fall day so I took some nice pictures as well. Sebastian wants to do everything that Julianna does, he is so cute!!!!!!!

 

I can not manage to get the pictures right side up today, why is that? Well, you just have to turn your computer or stand up side down that Julianna likes to do!

The weather has been cold as well but we are still enjoying the forest, and we found a new beach where we enjoyed grilling hot dogs.

October

To start with, I posted some videos of Sebastian that ended up below the "another 100 pictures of Sebastian" post as I had some trouble downloading one of them. Just so you do not miss them.
It´s definitely fall now and beautiful outside.
Bart had his birthday. We had a really nice evening together.

Girls gave a show and showed us some new moves.

World´s best daddy cup from Julianna.

Elena´s new look.

Well, how was it Elizabeth? We spoke about insurance and I said how we had not utilized the services of insurance companies (I do not like to support systems that I do not believe in, or see not working). You mentioned something about what if the kids break an arm or something (since we handle illnesses and such ourselves). Well that is not going to happen I said.
Well it did. But it was easy and it´s healed already. It was Julianna that fell of Spinner, our big horse. Her wrist hurt really bad. When it did not get any better I took her to the hospital and after 3 hours we were home again with a cast on her arm. She had a small fracture and received a cast that is open on one side that we took off ourselves after 3 weeks.

It was incredible how nice and relaxed the hospital staff were. And the ease, I did not have to sign or even write anything, or pay anything.
I had a hospital visit in Henderson in May last year that was kind of a nightmare, short, painful and expensive but yes effective and I was grateful then as well.
For you who do not know, my previous experiences with western medicine has not been very fulfilling and I have a reluctance to the whole system, but have now learned to appreciate the knowledge and resourses that they do have.
Julianna is so awesome, she did not complain at all, she was her usual loving self and took extra care about all her choices so it would heal well.
For me it was an interesting experience to be wrong and to again (tends to happen every now and then as I tend to live in the clouds a lot) be taken down and smooched into the earth like a reminder of that I am now experiencing this reality.
This time and space reality where my experience is that of duality and not always what I like it to be. One of my greatest dislikes is society, socialization and the systems that encourages people to be sheep, I mean not to take responsibility for themselves and their whole creation.
As Julianna was in pain and I could not take it away (immediately, or even myself) I suffered, even though I was not in pain. Julianna did not suffer, she was okay during the whole thing, the weeks to follow and all. How come I choose to suffer? Well if I look deep, in the anger and frustration there is a hopelessness and a longing to get out of this looking glass (read body) I feel stuck in.

Pain does not equal suffering. I suffer when I do not allow myself to feel my pain. Buddha said Who is it that suffers? What is the self? And, What is separate from the self? Suffering depends on self-reference, with perceiving oneself as a finite entity plagued by some outside Other.
Yes, it is my experience itself that is the suffering. That I (not me Petra) am having this experience is, from another perspective (way other) blissful.
Also, since I am touching on this here, I must say that I believe that western Buddhism have tried to figure things out that is not possible to figure out within a certain reality and so have lost the to me important and fun mysticism. Questions have different answers due to who is asking. Just like quantum physics!

Little cute Melissa as I was packing for a nice weekend camping trip in our trailer home.

We found a beautiful place by a lake that we hiked around. The kids were happy and careless and Bart and I spoke about how they acted like children (free children) and we were enjoying it. Later we realized that especially Elena may not act differently in town, it may only be us that look at her with different eyes there.

The campfire was exciting.

Back in town. Julianna with friend Alexandra.

Elena ready for a club disco. She belongs to an anti alcohol club (the children division where the issue is not so relevant but anyway, they arrange nice things and she got new friends).

Our cats are enjoying the hours of sunshine, that are disappearing as we are coming closer to winter. We have cold mornings now with ice on the roads.

Julianna joined a mini circus school where, after one week, they did a performance at a fair.

We kept our spirits up although the weather got gray and rainy.

We went to furuvik, an outdoor park where they had old traditional Swedish houses, some animals and also amusement rides. It was nice to enjoy an almost empty park where we could let the kids roam, and feed the camels. They had a small aquarium where one could go inside with the snakes. Julianna enjoyed it.

The goats were favorites.

Sebastian sleeps most of the time when we are out but when he's awake he likes to connect.

Traditional Swedish log house painted with Falu organic red paint.

At night, Elena had her school's summer-break performance.

It was traditional with songs and speech.

Julianna picked her Xmas dress to wear.