If you are on Instagram, leave your handle in the comments so I can follow your photos! And please tag your photos with #skimbaco hashtag to share how YOU live life to the fullest and what you enjoy in your life. Skimbaco Lifestyle isn’t about my lifestyle – it’s about how we all enjoy life in different ways.
I share more of my personal ways to enjoy life on Instagram, this blog is much less about my life. But I figured why not start doing this weekly update via my Instagram photos.
This week: we finally bought a second car! We’ve been a one car family since December, and I have been without a car since February when we moved to Sweden. We put priority in getting the home somewhat decorated, and traveling this spring, and finally now could buy a car too. And it’s not just A CAR, it’s an Audi S8, a ridiculously cool sports-limo. No, seriously, it’s this huge black car with black leather interior and huge trunk and huge engine. I haven’t gotten to drive the Audi yet, I’m “stuck” with a Mercedes-Benz station wagon, which in fact we are swapping soon too.
We were having too much fun waxing, and fixing and detailing the new (used) car, and we realized it was the perfect car to pick up people from airport limousine-style. So when my in-laws flew into town from the US on Thursday, my son dressed up as a driver, my daughter wrote a sign with their name on it, and we even got a red rose for Grandma, and off the boys left to pick up Grandma and Grandpa from the airport.
Now, this is how we live Skimbaco lifestyle – we take the opportunity to make special out of something ordinary, and I absolutely love how my kids completely get this mindset.
And my husband is getting pretty good at it too – how else he would have wanted to a car that he saw in a movie? (Ronin)
Since this is my in-laws’ first-ever visit to Sweden (and Scandinavia), we have been having a great time showing them our new hometown Linköping, and cooking Scandinavian dishes. First night we made salmon with new potatoes, an array of pickled herrings, and caviar with chopped onions and sour cream and dark bread from Finland – it was very typical Southern Finnish meal, what we would eat in the archipelago when I was growing up. We topped it with the famous Swedish Princess Cake.
On Friday night I created a dinner with flavors from the North, more precisely from Lapland. We ate reindeer with chantarelle mushroom cream sauce with mashed potatoes, lingonberry jelly and pickles. And I made my famous new potato potato salad. Yes, I am having too much fun with this culinary experience for our visitors.
Tomorrow is actually a big day – my parents will come to stay with us for a week too, and we will have everyone staying with us (have I already mentioned how much I love having a big house after a NY apartment?) and we will get to tour Sweden with the two sets of parents next week.
We have been married for 14 years… but this will be the second time our parents meet. It’s an odd world people, don’t judge. It’s not easy to try to raise kids, have two careers, move every two years or so, and unfortunately big family reunions haven’t been in our cards. We have filled our fridge with beer and wine, our iPhones are apped with translators and the UNO cards are waiting and we are confident our parents can communicate and connect without a common language. Thank God we have our own United Nations, the three kids (all born in different countries) that will make it very easy for both sets of parents to feel at home. You know, if you had doubt about my awesomeness to make it all work.
Have a great weekend!
