Life is good..

She is here, now she's laying all snuggled up next to me sleeping on the bed. She's such a sweet baby and I'm in heaven!

Being pregnant..

Not my favorite thing in the world. At least not for about the first 4 months, then I was wondering what I had given myself into.. Nausea 24hours per day and throwing up every now and then. Blah my least favorite thing in the world! And then the tiredness and just feeling bloated and fat. It was tough to be at work when I had a nose like a hunting dog. Poop, throw up and old people. Smelly! Yes everything seemed to trigger my nausea. I couldn't cook for those months. I couldn't even go into the kitchen because it smelled. Poor Markku needed to get things out of the fridge for me. He's been a true champion this whole time. Being there for me. I love him so.

After 3,5-4 months the SPD (Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction) came along. It was pretty painful and I was wondering if I would be able to work. But then after a few weeks it took off, thanks heavens!

Now I feel much better. Of course some days I do feel nauseous still and the SPD does kick in if I don't take it easy. But I feel soooooo much better! Loving trimester #2 compared to #1.

Linda

Life as we knew it changed over 5 minutes..

Who whould think that peeing in a cup, dipping a stick and waiting for 5 minutes could change our lives as we know it for ever?

- One cold evening, more specifically on january 31st, it was time to take the test. I had been feeling a little different the past few days and my period was late. It had been late before though and I didn't want to get my hopes up just yet. Two lines.
- The next morning, Febuary 1st. Two lines.
- Two mornings later, Febuary 3rd. Yet another test with two lines. Hmm. Two lines all three times... Didn't believe it at first. It took three tests for us to actually realise it :)

Yes, the tests came back positive! We are going to be parents! Whoop whoop!



Linda

Update..

This summer has been wonderful even though neither me or Markku have had our summer vacations from work yet. Here are some highlights..

1. We moved into our new home! Although moving in wasn't just moving in. There was loads of things to do with the place. We have torn down a wall and built a new one, well M. Lindahl actually did the heavy duty demolition and building but we helped. A 1-bedroom apartment has now turned into a 2-bedroomer. To have 3 rooms is wonderful! Thank you Micke! We love every corner of our home and it feels so great being a home owner knowing that this is where we can stay as loooong as we want.

Busy we have been... Spackel spackel spackel (Putty).. Paint, paint, paint.. Laying floor and stuff, phew.. But now we are at the fun part, interior design! It's lovely finally seeing the end to all the boxes and dust.. It's starting to feel like home :) Pictures will come soon..

2. Earlier this summer, well spring.. we went to England over the weekend for 2 uni friends of Markku's, Claire and Joe's, wedding reception. We started off in London, then went to Liverpool, and then to Glossop for the party, then back to Liverpool to hang out with the Bruces and then back to London to fly back to Sweden. Crazy trip for 5 days, um yes! Thanks to Jen and Andy for letting us stay at their apartment in London! Here's a picture of me and Markku on our exploring in London.

3. We went to Göteborg for a weekend in july, thank you Rebecca and Vigörn for inviting us to your wedding reception <3>

4. Eva & Sebbe and Becca & Andreas came to visit for a weekend. Fun stuff! You need to move here so we can all hang out all the time! We loved having you!!

5. Markku has been called to serve as the second counselor to the stake president in our stake which is rather exciting.. even though that means lots of meetings and less Markku-Linda time :( but I'm still happy for him. When it all was made official both mine and his parents came to stay with us over a night. It was great to have dinner the 6 of us and just chat, laugh and catch up. We have awesome parents and we love them dearly.

6. Last but not least.. Markku is this summer working as the musical director of "Fiddler on the roof" which has premier in Lund on the 9th of September. He's in charge of training the cast musically and making sure they all know the songs and harmonies and that it all goes with the orchestra. Big job for a big man. I love you Markku!

Well I guess those are a few things that has happened this summer and we hope that you've also had a nice summer. We are excited for what the fall has to bring.. To start with it's only a few more shifts until my vacation :) And a few more until Markku joins me! YAY!

We love you all,
Linda

Long time no see..

Well it's been a while since the last posting. And I see that the last thing I wrote about was our move.

Since then we have been busy fighting the struggles of finding somewhere to live from July (when we are kicked out of this place, since the contract was only for 6 months). Lund is a very hard place to find apartments for rent in, I tell you that! So we decided to go for a "bostadsrätt", buying one. Easier said than done. Banking.. deciding what we like.. bidding.. winning.........

We have been bidding on a few different apartments without much luck. It has been nerve-wrecking at times.. BUT.. As of this evening we have won the bidding of the apartment we have come to really like and we have now signed the contract!! Whoop whoop! We now just need to cough up the cash and we can move in June 15th.

God really does hear our hearts desires and blesses us when we turn to Him..

Love you all,
Linda

We have moved!

A NEW YEAR has begun. Since I worked on new years eve (day) and new years day (day) we couldn't go to the party we were invited to in Kungsbacka. We decided to have our own celebration just me and Markku at our place in our pj's. We cooked a fabulous meal and watched a whole lot of "House MD season 5". We had a little marathon of our own. The dvd box was part of my wonderful Christmas gift from Markku, my MYSBOX 360 :) There was a bathrobe that I had been wanting to buy for some time and the dvd box ordered from England. I HAVE THE BEST HUSBAND EVER!

I had a little nap on the couch for about an hour until about 11.30 pm, I was dead tired from getting up at 6 am and working all day. Couldn't miss the strike of 12 though.. We cheered with some bubbly stuff and watched the fireworks. A pretty amazing and special new years for us!

LATELY.. We have spent most of our time packing up our beloved apartment on Skolgatan and yesterday we finally moved into our new place! Uardavägen here we are! (Pictures will have to come later due to the mess here and no furniture except for our bed. AND the fact that I'm not sure where the camera is in the mess.. haha!) Thank you dad for renting a waggon-thingy and driving the bed down from Göteborg 80km/h yesterday, you spent all day driving, you're the man!

ECLIPSE.. A fun fact for all the Twilight crazy girlfriends out there who follow our blog. I just have to say that it's one of the few books I actually cannot put down. I really enjoy reading it. Haven't read the first 2, skipped a step cuz I've seen the films so it will be harder to keep reading I figured when I know already what will happen. I don't usually ever read books, I say I don't like to. Markku loves to read so he thinks it's amazing now, and is wondering what has happend to me. He's even expressed thanks to Stephenie Meyer for changing me :P hehe..

We're going to see Sherlock Holmes in a little bit. It's date night :) Anyway, I think that's it for now.

Catch you later!
Linda

Merry Christmas to you all!

Hello dear friends and family!

We hope that you have had a wonderful Christmas and that you are all doing well!

Love,
Linda & Markku

Ps. The blog will be updated shortly :)

...the adventures continue...

Today Markku has his last show of his beloved "Wind in the willows" which he had held close to his heart this summer. He has really enjoyed working with all the fun people on this project. He was a little sad this morning, I think he will miss it. He brought our new camera today so we'll see if there will be more pictures to post. Now he's at the after party and I'm home fixing for our trip tomorrow morning. Well catching up on blogging mostly but will hop on it now, packing time!

Cyprus here we come!!! 2 weeks of just me, Markku, adventures and sunshine!

Bravo!!

On august 1st I went to Gbg to celebrate my brothers birthday while Markku had his opening show of the new musical he has been working on during the summer "Det susar i säven" or in english "Wind in the willows". I figured he wouldn't be home most of the weekend anyway..

This is Markku alias Chief Weasel, the coolest bad guy you've seen for a long time. And oh he does it so well! He has a talent for acting! Me and Emilia went to see it weekend 3 and wow! Amazing! See for yourself.... The weasel clan is evil!

Adventurous day..

We started by going to church as we normally do on Sundays. Everything was fine so far.. After sacrament meeting Markku drove me to work. We stopped at the cemetery on the way to take a little walk because we had some time left before I had to start work.

We got out of the car and walked away for about 2 minutes. We then went back to get a jacket, I took my phone with me just in case. We strolled away again just happily unknowing and after 15 minutes when we got back to the car I saw that the glove compartment was opened, I knew I hadn't opened it.

Oh man! Someone had broken in!! Markku thought it was his fault and wasn't sure if he had locked his door. I saw that my purse was gone and his backpack. SHOOT! I didn't have time for this. Wallet, keys, scriptures, P-blessing. I was real mad. I spotted some dudes on the other side of this very big parking lot standing around a car and started running towards them with Markku following my steps closely.

When I caught my breath I told the 3 men that "someone" had broken into our car and asked them if they had seen or heard anything. They looked very confused, high and caught in action. They denyed everything and even though I said that the stuff in the bags was very important they wouldn't even consider speaking up.

I typed the licens plate nr in my phone and took a closer look into their car through the window. I asked if I could check ifour stuff was there. (Haha like they would agree to that.) I spotted a peice of fabric from Markku's bag that I recognized and pointed and asked them how my husbands backpack could have ended up in their car. I pulled it out and kept it, by then I was even angrier and just yelled at them to get my bag out. "And the GPS please!" I demanded. Markku was standing there so I felt safe even if he didn't say much. He started telling them that what they do makes people sad and hurts. "It's wrong to take other peoples things." One of the men's reply was "but I don't have a home". (My lunchbox with pancakes wasn't even touched, it was still in our car, guess they weren't hungry.) I asked to see the trunk to make sure they hadn't taken more stuff. There were quite a few bags there. I asked who's they were and they just said that they were theirs. I just said ok (yeah right).

We had all our things, nothing had been taken from the bags yet. They pleeded to not call the police now that we had all our things. I just said I'll have to see about that. When we got back to our car we saw that they had broken the lock on the drivers side so it wasn't Markku's fault (which I never thought in the first place). I called the police and gave them a description of the car and the men. We never heard anything back from the police but I hope they got caught!!

So.. now we don't have a lock, terrible! Lesson learned, NEVER leave anything in the car!! Trust no one even for a few minutes.

I ended up late for work that evening and after the endorfine level sunk I realized I could have been killed, goodness one is stupid sometimes. Never the less I got the stuff back and Markku now calls me his tigress!

Surf's up in Hög!

Time for the ultimate Beach boys experience!! These wonderful guys put on a fun show in Hög. Markku even sat down in the audience and sang. Fun show!Check them out here!

Eva & Sebbe

These awesome friends came to stay with us for the weekend. Saturday morning we went to Copenhagen together to visit the temple. After we split a pizza, worthwhile after all that hard work getting it. Man those Danes just take danish credit cards and they don't have functional ATM machines! Finally we got one to work and then you couldn't take out less than 300DKR so I have some change still... Had to pay for the pizza we had ordered already!

Moving on.. Beach n BBQ time! We drove to Falsterbo and enjoyed swimming eating and gazing in the sun until evening fell.. After driving home we took a walk in the park and found a fun chair to pose on. THANKS for coming!

Svung!

Markku was a leader at Svung and was sleeping there that whole week. I was there during some day time, just being there as a nurse just in case someone would get hurt. Luckily we didn't have that many accidents. I missed my husband! Although I worked nights that week so it worked out quite well anyway. One evening we went for a walk down at the beach and harbour in Lomma. A beautiful place! On the Friday we also went to Inez and Calle's wedding reception, thank you for inviting us!

Midsummer!

We spent midsummer at home, just me and Markku.. It was really nice since we had been away almost every weekend at some party to just relax. We had a little bbq outside for lunch and then for dinner we had Swedish midsummer food. Good stuff. The day also included some House episodes on the projector bid screen. Nice! Thanks Markku for making midsummer special for me!

Haha forgot one thing, that sunday he tried on some heels. In the picture he looks like an elder with style.

Linda 24 years old!

What a morning! A picnic for breakfast including a new picnic basket! It ended up in the living room due to rain, but it was cozy still :) It was nice to just have a day with my husband!

Later that afternoon was pizza-party-time! The movie for the night was Valkyrie. Interesting film... Thanks all friends who came and made my BD the best!

/L

Another graduation..

This time it was time for Matti! Thank you for letting us celebrate with you! Here he is in as he calles it his "fulsnygga" rain coat :) heheh..

Another thing that happened that day was that I made my first batch ever of applesauce that turned out real great! Fun stuff!

Congratulations brotha'!

Christopher has graduated high school! We went to Göteborg to spend the weekend and to celebrate his special day. What a great day to spend with family and loved ones! Chris - Good job!!

I also went to a baby shower for her friend Josefine who was going to have a baby girl.. Fun party that was as well. Many "aaaw's" and "cute" with that many women in the same room and baby stuff!
/L

Rebecca <3 Andreas 090523

What a beautiful new little family!

Me and Markku drove to Stockholm, listening to Robert Langdon, this past weekend to celebrate with Becca and Andreas. What a wedding! Löv was in the air for sure! We arrived at Pertti (Markku's brother) and Magda's house late on friday night. Thank you for housing us! On saturday morning we went to the temple to see them be sealed as husband and wife for all eternity!! It was soooo nice! While we were sitting in there my thoughts went to when we, 2 months ago, entered the same covenant. I'm so thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ that makes it possible for families to be together forever. I love Markku! After the wedding we practices some music that would be sung later at the reception. We also went for a little walk to find food, we found a pizza place and shared a wonderful Hawaii pizza :) Time it was to head towards Södertälje for the reception. Arriving at the place... WOW! And the party that followed!! The bride and groom arrived in a horse carriage, impressive, any girls dream ;) Great food and lots of fun entertainment!

THANK YOU newlyweds for letting us share your special day with you!

Sunday at church we got to see lots of our friends. After church we had a BBQ picnic with Magda & Pertti out by the water, the sun was hot and we soaked it up. When it was time to drive home, we really didn't want to go... Bye bye Sthlm.. We spent most of the time talking about life and in Jönköping we stopped for a little break and watched a beautiful sunset together! Being married is the best thing ever, congratulations on making such a great choice Mr. and Mrs. Birgersson!

Becca's bachelorette party!

Little Linda took the car and drove off to Göteborg on saturday May 2nd, leaving her husband in Lund to go and have fun with the girls. And did we have fun?! It was a very nice weekend that I really needed. We had a BBQ and enjoyed fun stuff.

Although I had a hard time sleeping alone, it was my first night to sleep without Markku since we got married, I managed to get some sleep at Eva and Sebbe's place. Thank you girls for the nice weekend!

Sunday I spent at home with my family in Gbg. Too bad Markku wasn't with me, it would have made the whole weekend. The drive home was long and quite lonely, but I spent some time blabbering away on the phone with Evi so that was fun :)

All together, it is always special to spend time with friends and family!

Dinner at the Wiklöfs

Thank you for a nice sunday! And for the awesome meal!