We Were True Ålanders Today

Mona and Magnus's view

Farm festival with the family

Best fika yet

Special brew for the farm festival

Hanging out with Einar

Northern point of Åland on the Baltic Sea

Ruth! 92 and full of life

History

Out with our young cousins 

We woke up in our little cabin and joined Mona and her family for breakfast. From there we were off on a day full of fun! First we joined Mona at Einar's häst (horse) riding lesson. His horse and another had a fit, but, it didn't phase Einar, he confidentially handled the situation. Next, we cheered Ellen in her swimming competition. We were extremely impressed with her butterfly!!! She is a great swimming. It was really fun to just be apart of daily life with our cousins! 

After the completion, we headed to a farm where we met Tryggve and Ulla (many farms were open this weekend for food, crafts etc.- did we pick a great weekend to come or what??) For lunch all had hamburgers made from the local farms cows! The burgers were different from the normal burger in the states, they didn't use cheese an they used honey mustard and local made sausage... Freakn good! We looked around at what the farm was selling. Kelsey was teasing Kirdy about a snake scaled purse, when a woman spent over a minute explaining in Swedish about how the purse was made and what exactly we were looking at, we just smiled and walked away thinking we were so cool for fooling her (we're American shhhh)! 

Soon it was time for fika..our favorite tine of the day!! We went the most North either of us had been before, to a amazing resort called Halvsvidden. Beautiful view of

the ocean. If any of you want an amazing place to by the water, we would suggest this place. 

After we were filled to our brim with the most amazing buffet of sweets, we went down to the ocean and climbed and climbed around! What a beautiful view! It was so much fun, that we could have stayed there climbing for hours.

 Ulla and Tryggve  took us in their caravan to see our great great grandfather/mother and our great uncle, Axel's grave. 

After, we visited the home where Axel's wife Ruth lives. She was immersed in a book when we arrived. But, once she saw us, she closed her book and was so excited to see us! She talked to us (in Swedish) the entire time we were there. It would be hard to ever get sick of hearing Swedish flowing from her mouth, seeing that bright smile and hearing her laugh. What a joy it was to meet her!!! :) 

Dinner awaited us at Mona and Magnus' which was followed by the wonderful box of old photos that Tryggve and Mona explained to us. It was really special to see our history in photographs!

That night Mona drove us to our cousin Jonathan's for a night out on the island. We met a few friends before heading to our nights adventure! Once at the club of course we got carded for looking to young (never fails). After getting inside we soon found Johanna and Josefine and we danced the night away, even Jonathan joined ;) it was a really special night to spend with the cousins. We had a gourmet dinner/frokost at a shell gas station around 4am after closing down the club. Jonathan hosted us for the night and, yet again, we woke up to breakfast. 

Mona came for coffee and we headed to Bo and Berrit's for fika. Johanna, her family and Josefine also joined! It was great to spend more time with all of them! We were so happy to not be leaving that day as originally planned! 

We ate dinner at Mona and Magnus' and had a relaxing time talking with them. Afterward, we played wii with Ellen and Einar. Who knew these Swedish kids loved Harry Potter as much as we do. We  all started singing, "Snape, Snape, Severous Snape....Dumbledore!" This is an unbreakable bond. We love those kids so much! After our singing, Mona and Magnus showed us pictures of the house remodel - they did such a great job!!!