GOD JUL and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas friends and family!!

We celebrated a wonderful Christmas here in Shanghai with our friends - a very sweet day filled with lots of food, presents and plenty of play for the children! Max & Emmy loved every moment of Christmas and the very anticipated visit from Tomten (Santa) as soon as the darkness fell over Shanghai - they were SO excited to meet ole' Santa and it was an awesome experience for both the kids and adults to witness!

We got to enjoy the traditional Swedish Xmas delicates for dinner (even in Shanghai) and we cooked everything from scratch, even the crisp bread... There's nothing like a good ole' Swedish Christmas dinner which always seems to last for hours!

On Christmas Day we checked into Le Royal Meridien in Puxi to enjoy some pool time, hot tubbing and some much needed foot massages, and later rounded off the day with another big Xmas dinner at the hotel. All in all - a fantastic Holiday weekend!

Here are the pictures from our 2009 Christmas.

Now we're just awaiting the new year and an upcoming trip to Sweden - hurray!

Meet Sabrina!

We just love this little girl at the Shanghai Healing Home!

Her name is Sabrina and she's now 2 months old, but she arrived to the home when she was around 3 weeks old. Her mom and dad left her in the mountains because she was born with a cleft lip and not desirable enough to be loved by two parents - ugh, I have such a hard time with this...

This girl has the most amazing eyes I've ever seen and she's like a little porcelin doll when she's sleeping, her eyes are slightly almond shaped and like a mona lisa painting. She's stunning!

She will undergo surgery when she's old enough (around 4 mo) and weighs the right amount to have surgery. Then she will be adopted. Meanwhile, she is spoiled with love at the wonderful Shanghai Healing Home and by lots of volunteers like myself. We sing songs to Sabrina and do baby massage and kiss a lot.

This past weekend Max, Emmy and Magnus tagged along and they all fell right in love with little Sabrina too. There are 3 other children at the home but most of them were sleeping while we were there so we only got to play with Sabrina.

Max and Emmy kept saying that the baby had no mom and dad when we got home later that day...just heart breaking!

Christmas Baking!

Today we had our friends over after school for some hearty Christmas baking of Swedish saffron buns. The kids enjoyed playing with the dough, getting the flour all over themselves and making some pretty buns! Some liked it more than others and it was fun to see how the little ones stayed at the table the longest while Max and Liam took off after the first 5 minutes continuing their Star Wars fight... no surprise there! After the first batch of not-so-yellow saffron buns (maybe I ended up getting a fake saffron batch, and no, this wouldn't this surprise me in China...) were ready, we gathered the kids in front of the xmas tree for some Kodak moments - voila!

Here are the picture of our fun day together at the Tedestedt casa.

Cheers and hope the Christmas sprirts are with you all!

Gran(d) visit in Shanghai!!

We were so excited to recently have the Gran family visiting us in Shanghai for a week full of fun and quality time!

I will write more soon on the fun times we had but I just have to share my two favorite pictures of the kiddos first- aren't they just adorable!

Today's cute picture! - UPDATED

Today I had the chance to swing by Emmy's school during her Ballet class and I have to say I was so happy I stayed to see them dance - soooooo very cute!

Max and his class also performed their Christmas carols at the German center which I came to listen to and snap some pictures of. They were all so good and have all their songs nailed down before the big concert on the 18th this month!

Look at these pictures and enjoy!

A proud mum!

We did it - Project Marathon Completed!

Magnus and I finished the Shanghai Half Marathon (21km) yesterday morning and we both feel such a triumph that we completed this race and did it in a respectable time of 2 hrs 11 minutes - not too bad for first time runners we think :-)

Our day started early, we woke up around 5.30 AM and temperature outside was around 7 C. Once at the race, which started near Puxi's People Square, we did a little warm up and even got interviewed by local TV channels and before we knew it the shot gun fired off the start of 21,000 half and full marathon runners. After a few early hick ups; my Ipod was on repeat and it would have been unbearable to hear 50 Cents throughout a 21 km race so while running I finally managed to fix it and then I had to secure my race number sign onto my clothing, we were off to a good start. After 10 km I had to make a quick bathroom stop but other than that, we ran the whole race without stopping which was over my expectations for this race - I thought I had to stop around 16-17 km to do some walking - but we kept it up and ran the whole way.

Magnus was without a doubt the BEST coach ever during the race, encouraging me to not stop and keep going. He was clearly less tired than I was towards the end of the race and would have finished at a better time had he not promised me we would cross the finishing line together. And so we did, hand in hand, we stepped over the finishing line - and it felt soooooooo good to make it the whole way and get through this race in one piece!

Later the next day we found out we had been both been on TV and everyone recognized us on Max and Emmy's school. Even our driver's daughter had seen us on TV so now we're nown as the Marathon celeberties at school, haha :-)

What an amazing experience this has been!

Here are the pictures from our GREAT Marathon day.

HALLOWEEN 2009!

Added: Princess Leia

(...don't like to put myself above my pretty kiddos but don't know how to change the order of the pictures on blogger...!)

Let me present this year's Obi Wan Kenobi & Queen Amidala - let the Force be with them!

We had so much fun earlier tonight during the neighborhood Halloween celebration, Max & Emmy were so proud of their tailored outfits in true Star Wars theme. They gathered tons of candy together with their friends around the streets of Greenhills.

More pictures soon!

Happy Halloween - booohoooooooooo!

The Trampoline is finally up!

After missing some spare parts in the original shipment of our new Trampoline, we finally received them and the Trampoline is now up and the fun can begin!!!

I'm looking forward to relieving some of that energy my kids seem to have a lot of after school on the bouncing mat of this trampoline!!!

Email Max & Emmy!!

I just read about this great idea that I want to share with all of you who are reading our family blog. It touched me and I think this can be a great new way of writing our kid's diaries while they are growing up.

By setting up email accounts for Max & Emmy, we can all email them messages which they will read once they are grown up and ready for the electronic age. It is sure to be a wonderful treasure for them when they are older and have access to these emails. We're all busy today and it's difficult to find time to create scrap books and send letters the old fashioned way. I decided I will start sending them short little messages of things they've done in school, who they're doing and their growth path and interesting little facts about them - I can't wait to read these together with them when they are much older - if they let me, haha!

So, type away and tell our little monkeys how much they mean to you, they will love to read it one day :-)

max@tedestedt.com
emmy@tedestedt.com

Cheers!
Lovisa

p.s - I am not going to read these email messages (nor do I have time) - they will be stored away in different email accounts. :-)

A very hungry Catapillar's Birthday Bash!

Today we got to celebrate Emmy's best friend Mia and her 2nd birthday during another sunny, warm and blue-sky afternoon in Shanghai.

Mia's theme for the party was from the book "A very Hungry Little Catapillar" and Mia was the most adorable little catapillar we've all seen - and so very hungry!

The kids had a wonderful time playing, creating butterflies, eating many many lollipops and delicious food. Max & Emmy loved every minute of this wonderfully organized birthday bash!

Here are the pictures from the great fun day.

Halloween Decorations!

It's so much fun to decorate the house this time of the year to celebrate all the kid's favorite spooky holiday - Halloween!

We've covered the house in spider webs, spiders, pumpkins and ghosts and we even carved our first big pumpkin, although it rotted within 4 days in the Shanghai heat, but it was pretty while it lasted!

Max & Emmy will be trick or treating with the neigborhood kids on the 31st and they love the whole flash light spooky experience - but mommy and daddy usually have to stay v e r y close by throughout the parade.

More pictures from Halloween after the 31st :-)

Marathon training!

Somehow I decided I would train for the Half Marathon coming up on Nov. 29th here in Shanghai - by writing about it here on the blog, I'm making it more and more official, giving me less and less power to bail out last minute, ha!

It's actually been quite refreshing to train for this little event - I try to run every other day and have set new records for 5 km (27.48) and 10 km (58.58) - a distance I haven't run for in 20 years! The picture is not very pretty but it means a lot to me, running 10 K was a big achievement and something I honestly didn't think I could do and once it's done, it's like, no problem, I can do this! So at least once a week I'll run 10 K and I will run 15km twice before the big race in November. The fact that I should be able to run 21 km during race day is going to be an interesting one... I'm hoping the sheer adrenaline kick from running in a marathon race will be motivation enough and get me through it!

I'm running for my own little sweet cause too - for a happy and loving relationship with my family back in Sweden and around the world, for us to have a strong, caring, supportive relationship even though we're so far away from each other most of the time which makes it tough at times. It's amazing how much easier running is when you set up affirmations and goals to run for, it's helping me a lot.

So send me all your support on Nov. 29th, that I can run this thing and cross the Marathon thing off my to do list :-)

Cheers!

Videos of M & E!

It's about time I debut some videos of Max & Emmy on our blog and appropriately enough they decided to sing along in bed the other day a few of their favorite nursery rhymes! Pretty cute stuff if you ask me :-)

And here's my personal favorite of our ever so calm boy Max singing his all time favorite song in the world - the Star Wars tunes (notice how Emmy clearly is taking after Max in pretty everything, even playing Star Wars...):

Enjoy!

Max First Sleep Over party!

Ok, I'm doing great - 2 blogs in one night :-)

Look at these cuties - Max (aka Star Wars Storm Trooper Captain Rex) and his friend Isak is in bed trying to put their tired little heads on those pillows! Max is having his first sleep over night and the boys have had so much fun!

First we went on a bicycle ride to the DVD store to get the night's DVD (WallE and Scobby Doo) and during the ride we also found a store with Star Wars costumes which of course we had to buy as they are hard to find in China! Max was thrilled to get the storm trooper costume and wore it all afternoon and evening!

Before dinner we had fun in the park and Max & Isak played really well together. After dinner the boys got to watch a movie with popcorn and a small dish of candy (it's Saturday!) and then off to bed. First we reviewed all the Star Wars characters in Max Star Wars book (yaaawwwwn....!) and then lights off for a good night's sleep - no surprise, they boys went to sleep quickly!

Friends visit to Shanghai!

We were so excited to have our great friends Philip & Johanna visit us in Shanghai over the October Holiday! They were our first friends to visit us in our new house and luckily we got the house ready before their visit, a month after move-in.

For 7 days we had a good ole time showing them Shanghai, but instead of packing the days full of crowded sight-seeing adventures, we decided to actually plan...virtually nothing! Instead we went out for a few dinners, strolled around some of Shanghai's cozier neighborhoods, hung out at the pool, did some of the well deserved shopping only Shanghai can offer and just enjoyed the amazingly good weather this time of the year. And of course,
n o o n e leaves Shanghai without supporting the infamous copy markets, they certainly fascinate most people and leave few without anything!

One of the nights we also met up with fellow Swedes in Shanghai to do a cooking school night at Stiller's restaurant, one of our favorite spots in town. The menu for the night was prepared with 3 fish entrees, coupled with a savory chocolate dessert. A great night, lots of food and good conversations with old and new friends! Here's the group photo before the night's activities got started!

More photos and fun from Philip & Johanna's visit here!

Cheers!
Lovisa

Balsamico Tradizionale

Finally did it - bought the 12 year aged Balsamico Tradizionale (it was on sale for once, and Mag approved the big ticket item!) and I have 4 words to say after serving it with both vanilla ice cream and salad:

IT WAS WORTH IT!

YUMMMMMY!

One Superwoman!

Sometimes I do wonder how I got this lucky! No doubt we live a comfortable life in China with all the help that's available to us here thanks to the culture of commonly having helpers in the house (we foreigners are no doubt quick to hire them too upon arriving in China...). But it goes beyond that. I absolutely adore my Ayi Ms. Yi (the exact translation of Ayi is Aunt, so I'm an Ayi to my Ayi's daughter, but most people refer to their domestic helper as an "Ayi") and she's bailed me out more times than I can remember at this point.

The other day she and I were working in the garage trying to find some lost wedding pictures we can't find after the move. I wasn't very careful while moving around boxes and I completely ruined my favorite beautiful expensive Tory Burch sweater given to me this summer by my sister (which reminds me - ouch, I was supposed to buy her a replacement one online... will do this week, Sorry Sig!). It looked like something a wild cat had attacked with snags and threads pulled everwhere. I simply couldn't believe it, it looked terrible and there was no way it was wearable the way it looked!

I was ready to throw it in the garbage when Ms. Yi saw my puppy eyes nearly filling up with tears as I confirmed the fact - completely ruined! As usual, she quietly told me she would look at it and see what she could do. Thread and needle in hand she sat down with the sweater the next day for 2-3 hours and handed it over to me in the afternoon - like new! I know how to fix snags and small pulls in a knitted sweater but the damage on this one was just too great...! As usual, Ms. Yi did the impossible like so many times before. Amazing!

Here's a picture of the now fixed infamous sweater after hours of work and a fresh wash...

Lunch at Gronkulla!

Today I hosted a little lunch at home for some wonderful women I met during Emmy's music class last spring. We had a great time and chatted up a storm while enjoying some salad, quiche and blueberry cake. A good ole' time and as always, we shared many great pieces of advice for us tai-tais to survive the Shanghai jungle!

It's a first!!

Inspired by a younger boy, I grabbed Max bicycle in the garage, dusted it off and removed his support wheels...and guess what - he took off fast! It didn't take long before Max was the most confident guy on a bicycle! So exciting!! It feels like a mile stone each time something big like this happens and this year has been full of them - learning how to swim, to bike, to read (a little) and just growing up a lot! Now we just have to see if we can get our dear son to sleep through the night in his own bed....now, that would be a big first!! :-)

Cheers!


Lovisa

Bicycles!

So we finally bought some bicycles - we must be the last people in China to get ourselves this mode of transportation used by m i l l i o n s of locals but also expats around town. It's simply one of the easiest ways to get around town and we're now proud owners of 2 new ones. I ended up with an older updated version of the trendy Trek Calypso style with a h u g e comfortable seat (a welcomed cushion :-) while Magnus went for the speedy and exercise style Mountain bike.

We also got a wagon for the kids so I can take them both to school which is really cool. They love sitting in the back seeing all the fun things you see while bicycling instead of driving. It takes us only 18 minutes to school! Great stuff!

MOVED IN!

We're finally moved into our new house in JinQiao area of Pudong! We absolutely love the house and the move has been smooth sailing from beginning to end - with a single coffe cup ear broken out of a total of 340 boxes and packages, I think we can call ourselves lucky...

The house was so much better than we first remembered it and it feels wonderful to finally be in it and so much closer to civilisation. It now takes us all 4 minutes to school (we even found a new secret road making it quicker!) and Magnus is enjoying a short ride to work too. The morning rush is gone and the tireless waiting at dinner time due to traffic as well. I could only explain this little retreat with two words - peace and happiness!

Here are a few pictures of our new pad and more to come once I've put some finishing touches in the rest of the rooms :-)

Come and visit us ANY time!!

PICS of new house here.

Lovisa

One of my favorite Summer Pictures - 2009!

Well, I have over 1000 pictures to sort through from summer 09 - but this one is one of my clear favorites from a very sweet long vacation in Sweden this summer!

I'm working my way through the pics and will hopefully post a link with all the goodies (nobody wants to look through 200 pics in an album so I promise to keep it short and sweet) of the highlights from our time in Sweden.

Until then, enjoy this gem of my favorite people in the world!

Cheers!
Lovisa

Beautiful colors of all shades

We recently spent a wonderful day at the pool and 2 adorable and fun Swedish children joined us in all the fun water play. I know Max & Emmy are used to Chinese people and certainly don't react to their looks at this point but this time it was different.

The Swedish children were adopted from Africa and I could tell that Max was puzzled by their skin color. Finally he asked me why their "skin was grey" and we talked about people coming from different parts of the world and our skin looks different even though we are just the same inside. This was the first time we had a talk about people being different and it was an eye opener even for me as a parent to have this talk. The opportunity to teach your child about people's differences and equality are so great at this age and it's an opportunity I don't want to miss as a parent.

Fun Play date!

The weather is still too hot to be outside playing for more than 30 minutes here in Shanghai so today we resorted to a great indoor play area called Ruby's where the kids had a great ole' time!

Max, Emmy and Liam dressed up and played theatre while the enthusiastic audience (2 excited moms) clapped hands to every move they made..They got to do finger painting on the glass wall and played with all the fun "new" toys. All in all a great day!

Also, I'm reading a book called "Give your child 100 possibilities instead of 2" which talks about gender issues and how to try to give boys and girls a more equal upbringing, so along with that I'll post the picture of Emmy wearing her favorite outfit, a princess dress - lifting weights! How's that for balancing it out!

Here are some more cute pictures of the kids today

Emmy's new bike!

It was not difficult to see Emmy's passion for bikes after this summer and for the last two days she's practically robbed two bikes from restaurants we've visited. The signs couldn't be more clear, so today we went around looking for a good bike for Emmy. After mingling with a million other Chinese people on a casual Sunday afternoon (I can't believe I got Magnus into Carrefour on a weekend!) we finally found a gem at the TREK store for our little girl. It's just perfect and she LOVES it.

A new bonding relationship has formed between a pink bike and a very happy 2-year old little girl....

Astrid Lindgren's World - Vimmerby, Sweden

What a wonderful place on earth this is!! In small Vimmerby, Sweden - the home town of Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi, Emil and Madicken, an entire world is built for children of all ages who love Astrid's tales. We loved visiting it and the kids couldn't have been happier there.

There were so much to do and so many exciting theatrical performances to see, we simply couldn't get enough of it. We stayed for two days and walked around to see Emil feed his pig, Madicken to do her tricks and Pippi to sail on her dad's pirate ship for real! This is a place build entirely for children and it is so well designed and fun, no child could possible be bored, at least ours weren't! I think our favorite was Ronja's castle where the actors were so real and good it brought back some major childhood memories of my mom reading Ronja Rovardotter over and over again by my bed.

Here are the photos of our time at Astrid Lindgren's Varld!

A New Haircut!!!

It was in the shower on my 37th birthday I decided to finally do it - cut bangs! I called my good friend and excellent hair dresser Eva in Stockholm (Heads on Linnegatan) and I am SO excited about the new look. It was a welcomed change and certainly time for one...

Here's me and Eva afterwards.

Cheers!
Lovisa

Hey - it's just another birthday!

What a sweet day! I couldn't be happier on my 37th birthday today with my family here on Boda, Sweden. I've been pampered with a nice long walk with my mom in the woods, then a massage, later a facial (see the shine, ha!) and a super delicious cake made by my sister Signe. And I'm told a pedicure is awaiting me this evening so the pampering continues...

Barcelona Love! (pics updated)

Barcelona - what a city!! We just spent our 6th wedding anniversary in this fabolous city and were blown away by its food, archiecture (was anyone but Gaudi allowed to build in this city...?), the people and of course our personal favorite - Hotel 1898's rooftop terrass where we spent quite some time under the sun in total peace and happiness (joined by a few glasses of Champagne and Pina coladas too...).

We enoyed a wonderful dinner in Michelin guide rated restaurant Lasarte and hip Shoko by the beach but my personal favorite was still buying food at the local markets (fresh figs, plenty of cheese, parma ham, bread, desserts) and order up wine and Champagne and enjoy it all on our hotelsuite terrass, watching the sunset and each other! Pure happiness.


My favorites Barcelona places were easy to spot: Sagrada Familia, Parc Guell, Gaudi architecture around the city, the beach, an amazing little tapas place with the city's best tapas only a stone throw away from Placa de Catalunya called Ciudad Condal. We ate there every day and drank way too much sangria causing a sweet headache around 4 PM in the afternoon (whereby we quickly resorted to the roof top pool at Hotel 1898!).

Here are the pictures of our great time in Barcelona.

Cheers!
Lovisa

My big runner - what a trooper!!

We're in Sweden and are having the best time of our lives!! The trip over was GREAT, Copenhagen was awesome, forgot how amazing that city is, now the weather is just perfect in Sweden and we're with family we love - what better things in life can one ask for!

Also, Max ran the Trosa Stadslopp this Friday and did a GREAT job running the 700 meter race for 0-6 year olds. He got a little bit of a cramp after 200 meter but thanks to dad's encouraging words he was able to finish the race a trooper and star (in mom's eyes :-). More pictures from our fun time here in Sweden soon.

Gotta go to the beach now!

Cheers!

Can someone call the Guiness Book of World Records.....!

So this is my packed suitcase for Sweden... for 7 long weeks I'm heading back home with the kids and this is all I've packed... definitely a rare new record for me and for those who greet us each time we come back home, know this for a fact too!

But to be honest, the shoes are not packed here, nor are the toiletries or a few other items..but it's still pretty good I think :-)
We're preparing the last few items and going to bed soon for an early start to the airport tomorrow. Even got myself a massage, pedicure and manicure today so I feel like I've prepared well for the long flight back.

The kids are very excited to fly and we read the airplane story book tonight to get them even more excited. The snack bag is packed, the surprise toys for the long flight too and a VERY charged DVD is ready to be used for long time tomorrow! I just hope they can agree on the movies without too much fighting (in business class, that could be fun to watch for our fellow passengers :-)

Sweden, here we come!!