"To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me." Isaac Newton

Yesterday we made an excursion for the day and took at drive out to the eastern shore of the island, first stopping at Katthammarsvik.

The water was quite cold, but nice and sandy on the bottom at the beach. Haylie met a little girl named Freja and they seemed to be kindred spirits. Before long they were catching minnows and jellyfish together.

This is where we ate lunch, Katthamra Gård (farm).

Freja happened to also be there, so Haylie got some more playing in.

After lunch, we drove up on Grogarnsberget over to the nature preserve.

Stefan and Haylie were checking out the rocks.

After getting her sandals wet, she took them off and waded around.

There were a lot of birds on some rocks a ways out. Our new camera has good zoom.

Later we drove to Sysne fishing hamlet and stopped briefly. It was pretty windy on the point, but Haylie was compelled to throw some rocks in the water.

It was chilly. We stopped at Sandviken at the beach, which is really nice sand, but it tends to be cold in the water on the east side of the island, since the prevailing winds come from land and blow out the surface water.

But pretty soon she worked up her nerve, but the swimming was mostly running back and forth into the ebbing waves, and then away from the new waves. Accompanied by much screaming, I might add. She fell over at one point, which she took well, but after that the shivering got the upper hand over the fun.

Today we took Haylie's friend Hilda with us and went swimming at Gustavs in Fröjel, a couple miles south of where we live in Klintehamn. The water was much warmer here on the west side, and since the summer has been rather cold, the algae levels are low. Hilda had a lot of opinions about me: my glasses were weird, my bikini was weird, my skirt was weird, and I talk weird. She had tons of questions about everything. Haylie doesn't ask so many questions, she mostly observes, so we aren't used to that. Now Haylie has been dressed as a princess tonight, in her new Barbie ballerina dress, wearing all her jewelry. Her little friend Elis 3, the neighbor boy, is over. He was out wearing a dress playing soccer and screaming "Aaargh" earlier. Now he is playing dollhouse behind me, as Haylie continues to accessorize while singing the "diamond castle" song from one of her Barbie movies. He likes our trampoline and dollhouse. The dollhouse is the favorite. Haylie never wants to play with it, but he loves it. At least someone is using it.