I spent the day uncomfortably perched on the edge of the roof, leaning over to paint.

Maybe I should make my millions importing vinyl siding to Sweden.

Now it is Stefan's turn to work on preparing for the wiring. They are ready to put the roof tiles on, so we have to paint the boards around the eaves with primer. Tomorrow Camilla is going to babysit and Josefin is going to come help us paint. After Stefan is done preparing for the wiring in the ceiling, they can put up the interior walls, and thereafter put the roof tiles on. The roof is going to be of black concrete tiles, so it is heavy and needs the extra support of the walls.

On the far wall is the main bathroom on the left and our bedroom on the right. Haylie wrote her name on the slab in her room today. She worked on hammering in some nails for a while. I could see that she is an old hand at hammering. That is Swedish daycare for you. In the US they would never give toddlers tools. Here they have a carpentry room at daycare.

Our living room is sheetrock and plywood storage right now.

The carpenters left Stefan a little message. "Hurry up Stibbe (a nickname)"

The first layer of insulation is up, vertically, and then they cover it with plastic and afterwards they will put another layer of insulation horizontally so there will be no spots where the cold can leak in.

Tomorrow I will be up on a ladder painting those boards.

On Sunday, Stefan and his dad took a load of dirt to the lot. We need to move our perennials there.

This was inside the house on Sunday. Now they have insulated and it is Stefan's turn to work on the wiring so they can insulate more and start putting up walls inside. He has been there a few hours each day after work. We also redid our kitchen plan this week, picked out our toilets, and last night we had to go over the electrical plan again.

Haylie's dental check-up

No training wheels

This afternoon we took a walk through the woods to Stefan's uncle's farm, Sicklings, where Stefan's dad grew up, to look at some dirt that we are going to drive to the lot tomorrow so we can move our perennials before winter. It is just through the woods behind our apartment complex. Haylie rode her bike without training wheels. She has tried a few times this summer but has been unstable so Stefan has had to help her. Suddenly today she could ride by herself and even learned how to start and stop without help. It was a nice walk on a nice day, although she had to stop every ten feet to check stuff out. The blue raspberries, Salmbär, are ripe now, so she ate quite a few. When we got there, we had to inspect some piles of dirt, mushrooms, young salmon in the creek, and pick flowers. Stefan went to look at the topsoil while Haylie and I talked to the horses and sheep. We fed the sheep some nice clover that was outside of the electric fence just out of their reach.

When we finally made it home, I made pizza for dinner and Haylie went off to ride her bike with her friends Leo and Tuva. Stefan was a little worried, but she rode off with all the confidence in the world. She has learned that if she loses control to steer off into the grass and stop, so it went fine.

Yesterday was the first day (if you don't count the morning) with no huge power struggles, so we had a nice evening, with American pancakes and bacon for dinner, and chips and dip and a movie afterwards. We rented Happily Never After on the internet. Haylie liked it a lot. It was so nice to have a break from fighting with her.

Kräklingbo marknad

Today, we went to Kräklingbo market. We almost didn't go after lots of power-struggling this morning, but finally we worked on the concept of comprimise and were able to get going. Haylie and I ate Thai like we do every year. She had spring rolls and I had Chicken Saté with noodles which I had to share with her. She loves Thai food.

When we were done looking around, Haylie got to do a couple rides.

We ran into cousin Tindra and she and Haylie did a couple rides together. Haylie was a good older cousin, seen here telling Tindra that you have to stay sitting the whole time.

Haylie also ran into her friend Bianca from daycare. They were looking at some roosters and hens together. The fowl and the rabbits are always a popular stop.

I stopped by the house on Thursday. It is all enclosed now, with a temporary door put on. They have started to prepare for insulating the roof.

Our eaves.

We went to Haylie's baby cousin's baptism today at Klinte church. We sat in the back because the minister was already talking when we got there, and like a true Lutheran, I was self-conscious about walking in and sitting up front. Haylie wanted to sit by Isabelle, but they just got the giggles so that didn't last long. Haylie had ants in her pants and was having trouble sitting still, but luckily she found a spider next to the pew halfway through the service and was thus occupied in poking at it for a while. "Why do we have to be quiet the whole time?" I think Stefan was thinking the same thing.

The guest of honor is wearing the baptismal gown that everyone in the family has worn since the end of the 1960's. The boys have a blue lining and ribbon and the girls have pink.

Josefin took a few pictures of us outside the church's party room where we went for coffee, cookies, rolls and cake after church. Haylie by now had gotten over the trauma of not having dress shoes. She was very upset that I got to have high heels and she didn't have any. She was also slightly distraught by the fact that her dress didn't twirl as far out as she would have liked.

After getting all sugared up, the kids went upstairs where there is a playroom and we didn't see a hint of them for the rest of the time we were there. They had a fun time together building a fort.

Stefan stopped by the house after work, and the builders were still at work laying tar paper. The roof is totally on now, and they finished just in time for a downpour. We had quite the thunderstorm tonight, but far away so mostly just lightning and not the thunder. Haylie was exhausted and crying tonight so she went to bed early. It must have been a long day at daycare. Yesterday she came home and told me that she had a substitute English teacher named Alan. I asked if he talked more like her teacher Meg who is Australian, or more like Mom. More like Mom, she said, except different. I got the explanation for that from one of the other teachers this morning. He is from Canada. Hope she doesn't start talking like in the movie Strange Brew now.

It could be worse though.

Our trusses came today

I stopped by the lot this morning on my way to work in the pouring rain and met a very wet Kenneth, our builder. The rest of the guys were in their trailer, drying off. I was excited when he told me that the trusses for our roof were on their way at 9 AM. Thankfully for them, the rain stopped at a quarter past nine. The builders worked all day, putting our jigsaw puzzle of a roof together. The trusses had to be specially ordered from the mainland since the junction where the three branches of the "Y" of our house was a bit tricky.

By the time I stopped by after work at fourish, the sky was blue and the sun had dried almost all of the water that had come this morning. Our neighbor was still hard at work, since he is doing it all himself. He is building a house with concrete block walls, and the job has already started to lose his appeal. He seemed to have some friends over for help today, which I am sure he appreciates.

This is our house from the North side, where you can really see the angles. The guest room, Haylie's room and our bedroom will have windows in this direction.

Here you can see the difference in height between the living room/kitchen with its slightly vaulted ceiling on the right and rest of the house with regular ceilings on the left. This view is from the backyard WNW.

Here is the front of the house. The front door is the hole in the center, and the side door on the right is in to the laundry room. The kitchen/dining/living room area is in the long part on the left where the tar paper is already on.

Here is the view from the backyard to the SW.

Lots of strange angles.

An interesting solution.

This view is from the south wall, in the kitchen, looking north through the living room. You can see the front door on the right.

They put an I-beam over the bay window for strength. This is where our eating area will be. It is going to be a great view of the pine woods on the other side of the street from those windows.

And more walls!