Here are some of the most important events and dates of my life.

FIRST LET ME INTRODUCE MY FAMILY
My father’s name is Lars – Åke, he was born and raised in Örebro. He met my mother, Jean, in Scotland and they fell in love, she moved here and they started a family.
Their first child, and thus my big sister, was Anne-Marie (Amy). She met her husband, Paul Murray, in Scotland. They too fell in love, she moved over there and they started a family. They now have four wonderful kids, Stephanie, Rebecka, Jack and Lauryn.
Their second child, and again my big sister (although she’s usually referred to as my little sister.. ’cause let’s face it, she is little! , Anne-Charlotte (AC). The usual happened to her – she met her husband, Paul Strachan, in Scotland, moved there and started a family. Boredom soon settled in so they moved to Sweden. They have two sons, Nicholas and Alexander (to be biographically correct, Anne-Charlotte & Paul met first and moved to Scotland, and during a visit there Anne-Marie met her Paul)

And at their third attempt my parents finally gave birth to the ultimate guy – me 🙂 Since I love breaking the mold, I’ve avoided going to Scotland in recent years (although I broke that tradition in 2001 & 2006), and I sure as hell won’t marry any Paul. Other than that, my parent’s have done their best trying to help less fortunate children by being a support family and taking on some foster kids so my family ties can get a bit complicated at times! One of the boys they took in for a year was Joakim who becamse the brother I never had. We still refer to eachother as brothers and it’s always fun to see people’s reaction when we try to explain it.

1974 – GENESIS
(also the year ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with “Waterloo”)
Sometime in late September this year I was conceived. I haven’t asked my parents (Lars-Åke & Jean) about it, since that’s one of those things you don’t wanna know about your parents!

1975 – BIRTH OF A NEW… BOY
This is the year I popped out. 2nd of June at about 5 am. to be more precise. The glorious event happened at Södertälje Hospital, which is the city where we lived in for five more years.
Only thing I remember of those five years is an accident I had with my bike that resulted in a trip to the previously named hospital, and I still blame Anne-Charlotte for it. But I’ve paid it back when I broke some bone in her hand 15 years later.

1980 – FRESH START #1 / MOVING FOR THE FIRST TIME
This year, my parents decided an apartment wasn’t big enough for the family (we were 3 kids so who can blame them), so we moved out to a small… I don’t know if “village” is overstating it? Anyway, it was called Sorunda and it’s about 40 km south of Sweden’s capitol, Stockholm.
It was a very good move, except it was in the middle of nowhere, but as oppose to living in Södertälje, there we had a huge backyard, forrest and nice neighbours. Great place for a kid to grow up.
My parents became friends (and inevitably, so did I) with the Hultberg family.
I found a friend in Richard Holén, a guy three years older living in the same street. If I had a dollar for every Star Wars action figure or piece of lego we went through, I’d be a rich man! And had I known Star Wars would be back in 1998 I would have saved them! Anyway, his kid-sister, Marina, became a very good friend with my sister.

1981 – OPERATION REMOVAL
This year I had an operation to remove a hernia. Because I was such a brave little guy (although I was unconcious) my parents bought me this huge (hey, give me a break, I was six years old, back then most things were huge!) LEGO set – a firestation.

1982 – START OF SCHOOL
This year I began school in Sorunda. It was pretty uneventful.
Except when we tried doing some activity for the parents to come and see. Through democratic voting we decided to do a circus-like show. And when we decided on what events would make up this circus I came up with the brilliant idea of a super-mega-strong weight-lifter guy. So what was my reward for that brilliant thinking… I got to be the dude standing in shorts on stage in front of all the parents. Sure it’s fun to talk about now, but it wasn’t fun back then. And even worse, my mother had to take a picture of it!
I also did what most boys in this age and time did – joined the local soccer team. I was the goally, a very fierce one at that. There wasn’t one shot I didn’t try to block. I emphasize tried!

1985 – FRIENDS I DIDN’T KNOW I HAD
This year something great happened to me. Up ’till this point in my life I didn’t have many friends and I wasn’t the most popular guy in school (or even class).
Anyway, it was in fourth or fifth grade when we decided yet again to do a show for our parents. This time we decided to do a stage/musical performance. And through random chance (i.e lottery) I got the male lead in this play, the Mayor of a city taken over by mice. I took the assignment seriously and memorized the script in 2 days. Unfortunately I got sick a lot during the preparations for the show, so my teacher called me up and said I was fired. Instead, I got to play a non-speaking role (Mouse # 6)
Naturally it hurt, but when I came for the next rehearsal he had a change of heart. It seemed my classmates didn’t wanna do the play unless I got to play the lead! I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but it felt really good having that support. It also added to the preassure of doing a good performance (and if I remeber correctly, I sucked, but atleast I have “stage experience”), and I also got my name printed in the local newspaper, Nynäsposten.

1988 – MOVING FOR THE SECOND TIME
My parents along with the Hultberg family decided to buy some land and build two new houses. And so we did. After alot of delays and electrical problems we moved into this huge house, which was nicely located right next to a lake. Unfortunately, it was even more in the middle of nowhere than Sorunda (this place is called Lyngsta). I think it was about here I dumped the soccer and picked up tennis instead. And I came second in the local championship. Naturally, there is a story to that too, but I’ll save that for later. I also started 7th grade this year, but that’s something I’d rather forget.

1989 – BOORING BIRTHDAY
My 14th birthday Sucked, with a capitol S. The focus wasn’t on me, but the democracy movement seiging the Tian Nan Men square in Beijing. As everyone recalls, this attempt at a revolution was squashed with brute force. That’s a nice memory of one’s birthday.

1990 – I WENT RELIGIOUS
This year I did another thing most kids did, I did the Confirmation thingy (I don’t know what it’s called in English) in the Swedish Church. It was an attempt to see what all the noise was about.
Unfortunately, the only good thing to come out of this (except that I met lots of nice girls) was a very nice relationship with Sorundas priest, Knut Fischer, the coolest religiously envolved person ever!

1991 – FIRST GRADUATION & FIRST JOB
And so we graduated from ninth grade. It was bitter-sweet, my 3 years in this school was the worst of my life, but as I’ve said, I had gone to school with some of these people for 9 years and unfortunately I lost contact with most of them.

My sister Amy got me my first job this summer. It was in a fastfood restaurant (Clock in Årsta). Ok, so it wasn’t the best job, but it helped me finance all my computer purchases. And if I do say so, I turned out to be the meaniest chef in the restaurant. Unfortunately, burgers are just about the only thing I could do in the kitchen before I met Helena.

After the summer break (mostly spent working in Clock) I started 10th grade, which in Swedish is “Gymnasiet”. I chose the second hardest course, “engineering”. Very theoretical, I don’t think alot of people (including myself) thought I’d do all 3 years. But oh how I love to surprise people.
The school was Nynäshamns Gymnasium, pretty decent school and as far as teachers go, they were OK. As you’ll see, I ended up in the same class as Henrik Andersson, Jan Mattsson and Joakim Hägvall from that “confirmation thingy”). That triad can be very fun to party with, which I did and you can see the result under the year 2000.

1992 – BOOOORING YEAR
This year was pretty booring. Except for one major event, but I’ll leave that to your imagination.

1994 – SECOND GRADUATION AND SECOND FRESH START
I did it. Three years of trying to learn spanish, chemistry, math and stuff I graduated! So what do I do after this? I go for one more year! This time it was at a school in Stockholm (Thorildsplans Gymnasium). Not one single person at this school knew me, which resulted in me sporting the “mysterious transfer student noone knows”-attitude.

1995 – THIRD GRADUATION
I don’t know if it was that new attitude or the topics we studied (computers, what else?), but I aced this one year which earned my a nice engineering degree (of the lowest form, but atleast I got one!). So what do I do after doing a total of 13 years in school? I apply for 2 more!
So after yet another summer at the Clock restaurant, I moved down to Alvesta (a pretty booring town) to live in a dormitory along with some 20 other students and studied Computer Science at Högskolan in Växjö (the school was later updated to a University). This time it proved too much for me. After four months and flunking every test I got the message that this wasn’t for me, and spent my time and money having fun, but after X-mas I decided to start looking for a job instead. Some of the few good things about this failed attempt at becoming well-educated was a short but oh so intense romance with a girl in the same dormitory, and later a platonic friendship with a fellow Trekker, Anna Lundgren. Unfortunately, we grew apart getting too de-similar interests and priorities.

1996 – MY FIRST REAL JOB
After X-mas I went down to Alvesta. Not to continue my academics, but to have a little college-fun, and I also started sending out job applications. It took me two attempts before I got an interview, and fortunately for me the guy interviewing me, Jan-Olof Röstlund, gave me a break (I had no experience and not that good education) and hired me. So I started working at a computer company called MinDator. I started off in the Configuration Department, which turned out to be more fun than I thought. Mostly because of the guy I was working with, Chribba, who is too cool to even care about being cool.
I also quit the Clock-job, because that restaurant was torn down and replaced by a McDonalds.

1997 – NEW FRIENDS
The biggest event this year was when “Star Trek – First Contact” was released in May this year, and lots of Trekkers showed up for the premiere. One of those was Eva. My first impression was that she was just a nice friendly woman, but she was married so I’d have to settle for platonic. But then I realised it wasn’t first impression because we had already corresponded through e-mail for some time, but never actually met. And now, more than 15 years later, we’re great friends, even having done the Beer festival together 🙂
Also, this is the year when we recruited another guy for our department at work, Jonas Westin. He turned out to be quite the party animal, and if it wasn’t for him or Eva I really wouldn’t “get out much”.

1998 – YEAR OF HAPPENINGS
This started out as a slow year, but turned out to be one of the most eventful ever. First I was so impressed with the new DVD standard, I started working up a real home cinema system.

Then in April, our boss (Gilbert Wolf) thought the company was doing so great that everyone went on vacation to Greece for 5 days. That trip was memorable to say the least, although I had a slight accident – I fell asleep in the sun on the boat, and I could hardly walk afterwards ’cause my legs were so burnt it made any serious partying that night impossible. During this trip I set an all time record for “cheapest vacation ever”. 60 SEK ($8.50) ! 5 days in Greece and partying atleast 4 of those, and all for just $8.50 !!
Unfortunately, at the same time my father celebrated his 50th birthday. It was a really tough choice between going on this “all expenses paid” vacation or celebrating my father. Hope he forgives me.

And during the summer, Stockholm Trekkers, had a DS9 Festival in Stockholm.
As a PR stunt, I was interviewed on Radio Stockholm by Alexander Norén. The guys at work thought it would be real funny to MP3-encode it but I’m not gonna post it here. Ok, it’s not much, but atleast I did it!

So after the summer ended, the guy (Chribba) in charge of our department got a promotion – Network administrator. So, I got his job as boss over the Configuration Department. As part of the promotion, I got a one week paid trip to Kenya. “Kenya? Who would wanna go to Kenya?”. I didn’t, but what tha hell, it was paid and a chance to get away. And man am I happy I went, the trip was unbelievable. If you have a chance to go – “Just do it!”. Their capital, Nairobi, wasn’t that much to see and we only stayed there for one night.

And that night I was introduced to their very nice (and cheap!) beer called Tusker. Highly recommended. After that we spent 4 days out in the Masai Mara safari, touring around seeing elephants and lions. Sure I’ve seen elephants and lions before, but not in the wild. And believe me, you’re not so tough standing 2 meters away from a lion! When that was over we went out to the coast, Mombasa. There we just laid in the sun, drinking Tusker and enjoying doing nothing whilst getting paid. And guess how much I spent on this trip? 700 SEK (about $95), and that includes a whiskey for my father!

During fall of this year, I got interested in Formula 1. I remember it well, it was the race at Spa, the one with the HUGE crash, and the one when Schumacher wanted to kick Coulthard’s ass so bad that the mechanics had to hold him back! And that interest grew with time.

1999 – MOVING FOR THE THIRD TIME
That was it, I couldn’t take it anymore. Living in Lyngsta and cummuting to work took a total of 4 hours every day. So I just had to get a place closer to Stockholm. Also, I couldn’t live with my parents when I celebrated my 24th birthday, so in February this year, I got an apartment in Visättra (about 14 km from Stockholm). And by autumn, our big boss at work realised I must be tired of doing the same job for over 3 years that I got another promotion. And that promotion was “Info- and Webmaster” of our E-commerce site.

Another funny thing that happened this year was when my sister convinced me to go with her to the annual Beer festival in Stockholm. Don’t know why she desperately wanted to bring me along, but I realized that between her, her husband, her best friend Kay and Kay’s brother, I might be the odd man out. So I brought my friend, Eva.

As many of you might remember, this New Year Eve was something special for most people, me included. I had the most wonderful evening (the kind when you put your phone off-hook, which annoyed my family) with the most wonderful woman. No more comment about that.

2000 – ANOTHER PROMOTION AND RADIO APPEARENCE
Ok, so 2000 came along, without the much feared computer havocs. But Chribba, my previosuly mentioned computer master, quit his job at MinDator. As usual I was asked to take over his work as Network Administrator, and ofcourse I accepted. This is also the year I became friends with some people at Radio Stockholm. “People” being Tomas and Malin who hosted the best radioshow ever – “Städdagen”. And this year’s edition of the swedish show “Villa Medusa” featured a guy, Johan a.k.a ‘Godzilla’, that was just too hilarious to be true. So when he was scheduled to be interviewed in Radio Stockholm I got a VIP invitation to sit in the panel. For about 22 minutes or so we were on the air talking about everything from the LoveLetter virus to youth anarchists, and that guy had some very laughable comments about life.

This year I also celebrated my 25th birthday. (Shit! This meantI actually had to grow up!) To celebrate this, everyone from work, my sister + husband and some of my friends (Henrik, Janne & Jocke that I went to school with, Steve who’s a loud american friend of mine and my sister, and Marina, another friend of my sister) went on a 24 hour cruise to Finland. On trips like these, about 15% are there to actually go to Finland, the rest are just there to party. And man did we party! We partied so much that the camera reel with all photos was rendered unusable. If it was accidentally or if someone wanted it destroyed, I leave that up to you!

I also went to the Stockholm Beerfestival. I was accompanied by Eden, my father, my sister (who was driving so she didn’t drink anything with alcohol), her husband Paul, Per (a friend from work) and his megababe girlfriend, Elisabeth.

2001 – YEAR OF FUN
This year I decided to just have fun! I always try to have fun, but this year I wanted to do more than usual.
I started the year off pretty great! My sister (Amy, the one in Scotland) celebrated her 30th birthday in mid – January. She expected something major from her husband or family, and she was kinda depressed when it came and passed, and nothing. And so two days afterwards me and my other sister (AC) just popped up in her livingroom. Just like that, out of the blue, we popped in! She was extremely surprised, but none the less, happy to see us! We spent 4 days over there with her and her family and we had fun every one of them!

This summer the company, Min Dator, was doing badly. So we merged with another computer company, Pulsen Integration. Most people got to keep their jobs, but there was no need for another webmaster or network administrator. But with my experience they thought I’d be a good PC technician / consultant. Only problem was a drivers license. As part of my plan not to grow up I haven’t bothered to get one. Now I had to! Took three months (two of which was just waiting), but I did it. My first assignment was as a consultant at SAS, sweden’s largest airliner. The work itself was kinda booring, but it was really funny working there so it was ok. The work was kinda slow, so I started writing a Natalie Portman fansite. And it turned out so nice that we adapted it and re-wrote the entire NataliePortman.com site! So now I’m apparently in charge of all HTML programming on that site. But I’m not complaining.

Then it happened. My year of fun came to an abrupt end. I didn’t feel so good one tuesday morning so I called in sick. I sat home alone in my apartment playing Grand Tourismo 3 all day long. I’m the kind of person who tries to stay up to date with the news and events, either through the web or radio, but not today. This day I was completely isolated. Until I turned on to the 6 o’clock news and saw the World Trade Centers collapse. During the next 9 hours I couldn’t stop watching the TV, it just seemed so totally unbelievable!! A couple of weeks later a SAS plane crashed in Italy. And that caused some major financial problems for SAS, and they had to cut back on everything, including consultants. So it was back to HQ for me. For a month anyway, then I was sent to the next project – huge installation project at the biggest law firm in Sweden. The work itself was pretty standard, but the biggest plus was the women. I’m not only talking hot chicks – I’m talking classy, beatiful women. Me like!

In early December, the Technical Museum here in Stockholm started an exhibition about “Trek-tech”. As a part of that, we (as in Stockholm Trekkers) were asked to have some sort of activity. So on December 8th we had a day of showing a couple of tech-trek episodes and then a panel of experts commenting and answering questions. And guess which two were the experts of Star Trek? Me and Eden of course.

This year ended on a high note! A friend of mine got sick of me being single so he fixed me up with a pretty nice woman. We had our first date the weekend just before New Years. That date went pretty well, and I was invited to spend new years with her at her place. Who can say no to that offer? Even if I knew then what I know now, I would have gone for it.

2002 – YEAR OF LOSS
After a very pleasent New Years, we agreed next date would be at my place. Big mistake! After seing my collection of pics of beautiful women on my wall, and seing how much work I do for NataliePortman.com , she insinuated that I’d have to give all of that up if we were to be a couple. A woman demanding that after just a week is not one that I’m comfortable with, so we split up. No resentment or anything, just difference of opinion. That was the first, and easiest, loss. Then came the loss of the most influential writer ever – Astrid Lindgren. She wrote so many beautiful stories, so many great books and got the imagination going for millions of kids! I loved her work, like “Mio min Mio”. Even hearing songs from some of her books made me cry. And they were tears of joy. And now she’s gone.

After that, it was time for the biggest loss I’ve ever suffered. On February 25th, my best friend Eden died. This guy meant more to me than I ever could give him credit for, and life will never be the same without him. The good thing that came out of this was a friendship with Ricki, a friend of Eden’s that I’d hardly met. We took it upon ourselfes to try to do as much as we could with the funeral and stuff. I gave the eulogy and fixed the music and stereo for the funeral.

2003 – ROCKING ALL OVER THE WORLD
This year started out as boring as any year. Working as a computer techie at different firms but in april I found out I was gonna be one of the techies that was gonna travel all over the world visiting the swedish embassies and updating their computer systems! At first I didn’t wanna sign up because I’m too much a creature of habit to even try something as big as that. But after getting my ass kicked by friends and family I signed up. So after a few days introduction at the state department they sent us on our way. The embassies were split by 6 teams and I was the computer geek for Team # 1 ofcourse. I started off with an introduction trip to Guatemala to learn the ropes by Micke (one of the few techies that actually worked for the government). Then I got home to sweden and slept a whole day until it was time to go to Singapore. After that it was Hungary and then Bulgaria. Then we were suppose to have a summer break but that didn’t last long since the embassy in Buenos Aires (Argentina) wanted to be upgraded and I “had to” go there. Then it was time for Poland, Belgium and Nigeria. But when I came home after Nigeria we were off to scotland to celebrate my sister’s 30th birthday. After 3 days of beering and just eating crap food we went back home. But I felt horrible, like food poisoning. And it didn’t get any better so the day before I was to go off to Congo I checked into the hospital for the first time in a long, long time. They didn’t find anything wrong me and sent me on my way. But when I got down there it got so bad I didn’t think I was gonna make it back home so I had to go to a hospital there too. They gave me some pills and just hoped I’d make it back to sweden. Which I did and as it turned out I’d gotten salmonella. Not in any african country, but in Scotland! So I took 2 weeks sickleave (first time!) which meant I couldn’t go to Jordan which I really, REALLY wanted to!

That is basically what 2003 was all about for me, travelling and learning to appreciate life!

2004 – KEEP ON ROCKING!
January was like any other January, working a little bit here and there until I started travelling again in february. This time it was all the way over to Helsinki (Finland)! After that down to Ankara (Turkey), over to Denmark just as spring started and then down to the best one yet – Rome! When it was decided I was gonna go there my friend Ricki booked tickets for him and his wife to go there for that weekend and I spent all weekend getting a personal guided tour of Rome. It doesn’t get better, does it? But then it was time for the last one – Hague (Holland). Only thing that made that one fun was the free drinks in the hotel bar! So by June it was all over. All 100 embassies had been done but I still have the memories and photos from all the trips and I would so have hated myself if I had turned it down! You’d think I’d get depressed over this? But I didn’t really have time since in August we kicked off the first real Star Trek convention in swedish history! And guest of honor was Tim Russ! Since I had access to the biggest car and Tim brought his family with him I got to be his personal driver for all four days he was here. And the man was really funny and entertaining. Picturs can be found here.

After that it was back to work which turned out to be really slow because after this government job there wasn’t that much to do at work. At all! So I spent the rest of the year just “getting by”. The year ended on a downer however when I got a weird headache around Christmas time that lasted for a long long time and noone really knew where it came from or where it went…

2005 – GETTING FIRED AND NEW JOB!
In January this year it was pretty clear I wasn’t doing that well as a consultant. After this government job I didn’t get alot of new assignments and didn’t make much money so by end of January I was fired from my job. The first thing I did was call the manager at the lawfirm I’d worked on and off for since 2001 and he was interested in hiring me on a monthly basis since they had alot of stuff going on at that time. But after 9 months I got a real employment there. And although it was a bit different from being a consultant it was still a very fun and good place to work at.

In June I celebrated my 30th birthday. The plan was for me and my sisters and Joakim to go and see the Formula 1 race at Silverstone in July. And since that was really expensive I couldn’t afford having a big party so on my birthday I just told everyone “I’ll be at Dubliners at 7, come over if you want to” and they did. Eventually we occupied 6 tables and fun was had by all!

So in July we went over to England to enjoy a Formula 1 weekend and man was it fun! The entire weekend was a blast! Things really didn’t go as we wanted but it really didn’t matter, we had so much fun anyway! Although we did get very sunburnt as you can see in these pictures.

In October we were also visited by more Star Trek people – Marina Sirtis and John-Rhys Davies. I wasn’t that fond of Marina but John-Rhys Davies was such an awesome guy, really good entertainer and philosophical person. And I got to be their driver for a day and even bought them dinner! Some pictures here.

2006 – KEEP ON TRUCKING
This year was very uneventful. Almost completely uneventful. I kept on “World of Warcraft”-ing but in April we all at the lawfirm got to go down to Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic for a 3 day event! It was awesome and I had one of the most “I’m high on life!” moments I’ve ever had in that bar at about 2 am on saturday night. Then 7 months later when I watched the latest Bond movie I got to see all the places we were at and totally recognized it all. Kick ass weekend!

Then in the summer Amy’s kids were over here on vacation and me and AC flew back with them and spent a few days in Scotland with my sister and just relaxing and one night on the town. Pictures here.

2007 – TIME TO GROW UP YET?
I started this year by going down to Italy. Me and my best buddy Mats have been playing with some crazy italians in “World of Warcraft” for about a year and became friends with a guy called Mario who lived in Milan. So we set a date and flew down to Milano to spend the weekend with him and the other crazy italians. What a weekend, could not have been better!!

Then it was back to normal life for a few months and then in June me, my father and Joakim went to England for the airshow at Biggin Hill. Didn’t have alot of expectation and I really wasn’t disappointed cause it was alot of fun all the time! Unfortunately I didn’t take alot of photos 🙁

In the fall the big event was an old friend of mine from school was getting married! In hindsight it didn’t last but they looked like a really good couple anyway! We had his bachelor party in November and it was basically a perfect kidnapping, go-karting, dinner, some cool pool action and ending at a nightclub. Pictures can be found here.

Then in December they actually tied the knot at a great wedding with an even better party after that lasted long into the night. So long as a matter of fact I got to truly experience the subway by night! My pictures from the wedding can be found here.

2008 – TIME TO GET REAL!
2008 started much like 2006 and 2007 – with World of Warcraft! After defeating Illidan (which at the time was the final boss to end all bosses) I finally reached the stage when I could say “I’ve won the game” and move on. For a few months I tried internet dating and I really didn’t have any problem getting a date – keeping them was the problem. But all of a sudden I got an e-mail from a woman named Helena that immediately got me interested – she was open, honest, unafraid, funny, thoughtful and just about everything else positive I can think of and after alot of e-mails (that got very personal very quickly) we went out on a “getting to know each other” date. The date itself was bad but we really hit it off despite that and agreed to see each other again and go to the movies. But first she invited me into her apartment for dinner which for me was a good sign how comfortable she was with me. Little did I know this was a test if I could be in the same room as her cats without the allergies kicking in. This is probably the one point in my entire life where the rest of my life would have been different if I had reacted to her cats! But I didn’t! After dinner we saw “Jumper” which kinda sucked but that was good since we got a chance to do other things. After that it was a done deal, we got serious really fast and we spent the summer together and by September we were living together!

At work we had alot of stuff going on but we still found the time to go down to Barcelona! And ofcourse we did it when they had their first rain in months! A few pictures here. But that wasn’t the only time I got to fly – me and a collegue from another office went down to Brussels to pay them a visit. Although I’d already been there, and actually to this exact neighborhood, it’s still fun to travel!

2009 – GETTING MORE AND MORE SERIOUS
2009 started very good and we felt that we were so strong we started looking around for a house. But everything we looked at was either too expensive, too old, to worn down, not our style etc. so by late March we started looking at having a new house built for us! Fortunately for us those packages were available in a town about 30 minutes out from Stockholm, but for me growing up down in Ösmo that is a piece of cake! So we took a weekend away from home to think about it and then we signed the papers and hoped for the best. 2 months later, as the house was being build we also found out we were pregnant!! Although I wanted a child, Helena didn’t really want to go through pregnancy and child birth but after a few months of unprotected sex we kinda gave up on it and just moved along but out of the blue there it was! We had no idea about names or anything but in the elevator down after the ultrasound Helena came up with “SAM!” and we went with it. I got “Mikael” as his second name in honor of my friend Eden.

And 7 weeks after finding that out we finally moved into our spanking new house! Pictures of the house being built can be found here.

And we had our first major Christmas dinner this year, with our respective families under one roof. Was huge and I don’t know how a 7 month pregnant Helena pulled it off but she did!!

2010 – BIRTH OF A BABY … BOY!
After worrying about everything you can worry about during a pregnancy it was finally time. On sunday February 21st Helena felt that “today is the day” and by 9 pm we were off to the hospital. But he wasn’t in any rush so it wasn’t until lunchtime on Monday 22nd that he finally popped out! We spent three days in the hotel at Danderyd and then went home to our nice house.

Another first this year for me was to actually build something – a terrace! 64 square meters big at that! I had some help from my family but I did a lot of it myself because H took care of Sam.

And in the summer (July 1st) I went on an eight month long parental leave to take care of Sam! The first month was shared with H at home but then she got back to work and it was all me and Sam all the time!

2011 – CHANGES!
I went back to work in early March but after a few months of having the same stuff at work everyday and the new perspective of not having worked for months I realised I needed a new job. So in the summer I sent out some job applications to see what was out there and it didn’t take long for me to get a job at a healthcare company called “Carema”. But I didn’t start there until November 1st.

But before that me and H got married! We got engaged when we signed the papers for the house but now it was time to make it real by getting married. Since we didn’t have the money to spend on a wedding we settled for a small little ceremony at city hall and then going to a random city to spend the night and some ice cream at Söderköping to finish it off. Pictures are here.