Another day, another post.

[same_sky]

My child is ”doing Arts & Crafts”… her words, not mine. What she is actually doing is trying to put off going to bed for a little bit longer. She slept late this morning, as did we, so no one is nagging yet.

I am glad to report that she has taken up quite well with Farfar and especially with Farmor. They go outside and look at flowers and play with kitty cats, and there is always ice cream and Swedish strawberries at this house, so they are doing well together. I bet this is the first time that Farfar and Farmor will need to have ”strawberries” written in their budgets, because we have been to the store just about every day, or every other day at least, to buy strawberries.

Whitley is also having a good time. She has become addicted to Swedish coffee, or what my in-laws might refer to more aptly as ”sugar”. ,) Yeah, it’s a bit sweeter than common.. hehe. Unfortunately, we all have a cold or something, so she’s not feeling that great, which puts a damper on things.

We have strangely not spent time with anyone other than M’s family. Usually we’re running from place to place, but this time has been much more relaxed and visiting-focused. I think that having a kid has been the reason for that. I kind of wish we’d brought her stroller..though if we had, I don’t think we’d have made our plane, so I guess it’s just as well. At home, she insists on walking everywhere we go, but she’s made us carry her most of the time we’ve been here. I guess she’s just not caught up on her rest, and of course, we are expecting quite a lot of her.

So far, we’ve been shopping several times and we’ve been to Sigtuna (one of my favorite places to be a tourist), where we rode out on a Viking boat, and to the cathedral in Uppsala, and we’ve walked around in Stockholm a bit, We’ve also been trying to get some official Swedish business done while we’re here. So far we’ve applied for and received M’s Swedish passport, which was really fast. We have some Evie stuff going but I won’t go into details about it until we see how it turns out.

I bought Evie a bunch of books and some clothes at a flea market that we went to today, and some more books at a store. I figure that I can justify spending a little more since I can’t exactly buy them at home. I want to find some cute Swedish-looking clothing, but I am having terrible sticker shock on the prices.  Whitley has bought a bunch of jewelry and a Dalahäst (purchased for 80 kronor at the flea market and not 28727 kronor at the store.

E has crawled up in a rocking chair and covered herself up with a blanket so perhaps she is a little ready for bedtime. I guess I should go check on that situation and stop rambling.

Comments

[drottningen.livejournal.com]

How quick was the passport done? We need to do that for Jakob and Jonas while we are in malmo and can't decide to pick up there or have it mailed to the consulate in atlanta

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Magnus applied for his passport on Tuesday and it was ready on Thursday. This is in Sollentuna, in Stockholm. We were REALLY shocked at the timeline. We were told that they wouldn't mail a passport, but we have not specifically asked if they'd mail it to a consulate. We're still hoping to apply for Evie's Swedish passport while we're here, but she doesn't have a coordination number yet. Theoretically speaking, she is in the process of obtaining one right now, and then we can apply. I'm just not sure that it will arrive in time for us to pick it up.. assuming the number-getting works out properly. Still. We're at least a five hour drive from the nearest consulate, and if all we get out of this trip is a coordination number... better than nothing. It'll still save us ten hours of driving. I don't know why they make this so difficult, though. Looks like they'd want to be aware of all the little Swedes running around out there in the world.

[e11en.livejournal.com]

You'll have to tell me the trick you used to get them to allow you to apply for coordination number while you were there. NYC isn't that far from us but I'm not sure if you can do apply there now that it's only an honorary consulate. If we have to go all the way to DC, I'd rather just wait and do it the next time we visit Farmor.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I have been planning on emailing you or something to tell you how it worked out, although since it hasn't yet totally worked out, I was afraid of jinxing it a little. So, here's the story of what we've done so far, and hopefully if I set it up that way, the whole thing won't fall through. .)

So we take the train, walk up to Skatteverket in Stockholm and find out that the office we thought we were going to.. only does ID cards. Great. We get directions to the OTHER Skatteverket and take the subway over there (which also involved a lot of walking, of course.) We walk in and take our number and talk to a person there that listens to what we want and says, YES, we can do that here, and also, it will be about an hour and ten minutes before we can see you. So M waited there while the rest of us took off to have lunch. We went back at about the time limit and stood there while the lady starts telling us that they can't do it. M and his sister were there, and they were doing the Swedish thing, and they're all agreeing basically that she needs to apply for Swedish citizenship first. I am sitting there telling them that she is ALREADY a Swedish citizen, but I mean, I don't even speak the language well enough to follow the conversation so how can I argue with three Swedes, one of which is a government official in charge of these things? haha. So anyway, the lady is quite nice and helpful, and she tried, but finally told us that we needed to go to Migrationsverket. I had serious doubts about that, but she called them and verified. So.. M calls them the next morning and is told no, they don't do that. (of course.) However, they did finally 'prove' that I was right and she already IS a citizen--therefore, why would they need to have anything to do with her? So the answer there was--so sorry, but we can't help, apply in the US.

So, she's a Swede. We want to get her a passport, but Sweden doesn't know she exists. So.. I formulate a new plan. M also had to get his passport renewed. I told him to ask them about her when he applied, but he forgot. When we stopped to pick it up on Thursday evening, I nagged him into asking. I mean, it makes NO SENSE that a Swedish citizen should go to another country to apply for a Swedish passport, you know? He had to repeat his inquiry about three times in different ways to get the guy to understand the situation--she needs a passport. We need a coordination number to put on the application. HOW DO WE GET A COORDINATION NUMBER? And THAT is when the guy at the police station.... told us that they could certainly request a coordination number from Skatteverket. It might take oh, UP TO THREE DAYS, though. That's in caps because he said it like it was a big deal. We thought it was funny because three days is nothing in the general schee of things. Better than three trips to a consulate.

So we went back the next morning with all our papers, and we filled the special application out, and we were told this time that it might take a week. The girl at the window this time was unsure about the process, but she went to ask and came back with what looked like a procedural manual, so theoretically, it should really be a valid process. We just don't have results from it yet. We're not sure it will be ready in time for us to pick up the passport, but assuming the number comes through, we're probably going to give it a try and see what happens.

Sorry for the novel-length comment. :) Keep your fingers crossed!

[reebert.livejournal.com]

Besides the colds it sounds like you're all having a good time. :) Strawberries and icecream have become the norm at this house too. haha

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Yep, we're having fun. :) The strawberries help. I hate to encourage these crazy Swedes too much, but the strawberries really are better here. hehehe.

[grain-damaged.livejournal.com]

Heehee - too cute with the arts and crafts. Oh strawberries! What's not to love? It sounds like you're having a nice time with getting a chance to visit and not all the pressure of sight seeing.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Yeah, all the visiting has been nice. :) I have done most of the sightseeing stuff before but we still have to get the highlights in again for Whitley's sake. I'd hate to drag her all the way here and sit her down in a backyard and not show her anything else!