Anna Carin's

Another breathtaking sunrise in Dalarna

We got up and had a nice morning. The incredible sunrise, the many birds and Arvid going out on the Spark again. He went longer this time; all the way to Limafors and back. That's 3 km. there and back. We are meeting Mona Britt at the handcraft shop in Malung, then going to Anna Carin's for dinner at 2 PM.

We park and walk to the store. The shop has 20 different artists selling their works here. There is woodworking, jewelry, small wood furniture, clothing, knitted scarves, socks, mittens, pottery, wall hangings, paintings, wool creations (Mona Britt's) etc. We buy some things: 2 of Mona Britt's pictures, a wooden JUL candle holder, and a welcome sign. Mona Britt gives us 2 woolen figures too. Such a wonderful shop. It is amazing to see all the handmade creations from people in Dalarna.

Malung is decorated so nicely. They have taken knitted scarves and put them on all the trees. It looks so cute.

We head out to Anna Carin's. We stop at Sundkvist Skinn first because there is someone there that wants some leather goods dropped off at Anna Carin's. Then they will come pick it up there.

We think we have driven too far. We approach a ski area, Kläppen. Amazing. It doesn't seem like we are high enough up for a ski area to be. We call Anna Carin. We are almost to the cut off, we stopped just a bit too soon. You drive toward Sälen to her home.

We turn off on the road to Mora. Yeah, we find it! We always visit in the summer when Sweden is light and full of life. It looks very different with all the snow and one thing we did not expect was how low the sun is in the sky. When you drive it is so low and obstructs your view a lot. You will be getting onto a highway and you look back to see if it is clear and there is the sun! It is flat against the skyline and right in your eyes. But it does make for very sparkly snow. It just glistens and sparkles like it has glass or crystals on top.

We have an absolute wonderful time at Anna Carin's. Usually, we go to her house then immediately pack up and go to their cabin that is only accessible by boat. Obviously, we don't do that today. The lake would be frozen for 1 reason!

Anna Carin's daughter and fiance are there Ingemar and Marit. Also, Gustav of course. We eat moose meat with sauce, potatoes au gratin, salad, cauliflower, broccoli and bread. It is wonderful! For dessert we have fruit salad with a mint cream sauce. It is so good. I am thinking I would like to make something like this for an after dinner treat at home.

We enjoy talking with them. The two are engaged and getting married on Feb. 7. We tell them to come to USA for their honeymoon. We laugh when we also say, Bring Anna Carin! Nice, take your mother on your honeymoon??? Anna Carin really wants to come to the US, or so it seems anyway. We do hope she comes some day.

We learned something this trip. When a couple gets engaged, both get a ring! Then when they get married only the woman gets another ring. Something special about Ingemar and Marit is how they decided to get married. Traditionally, like here, the man usually proposes to the woman. But an old tradition is that on leap year on Feb 29, the woman can ask the man. So Marit asked Ingemar on Feb 29th! This is an old tradition in Sweden, some people have never heard of it. But I guess Marit did! They seemed so happy and cute together.

We went to see Karin, Ulla's mother. Ulla has been working at the ski mountain all day and had the bus drop her off at her moms home. Karin has Alzheimer's and we have visited her there before. It is dark now so Anna Carin leads us there.

We note that Karin is now in a wheel chair. She has her eyes closed most of the time and is being fed her evening meal. This is a big change from 3 years ago when we saw her. She was with us on a summer walk and she was so energetic she walked faster than us. She was picking flowers. It is sad to see her in a wheel chair. But the home is wonderful and the staff is amazing. Arvid sings some songs and some of the patients seem to tap their feet or become more active. He is singing Christmas songs in Swedish and the staff joins in. We take Ulla back with us to Anna Carin's where we have fika.

Fika of course is more coffee and sweets. Anna Carin really spoils us. We absolutely love being here. The bad part of all this relative hopping we do is that we know it will be a long time until we see everyone again. We stay pretty late.

Then we take Ulla back to her car where she leaves it before she takes the bus to work.