Sandra and I had tried to meet a couple of times in the last weeks, so I could take pictures of her family. But every single scheduled time, the rain was pouring down, and it was so dark - it felt like there was no day at all. But we were stubborn, and decided to meet at New Year's, before the dinner parties. It was our last shot, because tonight is my last night in Sweden before my year-long New Zealand trip. I'm glad we were persistent, because when I woke up at New Year's Eve, I knew it was gonna be a beautiful day. The sun was present for the first time in weeks. And we also got the first frost of the year.

So yesterday I _finally_ got to meet the lovely family. Two energetic and laughing boys, with two easy-going parents. It was a great mix. Here's how it turned out.

Natalie is my oldest friend. And my closest friend.

From the twenty-or-so years we've known each other, it's hard to fit all feelings in just a few sentences. I'm gonna try to describe why I love her so much, with a short story:

In third grade, our school was going to celebrate the day of the United Nations. The principal asked our teacher if she had any students who would like to get on stage, and count to 10 in a chosen language. We were about five who accepted the challenge. I chose Chinese, and tried to find the phonetics in books back home (this was the time before Google). The r-tard got to count in Swedish. Natalie chose Spanish, but told our teacher that she could only count to six. This was just fine; she was just happy we wanted to participate.

So, the UN day came, and the five of us entered the stage. I counted in my made-up Chinese, someone counted in English... It was a tough crowd, but they seemed to really enjoy Natalie's show. It sounded something like this:

Uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco, cinco, seis.

Offspring - Pretty Fly For A White Guy

Natti. With the 90's being far away, you should know, that I still love you to death. Thank you for letting me take your pictures today.