..a little closer to where I am today..

..after we sold our icehouse and moved to the 'burbs, we decided to try to add another little one to the family...after months of trying, lots of hormones and medications and finally surgery we gave up and thought we were happy enough as a one child family...that was the trick...low and behold a few months later we were pregnant with Lukas..once he was born we finally had what we had been yearning for so many years..two children, a little daughter and finally a little son.

This is my all time favorite picture from Lukas' birth..his proud sister Sofia holding him for the first time..don't mind the fact that her face is covered in face paint from her visit to the Children's Museum just prior to coming to the hospital....Love love love this picture.

Not many months after that day I also wanted to add another dog to our brood, so Gus our new dachshund joined our dogs Bogus and Lou.

Since I haven't introduced Bogus or Lou before...

Bogus was a gift to me from Ventura when we had just been dating for about 7 or so months...he was effectively my first born "child".
Bogus went with me everywhere the first 8 months I had him...this picture of him is from when we where working on gutting and restoring the condemned house in the Heights, that eventually became our first home together, back in 1991

Lou came along that same year, at halloween.
His mother was hit by a car when the litter was merely 3 weeks old so we ended up hand raising him with a bottle and eventually with gruel..Bogus adored his new brother and they never did anything alone again.
This picture of my sweet, sweet boy is from 2009 a few weeks before he died from a tumor behind his left eye..what made this even more sad was that only a month before he died, Bogus had passed away...they ended up not even being apart for more than 30 days, while crossing the rainbow bridge..they truly were the best of friends..and even while writing this I am crying..two years later..oh how I miss my two boys..

Gus was given to Sofia by Ventura's brother Benny.
Benny and his next door neighbor got into it one day and the crazy neighbor ended up poising the dogs and the litter of puppies..Gus, his mother and father survived and that is how we got him...to keep him from getting hurt by the looney neighbor.
This picture is from 2009 as well...

and that is just a few of our lovely animal family members...next time I introduce you to our Pecker Palace....

How I came to where I am today

After I left my Au-Pair job at the disfunctional cat/dog and kid family I worked as a nanny at two other families over a period of two years..and I all I can say is...I will never have a nanny for my children...maybe my three families were extreme cases, they probably were...but it is safe to say...NOT me or my children.

After I left my nanny jobs I took a job for a liquor company working with promotions..you might know me as Ms Goldschlager or Mrs Rumpleminze, maybe even Ms Jagermeister...or any of the other scary concoctions people pay premium for to induce a mean next day headache with, either way I had a ball..so much so that I took a job at one of my standard saloons as a night manager..it was and still is one of the coolest Honky Tonks in TX..known as Blanco's...I worked at Blanco's from '93-'97...when I met my now darling hubby....at that time I realized...money is cool and all...but I need to have a "real" job.

Since interior design was and still is, a huge interest of mine I decided to get into commercial office design...took a job as a Showroom manager for a small woman owned office furniture dealership...we did millions of dollars in business every year and boy was it fun..interesting and different too...I thoroughly enjoyed my years with them..but when Sofia came a long I just knew...my daughter will not take her first steps, eat her first cookie or say her first words while in daycare...I will stay home with her..come hell and high water...so I told Ventura and he agreed with my decision and at home I stayed.
 It was rough let me tell you...here in US families don't get any help what so ever as far as money or breaks on taxes when one of the parents stay home with their children...nope..to get anywhere you have to both work...money rings higher than anything else..But we managed, Ventura worked and we made do...and we loved our life and the fact that Sofia was getting a good start in her life.

 After a few years, two to be exact Ventura's dream of owning an icehouse came to fruition..and boy was it fun, nothing beats hearing your two year old daughter say..."let's go to the bar, mom"...actually that embarrassed me more than once..but now I laugh about it. We actually had Sofia's third birthday party at the icehouse...never had so many fathers show up for a kids party before..so that was a hit..hehe.

Once Ventura got the icehouse bug out of his system we sold it and never looked back..we were done with the entertainment business....

So I guess the very different jobs I have had, the various people from all walks of life I've met and the experiences I have gotten throughout this time period in life has shaped me somewhat if not all the way. Marrying Ventura changed me in so many ways..he taught me.."if you don't have it go get it"...nothing is impossible and you know what...nothing is..you just have to want it bad enough...During our first few years as a couple and young family..it was rough...but rough gets smooth if you just keep honing it...

...how I became a Texan...

I was about to graduate high school when it dawned on my that I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up..so I decided to run away for a year...to Houston, TX, to be an Au-Pair..what  a great way to live in a new exciting world, do what I know to do..care for children and others, have fun and still make money...brilliant I thought.
So I searched high and low in various daily news papers in Sweden until I found a family I felt meshed with me.
Pat and Jaime, with their daughter Ashley and soon to be born son Sean..they also had cats..three I thought, since that is what I saw in pictures they'd sent me...boy was I wrong..they had 11 indoor cats...and bless their hearts....they felt sorry for me since I am a dog person, so they got me a 12 week old puppy too...my days were busy, busy..a 3 year old girl, that spoke spanglish...her previous nanny had been a mexican lady, so the girl had no clue about english...great, a newborn baby boy, 11 cats and 1 puppy....did I mention I was just 19 years old at the time...
I thrived though, learned so much about life in general but more so about motherhood..something I didn't think I was going to learn at such a young age..Jaime was only 25 so we became best of friends, did a lot together on weekends, with the kids in tow..her hubby Pat was not the fathering type, nor the husband type, I found out years later.. I learned so much that one year and week and a half I lived with them, what I wanted out of life...in so many ways...I did however still had to figure out how to get there...through trials and errors...which in sense made me who I am today..

So here I am..finally..

I have been asked by a few friends to start a blog, mainly because I am a little crazy and I think they would like to laugh with me and figure out how I think sometimes...but also because I live here in TX, a whole world away from most of my family and lots and lots of friends. You see, I grew up in Sweden, in a small town of Borås, outside of Gothenburg and when I was fresh out of high school as a 19 yr old young naive and very blond girl I moved to Houston, TX to be an Au-Pair for a year...that year turned into two, three and on and on...I have now lived here in TX longer than I lived in Sweden...which in it self makes me sad..but it is what it is and here I am.

I have been living in TX for 19 years,  this summer, in June, it will be 20 years..20 years..wow...I was merely 19 when I got here...and here I am...20 years later.

Through this blog I hope to be able to connect with friends and family from all over the world, but not only that, I also hope to be able to let my two children learn even more about me..they already know me well....or do they?

I am an avid animal lover, much to my childrens joy and happiness...mine too..maybe not my hubby's, but there is another blog for that...

I will post from all walks of my life, as a mom to my children, a mommy to my furkids, and as a Pecker Palace Queen over my rooster and hens and of course anything and all between that.

But for now..I will bid you good night..see you soon again.