Purportedly Ostensible: Smitten with Smittska-Udden

I woke up this morning, appropriately enough, with Lykke Li for skull music. I mean, it's cool enough that I simply woke up (because, my dear Watson, it neccesarily follows that I was sleeping), but to have "Little Bit" swimming around in my head when I got there was icing.

Since I've become an exhaustively experienced world traveler I have certain quotient of pretentiousness I need to meet, so I've decided to say you really just can't "get" Lykke Li until you've been to that particular corner on Närkesgatan in Stockholm.

Disclaimer: Really, all you need to get Lykke Li is a internet connection or a reasonably competent record store employee.

So, Thursday evening we went to the beach at Smittska-Udden to have a picnic and watch the sun set. (Jesper's idea. Genius, really, as ideas go.) I won't lie (I will lie, actually, but just not in this instance). I would have loved to have had the rain and clouds I had when I first came to this place, but the fact that so much of my family could come with, plus we could roast varmkorv and have some of Josef's beach-made chili more than made up for the horribly sunny weather. We roasted marshmallows, too (this is not part of my efforts to become more pretentious, I promise, but Swedish marshmallows are SO much better than their American counterparts. I'm sorry, it's just the way it is.) and did this crazy thing where you sliced open a banana, slipped some chocolate inside it, wrapped the whole thing in tinfoil and threw it on the coals.

Swedes are crazy! Crazy delicious!

Aidan was jumping around like a mountain goat hopped up on goofballs and took a fair amount of tumbles, but the little guy just kept on going despite his spills ("It's a good thing I'm taking karate! I just used my skills to put my hands out!" Oh, my sweet little Napolean Dynamite, you're too much like me for your own good).

Chloe wandered off to explore and have a little "me-time". I think she's a little like me, too, in that it seems it takes her a pretty decent amount of alone to decompress and compile. Still, I was (and am) a little amazed at how social she's been during this whole outting. I guess I don't really get to see her too much outside of the Richardson Cave so I've never really known how she'd react amongst the normals. Still, our relatives here don't really count as normals, as they have been superlatively kind and welcoming, which seems to put them on the lee side of the bell curve in "normal human reactions".

Jesper rode his bike to Smittska-Udden, by the way, after riding his bike to the gym. To work out for, like 73 hours and leg press the entire Stena-line fleet, I'm assuming.

Seriously, these guys are superheroes who really suck at the whole "secret-identity thing".

I took some pictures but I'm almost loathe to post them because they do nothing to translate the beauty and scope of the little peninsula we were on. I've loved Sweden since forever, and my family here couldn't be more wonderful, but the first time I went to Smittska-Udden it seemed to settle into my bones and I can honestly say I've never felt more like I just belonged somewhere.

That is until we passed the naked guys jumping into the 0°C ocean. Way to ruin Sweden, naked guys.

Now I have to go apologize to Goblin Valley.

Britt and Sofie in a very well lit pic. Go, awesome photographer!

Honestly, could this crack be any more appropriate? I looked around for Mjolnir but couldn't find it any where. BTW, there's no real sense of scale here, but I could've fit into that fissure.

I'm just sayin'.