Björn: Our baby has turned into a toddler. He now shows off four word sentences (in Swedish too!), and does not let any word intimidate him. He's very healthy, but would make his parents happy if he learned to sleep a little longer in the morning. He often wakes up around five, and very rarely after six. His favorite things this year include: Big trucks. Small trucks. Cars. Boats. Trains. Rocks. Sticks. Crashes. Bangs. Splashes. Mamma. Raisins. Tickles. Mormor. Morfar. Farmor. Farfar. Cookie dough. Chalk. His awesome nanny Annette. Clara. Ice cream. Markers (ideally permanent ones). Any chair that is not a high chair. Dogs. Bossing dogs around. Meat. Ketchup. Cool boots. Barbapappa. Herr Nilsson. Bubbles. Sticking stuff in his mouth. Anyone particularly interested (grandparents?) can find more pictures here.

A new baby! We suspected in early August that a new Martinsson might be joining us, and a trip to Ellös Apotek confirmed the good news. Our baby girl (if the ultrasound technician is to be trusted) will join us on April 12; or some indefinite time thereafter if she follows the example of her brother.

		Houses: This year we bought a new house large enough to hold us all for many years. We also sold the house Leah had when we met (Leah acted as our agent and did an excellent job!). As the final move, we're now trying to sell the one I lived in. As I write this (Dec 26), it's under contract and if things go well (fingers crossed), we'll close in January. In connection with the move, we had a bunch of work done on the new house, and had to fix a long list of minor things with the two we already had. Exhausting ... Our new address: 1120 Hillside Lane, Louisville, CO 80027.

Mexico! In March we got invited to join Leah's family in Ixtapa. It was super nice, excellent food (lobsters, grilled fish by the pool, lots of deep fried nachos, cool beer), and a great way to hang out with the cousins and load up on some sun after the winter. (Thanks Linda and Dale!) Björn loved the pool and the beach, and surprised his parents by adjusting easily to his temporary living quarters and actually sleeping well (relatively speaking). Oh, and we had a jacuzzi with a panoramic ocean view on our balcony. Nice.

		Sweden: There were two trips to Sweden this year. I went by myself for work in May (when I discovered that we need to add a second story to the house; the view is much better from the roof), and then we all went to Mollosund in late July. Both visits were way too short and we did not have time to see nearly as many people as we would have wanted. The weather in July was only so and so, but we were lucky to get a couple of great days at the end. We all took Gosta's little motorboat over to Mollon where Björn played in the shallows and made some friends. Now at least Leah knows that such days in principle exist, even though she must still believe they are exceedingly rare. Björn likes boating and fishing stuff. And the house.

Work: Leah is back lawyering at Holland and Hart in Denver. It's a long commute and hard work. For both of us, this year has really been marked by an extreme lack of time. Björn is wonderful, but highly time-consuming (and I really wish he would sleep longer in the morning...). Work has suffered (and our social life feels like Wall Street in 1930). I at least got to do some nice travel: Vancouver (very fast - excellent sushi), Banff (beautiful, -32C), Monterey (Carmel-at-sea has the best beach I've seen in the US), Atlanta (twice! who knew the inner suburbs were so nice?), DC (the Swedish embassy is cool), Lake Arrowhead (just east of LA but does not look anything like LA), LA (which does look like LA), and Palo Alto. Almost made Premier Exec on United which is a milestone I aspire never to meet. Other than being far more pressed for time than usual, the novelty of this year for me has been that I've really transitioned to spending most of my research time working with students. I have three PhD students now (and am co-advising one more), and two undergraduates, and with administrative work (grant proposals, department committees and reports, refereeing), all the travel, and teaching, it's getting very hard to find the time to work on my own research. Not to mention the book I was supposed to have written by the end of the year ...

Lake Axehandle: We've made three trips to Leah's parents' cabin this year. (I only managed to make two of them.) Björn went tubing for the first time, got his Christmas presents early (Thanksgiving!), and loved poking around in the woods. The rest of us did the same, and also ate and drank way too much.