On Monday morning, Dwight and Astrid were so so good to get up very early and take us to the airport in Stockholm (3 hrs away) to catch our flight to Dublin, Ireland. They even showed us where to go in the airport so that we wouldn't get lost.

Below is a map of Ireland. We arrived at Dublin airport and rented a car. Luckily, the car had numerous scratches on the passenger side of the car. Some of their roads are very narrow and we a big truck comes by, you have to move almost off of the road to let them get by. Of course, many of these roads have hedges along the sides and thus it is easy to scrape the hedges since as your judgement isn't as good when you have to drive on the opposite side of the road that you are used to.

With Charlie's navigation, we drove from Dublin to Nenagh in County Tipperary to stay with Daniel White Spunner. He lives north of Nenagh near the Lake (Lough Dergh) on the River Shannon. This is the largest of three lakes that the river goes through.


On the way there, we took a detour to the town of Tullamore, County Offlay, to thank Helen White at the Midlands Ancestry who had done some great genealogy research for us a couple of years ago.


Abve is a pretty picture of a part of Tullamore looking out of the front door of Midlands Ancestry.

Well, you might be wondering who Daniel White Spunner is and why did we leave Sweden to have a short visit with him. If you guessed that he was Kent's 3rd cousion once removed, then you got it right. Below is a relationship chart which helps to explain what a 3rd cousin once removed is.
As you can see, my 3rd great grandparents were Elizabeth Spunner and Benjamin White. One of their children was Elizabeth White, who married Joseph Palmer Canter. Elizabeth White was born near Shinerone, County Offlay, in 1793. She is my 2 great grandmother, who also had a brother by the name of Thomas Spunner White. Later in his life, Thomas S White changed his name to Thomas Spunner White Spunner when he inherited the family land from his grandfather Thomas Spunner. As you can see, Daniel White Spunner is a 3rd cousin of my father making him once removed for me.

This was the origin of the White Spunners that today live in Ireland, England and the US (mostly in the Mobile, Alabama area).


Here is a picture of Daniel with his older sister, Oonah. Daniel was kind enough to invite us to stay with him. Since we don't drink tea, coffee or alcohol, Dan got the idea that we must be vegetarians. On Tuesday for lunch, we went to visit Eva and she fixed a nice vegetarian spaghetti. During lunch, she asked us if we ate fish. Then she asked if we ate chicken and beef. She asked how we could be vegetarians and we all had a good laugh.

Tuesday morning before meeting Eva, we visited the Heritage Family History research center in Nenagh. Below is a picture of the front door. See if you can figure out how to open the door.

As you will notice, there were two door knobs with a sign pointing to the knob in the middle of the door. The sign said turn handle to enter with an arrow pointing to the middle knob. As it turned out (no pun intended), you were supposed to turn the knob on the right hand side of the door in the direction of the arrow. It tooks us several trys to figure this out. I think it would have been easier without the sign.

Our visit was disappointing as they would not provide us with a list of all of the births, marriages and burials of Whites and Spunners in a number of parishes in Northern Tipperary. They said that the could only start with your ancestor and work backwards rather than help us to compile a more complete family tree. Further, the records in the parish of most interest to us began about 25 years after the birth of the person we were most interested in. So, we decided to not have them do any research for now.

On Wednesday, we visited Milltown, County Offlay. Milltown used to be a very small townland, but now is mostly just the name of the old Spunner estate. It is quite impressive. We had lunch their and Dan took us on a tour.

More on Ireland later.

Well, we have been back from Sweden for about 1 week and it is about time that we finish reporting on Charlie's trip to Sweden. Below is a picture of a moped that looks like a car, but it isn't a real car according to Astrid. I think I remember that Dwight or Astrid said that its maximum speed is 45 mph. However, the small car below is a real car. Charlie was tempted to bring it home for Blaine's next car, but we talked her out of it.
Charlie also wanted you to know that there are lots of trees in Sweden.
The below picture is of the entrance to the famous Falun Cooper mine. They have a large wood goat to memoralize the goat that legend says first found the mine by returning to his owner with red on his horns.
We spent the rest of the week with Astrid and Dwight and then very early got up Monday morning to go to the airport and fly to Dublin.

This is early Friday morning. A lot has happened since we last had internet service and could post an update on our blog. We have returned from Ireland and now are back with Caleb and Johanna in Sweden. So ---- We will bring you up to date in the next few postings.

Last Saturday night, something of concern to Dallin, Daniel, Kemry, Ian, Haley, Emme and Luke occurred. Take a look at this picture and see if you can guess what happened.

Yes, you got it. Johanna fixed us reindeer for Saturday evening dinner. We certainly hope that this wasn't one of Santa's reindeer and he will be able to visit you this year. You better make extra sure that you are on his good list.

Saturday morning, it rained in Falun, but it cleared up in the afternoon. We went downtown to do a little shopping and have Johannna pick out an english addition of the murder mystery series that she is reading. Then we visited the Falun museum. It was full of art work including some very modern stuff. In one exhibit, you could help make the art by getting you shoes in some graphite and walking on the picture. In another, they had two computer screens with random snow or TV noise on them.

Then we returned to Caleb and Johanna's for the reindeer dinner. PS. Mom, Caleb and Johanna ate their reindeer with some red stuff that they called Lingon berry jam, but I worry that it was part of Rudolph's nose.

Don't they look guilty of something?

On Sunday, we headed off to church. Below are a pictures of their small church.

Perhaps, Zach can tell if they actually took us to the right church or not? They had Books of Mormon so I think that we were in the right place.

Actually, the entire meetings were in Swedish and we didn't understand too much. In priesthood, the instructor wrote the word "Karlek" on the board and I thought that the lesson had something to do with quorum brotherhood. Later, he wrote a word like "Kyskhetlagen" on the board and thought that they were talking about priesthood leadership or the brotherhood in leadership quorums.

I was feeling pretty good about getting that much out of the 40 minute lesson when we met up with Johanna and Charlie. I smuggly asked Johanna what their lesson had been on when I learned that Karlek meant love and that Kyskhetlagen was the law of chastity. Well, so much for my impressions, but I did learn a couple of Swedish words. Nevertheless, the most important thing we got for the 3 hours of Swedish is that we were able to renew our sacrament covenants and the promise to have the spirit with us this week.

We really admire Caleb and Johanna. She helps translate for Caleb each week, but until Caleb learns more Swedish he doesn't get too much out of the Sunday meeting talks and lessons. He does get the renew promise to have the spirit with him which more than makes it all worthwhile.

Nevertheless, it would be easy to rationalize staying home on Sundays until Caleb learns more Swedish and then maybe rationalize doing something else when he does learn Swedish, but they are being true to their covenants and consequently will be blessed in many ways for doing so. Caleb will be able to more confidently pray for help learning Swedish as a result of their faithfulness among other things.

On Monday, we went to Ireland, but that will have to wait for the next posting.

reporting by Charlie's chief angel.

As we said on our last posting, yesterday was full of interesting things to do.


First, we thought that you might like to see on a map what we have been doing.







On the first map, you can see Stockholm on the lower right of the map. Then northwest of Stockholm about a 3 hour drive is Falun where Caleb and Johanna live and where we have been staying.


Their ward meeting house is about 1/2 hour away in Borlange.

You can also see Lake Siljan that we visited yesterday.

The second map is a blow up of the area around Falun. I have marked similar items on this map including Mora, a town on Lake Siljan where we ate lunch and visited the Zorn museum.

You can also see on the map to the right of Falun the town of Sundborn. That is where the house of Carl and Karin Larsson is located that we previously reported on our visit to it.






The last map shows more detail around Lake Siljan. Our day started out with a trip to the dump which was on the way. Caleb and Johanna had an old TV to get rid of. The dump was interesting. It was kind of like a DI drop of with different with different containers for various categories of junk. The TV went into the electronics bin.

O course, Caleb needed to protect his back so I carried the heavy TV by myself. How long do you think this back stuff will go on? I applogize for no pictures of the dump, but since it wasn't on the top ten things to do in Sweden in our tour book we didn't wasted any mbytes on it.



After the quick stop at the dump, we traveled up to Lake Siljan to a small down where they make the famous Dala horses. On the left is Johanna riding on a large Dala horse.

The Ollsons started making these horses in the early 1920s and everyone feel in love with them because of their bright colors. Everyone wanted one and they eventually became a famous symbol of Sweden.






Not to be out done by Johanna, Charlie and Kent took their turn by the horse.

There were only a few corrals for the horses. Below is one in which Charlie and Johanna enjoyed shopping.



In this picture, you can see the main drag of Dala land. There is one corral on the left front and another in the rear right. Both provided Charlie and Johanna with fun, but I think the one on the right got most of their oats.












One final picture of Dala horse land. It seems one artist mistook this telephone both for a horse and painted it. Charlie wanted to buy this, but I talked her into just taking a picture of it instead.






After looking at the horses, we got back in Johanna's parents car and headed for Mora where the Zorn Museum is. We are really grateful to Johanna's parents for letting Johanna and Caleb borrow their larger car.




Above are pictures of the Zorn Museum and grounds. The museum contains a number of his portraits and landscaped paintings. He was a very famous portrait painter, painting portraits of Swedish Kings and even a few American Presidents. Charlie bought a couple of post cards of his paintings and Johanna bought a larger print of a very cool water landscape.

Across the street was the Mora town center and the main shopping pedestrian street is shown on the right. Best of all, Johanna found the latest book out by Liza Marklund. She writes muder mysteries and comes highly recommend by Johanna.


While in Mora, we grabbed a late lunch. Below is a picture of the calazone that Caleb and Johanna ate as well as the pizza that Charlie and Kent ate. The pizza crust was very very thin and we had to make sure that it just wasn't solidified tomato sauce.
Next, it was back south to Rattvik to view the lake. It was a very pretty sunset.

Johanna also found some stores for Charlie while getting directions for the view site (Did she really need directions or was this just a cover?) The stores had dirt roofs and this one had a pine tree growing on it. I guess this is what happens in Sweden when you don't clean out the rain gutters regularly.
Kent and Caleb really enjoyed the shops!

We had a little time before the evening concert started and we walked around the lake at Rattvik. Here is a picture of a Church boat, which each town had for their residents to go to church. After church, they raced home.

Charlie took this great picture of the sunset.

Unfortunately, it started to rain and we were lucky enough to buy some rain coats at the concert. During the first song, it started to rain very hard, but before a few more songs the rain quit and out came our goodies which we brought to eat at the concert.

The concert was great and the setting was very cool! It was in the bottom of an old lime quarry as shown below. The sound system was great and they finished off the last song with some great fireworks!

With Johanna's excellant driving, we arrived home about midnight just in time to hear the Friday night celebrations in the neighborhood.

The last two days have been calm days. We went for walks in the morning. On Wednesday, we also drove to a small village and went to a nice restuarant with a great view for lunch. Today is scheduled to be a full day. We have planned to go visit the factory where they make Dala horses and then visit a famous artist's home by the name of Zorn who among other things painted a portraits of some American Presidents. The evening will be topped of with an outside concert in a lime quarry with fireworks.

On Monday, Johanna spent the morning planning out the weeks activities and it is going to be an interesting week. Johanna, Mom and I went for a walk in the morning and I worked on the blog. In the afternoon, Caleb and Johanna went to see Caleb's hemmatologists while Mom and I read and took a nap.

We then took a short trip up to see the ski jumps and look over the city of Falun where they live. Falun is their national training center for ski jumping.

This is picture of the ski jump taken from their flat with the zoom on. It doesn't look as scary from a distance, but up close it would be quite a thrill to go off of this. We will leave it to the brave and younger to tackle.

On the right is a closer picture of the ski jump that was taken right next to it. Notice Mom, Johanna and Caleb at the bottom of the picture to get a better idea of how tall the start is.

Of course, this is a picture looking up the take off ramp of the ski jump. It is a good think that we don't have one of these close to us in Sandy or I think Dallin or Daniel might have gone off of it already.

Finally, here is a picture looking down from the bottom of the take off ramp. Notice the steep drop off and the viewer seats or stands on the bottom right of the picture. You can see Falun in the background.

Down below the stands is the Falun Sports Center. It is really large and besides including a swimming pool and exercise facilities, there is even a large horse riding arena that you can see directly below the ski jump viewer stands. It is the oval dirt colored object.

Now, for a look at Falun. The tall brown tower is the famous copper mine and to the right is part of where it caved in. We are going on a tour of the mine today.
For Jarrod, you can see an electrical substation if you closely at the back of the picture.




On the left, is a picture to the right of town with a big lake in it. There are lots of pretty lakes.

The picture on the right is looking the opposite direction from town at the top of the ski jump parking lot.

On the way back to their flat, I took a picture of the home Johanna grew up in through the back window of the car. She grew up in the yellow house which is just across the street from the hospital that her father worked in for +20 years.

And of course, Caleb was enjoying the ride back home so that he could play with his new PlayStation 3 that he had us bring over to him.

Sunday: It was nice to have a good night's sleep and get a shower. We are staying with Caleb and Johanna in their apartment. They gave us their bedroom and they have put down some matrices in their office room for them.

Church started at 11 am and we left for church at 10:30 am because it was in an adjacent town, Borlange. We forgot to take our cameras, but the church is a small building, perhaps a phase 1. Most of the service was in Swedish so we just sat their and smiled. Johanna did some translating for Marla in Relief Society and for Caleb in Sunday School and Fast and Testimony meeting.

Afterwards, we took a short nap and had a great spagetti dinner that Johanna cooked.

We hope everything is going fine at home, although we have heard that Blaine is working a billion hours and that Robyn and Zach's swamp cooler quit. It is unreal that you are having such hot weather. The weather here is nice, but it is crisp with a high of about 68 deg F.

Well, we left for our trip to Sweden on a 6:20 am flight. To get ready, we had to get up a 3:30 am so we would have time to call Dwight and see what he wanted us to bring. We had four suitcases. The two largest bags had Caleb's stuff in it. Nevertheless, we were pretty tried as shown by Charlie's picture on the flight from Denver to Philadelphia.

We arrived in Sweden about 7:30 am and even though we had to go through a very slow and long line at Pass Port control, we made it out and found our luggage before Caleb and Johanna came.

We went downtown Stockholm to look at the sights.

This is an old church according to Caleb.

Johanna, Caleb and Charlie heading into the Royal Palace.

Inside the courtyard of the Royal Palace. The changing of the guard at the Royal Palace.

The old Stockholm is full of narrow streets and interesting touristy stores.

The Stockholm temple.

We then went to Johanna's brother's flat and took a nap. Later, we had dinner with her brother, his wife and Johanna's parents. It was a really great dinner and we really enjoyed talking with them. After dinner, it was off to Falun which took about 3 hours or so to get there and then we crashed for the night.