Calvin and Daddy's Excellent Adventure

The child’s screams echoed throughout the airplane.  Passengers were giving each other looks that said “ wow, that parent can’t control their kid – what are they doing taking a toddler on a trans-atlantic airplane flight??”.  Flight attendants tried unsuccessfully to bribe the child with crayons and coloring books.  There was nothing they could do…

At the same time, I looked at Calvin, happily watching Ice Age on the in-seat screen and thought again of how lucky I had been so far and how good of a boy he had been.  I also reminded myself of the 4 as-yet-unseen matchbox cars I had hidden in my bag just in case I ended up in the same predicament.

And so began our 2 week trip to ‘merica!

Swedish grocery stores -- a potential solution to US Postal Service woes?

There was an article in The Economist about how Nordic countries may serve as the new model for other countries to follow.  It's a very good article and worth a read during your lunch break.  In more ways than one, I think the US could learn from other countries in how to approach their economic issues.

It was announced yesterday that the US Postal Service will no longer be delivering mail on Saturdays in an effort to address their financial issues (rumored to be months away from insolvency).  For the past two years, they have reduced the hours for postal office workers, cut staff and raised the price on first-class stamps.  It seems the reductions weren't enough for the agency to remain profitable and are hoping the 5-day delivery schedule will address the issues.

A NY Times/CBS News poll cites that a survey reports that 7 out of 10 Americans favor a 5-day delivery schedule if it helps address the billions of dollars of debt.  However, many small daily and weekly newspapers are delivered on Saturday and given this new delivery method, would not arrive to customers until Monday.  I'd imagine the bulk of news delivery is actually electronic and no longer in paper form to the majority of Americans so their argument is rather weak.

Sweden's postal service, Posten AB, used to be operated as a government agency.  In the 1990s it was transitioned into a government-owned limited company, however, the biggest transformation was when they abandoned public post offices in 2001.  Many Swedes complain about the change in service and maintain that it is not as reliable.  As someone who has had 2 packages "lost" in the past year, I can attest that at times, the connection between USPS and international shippers OR Posten AB and international shippers, is not reliable.

Posten AB is operated through Postal Service Points in grocery stores and gas stations.  The grocery store/gas station employees handle your mailing needs, stamps, envelopes, package drop off and pick up during their store hours.  That means you are free to drop off/pick up packages Monday-Sunday during store hours.  I cannot tell you how much more convenient this is as a customer.  It also works out well for the grocery store where I am picking up my packages -- I might just need some milk too.  Extra business for the store and I don't have to go out of my way to pick up a package.  The hassle-free factor is tremendously valuable.

While convenient for the customer, the employees must cover the post counter in addition to their other daily duties.  I've never really seen this to be a problem as they grab the person stocking shelves or from the back room.

There is still a mail truck (or bike in the city) that delivers mail and small packages (if your mailbox door is unlocked) into your mailbox directly Monday-Friday.  If you have a large package for pick up, you receive a slip with a barcode to turn into the appropriate drop-off center.  It's a system that seems to work fairly easily for all involved.

In Atlanta, I dreaded going to the post office.  I hated it.  We would always joke about which we hated more -- the post office or the DMV.  Unfortunately I had to visit the post office much more frequently. It was an additional out-of-the-way errand that I had to complete involving long lines with grumpy workers moving at a glacial pace.

So, should the US consider shutting down post offices, save for the post office boxes, and move to a point-of-service type model?  Why not?  It would probably be a more sustainable model for the agency.  It would involve many people being laid off, but not as badly as if the USPS shuts down entirely.  When looking for sustainability, one must consider all of the options.

Why keep an antiquated, costly system in place that is providing poor service when there is a feasible model for long-term sustainability?

What are your thoughts?

A Swedish-Vegan takes on the Super Bowl

(SCENE – 7pm Stockholm Time on Sunday, January 20th)

WOOOO!!!!

It’s the AFC/NFC Championship games today – and BOTH of our families favorite teams are in it!!!  We root for 2 out of the final 4 teams left playing!!!  This is going to be the best Super Bowl EVER!!!!

(SCENE – 7am Stockholm Time on Monday, January 21^st)

Uhhhhhhhh – I hate football

(SCENE – Mid-Day on January 23^rd)

Jonathan:  OK Lis, I think I’m ready to start preparing for a Super Bowl Party.  It’s basically a holiday in the US and most of the time we don’t have a team in the game.  We need to get our heads right and make America proud.  The game’s in New Orleans this year, so on top of the normal pizza and wings, let’s get nuts and make some jambalya with sausage and shrimp too – they have a ton of that stuff out here.

Lisa:  I want to go vegan

Jonathan: ……………..

Happy Swediversary!!!!

Can’t believe it’s been a whole year out here in Sverige.  The first 6 months or so were really crazy, with every day feeling like a brand new adventure.  For better or worse, the second half of the year seemed much more "normal".  Not sure exactly why, but probably because we are outside the city and are doing less exploring each weekend, more fun hikes and nature stuff.

While we’ve written a lot about our experiences in the past year, I wanted to highlight five of the “under the radar” things that we love about being out here (as well as five little things that we miss the most from the US)

Swedish Positives –

1)      Taxes are included in every posted price.  So when you go to the store and see a fantastic gift for your wife, you don’t need to worry about what the Swedish taxes will add on at the register (likely so that you never KNOW how much Swedish taxes are adding on at the register).  They have already priced this in, so something that has a sign for 100 SEK, can be handled very quickly by just handing the cashier a 100 SEK bill – no fear of needing to find 40 SEK in coins in your pockets or ending up with a ton of change.  Also, makes it a lot easier to budget when we go grocery shopping -- "minimize the surprise".

2)      People with babies ride free on buses.  Not as useful to us anymore now that we live in the forest, but when we were city folk, Lis was able to just jump on any bus she wanted when she had the stroller.  They did this for two reasons – one, because they love kids and families, and two, because logistically, a parent getting on the bus with a stroller will get into the middle of the bus.  The parent will obviously NOT want to leave their baby to pay up front, or even if they did, it would be against the stream of traffic.  So, just ride for free.  PERFECT

3)      Dogs can go everwhere.  Dogs are people too here in Sweden.  We see dogs strolling through malls, restaurants, buses and trains.  Not just small little “purse dogs” or anything, but actual “hunds”.  Doesn’t hurt that Calvin loves himself some doggies.

4)      Winter isn’t scary.  Growing up, winter was always something that was fun for 30 minutes sledding before heading in for hot chocolate (still awesome).  Then in college at Rochester, it was an excuse to stay in and waste some time.  Here though, its outdoor time 365 days a year.  As my coworker says, “there is no bad weather, just bad clothing”.  When we first showed up a year ago, we were shocked to see playgrounds PACKED on random February weekends.  Now, we don’t go to the playground, but we see 200+ people ice skating or dozens of people cross country skiing.  Its usually a very cold but SUNNY here in January, so that helps, but it actually makes us excited about going outdoors in the winter. We used to lock ourselves inside if it dropped below freezing in Atlanta.

5)      No eating at desks.  I just remembered the other day how shocking it was when I first arrived that no one ate at their desks.  I think that is how I had lunch for the 3+ years I did consulting – either bringing food or buying food and eating in front of my laptop.  That isn’t even ALLOWED here.  I thought it was crazy originally, but now I really like the ability to recharge by reading my kindle or going for a walk for an hour in the middle of the day.
6)   Parental leave.  We've talked about it in past articles, but I was able to take 6 weeks off as parental leave with Calvin.  How awesome is that?!?  Not only was I able to get some serious cuddle time in but we had a ton of time together as a family.  It was great to participate in Calvin's daily routine without feeling exhausted after a long work week.

7)  (BONUS POSITIVE) Vacation schedules.  Obviously, they are more generous with vacation time out here, but that isn't the biggest thing.  In the states, I think I had 18+ days of vacation time, but used MAYBE 5 a year.  Out here, people use their vacation time.  The primary reason they use it all is because the whole country decides to take vacation at the same time.  Basically NO ONE works for a week in February (they actually split up this Feb vacation by region - Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmo, Other etc - to not over populate the ski resorts), then NO ONE works for all of July, then NO ONE works the two weeks of Christmas / New Years.  It makes it really stress free to go on vacation at that point - no huge list of emails to come back to, no worrying about who was going to handle your projects when you were gone and no organizational guilt about leaving.  Really, really relaxing.

And the downsides….

1)      Lack of sports culture.  I think when we arrived I knew that I wouldn’t have baseball/football/basketball  to talk about with folks, but I expected that I would just switch to focusing on hockey and/or soccer.  Instead, NONE of the Swedes I know care at all about either one (my southern European friends do love their fotbol though, I’ll give them that).  They’ll mention quickly if Zlatan (the best Swedish soccer player) had a big goal, or if the national team had a big win, but no one EVER talks about their professional domestic teams.  I really expected to get big into hockey, so this has been kind of a let down.  Soccer still is really boring though. 

2)      Buying booze is a HASSLE.  They have the state run liquor stores here, and honestly it’s not that bad.  Heavily taxed, but so is everything else.  They have a pretty decent range of options, and are really into boxed wines (cheap options that are easy to trek home without a car).  The worst part though is that all of their beers are sold as singles.  Yes – this does make it easier to mix and match, but its always a pain.  Rather than just grabbing a six pack for the weekend (who am I kidding?), I have to deal with random beers everywhere – that aren’t even refrigerated.  Now that I’m writing this, it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but trust me, it’s annoying.

3)      Steak/beef options are lacking.  Well, you can tell that I started this blog BEFORE Lis got on the vegan kick, but just for clarity, one of the arguments she used with me was “all the meat here sucks anyways, so we aren’t missing much”.  I had no counter argument.  Back in the A, we would get nice flat irons or sirloins and have those with a perfectly baked potato.  Now, we’ve had steak once in the past year – unless you want to spend $50/lb, you’re only going to be able to find a roast.  ALSO, Swedes love potatoes, but usually just to boil or mash.  We tried their “baking potatoes” once and couldn’t even finish them.  No threat to Idaho, don’t you worry.  (UPDATE – the news today said that the average swede eats over 170lbs of beef a year!!!!  That is 3^rd most in the world!!  So obviously, they are going to increase the taxes on beef.)

i miss you vortex 

Sweden's milk options are also confusing

4)      Public bathrooms aren’t free.  Again, this is just odd, and probably more of a mental thing than anything, but once you leave your house on a weekend morning, you can’t find a restroom unless you buy a coffee or pay 5 SEK ($.75) to get past a gate.  I hate carrying change, so that means I drink a lot of coffees when we go out – which accelerates the cycle a bit.  I can’t actually remember using public bathrooms in Atlanta that often, but now that I CANT do it, it stresses me out.
5)  Lack of good ole american holidays.  It's probably because they take the specific weeks off like I mentioned, but Swedes don't really take many holidays off (outside of Fri and Mon of Easter).  No Memorial Day, no 4th of July (or equivalent), no Labor Day or Thanksgiving.  Outside of the major agreed upon weeks, its pretty much straight through.  Additionally, if you need/want to take a day or two outside of the agreed dates, it is a major hassle, because everyone EXPECTS you to be there.  It's almost shocking if you aren't.

6) Lack of language skills / guy friends.  If you had told me a year ago that I would barely know any more Swedish words than I did then, or that I wouldn't have any guys that I would meet up and grab a beer with on a random Saturday, I would have laughed in your face.  Unfortunately, I would have been wrong....For some reason Swedish just hasn't stuck with either of us (not so for calvin), and while Lisa has made friends, Ive relied much more on party-skypes with buddies from home.

high five - early in a game obviously

      When I think of how our lives have changed in the past year, it is really incredible.  Of course, watching Calvin grow is amazing but that would happen regardless of where we lived.  I think both Lisa and I have changed so much since we've had the unique opportunity to become a stronger family unit.  Since we're still relatively new "outsiders," we don't have an established group of friends to go out with.  That may sound negative, but it means that we end up having a lot of together time as a couple - which is a super huge positive.  Seeing how this move has strengthened our family unit has made all of the difficulties worth it.  We know that we will continue to be challenged but that as time goes on, we will become more comfortable, adaptable and unafraid to continue to try new things.  We really love incorporating new Swedish traditions into our American traditions.

      Cheers to a fabulous year full of new discoveries, friends, opportunities, and continued personal and professional growth.

my hearing is deteriorating quickly...

When we first came out here (almost a year ago!!!), we thought it was completely strange that Europeans couldn’t tell whether we were from America, England, Australia, South Africa, whatever.  They definitely knew we weren’t Swedish and that we were native English speakers, but that was about it.  We had a lot of laughs about this – just good times laughing at the silly foreigners (locals) that we would meet.

Oh, how we laughed.

Then we went almost a year without hearing many people at all speak American English (in person at least)

Now, I find myself gravitating towards anyone I hear speaking “native English”.  My ears perk up and I try to figure out where they are from.  

The problem is that I DON’T RECOGNIZE IT right away.  Yesterday in the lunch room, I could have sworn that the guy next to me was from some random city in the US as he was talking to a coworker.  Only after five minutes and hearing him refer to someone as a “bloke” did I figure out that he was from Australia, not Kansas City. 

This has happened a few times in the past number of weeks, and I’m not exactly sure why.  Again, I can still pick up on native-english speakers, I just am losing the ability to know which country they are from.  Really, really odd and disconcerting. 

I think we’ll need to step up our skype game, and have more people visit us soon…

and I apologize for ever finding this funny....

Grattis på kalkondagen

This year is definitely the weirdest Thanksgiving we’ve ever had.  We didn’t get the day off of work, we didn’t get stuck in traffic and we didn’t eat two days of food at one mid-day meal.

But that doesn’t mean we should forget the point of Thanksgiving, so what follows is my list of specific things that we are thankful for today  (to keep the blog short, only putting up the things that are significantly different than previous years):

I am thankful…

1) …that we were presented with a once in a lifetime opportunity to move internationally

2) …that Lisa and I are so aligned in our life goals that we were able to pursue this opportunity even with the numerous reasons we had not to move.

I'm also thankful for birthday cakes baked for "practice" a month before the big event

3) …that Lisa is able to spend each day with Calvin.  This is easily the best part of us coming out here. I love seeing the pictures that she takes each day and the little stories she has of Calvin being silly (or angry, or funny, or smart, or whatever), that she wouldn’t be able to share if we had stayed in the states

She captures Calvin's crazy faces to send in daily emails to our parents

Thanksgiving Dinner -- American style with Swedish Ingredients...

Living here has required that we adjust almost everything we do in our daily lives.  While we have adjusted to those things, like not owning a car, relying on public transportation, barely understanding the language, and working with new currencies and METRIC conversions all of the time, we haven't yet tackled the major food-related holidays.

Thanksgiving is coming up very quickly (it snuck up on us) and we are celebrating on Thursday with a few Skype sessions with our family back home and preparing for our own feast on Saturday.  We know that some ingredients will be difficult, if not impossible, to find, but we are determined to make this Thanksgiving just as special as the others.

Thanksgiving isn't so much of a culinary challenge as it is like choreographing a large dance with potatoes, breads and meats.  The challenge lies in budgeting your freezer space, then oven space efficiently and putting in the right dishes at the right time so that the food hits the table simultaneously with all the right temperatures and textures.  My first Thanksgiving on my "own" was right after Jon and I got married and we had Dustin and cousin Mikey over to celebrate.  I slaved away in the kitchen from 5:30am until 2pm and thought I did a fantastic job.  After working my fingers to the bone, the table ended up looking fairly sparse with only a few side dishes and a dry turkey.  Wahh waaaah...

First Thanksgiving -- not quite the feast I had in my mind but decent for a first attempt

Oh how I wish my most difficult issue was a "food processor setting."  Now I realize that I was a grocery store-spoiled brat with half of my dishes already pre-made requiring "assembly" on the big Turkey-day.  Some women are awesome and make everything homemade.  They always make me feel slightly guilty on the inside for taking shortcuts whenever possible but not enough to make me stop.  I just acknowledge that they are more ambitious, talented and patient than I.

Sweden's grocery stores are like America's in the 1950s.  There are no pre-made products really.  Preparing a huge Thanksgiving meal and Christmas dinner within 5 weeks of one another is exhausting and something Swedes don't have to deal with on an annual basis. Stouffer's stuffing wouldn't be so popular if women everywhere in kitchens hadn't asked, "can't I just get a little break here?" during their Thanksgiving cooking, baking/slaving in the kitchen for 9 hours.  After scouring the grocery stores here, even the big behemoths down the street, I have resigned to make EVERYTHING from scratch and to forgo some Thanksgiving classics because they simply do not exist here.  This will be a new approach to Thanksgiving since I always utilized shortcuts in the past.  This new approach has the greatest potential for either complete failure or the most delicious Thanksgiving dinner I've ever created.


Here's what I need to make from scratch, which I've never done before:

• Pie crusts -- crusts for apple, pumpkin and mud pies
• Oreo pie crust -- will be crushing Ballerinakaka instead of Oreos -- hopefully a minor substitution
• Apple and pumpkin crusts -- no lard or Crisco available so I will be using straight butter - yum!
• Coffee ice cream -- WITHOUT an ice cream maker -- going old school.  (Oh and I'm sorry, but Sweden, what is wrong with this picture? Your population consumes 4 cups of coffee per person per day and you don't have coffee-flavored ice cream??  That's like Switzerland not having chocolate. Come on now!)
• Hot fudge topping -- Move over Smuckers cause the Ferland recipe is going to be hot competition!
• Whipped cream -- ok, I've made this before but even still.  It requires a lot of arm strength to whip by hand
• Gravy -- since we can't find a turkey ANYWHERE, we are roasting 2 chickens and we have to make gravy on our own.  I found something called Naturligt smakrik, Brunsås (translated: naturally tasty gravy/brown sauce) is the closest thing to gravy that I can find.  No idea how it is going to taste though.
• Pumpkin pie filling -- the cans of pumpkin pie filling are probably the most convenient thing ever. I know that some people hate them but honestly, I can't tell the difference between homemade and the ones from the can.  This year I'm going to cut a real pumpkin in half and bake it and puree it with the Magic Bullet our landlords left for us to use.  It's my only hope for pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving so fingers are crossed tightly!

Not buying you...

Not buying you either

This would save so much time

Here are the links to the recipes for our menu this year  -- we had to omit turkey and cranberry sauce because Sweden doesn't know that Americans in their country are dying for those two things this week:

• Roasted chicken
• Stuffing
• Mashed potatoes
• Broccoli and cauliflower au gratin
• Roasted asparagus
• Apple and bacon brussel sprouts
• Jonathan's famous meat pie

Desserts

• Mud pie
• Apple pie
• Pumpkin pie

And just in case it all falls to pieces, I'm putting 2 frozen pizzas in the freezer downstairs...

House Hunters International - Stockholm, Sweden and us

We were on tv last night!  Thanks to my parents and some extra large cups of coffee, we were able to wake up early (4am) and FaceTime to watch our episode of House Hunters International live on their television in NY.  Fortunately they were recording it as well, so we could rewind and catch some of the parts we missed due to our screams and sidebar commentary.

Prior to watching the show,  I think Jon and I were both worried about how we would be portrayed.  Over the course of filming 4 days we said so many things that we had no idea how they would piece it together.  Being 4 months ago, we don't even remember a fraction of what we said or did.  At the heart of it, my worst fears were actually being accurately portrayed and just not liking what I saw.  You know how when you hear your own voice on a voicemail or tape recorder that you are absolutely shocked by what you hear?  I was afraid of that but in video form...for 18 minutes straight...seen nationally.

My parents set up their ipad to face the tv so we could watch it like we were in their living room.
I love technology!

When we began FaceTiming with my parents (thank goodness for iPads), our hearts were racing and we were freaking out (internally).  Hiding behind our first mugs of coffee, we watched the first clip.  It was really interesting to see how they pieced together all of our scenes. For instance, they show us at a coffee shop ordering food -- it was a French coffee shop and they asked him to speak Swedish.  Poor guy has the most French-accented Swedish diction ever.  Perhaps not a Swedish cafe representation but it gives off the right impression -- that we are overwhelmed by the new language.

Throughout the episode, I think that the entire experience is pretty positive.  I come across as a penny-pinching tightwad but then again, that's not that far off from the truth.  Jon was told to be a little more "loose" with the budget, which of course he was not. Other than that, they recreated our house hunting experience pretty well.  The realtor was fantastic.  She was very positive and helpful. I wish we had her help during our own experience looking for a place.  She earned our future business though as I'm sure we will be looking for a new place in the upcoming 1-2 years.

I wish they had shown less of the houses and more of Calvin.  It was so nice to revisit him at his age during the taping -- 14 months. He has changed so much so quickly.  It was also nice to revisit Stockholm in the summer time.  We'll be replaying our dvd during these dark winter days as a reminder of just how beautiful the summer can be in Stockholm.

We couldn't share these pictures with you before the airing of the episode but here are a few "behind-the-scenes" pictures of our episode.  Look for our full episode on hgtv.com or hulu.com whenever they update their episodes.

Thanks to everyone for watching and posting screenshots of us on their televisions to Facebook.  It was a surreal experience for us and we had a lot of fun!  We hope that our episode entices some of you to book a trip to come visit us, in the summer of course!


Behind the scenes pictures!

Calvin loved Christian -- the sound guy

Don't look at the camera, don't look at the camera

Ase, our awesome realtor

Our producer, keeping us on task

Butterfly house - carp tank

Swings!

What a great crew!

Updated: Get out and vote! 2012 Presidential Election

Sweden is HYPED up about the election in the US.  My neighbor pulled me aside and asked if I had voted for "the good guy" and Jon is being cornered at work with his co-workers' own opinions about who should win the election.

We sent in our absentee ballots a month ago, so we already voted but we are still ready to watch the excitement and chaos on tv.  Apparently Sweden's Channel 1 will cover the event so we don't have to worry about missing any of the action.  We are headed to bed early tonight so we can wake up at 3am to catch our episode of House Hunter's International.  It should be an interesting night!!

Update:
The election coverage on Sweden's Channel 1, naturally,  is all in Swedish...not much help.  I'll be tuning into CNN international and Al Jazeera English.

Lyckliga Halloween!

Sweden has its own holidays like "Kanelbulle Day" (cinnamon bun day) and other pastry holidays but we don't want to lose sight of our own fun American days, like Halloween.  Calvin can have the best of both worlds -- American traditions AND Swedish traditions, but it means that we have to work hard(er) at ensuring it is celebrated properly.  Halloween is still gaining popularity here in Sweden and it was difficult to find adult costumes, so we just dressed with what we had lying around the house.

Since we don't really entertain much anymore, we kind of went decoration-crazy and bought skeleton garlands, spider webs, ghosts, and skulls to really spook-it-up!  I spent an inordinate amount of time scouring Spotify for proper kid-friendly Halloween songs to create a monster mashup for our 2 hour party on Saturday.

Spider webs everywhere

We invited our friends and neighbors to join us and I had envisioned deliciously spooky spider cake balls, ghostly shaped pizzas and a punch drink that would slake any thirst.  Things started to go wrong when all of my American Halloween treat recipes required dire substitutes from our Swedish grocery stores.

First off -- cake pops/balls require lollipop sticks.  These are relatively easy to find at craft stores in Atlanta but I had no hopes of finding them in my neighborhood stores.  Fine, no problem.  Let's substitute pretzel sticks instead of lollipop sticks.  Great, right? Wrong!

Pretzel sticks snapped under the weight of the giant cake balls

The tiny pretzel sticks were no match for the weight of the dense cake balls.  Rather than continue down this path, Jon gently suggested that I just flick the chocolate over the cake balls instead of dipping them into the chocolate and just leave them in "ball"form rather than use the pretzel sticks.  The end result was more attractive and still delicious.

New cake balls -- less spooky, more edible

Jon's pizza dough came out great, so instead of creating pizzas for the party, we put out all of the toppings and had each person make their own ghostly pizza.  Some kids just ate the toppings, so it worked out for everyone.  Swedish grocery stores are lacking cranberry juice, so instead of a blood red punch, we had to settle for a blueberry base with orange and apple juice.  Thankfully the SodaStream came in handy in making it all sparkly.

We ended up with 7 kids and 12 adults so we had a full house.  Luckily, the couch was wide open for jumping!

Couch jumpers!

                                                                            

 Most of the kids were too young for any official "games" so we kind of went freestyle with it and let them just play with all of the toys and balloons.  The older kids found the castle tent downstairs and played with Jon for a while.  I enjoyed seeing the shock on Jon's face when he realized he was the only adult with 4 children -- none of whom were his own.  The adults enjoyed some Hell beer and Pistonhead (complete with glow in the dark skulls) and we all rocked out to some Thriller.

            

On our actual Halloween night (Wednesday) we ended up with 7 trick or treaters -- all of whom were very scary looking.  They were dressed in elaborate makeup and black costumes.  I didn't know what they were supposed to be but they achieved the effect of scaring me into giving them candy so they didn't egg my house (not an empty threat as it happened to one of Jon's coworkers).  They banged on our door using our creepy door knocker and just stood there with a basket.  No "trick or treat" just a blank stare that said, "give me caaaandyyy" or however you say it in Swedish.  There were no cutesy butterflies or fluffy monsters -- all of these kids (aged 5-9) looked like they had come straight from a horror movie set.

Not Swedish children but you get the idea

Now, that's the way to do it.  The few kids who went trick or treating made out like bandits.  One kid even tipped - and thereby emptying - the candy bowl into his basket for him and his 3 friends.  Well played kid, well played.