Swedish sport holidays

So I did not blogg for awhile, just have not felt the inspiration but maybe you do not need to.

We still have lovely winter weather. I heard the other day that if you ski 45 minutes a day you spend 760 calories so that makes me wonder why I do not. Not really for the calories that I am just old enough to not care about but it is just so easy to put the skies on a go. I will do it today for sure.

Last week our kitchen water froze for 4 days and the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit the place. Finally I had to do the dishes in the bathroom and that brought back old memories when we restored the kitchen last year and did not have a kitchen for 9 months. Suddenly a measly 4 days seemed like a piece off cake. We had horrid snowstorms in south off Sweden a week ago but despite that my parents drove up on Friday to pick up my two oldest boys to go skiing. They have the yearly sport holiday, which usually means that kids sits in front off their computer for a week. We are so lucky to have my parents cause I doubt that we would go away skiing all 7 off us. It just seems like to much dressing kids, finding lost mittens and hats, carrying tired crying kids and not so much relaxing for us parents. And second youngest boy does not like snow at all. He complains every morning when he has to dress up in the warm overall and a year ago when he went visiting my husbands mum the first thing he did coming their he called home and said you do not have to even where a jacket here. A true Mediterranean boy.

I am spending the sport holiday fixing middle boys room. He has always shared room so far but is now getting one all by himself and a fab one I might add. I painted the walls a strong, light green color and his bunk bed in a metallic green and when he comes back we are going to paint big cartoon dragonball characters. When we restore we always do it in an old way, not just looking old but we strip the walls down to the timber and newspaper and paste it with wrapping paper which is the only paper they had back then and then we paint with linen oil paint so the room smells like a nice salad dressing. But on the kids room we do an exception. I want to do it how they like it. You know how you will see in magazines kiddy rooms with 2 toys on the floors and mild pastel colors. If you ask me the child did not chose that herself. We have already been remaking all the kiddy rooms the 3 years we lived here and therefore I tend to find cheap material and paints that are easy to paint over. We started with Lilo and Stich on small boys’ wall, middle boy had Harry Potter flying on a broomstick and big boy had 2 horses from the movie Spirit. I am not great with my own painting ideas but a wiz at copying. Big girls room was lovely to make since she wanted Indian and romantic theme. Then big boy got teenage room with turquoise, lime green and dark blue walls. Bed in metallic turquoise. The two middle boys got yellow, green and purple walls and also metallic blue beds. I really like the metallic paints, they make such a cool impression and they are water based so they do not stink more then necessary. Then I add the finishing touches from IKEA like pillows, rugs drapes and so on. IKEA is the best for kiddy stuff. I love doing rooms up if I just get the time and space I need. And a big thank god for the libraries where you get loads off ideas. We redo the kiddy rooms often, but the other rooms we want to do once so it takes a long time to figure out how we want it and what furniture we want.

Now to a sadder note. Our lovely neighbor went in to the hospital a week ago. It turns out he has herpes simplex encephalitis which is an infection in the brain and nothing to play with. He has had bad fevers for more then a week and has been confused. I really do hope he will recover. His wife is off course really affected by this considering just a little more than a week ago they were living they everyday life just like normal. They are one off those couples who has it. I mean who are happy and content with each other and who like spending time together. They respect each other a lot and are always happy and have lots off humor. I would love to be like that when I grow old. And they always have time for the village kids who often visits. Him and his wife are really close to us and kind off adopted grandparents to my kids who have their own grandparents so far away. Sure it is just life passing by but a hard part which we do not have around a lot thank god.

And yesterday 2 busses collided on the icy road north off Uppsala, resulting in 6 dead people. Makes you think.

Sorry L this one became long again but I will take your advise and blog a little shorter once and more often, if I can organize myself, as you know I am lousy at that.

Love and Peace