Sweden Report: Volume 1

I realized I did an awesome trip to Sweden and then my first blog post is a list of chores.  Sorry world!

Let's try a travel post instead?

Sweden - Why?

When I was 15 I was an exchange student in sweden.  It was my sophomore year of high school.  I lived with a family who had never had an exchange student before, in the small town of Torshalla, which is about 60 miles West of stockholm.  They had two kids, a 13 year old girl and a 9 year old boy. 

The family wanted an exchange student partly to help their daughter with her English.  Instead, I got really good at Swedish really quickly, probably in about 3 months.  I attended "Swedish for Immigrants" classes at the local adult education center, and was basically fluent before Christmas. 

Sweden - Since

I have been in touch with the family on and off since then, sometimes we go a year or two without emailing and sometimes we email more.  Andy and I visited Sweden for 2 days in 2014, and the host parents and brother came to our wedding in 2015 in the USA.  My host sister had twin boys in 2014 and a daughter in 2019 (so she now has 11 year old boys and a 5 year old girl).

Sweden - This trip 

My favourite way of connecting and communicating with people is in-person.  I wanted to see my Swedish family again, and I wanted to take the kids away for a few nights. I also wanted to leave the UK. I wanted to take the big kids on a flight. I wanted to make use of Lily's passport, which has never been used and expires in October.  

5 days - the kids clothes in the small bag, my clothes and spare room in the big bag.
Backpacks of activities for all.
I still packed too much.

Sweden - Transport

I looked into flights and saw that the second week of our Easter holidays was not too expensive. It was £120 per person round trip to Stockholm and back.  I als paid to book seats, which added £30 each ticket.  Next time I won't do this as apparently it's quite likely we will all sit together anyways (I don't think they can seat a 4 year old alone?) but I really wanted a window-middle-isle combo so I did pay for it.

The flight left at 11:30 so we took a 6:30am train from Cardiff, which got us into heathrow at 9am.  We purchased flight snacks, pulled our carryons through the airport (I was not going to check bags since that was an additional £60 each way) and had a leisurely time in the airport.

My host mom met us at Stockholm airport and helped us navigate the train back to Eskilsturna, and then we were driven back to Torshalla.  We had dinner of beef and potatoes (the kids mostly ate potatoes).

At Cardiff Central

At Heathrow Airport

Train to Eskilstuna

Sweden - The Plan

My host mom planned most of our days, and I saw a lot of people I knew 25 years ago.  The kids played at lots of play parks. We ate lots of Fika (swedish cake and coffee in the afternoon).  We stayed at the host families house. We met up with my host sister and her family, my host brother, my host aunt and uncle, my host grandparents.  The kids did great while being dragged place to place.  The weather was cold (10 C/15F, but sunny).  

Amazing park in Eskilstuna

Sweden parks were sooo good.

On the last day we went to Stockholm for the day, before staying overnight in an airport hotel and flying on home on Monday morning.

I can see why travel posts span multiple posts! I'll post again with "what we did, where we went" soon... this is volume 1.

Have you been to Sweden? Do you have any questions about Sweden, planning logistics, this trip, or any of the random things I've put in this post so far?

Reentry Report - I need a day or two to recover, and a list of house thoughts.

I had thought about booking today as annual leave to help with my return from holiday, but decided against it due to our very sparse childcare situation.  I'm using a fair amount of my holiday allowance covering childcare until our nanny can start 4 days with us in June, and I'll need to use more of my allowance to cover her holidays later this year.

I really really feel like I could use a day or three to catch up on life.

I know that there really isn't such a thing as "catching up on life" because life undoes itself at the same rate.  If I had a magic day I would do the following

• I haven't done the March photo albums (I update them monthly with a end of the month deadline). 
• I haven't finished updating budget for April.  
• I haven't gone through the photos on my phone to delete duplicates and bad ones.  
• Our house feels like it's becoming a "stuff" house and each room could use a thorough sort and purge.  
• The kids need some new clothes. 
• Our outdoor space needs some more thought and some more things and especially more seating
• The kids sand pit needs cleaning
• The climbing frame needs weeding around it
• We need a baby gate on the outdoor steps
• I need to get rid of the play kitchen in the twins room that they mostly use to close doors on each others hands
• Our bathrooms need a clean.  We haven't had a cleaner in about a year and while I am OK with the lowered standard, it is getting too low for me.
• Our whole house could use some cleaning and not just tidying
• I want to move furniture around in the kids room
• The kids need a wardrobe, they have grown out of their tiny drawers
• I need to request a new credit card as I lost our card and canceled it but have to phone to get a new one
• I have to return some clothing I ordered online
• Even though I upgraded my wardrobe last year it turns out that wearing the same things every day means clothes wear out quickly so some things already need replacing
• I need to find an american baby I can donate all our america themed baby clothes to because I don't want to give them to charity where they will probably get thrown away since it's very specific
• I would like to list all our reusable nappies for sale since I'm not using them for the twins and it's just taking up space
• There is a bag of stuff to drop off at the charity shop
• I have email to respond to from people I like

The thing is, none of those things are amazing, and none are worth a day off.  Also, without school or nursery for the twins, there is no day where I can putter in my house all day and sort stuff and feel great about it.  There are always people here.

I am taking a day off next Friday to go mountain biking.  I'm sure I'll remember that day much better than sorting the house?

Today I managed to put away 4 loads of Laundry:

The kids really enjoyed watching Bluey in Swedish:

This is what our bathroom mirror looks like.  I tried to figure out what the kids do when they spend ages "washing their hands" and I think I figured it out.

My most favourite room to clean/tidy post meals is the kitchen, but my least favourite thing in the kitchen is putting away the dishes from the drying rack.  These dishes are left over from this morning and also added to this evening because I just... don't.

I did manage to get L her summer school uniform before we went to Sweden.  In the winter they wear pinafore dressed with white shirts, in the summer it's blue checked dresses.  Helmet and cycling gloves are optional.

Another random Sweden photo - bathroom selfie on the way home.  the 7:40am flight was a bit rough.  The kids were a mess before they started.  But we made it!

What would you do with a day off? What does "day off" mean to you? What did my kids do to my mirror and when do kids stop touching glass all the time? 

Posting from Sweden

 

Posting from Sweden, via my phone. Apologies for any terrible typos (as usual)

I am nearly at the end of 5 days in Sweden with the two big kids. I was visiting a family that I stayed with as an exchange student 25 years ago.

I think solo travel with kids can be fun. Parts of this were a lot of fun! Parts of this were not fun. 

We are sleeping at the airport tonight (in a hotel) before flying out tomorrow at 7am.  I googled and there is a flight we could take back tonight instead, which I contemplated before realising this moment - being in a somewhat basic airport hotel, watching paw patrol in Swedish, preparing sandwiches with materials purchased earlier… this moment is the adventure. Travelling with kids is not a destination focused endeavour. Problems happened when we needed to get somewhere at some time or do something different. When we just explored, went slow, and had snacks it was fine. Sometimes good.

Being In Sweden is weird because I used to speak Swedish when I lived here 25 years ago and after 5 days a lot of it has come back and I find myself confused about what language to speak to the kids because in my mind Swedish is a kids language (because I was basically a kid when I lived here) and if they aren’t listening to me in English I can try Swedish. 

Speaking Swedish did not improve instruction following.

Anyways, it’s been a good trip. It will be great memories. And we will only get better at family travel. Practice makes… patience? 

Thursday Thoughts: I have some part time job(s)

I have a part time job as a clothing manager.  It involves having four kids, in 3.5 sizes, and rotating clothing in and out of drawers.  This week was spring clothing rotation.  Ezra has few short sleeve shirts and apparently no jumpers.  He is quickly growing out of his small three drawer wardrobe (the IKEA Godishus, if you're curious).  He now has button down shirts which could use hanging.  One pair of jeans now takes up 25% of a drawer.

*****

I have a part time job as a procurement operative.  Lily need summer school uniform and I rotated winter school uniform out of her drawers. She also somehow has run out of leggings.  I went online and tried to buy new leggings, and then I decided new clothes are expensive and so I used Vinted to order her new clothes.  For £25 she now has 6 pairs of leggings, two dresses, 5 shirts, and a new (to her) pair of pyjamas on the way. Way cheaper than buying new, but also must include the price of my time hunting for the right clothes, using the app, making the offers, putting together bundles... and eventually collecting the items. While it is a bargain it's definitely not free.

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I have a part time job as an events coordinator.  It involves four kids, ages 1-6. Includes making plans for sunny days and rainy days, and coordinating activities that are fun for all, but fit within the parameters of ability and nap schedules.  I keep a reserve list of indoor and outdoor activities and ensure that appropriate activities are planned to fill the spaces available.

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I have a part time job as a CFO.  I tally up the finances, produce a rough P&L, and monitor spend vs. budget for a household operation.  

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I have a part time job as a social secretary.  I coordinate play dates, I liaise with parents I like who have kids of similar ages.  I consider the weekend activities with my events coordinator and check whether any event can also become a social event.  

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I have a part time job as a documentarian.  I take photos of the kids, record funny things they say, and produce yearly albums of our adventures as a family and as individuals. 

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I have a part time job as an interior decorator.  I continually see how spaces are used, what looks cluttered, what could look better.  I suggest new pieces to fit our functional needs.  I purchase upgrades to household decor as necessary

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I have a part time job as a chef. I can make a pasta dish with anything in the kitchen, in under 20 minutes. 

*****

I have a part time job as a facilities manager.  I know how much soap there is, how much toilet roll there is. I know how many fish fingers are in the freezer.

*****

I have a fulltime job too.  And I have hobbies and friends.  But... it's a lot of jobs.  I also married someone with a lot of jobs.  He's a bicycle mechanic, a handyman, a cleaner, a school administrator... his list goes on too.   We are just in a period of lots of jobs.

What are your part time jobs? 

Spring Break Thoughts and Fun Plans

It's spring break here! 

The kids are off school for two weeks.  

I am in work 2 full days and 2 half days next week, then off the week after.

Everyone is off from Good Friday through Easter Monday.  

Easter Goals:

• Go to local national trust sites and do easter egg trails
• Do an easter egg hunt in the garden
• Tape bunny ears on a helmets and go for a bike ride

  

  2023

  
  
• Make Chocolate Easter Egg Nests

Easter Already Done list

• Haircuts! I've decided the boys (Andy and Ezra) get haircuts at every term and half term holiday. I do the boy hair cuts myself - Ezra's summer hair is short:

• Set up the garden for eating outside

(we still need to set up a toddler table)

The kids are off school for two weeks, and on the second week of holidays I am taking the two big kids to Sweden for 5 days to visit family.  It is very exciting and also... I haven't left the country since 2019.  Lily has never flown before. I don't remember how to pack, or travel, or do anything.  I will bring lots of snacks.  It will be fine.  It will be fun?

Do you get an easter holiday? Does it feel like spring break?

Sunday Update: Reading, Sports, Sleep

While March may not be a great month for me, April is usually better because I have moments of "this might be getting easier".  For instance, right now clothes are drying on the line and not on the upstairs landing

The big kids have been playing together and mostly not fighting for almost 90 minutes

All of us got out for a walk this morning to a historic building and ate hot cross buns near some cannons (as you do)

On the downside, Andy and Lily are both ill now, but since it took Ezra a week to get over this illness I'm not expecting any miraculous recovery from Lily.  Aubrey and Clara may be ill, but they also may just be 1.5 year old toddlers with all the associated toddler feelings.

Reading

I was really enjoying How To End A Love Story but... it's rather R rated.  I've realized I enjoy reading "curtain romance" more - where the naught bits are the literary equivalent of panning to the curtains in a film would be.  This is... not that.  However I listened to the recent Ezra Klein interview with Jonathan Haidt and now I am keen to read The Anxious Generation and The Righteous Mind - both on hold at the local library.

Sports

• Monday
• 30 Minute Upper Body with Ben Alldis
• 10 Minute Focus Flow for Riders with Denis Morton
• 10 Minute Full Body Stretch witH Ben Alldis
  
  
• Tuesday
• 30 Minute Legs and Core with Ben Alldis
• 10 Minute Full Body Stretch with Ben Alldis
• 1 hour run with run buddy (4.7 miles, 600 ft up and down)
• 10 Minute Focus Flow for runners with Denis Morton
• 10 Minute full body stretch with Ben Alldis
  
  
• Wednesday
• 1 hour trail run with ladies run club (4 miles)
• 10 minute full body stretch with Ben Alldis
  
  
• Thursday
• 30 Minute Taylor Swift Midnights Ride with Ally Love
• 10 Minute Focus Flow Hips with Denis Morton
• 10 Minute evening stretch with Matty Maggiacomo
  
  
• Saturday
• Local parkrun 5k (32 minutes, pushing the double pram for the first third)
  
  
• Sunday
• 20 minute Pop ride with Hannah Frankson

Unfortunately because the aforementioned kid and husband generic illnesses I didn't get my midday Pelotoning in this weekend.  It also feels a bit silly to be on a stationary bike for 30 minutes when I could be doing outside sport, but also I can't be doing outside sport because I'm nominally watching sleeping toddlers.  Ezra and Lily (6 & 4) are not quite old enough for me to start a peloton ride while I am responsible for watching them.  It's nice to write this review because I felt like I hadn't done any sport this week when actually I haven't done much of sport in the last three days of this week.

Sleep

This time change has been great for sleep.  Somehow all the kids are sleeping somewhat reliably until at least 6:30.  I haven't woken up to the sound of crying with a 5 earlier on the clock in... weeks.  It's great.  I'm fairly sure I slept in to 7am once this week.  Overall my average is 7.75 for the week, including a night where I had to settle a poorly Lily from 10-12pm (although I got an hour of that back when we both took a nap the following day)

At nursery drop off on Friday it was "Happiness Day" where the kids could wear something that made them happy.  Andy and I remember to let Lily pick a happiness day outfit, which was apparently a goldilocks dress:

A mom showed up with her daughter and said "oh dear, is it non uniform day?" and another person said something about happiness day and I joked that I was about 1 for 10 in remembering different non uniform days.  A dad in the queue volunteered that he "doesn't keep track of any of it, that's mums job!" and I really wanted to say "yeah we employ a nanny to manage all of this for us" because if he can brag about his immense logistical privilege of offloading the school mental load onto his wife then why should I feel bad about offloading mental load onto a paid employee? But I did not say this.

I also realized that sleep is really the only thing that allows us to do this school thing.  We could not figure out the theme days days, clothes days, happiness day, odd sock days last year.  Because we had newborn twins. No wonder we couldn't remember anything.  It wasn't a systems problem (What if we wrote it in our calendar?) or a "go in the right order" problem (what if we packed lunches the night before?) or a reminders problem (what if we put sticky notes on our door for things that are happening the next day?).  It was impossible to do these things because it was impossible to do these things with twin babies.  Now that we have toddler babies and get enough sleep it is possible to remember days and pack lunches.  There's no planning or life system that replaces sleep.

Some Saturday Thoughts - Clearing The Decks, Closet Project, and Phone Thoughts

I had a bit of a "clearing the decks" Friday, and got 3 annoying things done

• Called ASDA because the booster seat I bought sent had a small hole.  We received the carseat in February and "complain about hole" has been on my to do list for a long time.  A really helpful customer service rep was able to refund me for the seat. I did not want to spend 45 minutes returning a £9 booster seat but didn't think it fair to spend £9 on a booster seat with a hole.
• Wrote to grocery delivery store about two rotten items in last delivery. I know it's probably less than £2 but I resent paying for delivery if they pick things that are already rotten.  I haven't heard back on whether I'll get any refund but at least it's not on my to-do list anymore.
• Wrote to another shop that sent me a broken travel bottle.  Again, it was a £2 bottle, but I don't want to pay even £2 for broken things

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On Friday my company published their 2024 Gender Pay Gap Report.  I emailed the global head of human resources to thank her for the report, and to ask whether they might include Parental Pay Gap reporting next year.  I have decided that maybe global heads of HR / EDI might appreciate a thank you from random people in the company.  I had a goal this year to reach out to 5 potentially career building people. Although this probably won't be anything career building I do want to get more comfortable contacting big important people.  I'm pretty sure big important people are still just people and if I wait for them to reach out to me I'll be waiting for a long time (there are 3,000 other people in the company so the odds are not good that anyone will notice me!).

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Today (Saturday) I tackled this really annoying project - CLOSET PROJECT

We have one closet in the whole house, and it's in the baby room.  I use it to store all kids coats/jackets and shoes.  It had become a nightmare:

Anytime a kid grew out of a coat or jacket or shoes I just chucked it in the closet.  Mostly because I can't actually get into the closet when the twins are around because they really love a pile of shoes and coats. However, I couldn't find anything, and the twins probably need their next size up shoes soon.  The top box of shoes was supposed to be Lily's future shoes (that Ezra had grown out of) and the bottom box was Aubrey and Clara's shoes (that Lily had grown out of)

I decided to mix it up a bit, and seperate shoes into type: Crocs, Slippers, Wellies, and trainers.  Now I have the following:

The bottom box is all welly boots.  We have enough boots for the twins since Ezra and Lily had to have 2 of each size, one for nursery and one for home.  For some reason I don't seem to have any shoes in between the size 4.5 Aubrey and Clara are in now, and size 6.  That seems like quite a jump, unless I have thrown some shoes away.  I pulled out all size 6 and below and stuck it in the twins drawers (baby sandals! So cute!).  I also found Lily a pair of summer keens sandals from Ezra, and a new pair of hand-me-down boots (no idea where her old pair went). The jackets are all ordered by size again. Mostly, it just doesn't look crazy.

On a clothing note, I always wondered why people dress twins the same.  I realized that it helps when we are at a park, because often one twin is doing something mildly dangerous while the other twin is doing something super dangerous, and I'll be watching the super dangerous twin while other people stare at the mildly dangerous one wondering where the parents are.  If the twins are dressed the same then people usually figure out its twins and not a very neglectful parent.  I have been looking for a matching coat on vinted to keep everyone dressed the same. 

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I've been thinking about phone use again recently, and whether I want to try to go smartphone free (or smartphone lite) again.  Although my time use isn't high (still about 1.25 - 1.5 hours a day), I am so aware most of my use is me starting into it willing it to "show me a thing to avoid what is happening".  I am also mildly put off by the number of times I pick it up in a day.  

Are there no hours in a day that I don't need to look at my phone? I'm not looking at texts, or making phone calls.  I'm googling something, or checking my email.  I would probably be happier with my numbers if I picked it up 20 times at 8am and 20 times at 6pm.  Do I really want to be touching my phone every 20 minutes all day long? No I do not.  I would like to have a different "get me out of this moment" habit.  I'm not sure what that habit would be.  Smoking? Just kidding.

Also, I blocked BBC and WalesOnline and most news sources from my phone.  I don't have social media, and so I really have to get creative when I want to waste time on the phone because there isn't much easily there.  But I still do it.  I read blogs on the phone (which is not as fun as on the computer because on the computer I can think and comment). I read some Peloton subreddits sometimes. I look at Rightmove to see local houses for sale.  All of these things are fine but none of these things add value to my life when doing them in 5 minute chunks on a smartphone. 

Have you tackled anything annoying lately? Organization Projects? Would you complain about receiving rotten fruit or a carseat with a hole in the fabric?

Goodbye March - A random review

March is not my favourite month.  Maybe this is the introspection of round number midlife birthdays, but I've realized that I almost never have a great March.  This also might be affected by recency bias (we put higher cognitive importance on recent things than historical things).  

Kyria gave an awesome rundown of her various March adventures on her blog and it got me wondering if I had any trends with March.  Read Kyria's blog for exciting adventure, read below for... the opposite:

March 2024 I had 6 month old twins.  6 month old twins is not fun.

March 2023 I was feeling terrible and wondering why I was gaining weight so quickly and so early in pregnancy (spoiler - I was pregnant with twins, which I found out in April. reading my line a day it seems very obvious now). 

March 2022 Things at work were getting weird, I felt like my career was going nowhere and weird stuff was happening.  The kids were 18 months and 2.5 and both ill a lot.

March 2021 I was still under lockdown and at home every day with a 6 month old baby, people were still banned from visiting or socializing (Also will take a moment here to remember that Wales had one of the longest and most restrictive lockdowns... which has almost zero effect on covid mortality as compared with the slightly more open England)

March 2020 Lockdown started and I was 3 months pregnant and had an 18 month old and was working from home full time.

So.. March is not my favourite.  Here's a short summary of this March, which was far better than most of the above!

Weather (first, because I'm sort of British now so everything is the weather): 

It was very sunny this March, if cold.  That was a nice change from rain

Sport:
Days I did some exercise: 28 (this includes walking, walking is exercise)
Cardio Sessions: 14
Strength Sessions: 9
Yoga/Stretching: 12
Days where I walked outside: 23

Other good things:
+ I have done 31 strength workouts this year of my 100 goal - 31% complete with 25% of the year over.
+ I did my 100th Peloton ride
+ I joined a local ladies running club

Budget:
I know this is a random one but I must confess that we are, for the first time ever, doing pretty bad against budget.  I realized that historically Jan-Mar are high spend months for us (not sure why? My birthday? New year energy? Time at home to fix house projects?).

This is a sort of useless graph of our cash float (basically a snapshot of bank account, so kind of useless because when we do things like pay down mortgages or pay off student loans it shows as a massive dip) but I can see that generally we lose cash in Q1, though not as fast as we have lost cash this January Q1. 

It's not a huge problem (yet, thankfully) but some of our budgets were clearly under-budgeted. For instance, we planned to spend £200 a month on house maintenance and improvements, then spent £600 in January replacing a bath panel, fixing our breadmaker, buying a new waffle iron and toaster, paying the window cleaner, some new hedging for the garden... it turns out being an adult homeowner is expensive.  It does mean that I'm trying to intentionally be a bit leaner in spending for the next quarter.  We are also saving money on childcare right now, which is our single biggest expense, so hopefully we will be in a better position in Q2.

Andy Adventure:

One of my goals this year was to have an Andy-Rachel adventure every month.  This month's adventure was going to be a trip to the bike park! Unfortunately it was not to be as Ezra was ill that day. Instead we added a store-bought takeaway to our grocery order on Saturday and had a curry night at home after the kids went to bed.  It was still very nice.

Other Goals
In March I took the kids to see a children's ballet.  I had a goal to take the kids (or Andy) to the theatre and I did.  It would be fun to see a theatre show with Andy still, but I need to keep an eye on shows and then buy tickets so it's a big project

I hung artwork in my office.  You know what looks better than art hung stacked on a bookshelf? Art hung on a wall.  Also, 100% love command hooks.  Also, that's where another £20 of house budget went.

In Summary

Was March the best? no. Was March the worst? no.  It was a month with lots of changes, but it feels like a pretty good foundation month for what's looking to be an exciting (and possibly chaotic) April and May.

How was your March? Do you have high-spend times of year? Have you ticked off any yearly goals for 2025 (if you do that kind of thing)?