Kindy schedule 11-15 February

Term 2 week 6
Focus activities: Love & Friendship, Valentines Day
Letter of the week: Qq
Discussing friends and how we can be a better friend
Poem - Queen of Hearts
Valentines Day box - making cards for our friends
Co-operative games and activities
Shape of the week - heart
Heart - art & craft activities




Monday
PMP with Mrs Carter
Music with Mr Instone
Storytime with Mrs Lewis

Tuesday
8 am assembly with Mrs Kalesaw - Love
ICT – Interactive whiteboard activities
PE with Mrs Carter

Wednesday
Baking tartes like the Queen of Hearts, to take on our picnic
Mandarin

Thursday
Picnic snack at the boarding house – we will take our tarts to share – please send picnic food for sharing for first snack. Please send a mat to sit on. Parents are welcome to join us, we will be walking over – under the walkway at 9.40am.
Library 11.20

Friday
Swimming
Fresh Fruit Friday - please send red or pink fruits for our "love salad"

41 hours later

This trip took 41 hours from door to door... of course, that was with the scheduled overnight stop at a hotel at LHR, so not too bad actually.
It went really well, again. Our kids are travelling stars!

Now I just need to unpack, and get everybody over the jetlag.
Good to be back though.

So long

Time to go. Last post before the trip, my computer is about to get shut down and packed up for the trip.



See you soon, on the other side of the world and in another time zone! So long!

"Spring Mormor, spring!"

-"Spring Mormor, spring!" (=run Mormor, run!) - A little movie from the snowy weekend, of the kids having a ball, and Mormor getting some exercise...

Choo-choo!

One of my missions in Denmark (apart from doing some heavy shopping!), was to visit Lucas' Godfather, to collect the latest delivery of Lego. I was lucky I had the girls with me, to help me carry, because there was an immense amount of boxes...



I was also lucky on the way home on the train, that I only had to change once, and both trains were then on the same platform, pheuw.
Now I just need to fit it in the suitcases, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem, since I came here with almost empty cases - and once you take it out of the cardboard boxes, it doesn't take up that much space.

But first, we had to unpack the train-sets, and build a huge train track. It took Mormor, Morfar and me almost three hours the other day to make it all up - and I'm actually not quite sure who is having the most fun with it, Lucas or Mormor and Morfar...





Happy boy:



Even Linnea was allowed to drive one of the trains, and she did pretty well considering it goes both backwards and forwards, in seven different speeds!

Time to go

Last day in Sweden today. Tomorrow we are off back to the UK, and Friday (hopefully) onwards to Brunei.

It's going to be nice to get back to the warm sun. Two weeks of winter slush is enough. We are lucky we did get some snow, even though it didn't last for long.

All the technical machines are charged up and ready to go, the bags are almost packed, and the kids know we are sleeping one more night at Mormor & Morfar's, then we are going to see Daddy, and he is going to get biiig hugs!

The kids' weekend

I'm not the only one who's had a great weekend actually. The kids were in heaven when it started snowing on Friday, and continued on Saturday! Jippie!

They were out with the sledge in the garden one of the days, and went to a big hill the next. They went pretty quickly downhill, and although Lucas thought it was "scary", he wanted to keep going and keep going!
Also they built a huge snowman, who was still here and got proudly showed off when I got back!
Here are a few pics from their weekend:



Reading the toyshop catalogues. They can spent hours doing this, over and over again:



Linnea has a thing with too much clothes. After changing her diaper here, it's almost impossible to get her trousers back on! She refuses trousers totally and I have to wrestle her to get them back on (because otherwise she would be too cold). But sometimes, I just don't win:



"Lilla snigel akta dig..." (=Swedish nursery rhyme about a snail that needs to watch out.)



Cool kid:

My girls

I have just come back from a lovely weekend in Copenhagen, with my best friends - Erika and Kamilla, my girls! Thank you - I had a wonderful time. You guys are the best!

EFIT - Friday 01.02.2008

09.15 I had forgot it was an EFIT-day, so my first picture is of Mormor and Linnea waving goodbye as I leave for the train, to go to Copenhagen for a weekend with my girlfriends:



10.15 Picking up my new passport at the Police Station, on the way to the train. It had broken in the binding, so I got a new one, free of charge:



11.15 On the train, listening to my favourite Swedish comedy radioshow På Minuten on my iPod, and eating chocolate:




12.45 Changing trains at Nässjö, on to the X2000 speedtrain:



13.30 Having met up with Erika, we feast on semlor (see here) and coffee, yum! (It's Bert-semlor, very tasty actually. Created by our local Skara-celebrity Bert Karlsson.)




15.20 Forgot to take a photo around 14, but here is the view from Öresundsbron (between Sweden and Denmark), if you look closely you can see the wind-powerstations in the far:



16.20 Leaving Copenhagen airport with the Metro. It's amazingly easy to get around CPH nowadays thanks to the metro. This last bit out to the airport was the last bit to get opened quite recently:




17.30 Erika forgot her backpack on the train we came with from Sweden. A very nice DSB-worker helped us locate it again, it had to go with the train to Helsingör and back - and here we have just recuperated it and are on our way to leave Hovedbanegården (=main train station CPH):



19.00 Dinner is served, sushi, mmm! Favourite meal with favourite girls!




20.30 Trying to make the little ones fall asleep with some Shrek - no luck..:



21.30 And then the night went on, with this, until very, very late. The end.

Cone therapy

We went out in the forest again this morning, to give poor Lucas some cone therapy. We brought along a picnic and went on search for a good spot. Lucas managed to make friends with the scary cones, and we had hot chocolate, bisquits and buns on a blanket in the forest.
The kids got to run off some steam, they thought it was pretty great in the end! Here are some pics:

Same procedure as every year

It's quite funny, every time we are visiting Mormor and Morfar we have to do things exactly like we always do them when we are here.
We have to follow the same routines as last time, as every time.

That means for example that the kids always have the same breakfast: HavreFras (=oat crunchies) or leverpastejsmörgås (=sandwich with paté). They also always play with the same toys, they play the same games with Mormor and they always have to have chokladpudding (=chocolate pudding) when it's time for a special treat.

That also has to be prepared the same way, every time which means:
They have to sit on the bench and take turns in helping to measure up the milk and the chocolate powder.



Then they take turns in mixing it. Linnea can hardly wait, check out the tongue!



Linnea doesn't like the noise when Lucas is whipping up the cream:



It's better to do it herself:



And last, the best thing, to get to lick off the cream!

Happy Day!

We went to one of the bigger cities around here today, to have a little look in the shops. Apart from getting a few of the things on my shopping list (like Twinings "Green tea & lemon"-teabags, elastic hair bands, underwear and Wettex-cloths) it turned out to be Lucas' happy day. We found a toy shop that had a big closing down sale - everything had 70% off!
So he got not one, but two new Power Rangers!

Not only that, we also managed to time Power Rangers on TV just after we got home - lucky, lucky! And - we had chokladpudding (=chocolate pudding) for dessert! What a day!



(Linnea got a orange soft toy cat, who she named "Mjau".)

"While the cat is away..." Part 2

Yes, didn't I just mention that things tend to appear in our house, while I'm away in Sweden? That is for example how we got our first big flatscreen, it was just there when the kids and I got back from a summer trip. Like I wouldn't notice? :)

This time though, there is no surprises, because I knew he would go ahead with all his ideas while we were gone. Again, this is something he has been going on about for a while.
Check out the latest "toy":



Apparently, we now own a speedboat! Together with another Kiwi-family, the Turners, this little gem is ours!
It needs a new engine and some decorative work, but then it's going to be lovely for our lazy days, and for taking our visitors on great excursions! It's 23ft, so it takes along two families with ease; and - you can ski behind it of course!





It's still almost two weeks until I'm back home, I wonder what else will turn up before that?

"The only difference between men and boys...

... is the price of their toys". I don't know who first said this, but it is oh so right! My dear husband loooves his toys!

While we have been away, Nathan has bought himself (even though he says it's for the kids, yeah, yeah) a new toy - a Nintendo Wii.
He has been talking about it for ages, so it was just a question of time. He went off with a few of his friends, and got a good deal, since they all got one each! (Funny though, how these things always appear when I'm away...)

I guess he is looking a bit like this at the moment:

Going shopping

The kids love coming along shopping for groceries here in Sweden! There are two big supermarkets we usually go to. In one of them, the kids get to drive little "Little Tikes"-cars, that has been pimped and crossed with shopping carts.
It's great fun! (Albeit a bit dangerous for the fellow shoppers.)

In the other one, they get to drive child-size carts, which they think is super cool.
The only thing is, we have to buy two of everything, to keep everything even (and calm), very important...

Scary things

Today we had some friends to come and play, which was really, really nice!
It was my old classmate Karin and her two little ones, Olivia and Valter.



They came around lunchtime, and we had yummy lunch and played for a bit - and then we took the kids outside to go for a little walk in the forest, in the lovely sunshine we had today!

Lucas:



Linnea and Valter:



Watsons: (Not very cooperative models)



Olanders (Karin, Valter and Olivia):



It was quite nice outside, and everything went nicely, until we entered the spruce forest, and Lucas totally freaked - because he got scared of... the spruce cones on the ground!
We had to cut the walk short, and I had to carry him back out onto the road. He was completely beside himself, and thought they were about the scariest things he had ever seen...

For sure, we were never really the most outdoorsy people in the UK either, and now, being a jungle child, even the most normal things can scare you if you are not used to them..! I guess I will have to take the poor child on some more exotic excursions into "the wild", to introduce him to the Swedish flora and fauna!