The inbetween days

inbetween christmas and new year - a mix of reflecting on the last couple of holly-days and giving some thought about the new year about to start. i really missed being with my family AGAIN this christmas and not knowing when I will spend a christmas together with my parents and sisters with families, a rather sad feeling
But still we had a good christmas together in our little family, bobbing on an island in the big blue sea - and we did spend most of our time with friends and even Santa found his way to our house.

These days we taking time out to relax, letting the children play with their new toys and games and meeting friends. I have actually finally got going on making a few new pages in the childrens photo ablums, decided to make some less complexed pages and get some done instead of having to high ambitions on making the perfect scrapbook page and getting nothing done. still the progress is slow.

Tonight we made a big indoor tent in Tessas room with a picnic and pretended we were in the desert of wadi rum, cosy and fun - Tessa is now fast asleep in the tent and hopefully it will not fall down on her tonight.

Its rain it's pouring the frogs are not snoring

Another day in paradise, getting rained out, it thundered, rained and poured all night long, I love a good rainfall with all of nature’s drama of thunder and lightning. Not at all frightening! Today we took my parents to hectic hot Bridgetown. A quick visit to some shops, rushed to get back in time to pick up the kids at school. The afternoon was lazy and relaxed, the children played with friends and as we have baby sitters available Bo and I went to movies - Feast of Love, good flick - not a PG rated as per usual, so it was a nice change. And it’s raining and pouring again so all the little tiny whistling frogs are happily whistling the night away.

Church Hopping

Silence in the house as all are asleep except me, the moths circulating around the screen and a few mosquitos feasting on my legs. Today has been a active sunday, my parents wanted to go to church so off we went hoping to find a good church to attend. We started off by going down Rondevous hill to St. Lawerence church in Lawrence gap 09.00 only to find it had started at 08.00 and was almost time to end so we went for a coffee while we waited for the next service to start 09.30, however coffee took all day to arrive so we missed the start of the next sevice and decided to go to the Methodist church thinking it started at 10.00 but alas it had started at 9.00 so we sped of to St. Davids church to attend the service there - and arrived almost on time ... we call it church hopping/hoping.

The afternoon was spent getting lost all the way to Bathsheba - so we go to see all of the inland of Barbados, sugar cane fields, little villages and alot of bananas. We even saw yet another church - St. John, although this time empty. The evening ended with fish BBQ and a glass of good white wine.

A House Full of Wisdom

Parents/grandparents arrive!

At last they are here, mom and dad/morfar and mormor have arrived in Barbados. We are going to enjoy each others company and Barbados for 3 weeks together.

On another note:

Had a dinner with a family that has just arrived to the island from Canada. We had a grand time chatting, drinking rum punches, eating Roti and picking bananas in the amazing garden. They have a fantastic house with lots of character and many good quotes.

Halloween Hysteria

The last couple of weeks a lot of time has been spent volunteering to help out with the schools annual spooktacular Halloween setup. I joined the decoration committee and have had a many meetings thinking up gory scary ideas for 17 different stations, a lot of fun. Together with another mum I’m responsible for setting up a ghost house, a mummy grave yard, fortune teller and skeleton house ... all the work still lays ahead. What I’m not to pleased about is that in a moment of inspiration I volunteered to help out with the arts and craft classes to make Halloween decorations with the kids, its fun but lots of work ....

Inspiring Arts and Crafts from Barbados

Photos from a trip to Earth Works & Art Gallery

Another Summer Another Vacation is Over

Back again after a long summer holiday (a cold one) back home in Sweden. Fantastic to be able to spend so much time home and with family. We now have our own summer place and we spent some time fluffing it up, ther's still much I would like to do but there is a shortage of energy, money and time. It is good to be back in Barbados in "our" house and get back into routines at school, around the house and work again. The kids seem happy in their new classes and teachers although 6 hours of jetlag makes the first week back at school abit tough....

Midsummer celebrations

This midsummer we had a huge get-together with the swedes on the island. all in all 42 people came to our house - i've never had so many guests all at once. It worked out great 'cause it was a pot-luck setup and everyone lent a helping hand. Still me and Bo were on our feet from dawn till 3 in the morning! have'nt been up that late for years and years. then all sunday we worked hard to get the house back into shape - but it was all worth it - we had a great really, really swedish midsummer in our garden.

Thoughts on ...

Saw this today, thought it was very TRUE.

Goto give this some thoughts and continue the process of creating myself. Have some ideas for the fall but now my thoughts are moving in the direction of going to Sweden for the summmer. Its only 2,5weeks to go and its going to be excellent to leave the island for a while. We are all really looking forward to seeing the family again and being in our home enviroment. Can't wait to go for a shopping spree in well stocked shops and supermarkets ... I miss that so - this is my 4th year of not good shopping! Aqaba was a desert and Barbados is not top of the charts either and above all so expensive.

Well thats not much said on creating oneself at all. Going to hop into the Jucuzzi and ponder awhile.

Cruel Exams

Unbelievable! My poor 8 year old has to write exams on the year's work. Everyday after a long day at school she has to come home and study for the next day's exam. Surely teachers should be capable of giving their young students their grades on the whole years efforts!!! I feel so bad for my daughter, she should be having free-time after a long day at school - enjoying what she enjoys most - playing, dancing , drawing, writing songs and playing with her sister and friends.
Homework sucks too - whatever is wrong with enjoying one's carefree childhood. At this rate she will be sick and tired of school by the age of 10!

Frogs

Photo for today is frogs. Tessa discovered a little pond at school full of frogs/toads - she was so fascinated/horrified by these creatures hiding under the lily leaves " Mamma jag är lite scared av dessa frogar". swenglish that was.

update from Barbados

Hello if there is anyone out there reading my blogg, you probably dumped my blogg as it has'nt been updated for awhile. but here comes a few lines and some photos too. Update from Barbados - All our dear visitors have left now and we miss everyone, it felt especially empty when Simon left as he spent 2 months with us and felt like part of the family. He was an excellent guest and it was also great that he liked spending time with the kids so they did some cousin bonding. Should add that the whole family were excellent guests, mosts helpful with the routines. Still finding ktichen things in odd places in the kitchen though ...

The weekend was good - did some relaxing, spent time with friends, went to a big childrens birthday bash with clowns, face painting, jumping castles and swimming! The girls no way wanted to go home - having a blast in the pool, had to bribe them with promises of loot bags. On sunday we went for breakfast at Bean and Bagel - see photo below. Enjoyed a short visit to the beach and then went to see Shrek III. We concluded the day with a nice BBQ - all in all a very good day.



Monday morning I was very unorganized, forgot my keys (for the house, car & gates) in Bo's car aswell as the booster seats, it took awhile to get to school and then in the afternoon I locked us out of the house so we spent some time at the mall waiting for Bo to get home with the keys. Goto get more orginized. Good thing though was that got my lazy butt back to the gym and now Im hurting abit here and there.

Some like it HOT

Todays LO of my nephew Simon and his favourite 'spice-it-up sauce' - Bajan HOT pepper sauce!

Todays digital layout

When Tessa changed to her new school - (but still at preschool level) she really felt like it was her first day of school. She was so excited to start in "big" school and be together with her big sister. She could hardly fall asleep the night before and woke several times. She is now officially "not a baby anymore, but a big, big girl - just look mom how much I've grown!"

Fairy dolls

Latest digital pics. Spur of the moment inspiration - found a empty gemframe. Turned out that Tessa loved the picture of her as a fairy, had it on the side of the bath when bathing and then fell asleep with the picture - pretty good reward - I think!

Yada at 1.5 yrs.

Tessa 10 months

a lazy day by the pool

I should really get my scanner working, Tessa is started to draw things that we can decifer, before only she could tell. Suddenly there is mass production of family portraits and they are so darn cute. maybe I'll give the scanner another go tomorrow, the silly scanner is basically brand new but probably broke down moving to Barbados... The main problem is finding the manual and disc in my (?) ever growing pile of boring sort me outs.
Today has been a day of relaxation for me and Tessa, we spent the day at the pool swimming and pretending to be Dora the explorer and Doras mom, we also had a map which apparently only spoke spanish - Ola! Bo and Simon went fishing - but mostly snorkled, Yada spent her day with a friend baking cinnamon sticks in a little playoven, that works (I remember having one of those as a child and making scrambled eggs and melting chocolate - but at seperate times ofkorsh LOL). yada also got into - webkinz.com - a cyberpet it seems like lots of fun - but having a webpet to care for will mean wanting to spend more time on the pc. anyhow proble solved can't be found on the island.

i'm a big big girl now

Big words from my little little girl - "i'm a big, BIG girl now ... and off she went to big school in her brand new uniform and hair in a pigtail!, but to me she'll always be my little little girl.

Both my sweethearts started in their new school this week - anticipation was high but it still felt sad to see them have to start afresh. Many new routines and rules to get used to - sometimes i wish i was back in sweden - with a more relaxed school enviroment, i think? never actually set foot in the real school world back home... but for now i hope and pray that the kids will feel at home in the new school and encounter many good and caring people.

... what happened to Easter?

Easter came and went and i only just got to chuck some bunny and chicken decos on the tables before it was over. Tessa got right into the easter box and did the serious easter decorations - all the ornaments on one branch of the palm tree and secret letters to easter bunny (probably, "bring me the loads of chocolates, ive been really good") in a easter egg. It probalby passed so qwik as we were away sailing, and I never properly pondered over the true reasons for easter - maybe next easter I will be ready to take on the whole kit. In childhood spirit an egghunt was conducted on a lone and hot island in the Carrabien - all the children shouted out over the seas - we love you easter bunny! as she (presumably) sped away in her speed boat. Easter bunny must be a lady bunny, right?, 'cause as far as i know no male bunnies have been seen hiding eggs since... well ... never!

Insane household

Back from our sailing trip. A wonderful week of sailing around in the crystal clear turquise waters of the Carrabien, enjoying white sandy beaches and lots of (more)sun. After a week of squashy but cosy living, our friends, (whom we love and they love us right back) were, I'm sure, glad to see us leave so they could get their over-occupied boat back in order and to themselves!

Back on dry land I spent two days washing and gettting sorted out before new friends from Sweden arrived to visit us. So now the house is fully loaded and we zooming around doing the sights, sounds and tastes of Barbados. I ordered a PSP2 with Singstar and Eyetoy games so the kids are reving it up - running, jumping around smashing play-play ghosts around or howling hopelessly out-of-tune to Madonna and making the house sound totally INSANE. What have I done??????

.. a few months later ...

Now it has been months since my last blogg, forgot all about it, i must confess...
We have now been half a year in Barbados and we feel quite local. Yada has even picked up the dialect! All practicalities are working well, the kids have settled well with school and friends, and then, BAM, we going to move them to a new school - a better choice but still it's not great to part them from friends again. hopefully they will love the new smaller school aswell. My newphew is here visiting from Sweden and now we are all looking forward to our easter break, we are going sailing with our good friends the Gracies in the Carrabien! how GREAT is that!!!

Barbados Rocks

I like it!