One week in

It is Friday and school has been out for a week. Which kind of feels more relaxed but also makes the evenings a lot shorter, since Luca does not return from Pinckney until 5PM. He is at a YMCA summer camp where they stuff the kids into some busses 🚌 and take off towards camp birkett.

Here we are on our commute - Luca and his I-insist-to-keep-biking-despite-having-2-cars Mom:

Teresa has only had synchronized swimming in the evenings, and the poor girl has been bored out of her mind. But Monday she will start the CIT (counselor in training) program at the YMCA, which will hopefully be a good experience.

Ulrik...... well Ulrik has been sleeping. A lot! He has had this week to recover from an intense school year. He has suffered from daily headaches from being as tall as he is, and we have finally finally finally gotten some adjustable chairs provided by the the school system. But they did not make it before the end of this school year unfortunately.

Kristian and I have been - tadaaaah - working. And working. And working. As usual. I have had my first "fluorescent mouse" EVER! And I have been very amused by that. I took out the brain on Thursday and it was bubblegum pink (which most likely makes it completely useless as it will light up as a Christmas tree under the microscope).

But now it is Friday.

And we have elderflower tonic in the fridge which makes the best G&Ts:

And tomorrow the plan is to finally get to put new fabric on our ugly couch - something I have procrastinated for days (or maybe weeks....... or maybe months. Ahem)

A Saturday in IKEA

This Saturday we went to IKEA. I know that some people think of it as the ultimate challenge of willpower (do NOT buy candles/plants/napkins/vases), relationships and ability to not get tempted by the icecream at the exit, but we LOVE it! To us it is a little piece of Scandinavia where it feels awesome to recognize the names on all the doormats (no kidding! Things that are intended to wipe your feet on are named after Danish cities. Thank you IKEA. We love you too🙄), and to buy løsgodis (bulk candy) at the exit. We can even get foods served in the cafeteria that are otherwise no-where to be found.

We went this time because we wanted to settle our living situation. It is no lie that I have a very hard time with apartment living these days. I hate to live in this temporary, cheap-materials, close to the highway apartment complex. But at the same time we are lucky to live in one of the places where anything broken gets fixed rather quickly, where our current upstairs neighbors are super quiet, and where we have established what I would not so humbly state as the coziest patio in the hood. And the pool! I don't even want to imagine trying to get through the summer without it. And we have sort of given up on finding a house to rent. The market here goes fast! And most houses are available in July/August which means we would have to pay double rent for a while, which would easily bring our out of pocket expenses in the vicinity of 5000$ (double rent, new deposit and moving cost), and that's quite frankly a lot of money to pay unnecessarily.On top of this the kids don't want to move again. And I don't blame them.

So in order to get ready for one more year of living here we decided to upgrade the inventory a bit.

So now Luca has a proper bed, we have a new fancy coffee table and a fancy lamp in our living room and a giant pillow the kids couldn't wait to share with Bailey as we watched a movie that night.

We also found these:

And since we are no longer as hesitant to hang things on the walls, it has become a lot nicer to live here.

Dairy Queen day

School is so close to being done that the elementary school teachers have checked out mentally. All Luca does these days is DIY slime, pool field trips, and electronic game days. And today it was time for yet an important tradition: the yearly Dairy Queen trip. But........ someone had an eye doctor appointment and got to spend the afternoon like this instead:

Including the much dreaded dilating eye drops

Which hurt - especially when the sun is shining. Luckily the eye center is prepared:

But since Luca missed his DQ trip we all decided to go tonight. All 6 of us as DQ also sells icecream for dogs ❤️

"Baaaaileyyyy! Look up!"

Oh well. "Can you look now?" (Taking his icecream away)

And after all that icecream a stroll in the neighborhood was appreciated. Dinosaurs and all:

#summer

It's June and it is officially summer. But summer has more to it than what month it is in the calendar:

- despite having dodged cold and flu all winter long, the first weekend in June wiped me out with sneezing and coughing. But I got to binge watch a ton of Netflix :-)

- mulberries are starting to show up. And the Chinese lady, who picks them all has started to "stroll" through the neighborhood. Grrrrrrr.

- the sun has been out so much that the little pond (right next to the "this is where Henriette broke her arm" spot) has dried up to become mud. Quite deep mud though, that dogs cannot walk on top of:

- it is that time of year where we'll have to renew our current lease. And where we drive ourselves crazy with "should we stay or should we go". Preferably to a rented house. But so far all houses have been too small/too expensive/available too early. At least we have made the decision that we are not going to rent an apartment unit somewhere else. We will only move if we can find a nice house within our current school district.

- and school is out in a week! Aaaaaargh. Aaaaaaargh. Aaaaaaargh. As always the thought of kids being home for 11 weeks straight kind of terrifies me, but we have managed to survive so far, so I guess we all will make it this summer too.