Everyday-life changes

As mentioned in the last blog post: our household has been shrinking with Ulrik moving out. And since we have limited space we are not wasting it as an “empty nest mausoleum” with abandoned teen rooms left intact and waiting for the kid to fall right back into their old habits when visiting. Instead we swapped Luca, who will now have not only his own room - but his own room with a door!!!! This kid has literally always shared a room or slept in a doorless den. And now that he is about 2 1/2 minutes away from becoming a teenager I think it is about time! I doubt he will close the door though. That’s not really in his nature. But he does enjoy playing Minecraft without constantly being told to move his computer away from the dining room table:

And someone who is even happier is Kristian who finally has a home office where he can have all of his computer stuff and even a workspace that allows for working at home without sitting cramped in a corner of the bedroom:

(And I am certainly not complaining that the number of dusty cables, where I sleep, has been decreased significantly😁)

The home office also houses another important item:

Teresa’s brand new bike! Her old bike was stolen some weeks ago, and of all our kids she is the one using it all the time (well a bit less now that she has her drivers license - more about that later). In addition we are gearing up towards buying a house. And with that come great responsibility as in “show us you can handle at least 3 credit lines/loans each” from the bank. I was OK, but Kristian was not, and after long discussions we agreed that getting one final credit card and use it for a semi expensive purchase we can then pay off to show our great responsibility (sigh......) would be the way to move forward. But what to buy? Several things were debated, but we ended up agreeing on a bike for Teresa. And needless to say she is quite happy with that choice and has already taken her brand new BFF on several tours.But - there is one in the family who did not like all of this. Poor bailey ended up puking from exhaustion after spending an entire day being told to stop getting in the way as we moved furniture around. I guess he only tried to help...... but he was so confused and didn’t know what to do with himself

And last but not least - this:

One relieved and happy 16 year old who nailed her driving test in the first try! Picture was taken by hungry and very relieved mom, who envisioned she would be eating lunch while her daughter toured the local roads with the driving instructor. Nope. Since she is only 16 it is required that a parent is in the car during the test. I was not happy. I am still afraid of highway driving myself and has elegantly (or maybe less elegantly in certain situations) avoided high way driving with a teen as the chauffeur. But it ended up being a good thing for me as I have now seen how well Teresa handled it. And this has certainly also expanded how willingly I grant permission to take Luca out for a movie or go see friends outside of town. So overall I would say that this week has been one of the better ones!