Mini-vacation in the the holiday - Innovatum

A few days of our summer holidays we went on a mini-holiday within the holiday, together with my friend Carin and her two youngest boys, Riccardo and Niccolò. We started with a visit to the science center Innovatum, in Trollhättan.

It was rather cool, for all ages. Lots of experiments and fun things to try:

We spent more than four hours there, lunch break included. One of the activities we all took part in together was glass art. It was actually really fun, we got free hands to create whatever we wanted.

We are jumping a bit in time, as our artwork wasn't dry until the following day when we had to come back to pick up the finished products. But I just wanted to show you, from left to right: Linnea did a necklace, I did a wall hanging and Lucas chose to make a coaster.

Summer in Skara

While visiting family there is always a bunch of traditional activities and rituals that we keep the same every time. Certain foods we eat, certain people we hang out with, certain things we do. Like going to the indoor play land. Oh yes, most kids this age would think they were too old (and big!) for it by now, but not mine, ha ha! And when you can bring your little second cousin as an excuse, it's all go, go, go!

Doing puzzles on rainy days:

Bringing the recycling back to get some cash for 'lördagsgodis' (=Saturday pick n'mix):

Playing games on the lawn, preferably croquet:

Baking and cooking with Mormor. Lucas' meatballs were the bomb!

And Linnea enjoys experimenting with different colours in her hair, this summer she had time both to be purple-haired and get mermaid-hair:

Mariestad

 

We had booked in a date with my friends Annika and Ulrika in Mariestad this Monday, at Ulrika's house, which thanks to the absolutely awesome weather felt like a complete holiday resort!

The pool, the sun loungers, the drinks (although not for me, I was driving), the toys, the food, the chill-out... aaahhh...

We had 'fika', we swam, we enjoyed the sun, the kids swam, we chatted, we ate some more, the kids played, we ordered pizza, all swam, we enjoyed the sun, the kids hung out... it was a great afternoon!

Swimming!

If anyone in Sweden wasn't happy with the weather this year, I have to confess - it was all my doing.
I had especially wished for a summer NOT like last years, I wanted more mixed weather to be honest. The summer of 2018 was fantastic yes, but I really didn't want another whole summer holiday of heat, I get enough of that at home.

But, I was happy that here in July we had quite a few days warm enough to go swimming. Yes, even I have been in!

We also had a day with our friends from Italy in the baths in Vara, just like last year!

The Whodunit Detective Agency

Even though we skipped our traditional summer theater visit last year, the kids feeling a bit too old for it; we decided to give it another visit this year. Mostly because the play that Charlies Theater-group had chosen this year was a very familiar story to the kids.

They performed one of the mysteries from the The Whodunit Detective Agency book series by Martin Widmark. We used to read all those books when the kids were younger, and especially Linnea has also read a lot of them by herself.

It was nice to be back, even though the story was obviously more for the younger visitors and this is amateur theater, we all enjoyed it and visiting these summer theater performances have been a really nice tradition for us. Maybe next year we should chose to come to the evening play instead, to keep the tradition alive.

Bison safari

One morning the kids and I did an excursion to neighbouring town Falköping, because we were going on a BISON safari! Oh yes! Quite a fun experience!

This bison farm keeps bison to graze the paddocks, and for its meat; but also realized there was an opportunity for added income by inviting visitors to their farm and let them go see the bison up close. The farmer built a special carriage, and this morning there was a full load of visitors going into the paddock.

As soon as these big animals saw the tractor they came charging towards us, oaw they could run! Apparently they can get up to 70km/h! What I didn't know was that the farmer had lined the trailer under where we were seated, with snacks for the bison, which was what they were coming for:

It was quite amazing seeing these animals up close, they were a lot bigger than I expected. The farmer told us all about them, and about how they look after their animals and run their bison business there at Wrågården.

At this farm they also keep deer, and moose:

You can also stay here at the farm, in their Elk-hotel! They have several cabins in different sizes, shaped like the different animals on the farm. These cabins have been created by a world champion chainsaw artist, Sören Niklasson:

It looked super cosy inside, maybe this is something for another summer!

We went for a little walk to say hi to the elks: