Like a broken record

I feel like I should post again... as it's been over a week that we've been back. But as per usual, I'm not in the perkiest mood, so to make it easy for myself I'll just copy and paste from last year's return:

Thursday, 30 August 2018

That sad September

We've been back almost a full week from this years summer holidays, and I guess it's about time to write that 'Hey we're back!'-post. Not that I haven't had time, ha ha, time is all I have; more because I haven't really wanted to.
Last year, I experienced my return was different to the years before and I was feeling happy and upbeat. (In hindsight, it was probably because I had just spent nearly TWELVE weeks with the kids 24/7 more than anything else, ha ha!)

This year, I feel I'm back to square one, or even minus fifteen or whatever the expression would be - I am back to feeling exactly like I did in 2015 and 2016, and worse yet. The words ugly, blergh, prison, gloom, boredom, beige and loneliness still resonate very much with me.

We've been back a whole week, and I've seen one friend for coffee, the neighbours came over for a G&T one evening and... well... I've been to the supermarket once and to the movies once. The rest of the time, I've mostly been sat here, as per usual. Making time pass, trying to figure out how I'll get through this soggy September, before the weather calms down a bit, job picks up a bit and life happens again.

I've stopped being hopeful that things might change, instead I focus on what I can rely on:
I can rely on feeling better when I can go outside and not melt away; I can rely on feeling accomplished when I'll start guiding again. I also rely on knowing that I enjoy so much having guests, and since we'll have four different families come over during October and November it'll be a fun and busy fall.
I just have to get through "Sad September"...

- - - - - - - - - -  

This year has been pretty much the same. I've been to the supermarket, I've had our neighbour Rory over as he's without family here at the moment, Linda has come for a quick coffee and I've driven the kids to see their friends. That's it.

Yes, I know, I sound like a broken record. That's just how it is this time of the year, it really isn't that upbeat and I just don't know how to turn that around. I guess with time I've just accepted it and I try to embrace it and most importantly just get through it.

Wrapping up the summer holidays

And just like that the summer holiday in Scandinavia was done and dusted for this year.

Time to say goodbye, in the rain, quite fitting, always a bit sad of course.

Thank you to family and friends for creating lovely summer memories with us! 💖

That one bike ride

After our little tour of Denmark and south of Sweden - where we after Hybholts also stopped in with the Robertsons in Helsingborg, but the only photo I took there was of their dog, Rafa - ...

... we returned to Skara for the last time this summer. Unfortunately we had to cut the holiday short, so what should have been a week there, ended up being only a few days.
Enough to go for that one bike ride though - take out and air the Boardman a little bit! We did my 15 km loop around Stenum and town together, in the evening sun. Lovely!

Bunkeflostrand

After a few days catching up with everybody in Copenhagen, we crossed over the bridge to Sweden and went to see our friends the Hybholts for a few days.

We are so lucky that they come seen us in Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks each October, but it's nice of course to catch up and stay at theirs while we are in Sweden as well.

For some reason I didn't take many photos there either... Just these few.

Copenhagen

Well, this will be an odd blog post... as we've just spend four whole days in Copenhagen and somehow, I ended up not taking a SINGLE picture of anybody of our friends. How's that even possible?! I don't know, we sure was busy seeing people!
To be honest it was a bit of an unusual stay this time, for different reasons, so there you go - the only pictures I took were these:

 Candy factory:

It was Pride-week:

And food, glorious food!

Happy 17th

So we've been back to Mormor and Morfar for a few days, before heading south tomorrow to continue part two of the holidays, together with Daddy. The last night here for this time we went to have dinner at Pinchos in Lidköping, one of the kids' favourites.

In a way it was also a celebration for our 17th wedding anniversary! Even if Nathan wasn't there it's a day worth being festive! Happy Anniversary!

Heart full

And just like that, four days with this crew is over. But I'm grateful we managed to make it happen this summer as well, not always a given. My heart is full.

Borgvik

One day we did an excursion to Borgvik. We lured the kids to come along with the promise to go eat some ice cream, but we also did some walking around the area.

Here at the Borgvik mill they started production of iron in the 17th century. The iron was exported to many places across the world, for example the Eiffel Tower in Paris is partly built with iron here from Borgvik.

Then we found a lake where the kids could go swimming for a bit. They really enjoyed jumping off this pontoon. It was rather chilly, probably our last swim for the summer I would think!

Dogwalking

Even in Karlstad I made sure I got my kilometers in every day, and joined Linda on her dogwalks with Bull. It is so beautiful around where she lives, especially down by the lake.

I just can't get enough of the greenery, the fresh air and the smells. I wish it could be bottled, so that I could bring it home and enjoy it, especially in that sad September.

Panikfabriken

Even though meeting up at Linda's is great, since there is plenty of room for all of us, and lots of things to do; we usually try and organize and activity or two, so that we get out of the house for a bit. This year Linda had booked us a session at 'Panikfabriken', a laser tag place! Oh my, we were all extremely pepped for that!

We played two games of 20 minutes each, and oh my was it a good workout! Especially for us who kept getting shot all the time (...), lots of running back and forth to revive ourselves!
But it was SO much fun! Even though I was far from good at it, it was sooo much fun! At least in the second game where we split up a bit more evenly than the first game (which was girls vs boys), so it was a better game.

I so want to do this again!

Sat Nam

Just back from our traditional meet-up with Anna and Linda and all their kids, and this year we all stayed at Linda's place again. Us girls take turns in bringing each other gifts and this year it was Linda's turn. She presented her gift already on the first evening:

Oh how exciting, we were going for YOGA!
All packed and ready to walk down to the lake, and our yoga spot for the evening:

This is the view we enjoyed, while we were channeling energy, balancing chakras and humming mantras in an introductory session of Kundalini yoga:

Look how happy and relaxed we were after the session!

Then we enjoyed the sunset, and our vitalized energies, with a bottle of bubbly!
My girls! ❤️